I often have a difficult time explaining sexism. Certainly you can piont to the thousands of ads that show naked, near naked, or sexualized women and girls, but plenty of ads with men in such states exist to rebuff your argument. The claim "well sex sells," is hard to combat because, we all know it does. As a lesbian I also have a hard time convincing men that these types of ads are offensive because (while I obviously take no pleasure in the demeaning of my fellow women and sisters) I have to agree with them when they say things like, "come on, tell me you don't like seeing hot, naked women."
The key is that each individual act of sexualization is trely not significant. It is the combined effect- which does not sexualize this woman, or this girl, but instead sexualizes the very state of being female, that is the issue. And a far-reaching, highly detrimental issue, at that.
Recently, I went on google images for a quick clip-art type of thing that could represent actresses. I noticed that on the first page for the key word "actress" about 6 or 7 (of the 30) pictures were of actresses posing naked and sexed up, presumably for a Maxim-like photoshoot. Another 3 or 4 were pictures of porn.
I was intrigued. The key word "actor" turned up a total 30 pictures of- well, actors! Not naked actors, not porn stars, not dicks. Just men who make a career of performing on stage or on screen. It says something about our culture that actress does not carry a similar definition, but must be sexualized simply because it involves the female sex.
I've found that this google-image experiment works with absolutely any word combined with the word woman, girl, or female. Go ahead and try "pure girl" "food girl" "work female" or even "self-esteem girl". Literally anythign will yeild similar results. It also works with feminine words like actress, waitress, and heiress. Mother yeilds only one porn image on the first page (all of these will provide porn on the first page 99% of the time, and the second page the other 1%) while daughter was mostly porn. That was one of the most disturbing things I found while conducting thse mini-social experiments for doubtful friends.
Now, when I try to explain this particular facet of sexism, I just commandeer the nearest laptop, and the evidence is just right in front of me.
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I typed in "oh hi" and on the first page I got a picture of a naked woman with the camera on her stomach looking up at her.
I was definitely NOT expecting that one.
This is all so true. Try 'redhead' 'brunette' 'blonde' or 'redhead etc woman'. Then try the same with man. Women are often reduced to their hair, have you ever noticed? A person might say, 'that brunette over there' and you know they're talking about a woman. If it were a man they usually say 'that dark-haired MAN over there / that blond man.'
I wish women could live without being constantly sexualised no matter the context. I've heard of men streaking, skiing in the nude, etc. and this is all supposed to be funny and not at all sexual. You often see scenes where men are naked in films and it's not sexualised (I can think of Red Dragon, Da Vinci Code, Watchmen, etc) - usually you just see them from the back. But female nakedness is always sexualised and sensualised. We very rarely see a real woman's body on screen, in a non-sexual context.
Actually, I got porn results on the first page for both "brunet man" and "redhead man."
Yeah, like porn of redheaded/brunette women or men having sex with redheaded/brunette women.
Less of that than you might expect. Do the search with safe search off. It's mostly gay porn.
My safe search is always off my friend, I like to live dangerously.
I just now searched "redhead man" (without the quotes), and on the first 2 pages (36 pictures), I would classify 5 as male/gay/bi porn (only one of them actually having sex, the rest just naked, and the guy actually having sex is with a woman, just she has a strap-on, so it's not quite what I was saying earlier), then there are 11 of a redheaded man either without a shirt on or not nude (like 2 without shirts). Then there are 18 pictures of just women or primarily women, 5 of which are porn (Not counting the one where the woman is doing the dude, and all but 2 involving actual sex), and some others which are more sexually themed than the ones of men. Then the other 2 are kids (creepy in the context, but yeah).
So, at best, there is an equal amount of naked men and women when searching redhead man, but the pictures of women are quite a big more explicit. Not to mention that the non-nude pictures are more likely to be sexually-themed when of women.
And you'd think using quotes ("readhead man") would be a little better, but while there's less porn, it's still 3 of women and 2 of men, and all 3 with women are having sex with a man (and is obviously porn for straight guys, from the content), and only one is a man having sex with a man.
So all in all, not a lot of gay porn, imo, only 1 or 2 pictures.
I was only looking at first page results. For "redhead man" there's an even number of nude/explicit pictures of men and women, but if you do "brunet man," on the first page you get five pics that are either explicit gay porn or hentai, one from m/f porn, two of shirtless men, two of clothed men, one of a clothed woman, one of male anime characters, and six unrelated pictures (including three that show up because Brunet is someone's last name). You have to go to the second page to skew the results away from relatively more naked men than women.
I'll give you "blonde" vs. "blond man," though. There are way more explicit photos of women there.
I think that the conflation of the female body with sexuality is very much a part of sexism. Silva Federici makes this point (drawing on Foucault). While I mention Michel Foucault, I agree with him that the female body was "thoroughly saturated with sexuality" to deem it was problematic and weak, and thus women as such. Alexandra Howson also talks about this, and Iris Marion Young.
