Men seeing women as objects
Did anybody research the study where inside mens brain they see women the same way they see object.
I wonder what sort of development turns out men like this.
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Somenormie
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S0UNDS_WEIRD
Never felt like I would willingly die for an object's preservation, but I have for a woman.
The study you're talking about is often presented in a pretty fucked up manner. Basically they showed straight men highly sexualized pictures of women, without faces even included, and found the areas of the brain that light up when trying to judge what another person is thinking and/or feeling didn't light up all that much more than when viewing an object. The mere inclusion of faces even in still-sexualized pictures of women they don't know and will never interact with greatly increased said brain activity, although it was still lower than, say, seeing a normally-clothed woman making an ambiguous expression in response to an unknown situation, at which point they were viewed the same as men. It was never about gender. It was about if the picture reflected a social situation or was just bobs and vagene plastered on paper.
Is this not kind of the progression to be expected? No one has a picture of boobs alone shoved in their face and starts thinking, "But are these boobs in distress? Are they happy?" Yet just a face makes this begin to happen quite a bit, and removal of the presentation that the pic is for visual enjoyment alone usually totally dissolves the issue. The fact is that it actually has to somewhat fool the brain. It has to make the brain feel a social interaction for it to have that part light up. Otherwise the brain essentially _is_ viewing an object, a photo. I think sexism is an enormous problem to this day but I honestly feel that study was conducted in a silly way to begin with and then further mischaracterized.
A more concerning study is one that found both men _and_ women are somewhat more prone to viewing women as collections of parts than wholes. The brain has two ways of looking at a jar of coins. One is a whole. It's the jar. The other is as a bunch of pennies in one place. The thought is that since women tend to have more commonly recognized secondary sexual characteristics, both men and women view them as somewhat more like a collection of body parts than they do with men. They still see both as more like wholes overall, but the degree to which a collective nature is perceived is higher when viewing women. Might be nothing we can do about it as a fact of physiology but it concerns me.
Anyway OP, don't worry. No. Normal men do not look at you like a coffee mug. Even jerks don't quite. Only literal, definitive psychopaths are close to that, and even they pay attention to feelings and thoughts so they can respond appropriately.
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idolomantis
Everything you said is exactly correct, thanks for putting it into words. I’ve always believed basically all of what you just wrote, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually written it out or tried to describe it before.
Your last paragraph kinda piqued my interest. Ever read anything by Athena Walker? She’s a diagnosed psychopath who writes on Quora. She’s really interesting, and she’s a great writer, too.
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S0UNDS_WEIRD
I have actually, quite a bit even. There's no doubt that she's really interesting and a great writer. I like her either way, but I do sometimes experience some lingering suspicions that she's not actually a psychopath but someone who understands them well enough to play one for the benefit of education. There are some unusual inconsistencies, but I give her the benefit of the doubt and would enjoy her writing regardless to be honest.
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idolomantis
I’ve thought that about her too to be honest, though I’m not really sure how to pinpoint what the inconsistencies are exactly. It’s just been something I’ve “felt”, though I suspect that I might just be overly suspicious lol. She just seems so normal to me I guess, though I still suspect she’s probably telling the truth about who she is. It’s just very interesting to read about someone who is wired so differently yet still manages to blend in so well
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candylady
There’s been several studies over the years and no matter how desperately men would like to find ways to nitpick the results(or dismiss them as bullshit without even having read anything about it), they always come to the same conclusion: women are not viewed the same way as men, and the more sexualized a woman is the less she’s seen as a person. Of course, these studies are just scientific confirmation of what women have been saying based on their own lived experiences for decades, so it’s not like this is some shocking discovery or something that we have to wonder if it’s actually true. This is like a study explaining how exactly the caffeine in coffee gives people energy long after we knew coffee woke people up.
If you don’t think jerks view women as objects, just ask them. A good number of them have absolutely no problem freely admitting to it. And, no, paying attention to feelings and thoughts to the extent necessary to get what they want doesn’t make it any better. Most people put in some effort to take care of objects too, they wash their coffee mugs, try not to drop them or damage them, etc.
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S0UNDS_WEIRD
I'm not insinuating that sexism doesn't exist or even that it isn't rampant, which it is. I'm not sure if you've seen me around much but sexism is actually the ism/phobia that bothers me the most out of sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia. The reason for this is that I'm a man of science through and through and I'm extremely intolerant of blatant disregard for science. They're all ridiculous concepts but sexism is the _most_ ridiculous. Bigots can at least foolishly argue that homosexuality and transgenderism are mental illnesses (they're not). Bigots can at least try to play scientists themselves and argue that if humans have genetically diverged sufficiently so as to have varying physical traits they might have significantly varied mental states so as to argue superiority (they don't). But sexism? Laughable even on the surface. Males and females are just primary genotype A and B of the exact same species. We've checked for significant cognitive differences across sexes in millions of species and found it literally once; it's just something nature doesn't do.
The very "supportive data" misogynists provide as proof of female inferiority is hilariously the best proof of sexism. Take less female scientists for example; the reason there are less female scientists is because the world is feeling the effects of thousands of years of sexism to this very day.
So I know full and well that proof of sexism is everywhere but as a man of science I also have to call things as I see them on a case-by-case basis. The fact is that it's a piss-poor study already and presented in an entirely disingenuous way. It is what it is. It intentionally objectifies women and then we get headlines with hard assertions like, "Men view women as objects."
When one actually examines the actual methods and actual results, we see the only takeaway is that the further you objectify someone, the more objectified someone perceives them as. Why pay for this shit? I could have told them that for free.
Honestly it's analogous to this: My brain activity is measured while I'm shown various pictures of black people. Areas known for processing threats are more active when viewing pictures of black people holding weapons. They report, "S0UNDS_WEIRD finds black people dangerous."
It sounds funny but this is _directly_ analogous to this particular study. It's not even remotely nitpicking to present the methods they straight up used and straight up admit they used. I would absolutely bet the house that if they showed homosexual men various images of men, the areas responsible for attempting to ascertain the mental state of another would be less active when looking at cropped pics of glistening abs than when viewing the facial expression of a man in day-to-day life. It's just common sense stuff and the already-silly study was intentionally mischaracterized for click bait online.
The other study I mentioned is much more concerning in my opinion, the one asserting that both males and females use less "global" processing when identifying women. We should really figure out if this is actually indicative of a problem and, if so, if this problem is inherent or socially created.
"And, no, paying attention to feelings and thoughts to the extent necessary to get what they want doesn’t make it any better."
No one said it did. The line merely further elucidates how cringe the first study was when even psychopaths don't view people _entirely_ like objects. Like you said, people don't read. Something no deeper than "men tend to objectify intentionally objectified photos more than others" is being sold as a hard, "Men view women as objects."
That's disingenuous as fuck.
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RoseIsabella
If some guy sees me as an object I hope he sees me as a nice, sharp set of gardening shears! *snip snip* 😃
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donteatstuffoffthesidewalk
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[Old Memory]
I dont know which one you're referencing but I'm sure it's entirely bullshit.
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1WeirdGuy
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Bobtailcatgirl
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GaelicPotato
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litelander8
I think it depends on the person and age, for sure. And maybe also if they were raised having respect for their mothers.
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greekfish
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