thanks for the thoughts, gio.
SchnappM, do you kiss your mother with that mouth?
these academics are mostly cultural anthropologists, some of them studying human sexuality.
I recognize the "need" for human beings to be sexually deviant, but that doesn't excuse behavior that reduces another human being to the level of "sex toy". Keep that shit in your own mind and bedroom, don't take it out on the street with you and make me slip in it.
I also recognize that while this game could have played out with any mix of genders, the women were not objectifying the men, nor could they have. The men getting off on watching these antics were not offending by cat calls from the women involved. It was an engine to encourage their behavior.
I realize that I sound like a repressed feminist to some of you (80%, actually), but does making a stand about how I want to be viewed as a sexual being have to be such an extreme?
Men, do you know how it feels to walk into a room and be made to feel like a page from a dirty magazine? How does it feel to you to be viewed in our society as the aggressor?
Can you imagine how it could feel to somebody trying to be taken seriously as an intelligent, feeling person, yet knowing that part of how you are viewed is by how sexually appealing you are?
I am sorry, but the fact is that women are objectified by men (and yes, other women). The result of this is that a lot of time, we are not taken as seriously as our male peers.
I feel that it is every woman's responsiblity to represent our sex in a respectful way and not continue to encourage the views that our society has of us as something to jack-off to/with/on.
I also feel that it is every woman's responsibility to recognize the power that we have as women and not to use that power to as a weapon against men or as a means to gain what we wouldn't otherwise earn.
Another observation: while I aknowledge that the musicians I know are a little more enlightened on this issue than the academics I know, being a female drummer has often gained me more praise than I know I've earned as a musician. Being told how much you "rock" (even when you know you've only been playing for week and you suck) and being told how sexy female drummers are in the same breath is very confusing. Am I good because I am a good drummer or am I good because I'm "hot" when I'm behind my kit? The up-side to this is that I am able to gauge my performance solely by my own standards and by the input from the musicians that I play with. All of us musicians know when we're "on". It doesn't matter how sexy I am playing if I'm not doing my job in the band.
Perhaps, I will stop "whining" now.

betty wrote:SchnappM, do you kiss your mother with that mouth?

i assume you're refering to the quote in his signature line. he's quoting me there, and you should be aware that it was intended to illustrate my feelings through the use of a relatively absurd and intentionally crass jokey-type statement. i don't in any way condone folks trying to get girls drunk so they can weiner them up. that would be a mean thing to do.

also, i think lotsa guys dig chick drummers because you can watch their boobs bounce while they play. for me, that's more of an obstacle, it makes it so i can't look at the drummer without feeling bad about myself. because i have this weird thing where i, for whatever reason, like to look at women's breats, and have to make a conscious effort not to do so. fricken biological imperatives!

what you did is fine. i've ruined people's nights before when i refused to go to a strip club with them. it's just how it goes. if you are gonna stand on principle and not go along with whatever the other people seem to be enjoying, you just expect that and learn to deal.

and there's lotsa other people out there who think just like you do, so, y'know, hang out with them. or just get really, really drunk so you'll play the stupid games too. either of those can be fun. obviously one will leave you feeling like a jerk when you wake up the next day. go ahead and make your choices based on your own criteria. that's what we do all the time. y'know?

toomanyhelicopters, thanks for clarifying that.

betty wrote:these academics are mostly cultural anthropologists, some of them studying human sexuality.

Ah, that explains it! Have you ever met a proctologist who was squeamish about rectums? Of course they wouldn't be reticent, nor would I expect them to check themselves morally. Not to qualify their behavior as acceptable or anything, but I can understand it. People who study sexuality think about sexuality a lot of the time (deviant or otherwise), just like people who are into audio and music think about sound and music a lot of the time.

Nevertheless, tact and better sense should tell someone--proctologist, sexual anthropologist, or otherwise--when to check the things that they themselves feel overly comfortable about for the sake of someone else. Sounds to me like these sexopologists were maybe just rude, in that they apparently had little respect the fact that you didn't want to mime fucking a sheep and have a bunch of guys hoot and drool over it.

and a little story that's slightly related, in concept:
I ran into a girl from my high school who is now working as a an entry-level journalist. She told me about the fact that the newsmedia spends hours upon hours each day covering the Middle East, and it has come to the point where she is so desensitized to the violence that she now has like no moral or affective responses to it. It was really bizarre and disturbing to see her talk glibly about the fact that they (the journalists) make jokes about beheadings and such--I mean this is some truly reprehensible stuff--and she's just like "it's no big deal, we see it all the time every day, i mean after a while you just can't care about it anymore" so the whole morality issue just fades away. She is also very robot-like in many ways.

Objectivity killed the conscience. I thought this was pretty messed up.

tmh wrote:because i have this weird thing where i, for whatever reason, like to look at women's breats

The 'breat' is by far the most beautiful part of the female anatomy.