The naked female body is sexuality and sexuality is the naked female body. This is something I do a lot of work on, studying the sociology of the body. You can't have a whole lot of power in this society if the vehicle through which you experience it is constantly an object of sexuality. And I think that's the point.
Voluptuouspanic,
"You can't have a whole lot of power in this society if the vehicle through which you experience it is constantly an object of sexuality. And I think that's the point."
I think the problem is the definition of power that the authors you mention find acceptable. They just did not allow themselves to see power in sexuality (personal vs. political). Ie, in a relationship where the woman is using her sexuality to gain material benefits from a man, her position is not considered one of power, but one of forced reaction to his material power. There's obviously a different perspective possible in this respect.
All this does is reflect the amount of porn on the internet. Google famously does not filter anything - it shows things as they are.
If there are more naked women in the Search result it means that there are more pictures of naked women on the net than there are pictures of naked men.
I think everyone suspects that.
Well, provided you don't have the filter on.
And it's also not just porn, but sexual imagery that isn't pornographic, like the maxim-like photo shoots she mentioned.
But I'd like for you to explain how suspecting that there is more pornographic imagery of women than men means that sexism isn't involved. Is the porn-filled internet not indicative of things outside of the internet?
Duh, that's the whole theory behind the phrase irl - in real life.
Um smiley, I think you've just proven a big part of this whole post....
That's not sexism thats business. Because homosexuality is STILL not widely accepted here (epic fail on the part of a developed democratic country) heterosexuals are catered to. There is a MUCH higher demand from men to see half naked women than there is a demand from women to see half naked men.
There are plenty of highly sexualized women who WANT to be sexualized who revel in their sexuality and the fact that so many people want them. Porn stars, models, pin-up girls etc are NOT victims of sexism they are strong women who want to flaunt their sexuality. Very few of them feel any shame in their workand most who do got into it under illegal and brutal or at the very least questionable terms.
When we can stop saying abstinence doesn't work then we can say something about being sexualized. But you can't cry out that women just *can't* say no to sex at 12 and 14 then shout out that its unfair to have all these sex-related or sexy images of women everywhere. Not ALL women are highly sexualized but those who are often make themselves very visible in teh media, on the internet and out in public. Same for highly sexualized men.
I thought I detected a tongue planted in the Phenicks' cheek in this post, but it's periodically so incoherent that I really can't tell.
Can someone please clarify? Is Phenicks a troll?
Are you serious? A troll?
Because I KNOW that heterosexism exist?
Because I KNOW that all female sex workers, models, or women who just love being sexy are not mindless drones who can;'t think for themselves? Because I think women who are in charge of their sexuality are not *victims*?
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
Wait, oh I know, you think all women have to be having sex but be very very discrete about and that no woman who isn't being victimized would ever be highly sexualized. Got it, ok now take your infantilizing thinking of women somewhere else. I don't buy the BS that women are children or that all little girls are just itching to have sex.
I actually do find the pro-sex stance of feministing a bit confusing.
On the one hand everything that empowers women and leads to more sexualization of women is encouraged, yet there are the complaints about sexualization.
I also think, this is taking women out of the equation.
Okay. Well, it's clear you read my post far enough to get to the end of it where I asked if you might be a troll.
"...you think all women have to be..."
Can you please point out where I said anything about what I thought women have to be?
All I did was ask questions, explicitly and implicitly, because I found your post unclear.
I think so.
I thought I detected a tongue planted in Phenicks' cheek in this post, but it's periodically so incoherent that I really can't tell.
Can someone please clarify? Is Phenicks a troll?
(My apologies if this is a double post.)
'That's not sexism that's business... There is a MUCH higher demand from men to see half naked women than there is a demand from women to see half naked men.'
Exactly. Sexism and sexist attitudes ARE big business. Sexism sells. If women were conditioned to be the sexual aggressors and to see men as sex objects it would be the other way round.
Women don´t see men as sexual objects?
Even if models, porn stars and pin-ups "choose" to be sexualized (?) you can't tell me that you can reliably separate that "choice" from a society that is steeped in sex, sexism and the notion that women's bodies are public property.
So women have no agency to make their own decisions? Careful with this line of thinking, it`s exactly what leads to women not being listened to, because well, society made it so we can`t trust their choices.
Not when their self identity is crippled by a misogynistic society that undermines authentic female sexuality for one thats dependant upon her underminement. Sociology and social indocrination are words you need to look up.
Does anyone else think that sounds similar to blaming women for being sexually objectified, ie, taking male responsibility out of the question? The poster doesnt seem to recognize the difference between sexual objectification and autonomous sexuality.
I typed in "actress" and "actor" and didn't get any nude pictures for either on google, and my safe search is off.
I did type in "work female" and came across a sexed up picture of a swimmer. I clicked on it and it was linked to this article written by a man about how female athletes are made to be sex objects rather than, what they are, athletes. He then lists the 50 "best" female athletes and points out how they've all posed for men's magazines or advertisement and how they are celebrated for their bodies rather than their athletic ability. So, there's a good example of sexism and the female body in sports.
The rest of this website is pretty questionable, but at least he was spot on about female athletes.