Women's self-objectification

"A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth." - George Bernard Shaw

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Whose Slut? - The F-Word

"Despite attempts to sell pornographic images of men to women as a great equalizer, women still prefer their magazines populated with sexy women. This makes sense to me; since the beginning of time, the female body has been associated with sex...

The traditional feminist response to the fact that straight women clearly demand and enjoy images of sexy women has been that we have internalised the patriarchal values which oppress us and lost sight of our own sexuality along the way...

Self-objectification is an integral part of female heterosexuality. Whether it be shopping for underwear or dancing at a club, most of us get a thrill at the thought of being desired by men. Taking it a step further, how many of us have fantasised about being strippers or whores?...

The notion that a sexualised woman is degrading to women derives from the assumption that she is being sexualised by men, for men...

In recent years, women have begun to reclaim their sexualisation. From women making their own porn films to the growing number of feminist strippers who freely admit they get a kick out of displaying their bodies, we are slowly beginning to show that sexualisation can be just as fun and empowering for the ones being watched as for the ones watching. We are even beginning to reclaim sexist insults... Anti-porn advocates'... cries of ‘degrading to women’ are merely adding to the common assumption that any woman who enjoys the male gaze must be either a victim or a slut...

Some feminists believe we can go back and change our history so women will no longer have to bear this association [with being male sex objects]. I believe that any attempt to do so will further alienate the majority of women from the cause and ultimately be met with overwhelming resistence, if not from the powers that be then from our own sexuality."


I was reading this after the outcry about Hugh Hefner saying that 'Women Are Sex Objects'.

While this is a refreshing change from much of feminism (for example, questioning that objectification is always a bad thing), the logic here seems to be that it is okay for women to objectify other women, or for women to objectify themselves, but not for men to do so (or to act on the implications of such objectification).

Besides the problem with restricting objectification of women to other women, if a department store has an attractive and novel display, you surely cannot fault people for ogling at it, telling their friends or even taking pictures of it. What you CAN fault them for is vandalising it or stealing parts of it (touching it falls into a grey category - probably the most you can do is expel someone who keeps touching your exhibit from your store). And to insist that only some people can ogle at it, tell their friends or take pictures of it seems capricious (perhaps even discriminatory).

To look at it another way, if "most [women] get a thrill at the thought of being desired by men", men are doing them a favour by desiring (and objectifying them).