I think it is possible to find someone sexually attractive and not objectify them. But, I think it is hard for people (both men and women) to view women sexually without objectifying them. There are a few studies that demonstrate this, though I haven’t seen a massive body of literature on this, which means I view these studies with some skepticism. Specifically, the studies will find that people can view sexual images of men without objectifying brain responses, but cannot do the same for women. Women are consistently objectified in a way men aren’t when viewed in a sexual context. See this study, this other study by the same authors, this study, or this study. (There may be more studies on this; I spent a few minutes googling and reading abstracts based on a memory of a study press release I read some time ago).
The issue here is not that people are sexually attracted to women, it’s that this sexual/romantic attraction becomes the primary way they view the woman.
Sometimes when I bring up this trend (finding women sexually attractive often involves a high level of objectification, and this is harmful to women), people’s response is “It’s natural/normal so it isn’t a problem.” But the behavior is harmful, and leads to systemic oppression. That it’s extremely common and may be largely innate means it’s more challenging to solve, not that we should not put effort into solving it.
There are a few things I recommend men do to try to curb this behavior. (1) Try to notice when you are engaging in this behavior. That is, when you are speaking to/thinking of a woman and viewing her primary as a sexual/romantic option. (2) When you do notice it, try to reframe her in your mind, actively thinking of things like her professional accomplishments or personality. [This is going to be very difficult to do, and you will not be perfect at it.] (3) Do not talk about her to other people in an objectifying way, which (in the broad definition I’m using now), includes talking about her primarily as a potential romantic partner. This means, if you meet a woman and you’re interested in her, when you talk about her to others, you should spend some time describing her general qualities in addition to the fact that you are interested in her, and avoid bringing up that you think she’s hot altogether. (4) Don’t expect perfection, but consistently strive to be better. Acknowledge objectification is normal, and don’t beat yourself up about doing it. But don’t feel like it’s a problem you can ignore either.
These are not hard and fast rules for every situation, but this is generally the approach I recommend.
Let me dive into an example of what can seem like innocuous behavior, but can actually be harmful to women, and contribute to a bad environment for women, especially when gender ratios are skewed and this sort of thing happens often.
You’re single and want to be in a relationship. You meet a woman at an event/party and develop a crush on her. You get back to your friends and say something like “I just met this woman named Phoebe. I’m not sure if she’s into me but I’m into her” and you don’t say much else about her.
This is pretty innocuous and it’s really not that bad on the scale of things. But it can still be harmful. Let’s say you met another man at the event/party, and you also really liked him, but you’re straight so it’s not in a romantic/sexual way. When you’re summarizing your time at the event/party to others, you might mention him and talk about the reasons that you like him, things that focus on his personality and who he is as a person. But with Phoebe, in this example, the only thing you’re saying about her is that you like her. So now, Phoebe’s building a reputation that is not built on her personality, but her role as a romantic/sexual partner. This other man, though, gets to build a reputation for his personality.
The harm goes away if you spend some time describing the non-appearance based reasons of why you like Phoebe. But, again, if the major focus of your conversations about Phoebe is just that you like her, that can be harmful in the way described above. It’s real subtle stuff, but maybe this example shows how even innocuous things can be harmful, and why they should be avoided (with a lot of leeway for not being perfect about it), even if they’re extremely normal.
Thanks a lot for the elaboration, I appreciate that!
I don’t have time to read into the literature right now, just very quickly responding to give you some impression of my thoughts and points of potential disagreements (which I haven’t reflected on too much yet, so really interested in your responses):
I spontaneously weigh the evidence of fMRI recordings of “objectification” very litte (my background is in cogsci and I worked a little with fMRI, though far from having any expertise, just general impressions of fMRI data being really hard to usefully connect to interesting psychological phenomena), but I agree there’s definitely a “there” there where women’s physical features are generally much more central in terms of what men find sexually attractive than for men’s sexual attractiveness to women.
I would not use the term “objectification” to also include thinking of a person as a potential romantic partner. That seems to invite misunderstandings and paint things that are predominantly very beautiful (having a crush) in a problematic way.
