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.
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