male/female gaze, rape culture, trans culture, palantir
yesterday i was grateful for an excellent monthly soup social…
today i am looking forward to yoga with anne…
some questions about the male/female gaze and objectification, wherein i try to puzzle out when gaze crosses the line into objectification…
if women dress sexily… aren’t they inviting a gaze, be it male or female?… and can’t that gaze happen alongside an appreciation of their other human qualities?…
what is the difference between a photograph that objectifies and one that does not?… is all high fashion photography objectifying?… is all nude photography objectifying?…
every morning i review a feed of photography of women on Behance… i download images that channel feminine beauty and mystique for me… largely fashion shoots, or portrait series… sometimes artful nudes… i spend a lot of time looking at women awash in mystique femininity… this is what visually attracts me the most… in part because i aspire to mystique femininity… but also because my erotic gaze is activated… subtle waves of desire, or the lack thereof, distinguish between what i save to photos and what i don’t… i can’t assess anyone’s intelligence from a photograph, but does that automatically mean i don’t care about that intelligence?… or does it mean that the essential nature of a photograph is objectification?…
if i am able to appreciate that all people have attributes beyond their physical appearance, is it then ok for me to respond erotically to people who are physically attractive and dressed provocatively?… i am pretty sure i want the human objects of my desire to be smart, funny and engaging human beings as well as sexy human beings…
Sexual objectification - Wikipedia Although both men and women can be sexually objectified, the concept is mainly associated with the objectification of women, and is an important idea in many feminist theories, and psychological theories derived from them. Many feminists argue that sexual objectification of girls and women contributes to gender inequality, and many psychologists associate objectification with a range of physical and mental health risks in women. Research suggests that the psychological effects of objectification of men are similar to those of women, leading to negative body image among men. The concept of sexual objectification is controversial, and some feminists and psychologists have argued that at least some degree of objectification is a normal part of human sexuality.
my wife brought a friends FB post to my attention the other day… this friend was outraged (as we all should be) by a CNN report on an online rape academy that offered instruction on drugging and rapping women and the large number of men who appeared to have visited it… what drugs to use… how to know when a victim is unconscious enough and more… this fierce woman friend was telling all the men in her daily world that she doesn’t believe she can trust any of them because a way too large percentage of them has studied how to drug and rape her…
the woman who waxes my back and does my brows told me she wanted to be overweight so that she was too heavy to be dragged into the woods, raped and murdered… which happened in our city recently...
a woman friend at the soup social i attended last night told me that when she dresses in certain ways, which were by no means overly provocative, she attracts way too much unwanted attention from men… so, she doesn’t…
from rebecca solnit this morning…
Everything Is Changing Fast: A Brisk Tour Through Shifting Views In a recent essay about trans rights and public opinion by Julia Serano in the Boston Review, she writes, "But the notion that retreating from trans rights will benefit Democrats in future elections rests on three false assumptions. The first is that the current anti-trans backlash is the result of “activists going too far,” a trope that is levied against virtually every social justice movement. This framing allows opponents to cast the rolling back of rights as a “realignment” with public opinion and a return to the “natural order” of things. But that is not at all what has happened here. What is new is that, starting around 2015—in the wake of increased trans visibility in the media (sometimes called the “transgender tipping point”) and the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell legalizing same-sex marriage—social conservatives began shifting their efforts toward targeting trans people instead. The attacks have since grown into a highly coordinated and well–funded movement that churns out both anti-trans and broader anti-LGBTQ legislation at unprecedented levels. This is the real reason why Republicans have become obsessed with “fairness in women’s sports,” “biological sex,” “social contagion,” “restrooms,” “grooming,” and other soundbites that didn’t exist ten or fifteen years ago. In other words, there hasn’t been an organic shift in public opinion on trans people but rather a massive astroturfing campaign against us." In fact, she notes, " poll after poll after poll has shown that voters reliably rank transgender issues among the least important to them."
Everything Is Changing Fast: A Brisk Tour Through Shifting Views
in case you, like me, thought Palantir was the good guy because of their "resistance" to misuse of their product…
The Technological Republic, in brief
In which a defense contractor lays its anti-democratic, pro-fascist ideology bare.
[Palantir]
Palantir CEO Alex Karp wrote a book last year called the Technological Republic, but perhaps because it didn’t have the impact he hoped, the company posted a tweet thread (and LinkedIn post, etc) that summarizes its core points. Which are, to be clear, an argument for hard-right nationalism — complete with remilitarization and implied cultural hierarchy — and fusing Silicon Valley with the national security state.
[Link]