(Definition from Wikipedia: “In social philosophy, objectification is the act of treating a person, as an object or a thing. It is part of dehumanization, the act of disavowing the humanity of others.”)
The men I talk to about romantic interestests (most among them EAs) don’t seem to me to be doing much objectification with their love interests, e.g. character traits/flirting experiences/deep conversations play a huge rule when falling in love, though of course physical attraction matters hugely as well.
Maybe that’s just my social niche though? I can imagine that there are men who basically actually objectify a women when they are sexually attracted to them, and that an affected woman would find it very offputting if a person they want to be friends with regularly just perceives them as a body that makes distracting noises.
It’s just that the men I hang out with are not like that and I expect the women they have crushes on would most often at minimum feel flattered if they knew how my friends see them, and not at all like they were dehumanized.
Hmm, fwiw I also feel fairly uneasy about reducing physical attraction to objectification, can’t immediately put my finger on why though.
avoid bringing up that you think she’s hot altogether.
From previous conversations within my EA subcommunities I have the impression that men talk too little about who they have a crush on. My current hot take is that it’s much easier to develop healthy romantic and sexual attitudes, norms, behaviors etc. if men would generally talk more openly about such topics, including who they find hot.
I’m generally fairly open and happy to talk about such topics and I feel like I can regularly give fairly useful (and kinda “basic”) romantic advice, and I have the impression that there’s often a strong desire to connect with other men about romantic feelings, experiences, etc.
E.g. I’d guess that if OCB would’ve felt less shame about his sexual and romantic desires (which I remember him saying in his apology) then he would’ve talked about them more with friends and he’d’ve been in a better position to evaluate what type of romantic and sexual behavior is cooperative and a good idea in general.
Your Phoebe example is interesting and not something I had considered much before. :) The idea that discussion about her romantic/appearance aspects could crowd out discussion of her personality or talents would make sense if we assume that the total amount of talk about Phoebe versus the other man is the same. In practice, I suspect that if someone has a crush on Phoebe, he’ll talk about her way more than the other man to his friends, including about both romantic/appearance and personality/talent attributes. One might even expect Phoebe to get an advantage relative to the other man due to this.
A number of female political commentators and celebrity female politicians are unusually attractive, and this is probably because their appearance makes people more interested in all aspects of them, including their intellectual/policy contributions. The main unfairness here would then be to crowd out the less attractive women and men whose work is of equal quality.
We can maybe think through this with real life examples. If you have a friend who has a minor crush on someone they met once/twice, and you don’t know that person, what is the primary thing you think about them? What category do you put them in?
Ok. :) If the crush isn’t an EA, I probably would mainly think of her as “my friend’s crush”, though with some curiosity about her career and other attributes. If the crush is an EA, I would be more curious about the other aspects of her (such as wondering what field she works in), though you’re right that “my friend’s crush” would still be a main way to think of her until I learned more.
What I was getting at with my comment was that even merely being a friend’s crush can increase the salience of the person in general, making it more likely I would learn more information about her, including her personality and career pursuits. So my total amount of knowledge about her achievements would be higher than otherwise. And in some cases, people who started out interested in someone for superficial reasons may come to be primarily interested in the less superficial parts. TV Tropes gives this example:
This show with the cute lead character actually has an interesting side character with an in-depth story that you’re really getting into. [...] you end up really liking the show/movie/book/game/etc for a reason completely different from why you started to check it out.
Traditionally, this is even how many people approach dating: starting with superficial attraction to someone and then coming to like them on a deeper level. (Personally I think that if you ultimately want the deeper level in a relationship, it’s better to directly search for someone who is a good match in that regard. But this is a bit of a tangent.)
Of course, there will be some people who only ever notice the superficial level and don’t explore deeper, but I still think the total amount of deeper knowledge about something tends to be higher when there’s more superficial attention to it. There might be some exceptions where if something is perceived as too gaudy, then serious thinkers may be deterred from engaging with it to avoid appearing low-brow. For example, PETA’s old marketing tactics using nudity might make some elites less likely to engage with animal-rights philosophy for fear of appearing unserious.
