Women object to being treated as objects

As you will know, if you have read any of my blogs before – I tend to right substantially about the extent of sexualisation of women in our society today, and how this creates the view that women are mere sexual objects. Some women accept this, some are unaware of it, some even play up to it – I prefer to challenge it. Harriet Harman once again contextualises my blog post too, as Paul Waugh reported that Spearmint Rhino handed out leaflets during the Labour conference, obviously to annoy Harman, and The Sun placed Harman on their Page 3 – which incidentally relates to the “Turn Your Back On Page 3″ (TYBOP3) campaign I am going to discuss below.

This show how there is still an upward struggle to overcome the objectification of women in society. Harman sticks up rightfully against the degrading ways that women are portrayed and treated, and what do the male dominated and interested companies do? They try to make Harman out to be an abnormal woman. Someone who other women should not follow. They do not want increasingly more women to realise the level of subordination and pressure that women face in society.

As mentioned above, The Sun’s placement of Harman on Page 3 relates to a campaign I stumbled on the other day.“Turn Your Backs On Page 3″ recites Clare Short’s Private Members Bill, which sought to ban Page 3, as an example of how there is a history of women who have been against the exploitation women often face in newspapers and other mediums. They are right, why should women have to walk into their local newsagents to be greeted by fake women who escalate the unrealistic expectations many men have about women? As they report, there was a expansive range of fan mail for Short (as shown by this book) following the tabling and the subsequent defeat (she wouldn’t win in a political system dominated by men!), this was an issue that touched many women’s hearts – probably a deep seated reason that The Sun and the lap dancing clubs get so defensive when women start to stick up for their own rights, as Harman does.  As the TYBOP3 campaign states, exploitation of this kind is just pure sexism.

What baffles me is how many women, as I said in my opening, actual play up and like this type of attention. The TYBOP3 campaign reports, there was a response from a group of women to the campaign who painted “Don’t Turn Your Back On Page 3″ on their breasts. As the TYBOP3 campaign blogs:

“Human rights organisation Object (www.object.org.uk) have just issued a comprehensive study titled ‘Joining The Dots’ which outlines important evidence linking the sexual objectification of women and girls to a negative effect on individual health and well-being, dissatisfaction over body image and self-esteem which in turn leads to eating disorders and plastic surgery, sexual bullying, the damaging of sexual relations between young people, the promotion and reinforcement of sexist attitudes and racist attitudes and violence against women.

If the girls were to read this study and still felt that a career in glamour modelling was the right path for them, could we at the very least still all come to the mutual agreement that these images shouldn’t be dominating our British press and media?”

In an interesting aside, an article I read on Sociology Lens also points to how Feminists can often be confused by why women pander to the domination and sexist remarks of many men. Feminist Jaclyn Friedman states that this is partly due to the influence of porn, and the inability to realise that they can achieve their own relative status without the power of men.

Object is a campaign that I have only just came across, but it epitomises a lot of what I have been arguing on many of my blog posts. Under the remit of challenging the “sexual objectification of women in the media and popular culture” they are thus against the issues talked about in this blog and blogs before, such as porn, lad mags and lap dancing. Their message is simple: women are not sex objects. This is something that Harman has made clear too, and for that I think she is one of the best MPs in Labour. I know, her way of getting across her message is wrong, as she distorts the impact by herself interested leadership challenge, but what she argues for in terms of women’s rights and equality is spot on.

In sum, I think it is apparent from this that there is increasing dissatisfaction amongst women who are treat as objects, and whilst there are women who do relish the sexist culture we live in, there appears to be movements towards a better type of society for women.