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Liberation vs. Exploitation, Agency vs. False Consciousness

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14:22 / 22.09.07

Hah! You know, I honestly think that if I chose to put a penis of my picture errrrmmmmm a picture of my penis out on say a "user-generated" porn site, or if I chose to appear naked in a magazine, and then was subsequently given a score by other users, the editorial staff or whoever might do that, presumably so I could be assigned a relative rank ordering in some sort of competition between other men doing as I did, then I would feel neither here nor there as to being dehumanised. Having freely (I presume, in the absence of experience) entered such a competition(?), I truly believe the scoring bit would be the least of my worries, if there were any.

But I don't regularly feel dehumanised when a girl looks at me and I think she's eyeing me up. The female gaze doesn't feel dehumanising to me when I am its object. My SO often says she feels differently when guys look at her, and a lot of my female friends the same; my impression is they feel sometimes mostly flattered but often also mostly vaguely threatened. Yet most of the women I know put a good deal of thought and feeling into how they look and project themselves. Clearly (I think to myself and thus write here), they must belive that at least some of the time they can be in some control of how they are looked at, and by whom. It doesn't have to be sexual, eg one can dress to impress in many different domains, for power, intellect or some other effect. But yet it seems that a some of the time, or maybe even most of the time, the carefully constructed projection does some women more harm than good.

Dzjayzh, that was longer than I meant. Did I answer your question?

14:58 / 22.09.07

there's no problem with turning round and telling him to fuck off
It may be no problem for you and some others, though I'm sure that there are many more timid women who may not feel comfortable doing that, and who knows what the reasons for that may be.
I'm all for the freedom of people to do as they like, as long as it isn't done to hurt others, that kind of thing. And people "taking back" or wanting to wield their sexuality as an empowerment is understandable as well, though it may be impossible to extricate all the reasons behind that from one's history within their culture. Self-perpetuating or even self-enhancing feedbacks of sexuality in a media-dominated culture become stubbornly ingrained, and I don't think that anyone could argue that it is all always fine and good, and not at it's root permeated by the prevalent sexism and power inequalities in the culture. Many people may have some perspective on this, but I don't think that everyone is so free or able to stand outside,view it objectively, and act accordingly. Another reason I don't know that anyone can, totally, is that we are animals, complicated social and cultural animals, so an ultimately base drive like sexuality— that is at it's heart solely an animal impulse to procreate— is undergirding all the abstractions we pack around it. And abstractions that develop in individuals within a society are strongly guided by that society. If you feel comfortable with your own public expressions of your own personal sexuality, that's fine, but it doesn't necessarily take into account how that interacts with other personal sexualities; or the motives and reasoning behind another person expressing themselves in what appears outwardly as a similar fashion, but could be from a totally different motivation.

Tryphena Absent

15:27 / 22.09.07

It may be no problem for you and some others, though I'm sure that there are many more timid women who may not feel comfortable doing that, and who knows what the reasons for that may be.

There aren't any other ways to address individual behaviour. Making noises at people isn't illegal for good reason so it's up for the individual to seek help if they can't respond in a proportionate way. The opposite stereotype to the timid woman with problems is the aggressive male who has anger management issues and yells at people in shops, he needs to seek help too.

I'm all for a society where everyone is nice and treads carefully so as not to upset others. It's not going to happen. I don't approve of men whistling and leering at women in the street but there will always be some men who do it because they have as little understanding of social conduct as the woman who doesn't know how to tell them to leave her alone in more than one way. Do you understand what I'm saying here?

Tryphena Absent

15:51 / 22.09.07

Thinking about this I think I expressed that badly and it could be taken out of context. What I'm trying to say is that because there have to be legal boundaries and legality is how we tackle social problems there's a line between action and harrassment. A man whistling at a woman on the street is an action, if he whistles again after you ask him not to it's running towards harrassment, if he ignores you and does nothing else than that's fine, if he apologises then he's revoking his action. In order to tackle the original problem though the response of the woman is important, she has to be proportionate and understand that the original action wasn't immediately harrassment but an expression. If he whistles every single time he sees her in the street after she's asked him not to and she keeps seeing him then he is fundamentally harrassing her. If a woman is too timid to ask him to stop then he may not understand that he is engaging in harrassment, he simply thinks he's performing an action that she has no response to at all so the proposition that he must not whistle is important. People need to outline their boundaries so that other people see that they exist so that their personal sexualities are recognised.

18:47 / 22.09.07

Odd footnotes to this discussion from reddit:

Alternet Editor Don Hazen: "Pornography and the End of Masculinity"

Gist: But what has become clear to me is that, under the guise of the first amendment, a huge and powerful porn industrial complex has grown out of control. And a big part of its growth is fueled, not just by the Internet, but by continually upping the ante, increasing the extremes of degradation for the women in tens of thousands of films made every year. I am convinced, although it is, of course, difficult to document, that the huge audiences for porn and the pervasiveness of the themes and behaviors of degradation are having a negative impact on the way men behave and the way society treats women.

It's a bit long and is more focused on "actual" porn, but says some pretty interesting things about the moving of the bar in more mainstream media and disturbing details about the kinds of attitudes being constructed.

and then there's

A study from the University of Guelph finds men often feel "coerced" into sex because we're subject to the myth of the massive libido. In other words, yes, these social constructions do have a measurable effect on behavior.

Gist: The existence of traditional stereotypes may cause men to engage in sexual activity rather than feel guilty about refusing it. Meanwhile, adherence to such stereotypes by women may fuel the belief "that resistance may be somewhat futile against a man's indomitable desire for sex," the study stated.

All Acting Regiment

02:19 / 23.09.07

I think it's worth remembering, as well, that "Liberation/Exploitation" and "Agency/False Consciousness" are all things that can happen in and around this area without being entirely mutually exclusive - I mean, despite being opposites - in the sense that, just because some kind of liberation can be identified in someone's actions, that doesn't mean there's no exploitation going on there.

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