Reviewing the last post, which - you'll recall - ended with me killing all rapists as you do, I wondered why I was writing about something I state detachment from - something I'm not explicitly guilty of when I should be addressing the root problems of gender roles, masculinity and the objectification of women. A subject that shall surely prove more convoluted than before as I try to argue both sides of my primordial human biology and my civilized human decency. I didn't make concessions to the guilty men in the last post, perhaps because my revulsion makes me not want to see another side to it, because it seems so abhorrently wrong. With the more everyday matter of sexually objectifying women, well, I do it on the daily - every time button gets changed.
I was going to try and argue that I wasn't guilty of objectifying women, if that's viewing someone purely as a depersonalised object of desire* because even when I've bust a nut over a magazine or ogled a perfect stranger; I know there's a human on the inside. That might be true but it's not enough. If I'm looking, I'm rarely thinking about their loved ones and their childhood, their dreams and desires - unless theirs might align with my own current desires *wink-wink*. More likely I'm thinking about my long suffering button and how the pair might look together, and then if button might really be game - if she's said what I've chosen to hear her say then it's definitely on the cards - but then how awful I have made her feel upon two occasions - both on that lecher's paradise Newland Avenue - making eyes with students, while button's eyes have welled. I blame absent-mindedness, animal-nature, but I can be better than that.
Being aware that there is some soul where you, the man, only care for the hole isn't enough. It's that point that you only care about anatomical aspect of a far more complex animal that is the problem, it is that reducing them down in your estimations to what you are interested in that makes it objectification. Right? I'm not claiming expert knowledge, I'd invite anyone with a better definition to call me on it.
*Defined in this how-to-objectify tutorial, I keep seeing about the interweb.
I'm not the best advocate of laddish harassings of the opposite sex, it's true. Because I'm mannerful, faithful to my partner, and frankly I'm classier than that shit. Pack-mentality encourages morons to wolf-whistle, "civilizations" rancid hypocrisies have permitted rear-fondling, fucking business interests directed who gets hitched to who for centuries - in some parts of the world - and in western societies "upper-class" circles it still does, a sexist notion that men have all the answers and women don't get 'it' lets two pissheads decide "what she really needs" when she sucks her teeth at their come-on's, so they follow her to a blind-spot on her way home...
(Having written this mostly last Saturday, returning to it is proving a challenge. I think the point of joining the topics of sexual violence and masculinity has been achieved. Next on the agenda: I want to dissect concepts of manhood as discussed in a BBC article recently, perhaps explore the other-to-self-salience spectrum and no doubt conclude the greatest man of all time is some awkward asexual.)
