All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
— George Orwell, Animal Farm
Sexual desire informs our choices and interests in unexpected ways. It is how we condition this desire — limiting or fuelling it according to a person’s social identity — that influences social structure and keeps the patriarchal system alive.
Up to this point, we have examined the cumshot principle through the lens of femininity, or how women bear the responsibility for attracting and receiving men’s desire. But women aren’t passive targets, even though we perceive them as such. They feel desire, too. Yet, because our culture presents sex as a demeaning act, and because men mustn’t be demeaned, we keep women’s libidos in check so men aren’t encumbered with requests for sex. We teach women that men are not there to elicit or satisfy desire. Rather, a man is someone to respect, someone to fall in love with.
As a result, to be attracted to a man, many women need to feel something that goes beyond the physical. These are the women who project themselves into a relationship from the moment they meet someone they like. They find it difficult to stick to carnal desire when taking a lover.
These women did not miss out on the sexual revolution; they are simply incapable of seeing their partners as anything but a person in their own right. And it would be hypocritical to claim this surprises us, given how we subjectify men.
What does it mean to subjectify someone? Subjectification is the opposite of objectification. It is another component of the cumshot principle, which presents sexual attraction as a unidirectional urge that originates with the man and is directed onto the woman. The man is the narrator and the subject of our sexual fantasies.
In our culture, men are systematically subjectified: they are both represented and recognized as complete beings.
Desiring someone who is subjectified means being attracted to their entire being: their personality, character, interests, talents, and dreams. And because this attraction goes beyond the physical, it is difficult to sexualize a subject — a man — without falling in love with him. Desire becomes all encompassing. And when that happens, it turns into something of a crush, or love, or at the very least, affection.
To avoid this “love risk,” a woman seeking sexual satisfaction might sleep with men she is attracted to physically but not emotionally. Doing so could, however, stand in the way of sexual desire since she has been conditioned to value the man as a whole. If everything about a man save his physical appearance turns a woman off, she will likely have a hard time getting wet.
On the flip side, most men will have no problem getting an erection if a woman excites them, but doesn’t really interest them as a person. After all, they have been trained to separate a woman’s personality from her appearance.
Our patriarchal system does not tolerate women who treat men so cavalierly. Men must not be seen as sex objects: their integrity must be respected and they must be listened to. Placing too much value on their appearance jeopardizes their power in society.
We don’t want to sexualize men’s bodies in public spaces, since this might lead to an equal balance of power between genders.
Exposing women’s bodies on billboards, in pop culture, and on the street would not be inherently sexist if society did not encourage sex segregation. Yet tradition dictates we expose women’s bodies and conceal men’s bodies without intending to create sexual tension by doing so — and that’s truly sexist.
“BUT WHAT ABOUT MEN?”
When we talk about how women’s bodies are objectified in public spaces, someone invariably points out that men are treated similarly, notably in underwear advertisements. This is, of course, true — but we cannot compare the instrumentalization of the genders, since sexualized images of men appear within a larger context of male subjectification. Psychology researchers in the United States and Belgium presented participants of both genders with images of attractive people in undergarments or bathing suits. They observed that participants perceived only the women as objects, not the men.1 In other words, even in the few instances where men are sexualized, they are still subjectified.
“To live in a culture in which women are routinely naked where men aren’t is to learn inequality in little ways all day long,” wrote Naomi Wolf in her 1990 bestseller, The Beauty Myth.2
It is for this reason that fashion puts so little emphasis on men’s bodies. We don’t want women paying too much attention to men; otherwise, men would have to make sustained efforts to maintain and improve their appearance. This would take time, energy, and money — resources they would no longer devote to consolidating prestige and power. In public spaces, women should not be encouraged to stare at sexy men, check out a passing hunk, or ignore aging men with their sagging bodies. They must instead be indulgent and look past a man’s physique to consider the set of criteria directly linked to the place men hold in society.
We condition women to be attracted to
Meanwhile, we fail to condition men to be attracted to these same qualities in women.
Sexual attraction directly impacts our ambitions and dreams. When we desire others, we are pushed to gain skills they consider important. So if men do not value women’s power, money, or sense of humour, these qualities become largely irrelevant. Men, however, continue to cultivate these same qualities to attract women. The status quo is maintained.
Subjectifying men provides them with “sexual immunity.” This immunity reinforces and secures both their power in society and their power during courtship rituals. We accord men the respect a person deserves, but we don’t always do the same for women. Considered objects by default, women must work to extricate themselves from mass objectification by painstakingly convincing men of their worth outside of sex.
We could rebel against the injustice of the woman-object/man-subject dynamic. We could declare that women should start “acting like men” — that women should objectify men — in order to reverse the trend. But it isn’t that simple.
It isn’t just that women are “too empathetic” to treat men as objects; the entire process is difficult to set in motion. Objectification is a mass movement propelled by culture. For centuries, men have enjoyed cultural artifacts, made by men, that depict women as objects. And our culture continues to be produced in large part today by men using their male gaze to instrumentalize women.