I think it is possible to find someone sexually attractive and not objectify them. But, I think it is hard for people (both men and women) to view women sexually without objectifying them. There are a few studies that demonstrate this, though I haven’t seen a massive body of literature on this, which means I view these studies with some skepticism. Specifically, the studies will find that people can view sexual images of men without objectifying brain responses, but cannot do the same for women. Women are consistently objectified in a way men aren’t when viewed in a sexual context. See this study, this other study by the same authors, this study, or this study. (There may be more studies on this; I spent a few minutes googling and reading abstracts based on a memory of a study press release I read some time ago).
The issue here is not that people are sexually attracted to women, it’s that this sexual/romantic attraction becomes the primary way they view the woman.
Sometimes when I bring up this trend (finding women sexually attractive often involves a high level of objectification, and this is harmful to women), people’s response is “It’s natural/normal so it isn’t a problem.” But the behavior is harmful, and leads to systemic oppression. That it’s extremely common and may be largely innate means it’s more challenging to solve, not that we should not put effort into solving it.
There are a few things I recommend men do to try to curb this behavior. (1) Try to notice when you are engaging in this behavior. That is, when you are speaking to/thinking of a woman and viewing her primary as a sexual/romantic option. (2) When you do notice it, try to reframe her in your mind, actively thinking of things like her professional accomplishments or personality. [This is going to be very difficult to do, and you will not be perfect at it.] (3) Do not talk about her to other people in an objectifying way, which (in the broad definition I’m using now), includes talking about her primarily as a potential romantic partner. This means, if you meet a woman and you’re interested in her, when you talk about her to others, you should spend some time describing her general qualities in addition to the fact that you are interested in her, and avoid bringing up that you think she’s hot altogether. (4) Don’t expect perfection, but consistently strive to be better. Acknowledge objectification is normal, and don’t beat yourself up about doing it. But don’t feel like it’s a problem you can ignore either.
These are not hard and fast rules for every situation, but this is generally the approach I recommend.
Let me dive into an example of what can seem like innocuous behavior, but can actually be harmful to women, and contribute to a bad environment for women, especially when gender ratios are skewed and this sort of thing happens often.
You’re single and want to be in a relationship. You meet a woman at an event/party and develop a crush on her. You get back to your friends and say something like “I just met this woman named Phoebe. I’m not sure if she’s into me but I’m into her” and you don’t say much else about her.
This is pretty innocuous and it’s really not that bad on the scale of things. But it can still be harmful. Let’s say you met another man at the event/party, and you also really liked him, but you’re straight so it’s not in a romantic/sexual way. When you’re summarizing your time at the event/party to others, you might mention him and talk about the reasons that you like him, things that focus on his personality and who he is as a person. But with Phoebe, in this example, the only thing you’re saying about her is that you like her. So now, Phoebe’s building a reputation that is not built on her personality, but her role as a romantic/sexual partner. This other man, though, gets to build a reputation for his personality.
The harm goes away if you spend some time describing the non-appearance based reasons of why you like Phoebe. But, again, if the major focus of your conversations about Phoebe is just that you like her, that can be harmful in the way described above. It’s real subtle stuff, but maybe this example shows how even innocuous things can be harmful, and why they should be avoided (with a lot of leeway for not being perfect about it), even if they’re extremely normal.
Thanks a lot for the elaboration, I appreciate that!
I don’t have time to read into the literature right now, just very quickly responding to give you some impression of my thoughts and points of potential disagreements (which I haven’t reflected on too much yet, so really interested in your responses):
I spontaneously weigh the evidence of fMRI recordings of “objectification” very litte (my background is in cogsci and I worked a little with fMRI, though far from having any expertise, just general impressions of fMRI data being really hard to usefully connect to interesting psychological phenomena), but I agree there’s definitely a “there” there where women’s physical features are generally much more central in terms of what men find sexually attractive than for men’s sexual attractiveness to women.
