Agent of Desire Transforming perceptions of female sexuality

Women Objectifying Women With the current normalisation of the sex industry as it moves out from the shady inscrutability of the 'gentlemens clubs' and sex shops, - pornography use, pole-dancing clubs, burlesque nights, etc, are increasingly seen to be acceptable products and services for women. For example, female celebrities such as Madonna have been photographed entering lap-dancing clubs. The reason for women using sexual products and services that are aimed at male agency could be explained by a study into arousal by watching porn. It revealed that women whether gay or straight were equally affected by images of women. This differed from the males who were studied in the group who tended to be aroused according to their sexuality. What could be inferred from these results is that women naturally objectify women, and that there is something innate about the female form that leads it to be objectified. When women consume sex-products and services that are aimed at men, they could be seen to be truly liberating their sexual agency if this is the case. However this assumption does not take into account the maleabilty of the unconscious and how a culture that repeatedly shows women in an eroticised way, reflecting patriarchal power relationships, could affect the development of female sexuality. To illustrate, here is my personal experience of sexual indoctrination: I remember my first experience of an erotic image was as a small child at school making papier mache sculptures using newspapers donated by parents. A group of children were giggling at picture they had found from the mess we'd created. I had to look for myself and it was a picture from page three of the Sun. It was very sexy and compelling. What was erotic about it was not only the fact that it showed a woman's breasts, but that she was in a brazen pose and wore an inviting expression - she was presenting her breasts in such a way that they should be looked at lecherously. This was very different from the anthropological imagery and breastfeeding pictures I was familiar with, so I was confused and still had a feeling of pity that 'people are going to see her with her top off', but she looked quite happy and I was transfixed. I was not to see an eroticised image of a man that had such an effect on me until much, much later, when I was exposed to gay porn for men. After this initiation into objectifying women, the vast inequality between the depictions of men and women did not cease, but was repeated over and over again. In films that had nothing to do with sex, the camara - person would linger on the breasts or try to look up the skirts of women -to the point I took it as a given that women were the only sex-objects. Another factor that played into this assumption was the constant presentation of beautiful women coupled with less attractive, usually older men, for example the 80s series Hart to Hart. I naturally assumed that women literally were more attractive than men, rather than the truth  of the matter - that only beautiful women tend to get the platform of media presence, whereas men can become prominant through a multitude of other characteristics. The most overt way that patriarchal power relationships were programmed into my unconscious during my childhood, was by being reapeatedly exposed to a common desire to strip women of their clothes by the media and the comments around me. I remember a very early memory of the film King Kong, where the giant ape picks up a very small woman into his fist, then tries to pull her clothes down with his finger. Although I thought there was something strange about the difference in species, it confirmed to me that a woman's body was so beautiful and desireable that even an ape would want to strip her of her clothes. Also, the viewer is encouraged in the scene to identify with the giant monster (if my memory serves me right we see it through his 'point of view' camera shot), we get to enjoy the power of being this huge beast, with a helpless toy-sized woman in his hand. As the woman was very eroticised in her flimsy white dress and her 'take me but don't take me' body language', it was hard to truly empathise with her fear. I remember rooting for him in my mind, hoping he would strip her. It really brought out the sadist in me- I loved the thought of having so much power to completely control a human being - when I was in actual fact just a powerless child. I remember feeling disappointed when King Kong had a moment of pity and didn't take it further. An association between sadistic power and sexuality was surely becoming associated in my mind, with vulnerable women as the target. When I reached puberty I fell on hard cold ground when I realised that I was becoming a woman and that I would fall sharply on one side of the agent/object of desire split. I was no longer able to join in and watch, I was now being watched. I had some very unpleasant experiences as a teenager, that I'm sure aren't uncommon: Of having male peers trying to strip my clothes off of me against my will, my body speaking more loudly than my mouth, older perverted men trying to lure me into bed with drink, of feeling that my body was viewed as something to pleasure others rather than pleasure myself. I'd had my sexual agency taken away. From then on, eroticised imagery reminded me of this side of objectification. In other words, viewing pornography for me now felt masochistic, as I identified and empathised with the objectified people who I had once enjoyed degrading without a thought. Males of the same age rarely could see my point and instead bonded through swapping pornography and talked about women in terms as though they literally were objects, which was quite alienating for me as a heterosexual female. Some women at that age don't 'cross-over' to empathy with the objectified woman as I did, which is understandable - since we do still live in a patriarchal society. In some sense- by identifying with the 'victim' i.e.