Fuck Yeah, Gender Studies!

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December 1st, 2011 at 3:46AM

Anonymous asked: Can you clarify your belief on the absence of the objectification of men? I've been in cultural and gender studies for a while now, and I've come across plenty of texts where men are objectified, especially within media that caters toward gays (and thus, women, because the same media that does cater to gays also targets women). Now this doesn't necessarily mean the consequences and implications are the same (as those that are triggered by female objectification), but... it does exist.

Anonymous asked you:

feministryangosling, playgirl, guys gone wild, gay porn, male models, etc. What was that about men not being objectified for their bodies?

Anonymous asked you:

Robert Patinson and Taylor Lautner aren’t being objectified, at least in part, by fans (male, female, and other alike) of Twilight? I had no idea.

I don’t know if this is the same anonymous writer or several, but my answer remains the same.

Laura Mulvey (hotshot feminist film theorist, for those of you not in the know, and author of Visual and Other Pleasures) says that “the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification”. And i agree.

And when it comes to gay porn, we don’t see the male figure bearing the burden of sexual objectification. What does that figure bear? Since both the sexual subject and sexual object are men, there’s no burden, nothing to be borne—no power disparity. Both gazer and “gazee” are men. So, no burden—it’s a balance. And when the gaze comes from a woman? What burden does that impress on him? I say that it can’t.

As a cultural phenomenon, women’s “sexual objectification” of men isn’t that at all. Because women are always already designated the category of sexual objects, our “objectification” of men seems appears (to me) more like an eagerness to please; a cultural presentation of ourselves as sexual to reflect the objectifying, predatory gaze we are subjected to.

Certainly, i will agree that the masculine form is placed under scrutiny as regards its conformity to certain ideals. But that’s not sexual objectification.