But don’t some women find sexual objectification empowering?
Arguments that women posting pornographic images online, being subjected to violent, abusive and degrading porn-sex acts or being paid for sex by men are all “empowering” render the word meaningless.
Is empowerment nothing more than a feeling, a state of mind, a defence of misogynistic practices? Or does it involve real-world conditions, advancing the status of women as a whole – women globally having rights, education, a voice (actual power)?
In a culture that teaches women from the earliest of ages their value lies in their physical attractiveness and sexual appeal to men, being wanted sexually may feel validating. But individual validation for being ‘hot’ is not meaningful power, nor is it advancing women’s collective rights. The ‘power’ that comes from being desirable is temporary and conditional.
If pornified portrayals of women as passive, interchangeable, sexualised props are really the means of obtaining power, why isn’t the same treatment being extended to men? And why is it that this so-called ‘empowerment’ is only found conforming to narrow demands about how women should look and act, and not in our resistance to harmful cultural practices?
Why sexual objectification does not "empower" women
We need to talk about female “empowerment”.
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The clamor surrounding Kim Kardashian’s full frontal nude has finally started to subside, and my news feed, haggard and tired, can take a well-needed breather. There were many tweets about choice and empowerment. The heated (and old) debates about “slut shaming” and women’s sexual freedom resurfaced. There was even another nude, though this time Kim was accompanied by another young, it-girl.
“Sex sells”, so why not flaunt it? Yes, sex certainly does sell, and Kim’s nude is a good case in point. But this nude is just one of many images that exist on a broader trajectory of exploitation, in which women are stripped bear, consumed and discarded, until another nude appears on social media grapevine. The sexual exploitation of women through visual media is not a new phenomenon. In fact it is so ubiquitous that we rarely pause to ask why these images continue to be so pervasive. By accepting the objectification of women or simply looking the other way, we not only fail to question the broader systems of power these representations speak to – we actively sustain them as well.
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