objectification

By the end of the seventies the feared yet desired black male body had become as objectified as it was during slavery, only a seemingly positive twist had been added to the racist sexist objectification: the black male body had become the site for the personification of everyone__ desire.

Unless individuals have the power to defy commoditization and define their own lives, their potential is vulnerable to the crushing forces of objectification.

Being female in this world means having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide-ranging capacity for choice...Men too make choices. When will they choose not to despise us?

Health makes good propaganda.

The object, the woman, goes out into the world formed as men have formed her to be used as men wish to use her. She is then a provocation. The object provokes its use. It provokes its use because of its form, determined by the one who is provoked. The carpenter makes a chair, sits on it, then blames the chair because he is not standing. When the object complains about the use to which she is put, she is told, simply and firmly, not to provoke.

The object, the woman, goes out into the world formed as men have formed her to be used as men wish to use her. She is then a provocation. The object provokes its use. It provokes its usebecause of its form, determined by the one who is provoked. The carpenter makes a chair, sits on it, then blames the chair because heis not standing. When the object complains about the use to which she is put, she is told, simply and firmly, not to provoke.

Be that kind of girl who smiles when you walk past other girls instead of casting a dirty look. Don't buy into the notion of female competition that society so heavily promotes.

Women aren't my competition because male attention and sexual objectification are not prizes for me.

I don't see how being handsome can possibly harm a man. It's just another cheap privilege that took zero effort to attain.

NORA: No; only merry. And you were always so friendly and kind to me. But our house has been nothing but a nursery. Here I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I used to be papa's doll-child. And my children were, in their turn, my dolls. I was exceedingly delighted when you played with me, just as children were whenever I played with them. That has been our marriage, Torvald.

If we have no place to go where we can escape that reaction to our bodies, where is it that we're not forced? The idea that these crimes are escapable is the blind optimism of men who don't understand what it means to live in a body that attracts a particular kind of attention with magnetic force.

It__ all society is, the repressed sex drives of men, the objectification of women, their paranoia, the posturing, the macho stances, the beauty standard, it__ all just one charade masking a never ending hard on.

Nobody wanted to be sexless, but nobody wanted to be nothing but sex.

Women are also property in our bible; adultery is a property crime in the Old Testament, not a sex crime.

Art should be expressed without objectification.It's more than just attraction. Creative expression is not "art for art's sake" but art that breathes true meaning.

Female competition is when you are with a guy you like and you look around, see a girl who is prettier than you standing nearby, and think to yourself: "I wish she wasn't here." -This is what happens when you attach your identity and sense of worth to the amount of male attention you receive.

The flower of the ginger is superb and regal, but if we focus on nurturing the ginger plant to bloom we are unable to harvest its root. Enjoying the exquisite beauty of the plant will_prevent us from unlocking its true potential__he nutrients secretly stored beyond the reach of the sun. Why care about trivial matters such as external beauty? What matters lies beneath the surface. What a waste! She is much more beautiful on the inside where she has so much more to give to the world.

Women incorporate the values of the male sexual objectifiers within themselves. Catharine MacKinnon calls this being "thingified" in the head (MacKinnon, 1989). They learn to treat their own bodies as objects separate from themselves. Bartky explains how this works: the wolf whistle sexually objectifies a woman from without with the result that, ``"The body which only a moment before I inhabited with such ease now floods my consciousness. I have been made into an object'' (Bartky, 1990, p. 27). She explains that it is not sufficient for a man simply to look at the woman secretly, he must make her aware of his looking with the whistle.She must, "be made to know that I am a 'nice piece of ass': I must be made to see myself as they see me'' (p. 27). The effect of such male policing behaviour is that, "Subject to the evaluating eye of the male connoisseur, women learn to evaluate themselves first and best'" (Bartky, 1990, p. 28). Women thus become alienated from their own bodies.