-the stripped, humiliated, damaged and degraded woman, we don't get to 'hang-out with the boys' and enjoy their freedoms and powers. Instead we are forced into going against the grain and shaking our fists to be met with hostility, or forming our own feminist groups that do not have the same direct access to influence that men have.The bonding experience gained by objectifying women is similar to the psychology of gangs who bond through bullying one member of the group. Standing up for the bullied individual will almost certainly lead to a persons ridicule, bullying or ostracisation. For any woman who wants an easy life, objecting to males bonding through degrading women would seem a pointless waste of time, whereas 'joining in' offers the benefit of inclusion. As women go to lap dance clubs and strip-joints, talk about the value of porn and page three, I would guess they experience a similar eroticised power-trip to the males that do, but with the uneasy hypocrisy of former slaves who become slave-owners - dehumanising the very same people that were once their peers, since they are now included among the powerful and enjoy some of the rewards. Because eroticism has been so bound up in the objectification of women -there being so little erotic imagery of men by comparison, and that female bodies are constantly eroticised from childhood entertainment to adult, when I was exposed to an eroticised image of a man in gay porn in my later teens- a guy, all slick and well-lit, standing from the side, holding open his pants and looking down into them ( you couldn't see his genitals) - it hit me quite hard. I'd never seen an image of a male that was so erotic before and had an epiphany moment: There is nothing more innately sexy about the female body than the male- it is just the way the photographer directs the shoot. I had been so used to seeing very practical imagery of men: bare-chested men at work, male swimmers, etc, always with a sense of purpose - more like the anthropology pictures of women. Never until then did I see an image of a man that was deliberately alluring and inviting lechery in the viewer. This proved to me that the objectification of women is not innate, but a symptom of patriarchy. As pretty much all industries are dominated by men (who tend to have an unquestioning sense of entitlement to that dominance - since it has always been that way) it is no surprise that the media tends to portray women as sex-objects that want and need domination - with very little to counter that. There has been much patriarchal indoctrination of the male psyche from folklore and fairytales that imply that if they pass the test, succeed in the challenge, slay the dragon, etc, then they 'win' the woman, who has been presumably idle, just combing her hair and prettifying herself in front of the mirror, as a prize. I remember feeling annoyed playing Donkey Kong as a teenager, that after completing the game, you 'win the girl' who comes out to give you a kiss (no thought to what a heterosexual girl completing Donkey Kong might feel about that) so this folklore must still resonate quite strongly to be even turning up in something as modern as a computer game. It suggests that within patriarchy males are actually motivated by viewing females as passive objects to be 'won' if they are successful - in other words, the objectification of women is the axis on which patriarchy spins. In order to get around the ludicrous assumption that women wouldn't get bored or develop neurotic symptoms while they are 'waiting to be won', or would never say "sorry I don't fancy you - you are not my type" when he proudly turns up to claim her, the perception of women needs to be simplified and symbolised, and their genuine wants and needs replaced by a need to be viewed as a prize object and dominated by a man in order to feel complete. All industries that are dominated by men, are dominated by males who have received this patriarchal conditioning to objectify women. It is no wonder then, that the myth of the woman as a passive object is constantly reinforced. When heterosexual women are aroused by other women being objectified, perhaps they are simply drawing on all the sexually formative material they have been exposed to in their lives which, for its absence of male objectification, has slowly programmed their sexual agency towards objectifying women. It is quite plausible that if the material we are exposed to had always been the reverse of this gender imbalance, then men would be aroused more by their own sex and women less so. If this is the case, then women objectifying women is a sign that their sexual agency has been totally colonised by male desires and programmed for male domination. To comment on this article, please click here

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