MentalPolyphonics
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
March 13, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Tagged: existentialism, feminism, Postmodernism
Like every other gynosexual man (and, I suspect, most if not all of everyone else) in my culture, when I look at a woman I employ The Male Gaze. This isn’t intentional, I don’t say “hey, look, it’s a woman: I’d better turn her into an object! shoop-da-whoop“, it’s just something I’ve been trained to do by being raised in this culture. On an intuitive level I consider it somewhat harmless (just because I briefly consider having sex with you doesn’t mean I don’t respect you), but rationally it’s rather repulsive.
This New York Times article titled What Do Women Want? has been widely circulated in the blogosphere. The first two-thirds of it are modernist science stuff that you’ve probably already heard: vaginal lubrication does not equal mental arousal, etc. The bottom section, though, summarizes a surprising theory from a Canadian (now teaching at the University of Nevada) social-constructionism psychologist named Marta Meana: women get turned on when they are regarded as sexual objects. In fact, women get turned on by observing other women being sexually objectified or when they themselves have the potential to be sexually objectified.
This says that womens’ eroticism is not primarily in the mind, as is commonly supposed. But it’s not in the body exactly, either. Instead, as the existentialists would say, woman’s erotic identity is in her relation to The Other. And because he is more different, the “best” Other is Man.
karen
I get turned on when I know someone is into me. You decide if that is mental or physical.
Jared
@karen: Just out of curiosity, did you RTFA or was it TLDR?
Jack
The kind of research the article talks about weirds me out. It’s hard to tease out what’s social, what’s mental, what’s physical, what’s just “how women work”, what’s just error due to uncomfortable equipment, etc. Maybe it gets into that but for now it’s TLDR (I’m in double-jihad web browsing overtime this weekend).
But in advertising there’s a rule of thumb: Men look at an ad and say, “I want her”; Women look at an ad and say, “I want to be her.”
That’s why businesstards use women to advertise EVERYTHING.
Jack
Oh, right, I should bust out my Dan Savage quotes…
“There’s nothing wrong with objectification as long as we’re objectifying everybody.”
Actually, that’s a neat question: Is that statement true? It is pointedly not true in a literal reading of Christian morality (Mark 5:27-29):
I don’t like the second verse: Thoughtcrime is morally reprehensible. And look at the punishment!
Still: If all the men were blind, then objectification of women wouldn’t be an issue — amirite, ladies?
Don
Even Jimmy Carter lusted in his heart, so what hope is there for any of us?
Isn’t every mental/psychological event simultaneously a biological/physiological/physical event?
And on a thematically-related note, are nonsexual compliments to women (in addition to men) by two men that are strangers to them necessarily sexual harassment or just likely sexual harassment?
Jack
I’m working this bit of surprisingly safe-for-work erotica into a story:
Reading a report about a watcher who likes the watched to watch back: Surveillance pornography!
Jared
If the watchee is aware of the watching of the watcher, it increases the power dynamic. What’s not to like?
Jack
It’s the voyeurism of reading her account that’s neat.
Jack
Meanwhile the Japanese are working on Woman 2.0 — literally woman-as-object:
(Via BB)