I came across an
article
today, through the blog of John Moore, about the differing reactions of men and women to advertisments with sexual themes. Overall it is pretty interesting, though I think the methodology could be, ah, improved a bit. I'm not a big fan of anylysis based on self-reporting; virtually no one is good at introspection, and what someone thinks they think or thinks they do is not nearly so interesting as what they actually think or do. You can't usually figure out directly what someone actually thinks, but you can always watch what they do and go backwards to motivations. Not to mention that it was done online. Gak.
But anyway, enough of the methodology stuff. One sentence in the article really jumped out at me. "Women were also more likely than men to say that sexual ads ... are demeaning to the models used in them."
(rant follows) I think that is a really horrible. I feel that it is pretty clear that when someone says that "such and such an action demeans such and such a person", what they are really saying is "I like or respect
person X less because of that action." This would, of course, only be relevant for voluntary actions; I would agree that it's pretty reasonable to think that a someone who both wanted to and could be a brilliant scientist or jurist or what have you to be held back by sexism or racism or somesuch and forced into a situation where they can't use their abilities as they desire to, then yes, of course it is demeaning. But here, we are only agreeing with the person who themselves feel that they are demeaned by their circumstances. How would you feel if someone told you that for you to do a job that you loved was
'demeaning' to you?
And then, we come to the possible role in this of the 'mitigating factor' of force. It is certain that there are various pressures, societal and economic, which induce these people, mostly young women in this case, to do what they do. But they have plenty of opportunities - I would be willing to assert that a healthy attractive young person in the western world has more opportunities than five nines of everyone who has ever lived. If they don't like what they are doing, there are many options open to them. And if they do enjoy it, then who the hell has the right to criticize them for it? To make my overall position/bias clear, I believe that would be true for any job, profession, hobby, quirk, kink, etc, as long as nobody experiences involuntary harm due to it.
OK. I'm done ranting. Time for some meatloaf.
A short message for anyone who disagrees with me: I would truly appreciate it if you would send me a message with your reasoning. I am completely serious about this. It's fine that we disagree, people do that all the time. What I really don't like is I don't even understand why you might think the way you do, and that bothers me a lot. Help me understand your position.