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Finally, the dirty little secret about sexual objectification is that it is an act that cannot be performed with any attention to its ethical meaning. Experientially __rom the point of view of a man who is sexually objectifying__exual objectification and ethical self awareness are mutually exclusive. A man cannot reflect on what he is doing and its real consequences for real people and at the same time fully accomplish the act of sexual objectifying. There's no way it can be done, because hos own subjective reality is too contingent upon the unreality of someone else. All that can be left "out there" in his field of awareness is the other person's sexedness__n abstract representation of a gender__n comparison with which his own sexedness may flourish and engorge. So it is that a man shuts off his capacity for ethical empathy__hatever capacity he may ever had__n order to commit an act of despersonalization that is "gratifying" essentially because it functions to fulfill his sense of an identity that is authentically male.
John Stoltenberg
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Finally, the dirty little secret about sexual objectification is that it is an act that cannot be performed with any attention to its ethical meaning. Experientially __rom the point of view of a man who is sexually objectifying__exual objectification and ethical self awareness are mutually exclusive. A man cannot reflect on what he is doing and its real consequences for real people and at the same time fully accomplish the act of sexual objectifying. There's no way it can be done, because hos own subjective reality is too contingent upon the unreality of someone else. All that can be left "out there" in his field of awareness is the other person's sexedness__n abstract representation of a gender__n comparison with which his own sexedness may flourish and engorge. So it is that a man shuts off his capacity for ethical empathy__hatever capacity he may ever had__n order to commit an act of despersonalization that is "gratifying" essentially because it functions to fulfill his sense of an identity that is authentically male.

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