Men objectify women almost automatically, since the process is already at work around them. It’s simply the norm. Both genders are conditioned to accept their roles: women as objects, men as subjects.
But when it is a question of objectifying each other, men and women are on unequal footing. A woman who wants to instrumentalize a man for sexual purposes has to make a conscious effort to oppose the prevailing culture. It’s complicated, and it’s a lot of work. Objectification is a collective process, not a dynamic operating between individuals.
While it is nearly impossible to have a woman shift her perception of a man from subject to object, the opposite is not true: men often find themselves treating women as whole people, though they may have started out as objects in their eyes.
Though men learn to dissociate a woman’s body from her person, the process isn’t always triggered when it comes to the women close to them. It may not be a knee-jerk reaction, but we tend to humanize people we regularly interact with, and come to value these individuals for all sorts of reasons unrelated to appearance.
Within the context of heterosexual courtship, the man sees the woman-subject as a companion: a wife, partner, girlfriend — or a woman who can fill these roles. If a man deems a woman “worthy,” she earns the right to be considered a multi-dimensional human being; her words, desires, and preferences must be respected. This woman is what we’d call girlfriend material.
Indeed, many men categorize women into either good (the subjectified) or slutty (the objectified).
Women are classified depending on whether or not a man feels they deserve respect. The distinction is completely subjective — one man’s good woman may well be another man’s slut, and vice versa. A man may initially objectify a woman he finds sexy, only to begin subjectifying her (and expressing interest in all aspects of her person) once he starts falling for her. But, don’t forget, the woman must first prove she is girlfriend material.
Let’s explore how some men perceive women to be “just a piece of ass.” The idea is absurd; women do not exist solely to offer men sex. They have temperaments, personalities, and interests, which are not necessarily aspects of themselves on “offer.” Many men refuse to acknowledge these dimensions if they judge a woman unworthy. Yet this won’t stop men from wanting access to the ass in question, since they are conditioned to view a woman’s body as separate from her personality.
We’d like to believe we’ve long since outgrown this line of thinking, but we haven’t. In an American study that explored the sexual behaviours of college students, young men admitted that if the girl they liked had sex with them too quickly — on the first or second date — they were less likely to consider her girlfriend material.3 This rationale goes back to the purity imperative: if a woman does not prove her purity by abstaining from sex, she risks losing the man, along with the prospect of building a relationship together. By agreeing to sex, she becomes less appealing. Sex has sullied her and reduced her to just a receptacle for cum.
CAN WOMEN OBJECTIFY MEN?
When Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was elected in 2015, he made headlines around the world, many of which highlighted his sex appeal.
“Is Justin Trudeau the sexiest politician in the world?” wrote British publication The Mirror. The Philippines’ Daily Inquirer described the prime minister as the “sexiest leader in the free world.” American website Jezebel declared him “non-controversially fuckable.”
Many people were outraged in the wake of such reports, denouncing the lusty comments women were splashing across social media as “objectifying” Canada’s prime minister.
Was Justin Trudeau treated as a sex object?
I said it before and I’ll say it again: finding someone sexy is not the same thing as objectifying them.
Sexually objectifying someone means seeing them as a one-dimensional being whose main purpose is to submit to sex. It means believing the individual in question has no personal goals other than to arouse sexual desire in us. And it involves denying the object of our fantasy exists the moment he or she disappears from our lust-filled vision.
Finding someone sexy means attributing a sexual charm to them while recognizing they are a complex individual with a will of their own. And desiring someone has no bearing on how this person should act toward us. When a person finds another person attractive it should not be demeaning — their desire should not humiliate the other’s, undermine their credibility, diminish their importance, or pressure them into exposing their body or allowing themselves to be used.
Women’s salacious comments about Trudeau can certainly be considered vulgar or inappropriate. It is safe to bet, however, that most do not fit into a context of objectification and have not damaged the prime minister’s credibility or importance.
Might Trudeau have read these comments and felt objectified? Possibly.
This is where we must make a distinction between objectification on an individual versus a collective level.
Determining whether someone is objectified on an individual level is an exercise in subjectivity. We cannot do the labelling, cannot say, “You are being objectified.” No one can judge another’s objectification, since by definition the term involves an individual perception.
One might argue that strippers are objectified because they expose their bodies to stimulate arousal in exchange for money. But if a woman makes a conscious and informed choice and feels comfortable and respected in her line of work, she is not objectified: she is exercising free will. Saying otherwise risks dictating how she should feel and behave, using our own values as a benchmark. It disregards her emotions and subjective experience. In other words, this logic is just another form of objectification.
We cannot arrive at any sort of conclusion by evaluating an interaction from afar. While this doesn’t mean objectification is not taking place, we must also take into account how the person receiving the request for sex perceives the situation. We can only analyze a culture of objectification from afar when the dynamic becomes systemic — hence my emphasis on the term mass objectification.
When women talk about their attraction to Justin Trudeau, their comments don’t bear the same weight as a man who whistles at a woman in the street. Tradition would argue that what happened to the Canadian prime minister is unusual, while what happens to the woman in the street is to be expected.
