Women, Objectification, and Masculinity

Hetero man identified friends this is where you turn back. I’m being upfront this is going to make you uncomfortable (hopefully not angry, but definitely uncomfortable). My awesome, progressive, feminist, hetero, cis, male friends objectify women, like all the time. It is a conditioned response to the patriarchy telling them it is expected and ok. Actually, it is fucking hysterical most of the time. And I’m not saying being sexually attracted to someone is wrong or always objectifying. Additionally, within the context of a relationship power dynamics and sexual interests can encourage objectification within certain contexts.

That said, I have so many stories of guys just being objectifying toward women. So before we get into the examples let’s go over objectification. In the feminist perspective, objectification refers to treating someone (usually a woman) as an object. Martha Nussbaum has identified seven features of objectification and Rae Langton added three more:

1. instrumentality: person is a tool for the objectifier’s purpose
2. denial of autonomy: person is treated as though they lack autonomy and self-determination
3. inertness: person treated as if they lack agency
4. fungibility: person treated as interchangeable with objects
5. violability: person treated as lacking boundary-integrity
6. ownership: person treated as owned by another person
7. denial of subjectivity: person treated as if their experiences and feelings do not need to be taken into account
8. reduction to body: person treated as the sum or parts of their body
9. reduction to appearance: person treated in respect to how they look
10. silencing: person treated as if they have no voice.

Good times right? Obviously, my peers and friends are most likely to be employing 1,7, 8, 9, and 10. Ok, ok I know it sounds bad. But I’m willing to bet most people are guilty of doing this to someone at some point. We're conditioned to be selfish and by extension it is easy to treat others like objects. Now for some examples and why they are particularly troubling.

A while ago, I made an off the cuff remark to several male friends and acquaintances about how I’ve never met any of their female friends who were biologically related to one of the group or in a sexual relationship with one of the group. The response was immediate and negative. One swore up and down it wasn’t true for all of three minutes before they started to concede that yeah, they don’t have very many. Then the buck was passed to my friend. It was his fault because he pursued many of the women in the group’s friend category *side eye/eye roll*. But that isn’t the objectifying behavior, well it maybe I don’t know specifics there. But several of the guys started explaining to me how some of the girls my friend hooked up with went crazy and started fighting with one another, and I don’t really know but some kind of stereotypical female behavior that was irrational and problematic for the group. See, we’re looking at number 7 and maybe 10.  The women in question’s feelings and perspective wasn’t relevant to the group; they might as well not have had any at all. If you’ve ever blown someone’s mind you can immediately tell, which I did when I asked if they were sure the girls were ‘crazy and irrational’ or if it was a perfectly rational and emotional response to the situation my friend put them in. *crickets*

This objectification seems harmless enough, but it is clearly indicative of a way of thinking. The women folk are the problem and their feelings aren’t important. Of course, it has to be taken into that group mentalities and the desire to protect the group from outside threats, which these women may have been perceived to be. Additionally, women seem to be placed in these categories, which will sound familiar: respectable and inconsequential. These categorizations then determine whether or not the woman in question’s feelings and perspective is legitimate. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the story, and why I still find it fascinating is that they were all mortified by my observation and subsequent explanations by each other, which implies they too on some level have an issue with the objectification.

Now for a very different kind of example. In undergrad, I had a peer in several classes who consistently spoke over me and took credit for my ideas in class. This peer was a white dude; I know everyone is shocked. Several times he behaved and implied I should be flattered that he agreed with what I was saying. These were acts of silencing me and taking credit for my ideas. I wanted to use this example because it was about entitlement to my ideas and being heard over me instead of the overt sexualization that objectification usually invokes. Essentially, as a man his ideas were superior and any good ideas from a woman could be co-opted by him. For some reason he was entitled to my ideas. It is by far the most obnoxious thing I’ve ever experienced, particularly when he just spoke right over me. Also, this co-opting of ideas is something being discussed a lot right now by feminists of color on Twitter. 

I juxtapose this experience with a situation where two of my girlfriends and I made a good man friend speak for us. I borderline stalked a university representative for a year. True story. The fours of us were speaking with university representatives about fair trade issues and school licensing. The three white men on representing the university consistently directed questions to my guy friend. He did his best to redirect the question to the appropriate person including C and ME who were the leadership in our school organization. However, it was a cycle, the university reps would rather our guy answer all the questions and as the meeting continued we all were willing to defer to him. After, our guy was pretty angry with all of us for forcing him into that role.

In terms of masculinity, objectification is the right of men in the patriarchy. Women are objects for men, and men are entitled to benefit from all aspects women. This includes our thoughts, actions, and feelings. Being masculine means being able to demonstrate the use of women as objects. I don’t think men always see it that way. They don’t think that they are rendering women as objects and less than them just because they discount our experiences or take credit for our ideas. Some men probably only find rendering women as sexual objects to be objectification, but to me the other forms can be more insidious.This entitlement runs really deep, and I suspect a lot of men don’t even realize that this is going on. Instead, they think if they aren’t openly objectifying women for sexual gratification or objects for their physical use then it is ok. Once we work within the extended framework of objectify then we read infantilization as objectification; rejection of a woman’s ability to self-determine; etc. To expand on this conversation it is frequently happening in respect to ideas and the free exchange of thoughts online. Black Twitter is rightfully outraged that others, including white feminists, are taking their ideas and profiting from them. This is objectification. Dr. Patricia Hill Collins noted this in her talk I saw this spring: intersectionality is profitable now and when something is profitable the white people follow.