This is a response to the article:
Thoughts On Women Oppression And Porn
It offers a female feminist's perspective on the afformentioned.
Opening the article, author @sean-king leads in by defining and making notes on evolutionary #psychology (the idea that, useful mental and psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, i.e., as the functional products of natural selection). Highlighting that women (evolutionarily) hold sexual power.
He then begs the question: “Given this birthright evolutionary power over men's psyches, women could easily rule the world. But...they don't. Why?”
The answer is simple: we often don’t hold the power.
Not all women (people) want to be empowered sexually, so the ideal that it is “woman’s birthright” to hold sexual power is a sexist stereotype. Implying that (through a born-male, heteronormative perception) women are purely sexual influencing beings is a primitive ideal that helps uphold a patriarchal society. It is borderline Freudian.
Evolutionarily speaking, humans are capable of developing different behaviours genetically and adaptively. People are slowly realizing that we aren’t just monkeys, purely motivated by mating and hetero reproduction. This is evolution: the part of the mind that built civilizations, art, invented technology, and questioned society.
Is This Empowerment, Or Objectification?
Selling sex appeal is indeed a guilty culprit of objectification and dehumanization, but it’s not always repressing (sexually, socially or economically).
It can be difficult to draw the line between sexual empowerment and objectification, so this might help you understand the difference:
Who has the power?
If the person being subjected has the power, than it is empowerment.
However, if that person has little or no power, they are being objectified.
Ask yourself: Is the person aware and consenting to sexualizing the situation?
If the answer is No, it is most likely objectification.
If the answer is Yes, then it is definitely empowering!
“Do we objectify or dehumanize people when we allow them, without shame or scorn, in fact with praise, to market valuable assets (with their free will and consent)?”
That’s a rhetorical question.
Race, class, gender, or privilege aside; people benefit from empowerment. Sometimes, the empowerment comes from sexual means, and other times, it’s monetary. Most privileged people, feminists, and others alike will agree that sex sells.
Things aren’t as black and white as the author originally questioned, though.
When we have women(people) that are subjected to their quote unquote “inherent sexuality,” without consent, that’s when we have problems like dehumanization and objectification. Gender inequality is a much larger issue than just porn.
Feminism has one goal: to abolish the prejudice of (women) on the basis of sex, and for equal rights politically, socially, and economically.
Throughout the entire article, the author is attempting to explain what is wrong with society's treatment of women: yet simultaneously perpetuating what is wrong with it.
While, yes, it’s good to embrace your sexuality, and #gender: we have to realize that those are two completely separate subjects. Gender inequality shouldn’t have that many parallels to sexuality/sex. Sexualization is one of the underlying causes of gender inequality.
It’s wonderful we are finally starting to see the effects of oppression, and are analyzing our behaviors… but it’s going to take a lot to change society, and even more for us to abolish the true underlying aggressor:
institutionalized #sexism and #discrimination against #women of all ages, races and identifications.
Note that while I do not agree with the evolutionary psychology ideologies stated in the article in question, I do agree that there is a problem with gender discrimination that must be confronted.
I hope you take these responses into consideration when thinking about how we interact and treat women.