Objectification requires a dynamic of domination. In our culture, it is men who dominate women. So even if a particular woman can sexually instrumentalize a man she dominates (e.g., a rich woman who buys sexual favours from a poor man forced to prostitute himself, who feels he has been used or disrespected), on a societal level it is still men who culturally instrumentalize women. Male desire governs a woman’s experience in all sorts of ways and in all types of spheres, from fashion choices to rape culture.
Yes, a man can feel objectified by a woman. But no, as a gender, men are not collectively objectified. Women are.
PORN DOES NOT OBJECTIFY MEN
Some sexologists or porn experts contend that pornography objectifies men just as much as it does women. Most of the time, they argue, the camera focuses only on a man’s penis while the rest of his body is kept off-screen, similar to how women’s bodies are fragmented in advertising. True, men are not as seen and heard in pornography as women are. But how men are presented is actually a very effective manner of subjectification: it isn’t the actors being subjectified, it’s the men watching the screen. Producers keep the camera trained on the actresses for the pleasure of their male audience. These are the spectators that matter — porn fuels men’s sexual orientation (presumably straight), the fetishization of the female body, and men’s ability to mentally project themselves into a scene. We want the male viewer to feel as if the anonymous penis on-screen were his own. He is offered a story of which he is the hero. In short, he becomes the subject.
Expressions of desire can be enjoyable to hear when the attention is wanted. The problem, however, is that we can’t always predict whether or not our advances will be well received. So, to avoid objectifying our partner, we need to give them the opportunity to express their feelings of mutual desire, aversion, or indifference.
The idea is not to create a world in which no one can express desire: a woman can passionately want to be wanted passionately.
Feeling someone’s eyes on our body can be exhilarating, even when the attraction is not mutual. Feeling desired is an aphrodisiac. For some women, it represents power or a form of gratification, and some use it for material gain (through sex work or by dating a man who can support them) or to boost their self-esteem. There are men who envy this sexual power. They argue that it counterbalances all the other privileges men benefit from. “Women can’t complain about being underpaid or underrepresented in Parliament because they have something we don’t: sex appeal!” This is clearly untrue and manipulative. Nonetheless, there are women who use men’s desire to their advantage.
We can concede the injustice; men do not have access to this power.
Forbidding women to view the male body as an instrument of pleasure not only limits their sex drive, but also penalizes men, who are denied the heady pleasure of being desired by strangers who simply find them sexy.
Similarly, sex segregation denies men the pleasures of dressing up, admiring themselves in the mirror, and feeling eyes glued to their bodies. When men are confined to the role of hunter, they lose out on the joy of giving themselves up to the pursuit, of being dominated by a sexual partner who “knows what she wants.” They are denied the pleasures of autophilia.
GROOMING TEENAGERS
We have seen how the objectification of women parallels the subjectification of men, and how patriarchal societies maintain these mechanisms. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention another cog in the wheel, one we almost never bring up: the way we groom young girls who develop an attraction to boys once puberty hits.
In early adolescence, girls naturally begin to sexualize boys. Yet society actively encourages them to censure their attraction by mocking their behaviour.
Adults deliberately humiliate teen girls who are too “boy crazy.” When I was younger, I remember the adults around me sighing with exasperation as I drooled over videos of the Backstreet Boys dripping with rain, shirts unbuttoned.… “The Backstreet Boys are all gay,” one of them said to me at some point, clearly hoping to discourage my infatuation with these heartthrobs.
Generation after generation, some things never change. One Direction, Justin Bieber, Elvis Presley, NSYNC: girls go wild, and adults roll their eyes.
More than just ridiculing this behaviour, adults and media outlets continue to disparage young men who break into the pop scene using their sex appeal. The furious anti-Bieber movement of the early 2010s was completely irrational. Why did adults so aggressively despise a musical talent that was not in any way aimed at them? Why was there so much contempt for the young singer? Were adults really so proud that their musical tastes differ from those of a fourteen-year-old girl?
The teen girl craze for boy band members is the closest we come to objectifying men. These boys are fodder for fantasy — they are meant to excite in the same way that women in porn feed boys’ sexual urges. But while the latter seems normal, we are appalled when girls lust after the former. It proves a threat to the established order: teenage girls are meant to be desired, not feel desire themselves.
The situation is all the more disturbing given that girls develop a sex drive at an age when society expects them to accept their role of object. After all, patriarchy needs women to learn how to prioritize men’s sexual urges while they are still young, malleable girls.
Instead of exhibiting their feverish desire for the members of One Direction, girls are forced to keep their sexuality in check to maintain the fantasy of transgression, to focus on developing a beauty ritual that stimulates men’s libido without expecting anything in return.
We ridicule cultural products that specifically target teenage girls’ sex drives, and we humiliate these girls in an attempt to stifle their popstar crushes. We shame them until they fall in line.
Teens have active sex drives, and the entertainment industry knows it: they make a fortune marketing boy bands and other male stars to teenage girls. But the rest of society considers it preposterous that these girls should be crazed with desire. How immature can we be?
These practices remain an effective way to keep the cumshot principle alive and well.