A man attracted to a woman isn't objectifying her. Duh.
This might need to be revisited again, as it feels a little wonky at the end.. but it feels pretty good to me.
Attraction and association ∞
Men (males) have a strong association between that which is loved and attraction to women associated with it. (See also Male passions.)
A man passionate about a thing will also be attracted to women associated with that thing. Music, in particular, is something which has long been known to entrance and enthrall men. For example, Trance Music videos on YouTube often have images of models.
The reverse is also true. A man attracted to a woman who is associated with something will be more likely to become attracted to that thing.
Given a free market (See also The "free" market), there will be a strong tendency to encourage and take advantage of that association. Trance music and many other things associate strongly with beauty because it sells to men.
It also sells to women who have good self esteem, though I don't understand why and won't guess at it. Interestingly, horrible homilies will probably get uglier at all of this.
Ogling is not premeditation ∞
I guess I'll have to say the obvious: Ogling is not premeditating anything, especially rape. Holy shit.
There are people who think that's is in the hamster running in the wheel in every man's mind. They say it, lecture it, and publish it. See male passions on why and how this is false.
People who argue that ogling has a slippery slope to premeditation are demonstrating that they themselves think like that. More on that below.
Ogling is appreciation ∞
Attraction and ogling are distinct from premeditation and distant from action.
Imagine being in an art gallery. A particular piece is stirring to you. Do you contemplate theft? Does it even occur to you? I, for example, am enraptured by The Nike of Samothrace. I've considered getting a little plaster replica. I've wondered if I could get a poster-sized photograph. I've never thought about actually getting it.
This is not something which is countered by "It's illegal" or "It's expensive". Those concepts don't even occur in the mind.
Anyone who relates observation or thought to objectification, theft, or rape is projecting. They are sick. This is not some misunderstanding of philosophy. They have a disorder.
Pretty much every man who is heterosexual is actually attracted to and cannot have general thoughts about harming women. It would take an extraordinarily disturbed mind to be heterosexual and somehow "hate all women". It takes an extraordinarily disturbed mind to think otherwise.
Appreciation is elevation ∞
It's possible to look at a thing and be purely attracted to it. When this happens, the thing becomes elevated.
It's common for a man to look at a woman with the same emotion. Attraction elevates a woman in his mind. This is the reason men treat women better than other men. It isn't some cabal of men dictating society, it's every man feeling this passion toward at least some fraction of women. It becomes a general trend behind men treating women unequally; better than women would need to earn if they were men.
There are sick people who think that all men looking at or thinking about any woman or image of a woman lowers their opinions to objectification, but it's vastly more likely a man's attraction to a woman is in fact elevating them.
Attraction is typical ∞
Again I'll restate that male attraction to women is typical; it is entirely expected.
It is not something invented which infects the minds of men from the outside. Culture does not create it. Companies don't create it. It is something the free market builds itself around and not the reverse. The natures of people are what drive culture.
Though culture can influence people, culture cannot dictate their natures. There are the dim folk who hop on bandwagons because it's easier for someone else to do their thinking for them. These demonstrate influence from the outside.
Objectification and anything more extreme than that are not bandwagons. They are wrong and everyone knows it. Nobody needs to be taught that rape is wrong. The law of parsimony or "do unto others" makes these things obvious to any sane person.
Attraction is biological ∞
Culture does not create heterosexuality and attraction. This is patently ridiculous.
Biology creates heterosexuality. Well fucking duh. Every species on earth has an unbroken line of heterosexuality when their biology requires it. Humans do not reproduce any other way. Humans must therefore be typically heterosexual; be attracted to the opposite sex. It's not culture, it's biologically typical.
Choice over biology ∞
There is a strong argument for choice over biology.
In many places, civilization is at a point when typicality can become a "choice" of sorts. We are also so first-world comfortable that we can "act as if" on many subjects. We can play pretend all we like. We can even go against our heterosexuality if we want, because we have the privilege to choose.
This choice is easy to prove. For example, we live in a world where people can pretend to believe in gods when prayer is demonstrably illusory. They know prayer is imaginary because when sick they go to doctors and not priests, when injured they go to hospitals and not churches.
Attraction as choice ∞
There are people who think "gender is a social construct", but gender and sexual orientation are qualities people are born with.
One cannot "pray the gay away". Orientation is mutable only in the same way that a religion can brainwash someone. They can pretend and even honestly believe their entire lives, but those freed from brainwashing and the oppression of cultural norms cry with joy.
Just as there are stories from atheists having escaped religion, there are stories from people having escaped their assigned gender identity. For example, I've heard transsexuals talk about growing up feeling they were trapped in someone else's body.
Analogizing sexuality with belief breaks down under reasonable inspection, so I'll stray from that tool.
The line of argument that imagines honest belief can be changed as will is easily dismissed by asking them to believe in Zeus. It's simply not going to happen.
Just as there is a decent argument for choice over biology, there is a decent argument for choice over attraction. However, this is atypical. Just like believing in Zeus isn't going to happen, people aren't going to either want to or really be able to choose to change basic biological preferences.. without brainwashing. Therein is an argument for culture as brainwashing, but odds are very good that people who make such arguments are subject to it even more strongly, since they get these ideas from "education" (cough) and bandwagons.
Concluding thoughts ∞
Choice, belief, self-image, and acting as if all become a game in the first world. There is so much rope to run free on that it's not difficult to wander from the basics of biology and not difficult to intellectually flee from its reality.
That rope of privilege that gives us so much freedom lets us make all manner of atypical decisions. It's so long that people don't even have to segregate themselves to go do and be what they want. It's so long that I can't tell the difference between someone honestly being atypical and someone "choosing" to act as if they are atypical. I don't even have to care. I can go off and do my own thing, enjoying the exact same privileges as everyone else. Live does, however, become degrees of difficult when people use their length of rope to chase after others and try to shorten the ropes of others. Religion and ideology are the big offenders here.
I summarise that the biology makes attraction typical and parsimony makes attraction-objectification atypical. First world privilege then lets everything both be and appear to be a choice.
People that think otherwise have problems with empathy/parsimony.
Last updated 2023-03-19 at 00:41:40