XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to be public

Re:XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to... by demallien on Friday July 08, 2011 @06:12PM (#2744299)

The "you too" was just me reacting to the fact that I often see posts from men that don't seem to argue in good faith. As an example, elsewhere in this discussion a guy decided to correct my tone. He's been a member for over 100 days and this was his second post - nothing else has struck him as sufficiently important, but my post, oh yeah, my tone really needed to be corrected. That post was not in good faith - it wS someone objecting to the content of my posts, by attacking the tone. Your post struck me as more of the same, if that wasn't the case, I apologise.

Anyway, your point is still wrong. Judging someone as not sexually attractive is pretty much the opposite of sexual objectification, it's a refusal to treat the person as a sexual object. I might be perfectly willing to have a relationship with fat bald guy as a cOlleague, or as a tennis partner, or as a friend - I'm not denying his humanity, I just don't want to sleep with him. Compare that with his action of rubbing himself against me, even after having made it abundantly clear to him that I wasn't interested. He doesn't care about me and my wishes, they are irrelevant to his goal. He finds me sexually attractive, and he wants to get laid, and too bad for me if I don't agree.

So no, refusing to see someone as a sexual object is sexual objectification in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby.

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Re:XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to... by mentat on Friday July 08, 2011 @07:55PM (#2744571)

Ok, I see the way you're using sexual objectification now. I think people in this thread have been using it to describe both positive and negative reactions to people based on objective characteristics, not using desire as the important quality, but instead placing it on the objectification. Are you saying that reacting to someone as fat and bald as the primary characteristic of them is not objectification in the general sense? I think this is (or at least should be) what many men here are having an emotional reaction to. I'm not saying that this is logical or even necessarily valid in all cases, but there's a desire to have people of the opposite (or same) sex recognize one for qualities other than physical and have that be a basis for sexual attraction.

I think this sort of boils down to a misunderstanding between those who want to be seen as more than physical characteristics and the desire not to have unwanted physical interaction. I think those are both valid desires. The unpleasant experiences both "sides" have had make this discussion difficult. A failure to recognize you as a person with desires that aren't in accordance with someone else's projection onto you is clearly very bad. I don't think rejection is at this same level of very bad action, but it is still substantially hurtful to many men. You could just say "so what" to that and I'm not saying it to imply an obligation to accept. I'm just saying that it hurts to be rejected. Hopefully that makes some sense.

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Re:XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to... by demallien on Saturday July 09, 2011 @01:35AM (#2745104)

It's not how I use the term, it's its definition - Humpty Dumpty aside, words have meaning!

So no, rejecting someone as a sexual partner is not sexual objectification, pretty much by definition.

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Re:XKCD's Randall Munroe on Google+ requiring your gender to... by mentat on Saturday July 09, 2011 @01:29PM (#2745922)

I'm not sure what your educational background is, but when you spend significant time working on literary subjects, you come to understand that definition is the trickiest part of any intellectual engagement. Your claim that your definition is the definition even though I've pointed out several issues with it. It's too bad you seem to be unwilling to take other perspectives.

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