>G'day Observers,
hey rob, long time no discourse ethics! havin' a beer this evening i suppose? well look i'll go out and drink a blue margarita for you and dedicate it to you. skol!
>That's how you read 'em, Kelley. Fair enough. And then you asked them for
>confirmation or elaboration. Beaut.
hmmm. not quite getting the 'beaut' is this irony? sarcasm? mocking? "Gorgias rightly said that one should spoil the opponents' seriousness with laughter and their laughter with seriousness"
when i get to OZ to finally finally visit Ange and Catherine, i'll shout you out a beer if you can guess the author.
first off, Yoshie rightly described me as a sex positive feminist. so, the following ought to be framed in that context
>Is the portrayal of half-naked, or buck-naked, women all that sexist?
what do you mean by sexist?
>It's commodification, sure.
that depends doesn't it? obviously, SI is commodifying women's bodies.
>It's probably objectification, too
if you reduce a person to a part, to some attribute, to a thing without agency for it/her/him-self--is this what you mean by objectification?
>(although it
>ain't that simple - a naked woman generates an altogether chemical response
>from us if we're sharing a pool or a sauna with her than if she were to
>display herself with what we take to be an intention to arouse us.
now you're losing me. not sure what this has to do with objectification.
and isn't this a learned response? obviously.
'intention to arouse' --isn't that pretty slippery? here in the states, a judge in a sex harassment case ( i think it was the infamous judge Bork) had to make a ruling as to what evidence would be allowed regarding the woman who'd claimed she'd been harassed. bork decided that pertinent questions would be 1] did she wear long, dangling earrings 2] pattered dark stockings and 3] when was the last time she'd had a date. hmmm. guess judge Bork thinks that dangling earrings and certain kinds of stockings indicate an intention to arouse. obviously Bork is a dork, but i've heard, seen, experienced similarly dorky things
> Same
>with pictures - I gotta be imagining someone trying to turn me on if I'm to
>slobber appropriately - so a picture does it only after mediation by my
>sordid imagination
and what mediates that sordid imagination rob? don't say it's the beer! or even the chips!
>- an imagination overly populated by wanton wenches
>perhaps,
no doubt.
> but wenches with agency/intentions before all other things at
>least - their T&A ain't explosive until the gazer lights the fuse by
>imagining a willing person around it all).
well it's interesting that you pose it as if the gazer lights the fuse, as if there's a great deal of autonomy regarding what you find arousing. sure, there's a lot of variation but don't you think we're taught how to read this images in certain sorts of ways?
i think this is a nice example of precisely what is meant by objectification. in this case, somehow or other you come to imagine that the woman in the pic has agency/intentions and they are for you and your pleasure. isn't that a bit different than the grrls in the pool who may be indifferent, disdainful, preoccupied, etc? the image is presented to you in such a way as to incite you to see it in certain sorts of ways, this is purposeful
the people who produce these images have an extremely elaborate set of techniques they deploy in order to trigger this response in you. obviously you must learn this, learn to read the images this way: the lighting, the shadow, camera angle, etc.
>Sure, the intention is
>purchased in this instance - but that's our lot, innit? And we do all know
>it's purchased - so I don't rate arguments that boys are being misled into
>expecting from, and hence imposing upon, the girls in their world such
>behaviour and intentions.
and it's *not* purchased in RL? hah! you delude yourself rob.
actually, the research seems to suggest otherwise but only specifically with regard to hardcore porn. in other news: 13-15 yr old boys *do* say that girls should *put out* if you buy them dinner and a movie. the intention seems to be purchased with no shame there, ey?
so Rob, love, get yourself a copy of the video DreamWorlds II. In it Sut Jhally shows how women's bodies are objectified on MTV, not just by reducing them to body parts, but also by limiting the range of roles they play but also according to how they behave toward men
>I mean, any worker is subject to commodification and objectification, right?
>The sexism would come in if a limitation were set on the possible roles in
>which women are represented, and if that limitation were more severe than
>that set on men, no? And do we respond to that by excluding one more
>representative possibility?
exactly. images of women, today, are largely represented in very limited ways. they are represented as being for, living for, playing for, working for, desiring, wanting men. without men, women are lost. except that one in the clairol shampoo commercial: she ditches the guy to wash her hair. oh but that's because it's for great sex in the shower! oh wait, that's reassuring cause hey! she likes sex.
>It occurs to me that Anglo-Saxon feminisms take this stuff more seriously
>than do their continental European counterparts, anyway.
well no. i think, at least Yoshie and I, are sex positive feminists. i was objecting to the way the images were spoken about: naturalized the whole thing. i know greg was goofing off, and maybe WDK too, but who knows? and it seemed to be typed as if there were no women in the LBO clubhouse. now, that's annoying. would anyone have spoken of an ethnic group in this way? NO.
>One of the good things feminism has managed over the last few decades is to
>convince most of us that the best source of information about being female,
>the best way to find out what women's actual interests might be, and the
>best way to achieve those ends, is to have a society where women do the
>talking about themselves, identify their interests among themselves, and
>are materially free to pursue them as they see fit (albeit much of this may
>be enshrined only formally - I'm not making a 'post-feminism' case here).
>So I reckon all this telling us boys about our anxieties is a bit
>irritating. I'm anxious about lotsa stuff, and jokes are a perfectly
>understandable and, I think, potentially useful way to give 'em expression.
well unlike Yoshie, i like irony and humor and jokes and, in fact, think they might well be an important way of mediating conflict and criticism. that said, it's not clear that telling men to move over and let women define who they are and what they want/need is only about that and never about being critical of men. are men doing it rob? there is a self-reflective mode within feminist thought and practice which suggests that black women or working class white women, etc ought not be expected to do the work of educating white middle class women. white women ought to be doing that themselves by analyzing how privilege operates, how they themselves reproduce it. men ought to be doing that sort of work, ey?
>But it's for me to tell you what I'm anxious about, okay?
why? what epistemological basis do you found this claim on?
>Reckon my
>guess'd be better than yours.
again, this is a claim that rests on epistemological assumptions which say.
on what basis can you say: "I'm better at you than telling my story than you are" so...?
>don't seem to have had a lot to do with my todger (which I'll call what I
>bloody like, Kelley) or my aspirations for it.
OK rob, i feel severely reminded of my ethnocentrism. apologies.
kelley
"And all you can do is more heavy revolvers."