Objects

Lami amo da keyk! This could be overheard among male bystanders as they ogle on a beautiful woman who passes by. There are members of the gay community as well who would exchange antics on the “size” of their catch. Most of the time, they linger on the skin, face value and size… They are objectifying people.

At any given moment, according to a recent United Nations report, there are approximately 20 million human beings, women, girls, men, and boys, being retained in sexual oppression—sexual exploitation, sexual slavery, and pornography— against their will (Carter, 2017).

The objectification theory (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997) posits that women often are looked at as objects by society, with a sexual focus being placed on their bodies rather than on their abilities. The ubiquity of these objectification experiences socializes women to internalize an observer perspective upon their body. This process is called self-objectification and occurs when women think about and treat themselves as objects to be regarded and evaluated based upon appearance (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997; McKinley, 2011).

Although objectification is more directed to women, the concept is now being considered to men and boys as well. We see foreign and local actors investing on their body-sculpting and skin treatments for them to be more “presentable”.

It was mentioned in theconversation.com that if we only think in terms of the first form of objectification, and the consumption of “eye candy”, we are likely to conclude that the sexual objectification of men is a relatively trivial matter. Prevailing physical, political and economic power inequalities are such that in practice a man’s agency is much less likely than a woman’s to be overridden. Consequently, the objectification of men is much less likely to result in sexual violence. To this extent, a double standard might be thought tolerable.

However, in relation to the second form of objectification – where damaging norms and stereotypes are promoted and internalized – it’s difficult to defend the double standard. There seems to be no good reason to think that men are any less suggestible and compliant than women are when it comes to “normalizing” media representations. Young and impressionable men in particular may be as biddable and eager to play along as their female counterparts (Lucas, 2018).

There are those people who collect pornographic materials and their main focus are the parts of the bodies of people. They do not consider that these persons have feelings; that they have spirits and their importance is JUST on that certain part of their bodies!

Objectification and dehumanization represent motivational conundrums because they are phenomena in which people are seen in ways that are fundamentally inaccurate; seeing people as objects, as animals, or not as people. People may be perceived as lacking uniquely human characteristics, and thus likened to animals, or as lacking human nature, and thus likened to inanimate objects.

Both of these forms of dehumanization occur with varying degrees of subtlety, from the explicit uses of derogatory animal metaphors, to stereotypes that ascribe lesser humanness or simpler minds to particular groups, to non-conscious associations between certain humans and nonhumans (Haslam, 2013).

In the behavioral analysis unit of a criminal investigation team, the pornographic materials possession is one of the things that they look for to pin down a serial killer or a murderer. These are evidences that the criminal mind functions on objectifying persons not seeing them as human beings.

The research confluence theory states men with hyper masculinity that also involves psychopathic tendencies have low agreeableness, abuse, hostility towards women, impersonal sexuality combined with sexual permissiveness. When you have a confluence of those two things and violent pornography it may be a contributing factor to violent, abhorrent behavior (Puder, 2019).

It has been hypothesized that ‘high risk’ people who are high on rape tendencies are affected more by pornography and are at higher risk of becoming more sexually aggressive (Malamuth & Huppin, 2005). Among low empathy males attraction to pornography and violence is even greater (Cumberbatch, 2011). In a pornography meta-analysis, Oddone-Paolucci et al. (2000) argued that compared with control groups, in rape prone individuals, pornography may produce a 20-30% increase in the acceptance of rape as normal, in treating people as sex objects, in early age of first intercourse, and in coercive behavior.

With the exposure of the young to multiple sites, there must be filtering actions that the parents and teachers and other advocates on mental health on these facts. The only problem is when we see this as something NOT within our comprehension.

It takes a critical mind to wade and dive into such waters.

This, too, is another avenue when an individual reflects on his/her behavior towards people. Is s/he seeing them as human beings or seeing them as objects which could be dumped, rejected, hurt, pushed-aside, murdered, killed, or dehumanized? It is always an individual’s responsibility to look over his (mental) health.