I would not use the term “objectification” to also include thinking of a person as a potential romantic partner. That seems to invite misunderstandings and paint things that are predominantly very beautiful (having a crush) in a problematic way.
(Definition from Wikipedia: “In social philosophy, objectification is the act of treating a person, as an object or a thing. It is part of dehumanization, the act of disavowing the humanity of others.”)
The men I talk to about romantic interestests (most among them EAs) don’t seem to me to be doing much objectification with their love interests, e.g. character traits/flirting experiences/deep conversations play a huge rule when falling in love, though of course physical attraction matters hugely as well.
Maybe that’s just my social niche though? I can imagine that there are men who basically actually objectify a women when they are sexually attracted to them, and that an affected woman would find it very offputting if a person they want to be friends with regularly just perceives them as a body that makes distracting noises.
It’s just that the men I hang out with are not like that and I expect the women they have crushes on would most often at minimum feel flattered if they knew how my friends see them, and not at all like they were dehumanized.
Hmm, fwiw I also feel fairly uneasy about reducing physical attraction to objectification, can’t immediately put my finger on why though.
From previous conversations within my EA subcommunities I have the impression that men talk too little about who they have a crush on. My current hot take is that it’s much easier to develop healthy romantic and sexual attitudes, norms, behaviors etc. if men would generally talk more openly about such topics, including who they find hot.
I’m generally fairly open and happy to talk about such topics and I feel like I can regularly give fairly useful (and kinda “basic”) romantic advice, and I have the impression that there’s often a strong desire to connect with other men about romantic feelings, experiences, etc.
E.g. I’d guess that if OCB would’ve felt less shame about his sexual and romantic desires (which I remember him saying in his apology) then he would’ve talked about them more with friends and he’d’ve been in a better position to evaluate what type of romantic and sexual behavior is cooperative and a good idea in general.
Your Phoebe example is interesting and not something I had considered much before. :) The idea that discussion about her romantic/appearance aspects could crowd out discussion of her personality or talents would make sense if we assume that the total amount of talk about Phoebe versus the other man is the same. In practice, I suspect that if someone has a crush on Phoebe, he’ll talk about her way more than the other man to his friends, including about both romantic/appearance and personality/talent attributes. One might even expect Phoebe to get an advantage relative to the other man due to this.
A number of female political commentators and celebrity female politicians are unusually attractive, and this is probably because their appearance makes people more interested in all aspects of them, including their intellectual/policy contributions. The main unfairness here would then be to crowd out the less attractive women and men whose work is of equal quality.
We can maybe think through this with real life examples. If you have a friend who has a minor crush on someone they met once/twice, and you don’t know that person, what is the primary thing you think about them? What category do you put them in?
Ok. :) If the crush isn’t an EA, I probably would mainly think of her as “my friend’s crush”, though with some curiosity about her career and other attributes. If the crush is an EA, I would be more curious about the other aspects of her (such as wondering what field she works in), though you’re right that “my friend’s crush” would still be a main way to think of her until I learned more.
What I was getting at with my comment was that even merely being a friend’s crush can increase the salience of the person in general, making it more likely I would learn more information about her, including her personality and career pursuits. So my total amount of knowledge about her achievements would be higher than otherwise. And in some cases, people who started out interested in someone for superficial reasons may come to be primarily interested in the less superficial parts. TV Tropes gives this example:
Traditionally, this is even how many people approach dating: starting with superficial attraction to someone and then coming to like them on a deeper level. (Personally I think that if you ultimately want the deeper level in a relationship, it’s better to directly search for someone who is a good match in that regard. But this is a bit of a tangent.)
Of course, there will be some people who only ever notice the superficial level and don’t explore deeper, but I still think the total amount of deeper knowledge about something tends to be higher when there’s more superficial attention to it. There might be some exceptions where if something is perceived as too gaudy, then serious thinkers may be deterred from engaging with it to avoid appearing low-brow. For example, PETA’s old marketing tactics using nudity might make some elites less likely to engage with animal-rights philosophy for fear of appearing unserious.