I recently watched an episode of Boston legal where Alan shore is (finally) accused of being sexist. Accepting the charge, he lays out a definition of sexism which applies to him: not objecting to any economic or political rights, or intellectual and emotional equality and even superiority, and yet seeing a sexual object first and primarily when faced with a woman.
The endless targeting of women as sex objects on this show has always bothered me. The women fence this talk with wit and knowledge of the complexity of these men, and there's no violence, so I haven't had to dislike the show for it. Yet those interactions would undoubtedly be sexual harrassment in contexts I inhabit, which of course don't rate high on those other parameters of not-chauvinism either.
There are two questions: is Shore sexism alright if it sees women as equals in every realm except the sexual? Because it's not just a TV show, there is a growing possibility of separating spheres, even if it's not so prevalent yet. Second, can nothing be done about this ridiculous 'I dig those human mittens that warm my cockles' brain-setting?
For a lot of women, women themselves being equally sexually active solves both problems. Then male sexual dominance is at best role play and at worst sad illusion. But I'm not sure, for all that, that equality in this matter is achieved until women can give up the tendency of seeing men as people: social, economic, political, intellectual entities, before seeing them as men. Partly because so many of those identities are still so bound up with being male. Businessmen and chairmen and so on. Places with high technical specialisations and a meritocratic, yet socially aware ethos may be one way to create a situation where sexualisation is not harrassment. Are there others? And is it possible to get men to stop thinking of themselves as sexual animals? That stuff is getting damned dull, and is bad marketing for heterosexuality too, for those who are concerned on that score.
The endless targeting of women as sex objects on this show has always bothered me. The women fence this talk with wit and knowledge of the complexity of these men, and there's no violence, so I haven't had to dislike the show for it. Yet those interactions would undoubtedly be sexual harrassment in contexts I inhabit, which of course don't rate high on those other parameters of not-chauvinism either.
There are two questions: is Shore sexism alright if it sees women as equals in every realm except the sexual? Because it's not just a TV show, there is a growing possibility of separating spheres, even if it's not so prevalent yet. Second, can nothing be done about this ridiculous 'I dig those human mittens that warm my cockles' brain-setting?
For a lot of women, women themselves being equally sexually active solves both problems. Then male sexual dominance is at best role play and at worst sad illusion. But I'm not sure, for all that, that equality in this matter is achieved until women can give up the tendency of seeing men as people: social, economic, political, intellectual entities, before seeing them as men. Partly because so many of those identities are still so bound up with being male. Businessmen and chairmen and so on. Places with high technical specialisations and a meritocratic, yet socially aware ethos may be one way to create a situation where sexualisation is not harrassment. Are there others? And is it possible to get men to stop thinking of themselves as sexual animals? That stuff is getting damned dull, and is bad marketing for heterosexuality too, for those who are concerned on that score.
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