Is objectification a prerequisite for sex?
“I have no problem with women objectifying men in ads, or men objectifying women in ads. Because, really, the only reason we [humans] are still here after 65 million years, is because someone has been shagging.” - The Gruen Transfer.
I’m sorry, did I miss something? Since when was objectification a prerequisite for sex? Is it because I am a woman that sex to me is more than visual attraction and physical possession?
Need I be terrified that men today subscribe to this theory that in order to perform a most intimate act, which is at its heart prone to our deepest vulnerabilities, they must first objectify their partner and presumably protect their manliness? Have I got it all wrong? Please tell me I have it all wrong.
I understand that sex isn’t always a beautiful thing. Sometimes is it about pure base attraction, heat, pheromones, friction, sweat and climax. Great sex for the sake of great sex, is still great sex. But can it really be great if it is essentially one object fucking another? Barbie and Ken in the sack was never the hottest idea.
Something tells me that our pop culture adopting the values and aesthetics of soft porn may have something to do with this theory. And really, the Gruen Transfer is a show about advertising and we all know that the advertising industry have been justifying the proliferation of the male gaze and over-sexualisation with the simple catchphrase ‘Sex sells”. The prude in me asks; at what cost.
Everybody with two grey cells to rub together knows that the brain is our sexiest organ. If it weren’t then natural selection over the past 65 million years would have produced an aesthetically superior race by now. And that simply isn’t the case. So, how is it that a comment about objectification on a national TV program so flippantly accepts objectification as a part of sex?
For me all I hear are warning bells. Are our young women growing up understanding the in order to be attractive (and receive physical love) they must come pre-objectified; spray tanned to within an inch of their lives, hair highlighted, teeth bleached, hairless except for that on their heads, carefully styled to appeal to the narrowest possible idea of sexy? Are our young men growing up understanding that in order to be a man they must act like the degrading assholes you see in most porn these days (professional or amateur) and order women around, ‘take’ all three orifices available, include ‘light’ bondage and spanking and end ejaculating on her face?
How oh how can we restore intimacy to sex? I think it begins by reversing the over-sexualisation of our youth, introducing instead real sexual education (i.e. something more than sex is bad and dangerous don’t do it), by adding erotica to challenge the stronghold [mostly] degrading porn has on the ever-growing market, and by individually asking more for our partners. If it is normal these days to objectify, demean, humiliate in our sex lives then I say let’s do something radical like honour, respect, and worship in our sex lives too.