[quote="gio"]Objectivity killed the conscience.
A point well taken. But anybody studying human sexuality should know better than to hold a conversation with a woman's breats (ie: looking at them rather than our eyes), let alone encourage a woman to degrade herself. Pretty much what you said.
I agree that breasts are beautiful and I am glad to have them. I share them with my boyfriend and I breast-fed my son with them. These are, in my opinion, appropriate attitudes regarding these glands. An inappropriate attitude would be one where more attention is showered on my breasts than on my words, drumming, feelings...whatever, by somebody that I have not offered to share them with. Sure, glance at them, stare when I'm drumming, but don't make parts of my anatomy the focal point in interactions with me. A confusing issue in a society where women are encouraged to enlarge their breasts to make themselves more "attractive".
Thanks for sharing all of your opinions, but what about the Swell Maps re-issues on Secretly Canadian?

betty wrote:A confusing issue in a society where women are encouraged to enlarge their breasts to make themselves more "attractive".
Thanks for sharing all of your opinions, but what about the Swell Maps re-issues on Secretly Canadian?

I think this gets to the heart of your whole problem. Sexuality in our society is imbued with value judgments in a weird way, thanks in no small part to the roots of our society in Christianity and dialectic thought. How fucked up is our society that the pantomime actions of two women at a party and the responses of the men watching them can cause such a furor?

But they can, and it seems to me that it is because, in this society, "sexuality" has been turned into an artifice of power. Not that it isn't to some extent in every society, but in ours, especially, power relationships are asserted between men and women inside and outside of the bedroom, and the situation at your party was just another assertion of power by the men. I think that's probably what makes you uncomfortable. I think the term "objectification" misses the point: for the relationship isn't one of subject vs. object (again, the dialectics take hold), but of dominant vs. subjugated.

The problem is complicated, in our post-industrial society, where the subjugated sex has suddenly (from a historical perspective) been forced to become an independent economic unit, by the short-term gains that many (most?) women in our society have realized can result from taking part in this power relationship. Thus it is that this anachronism exists: the sex trades (from strippers to porn stars to prostitutes to, increasingly, mainstream actresses) have increased their role in our society, at the same time that it has nominally become more socially conservative. This is the perfect set-up for the powered sex: if you give the women limited survival options, but include as a lucrative survival option the sex trades, you make them choose to be subjugated, thus reasserting your dominance. And lots of women, living under the false assumption that money is the dominant artifice of power, have taken on these roles, gotten rich from them, and claimed to have subverted the relationship via their wealth (porn entrepreneur Jenna Jameson and pop music icon Britney Spears come immediately to mind). What they don't realize is that, though they personally have gained wealth and, with it, power, their efforts do not reverse the power relationships in society as a whole, but rather make the association between gender, sexuality, and power, even more concrete. In a very real way, they're fucked. (Get it?)

Maybe the thing about the men and women whom you observed that allowed those supposedly educated folks to engage in the activity, apparently without any qualms, is that, through their studies and understanding of the power relationships that have arisen in U.S. culture, they have been able to remove the "power" element from the relationship, at least as it is played out among themselves, and were thus merely engaged in play. (This is a method that seems popular within gay culture, where the dominant power relationships relating "heterosexuals" to "homosexuals" have been turned on their head by, for instance, the co-option by gays of the terminology once used against them by straights). They created a misunderstanding by not initiating you into their world before they began the play.

Of course, it might just be that they are a bunch of childish dorks, which is a definite possibility, especially among anthropology students. In that case, I think toomanyhelicopters is right (did I just say that?): just don't hang out with 'em. I think that is one reason most of my friends are gay: in every other group in Los Angeles, the power relationships built around and evidenced by sexuality are such that, for a straight male who doesn't buy the bullshit, its impossible to just go out and have fun around straight people.

Regarding breats, I like all of a lady's parts. I don't discriminate.

joshsolberg :"...In a very real way, they're fucked."
I understand all of this, and yes, maybe the situation was more "dominant vs. subjugated". I'm just not sure. The ethnographic aspect of this is out of my league; I simply haven't had the education in it.
One thing, though: these are not people whom I would not hang out with. They are truly great people and dear friends. My criticism of their behavior has caused them to be a little bit ashamed and that makes me feel bad, although I believe that I am correct in my assessment that the situation was crap, though not the usual behavior for this crowd.
Also, I am not the kind of person who would alienate somebody from my life because I disagree with their politics (sexual or otherwise, and within limits resonable to me). I will, however, ask questions and state opinions in order to maintain certain levels of comfort.
Thanks for the detailed thoughts on all of this.

Another thought on all of this:
I don't tend to react to situations that make me uncomfortable as a woman in terms of academic exploration. If it makes me feel yucky, it makes me feel yucky.

betty wrote:My criticism of their behavior has caused [my dear friends] to be a little bit ashamed and that makes me feel bad.

I have an idea for making amends with your dear friends. Let them read your quote below:

betty wrote:[T]hese are not people whom I would not hang out with.

Jesus H.! This sentence features the worst use of the English language that I have ever seen! I'm not kidding! Its construction is hopelessly tortured, it uses a double negative ("not" and "not"), and it ends with two prepositions ("out with").

It's terrible! It's terrible and funny! It's like a computer translated a sentence from "English" to "faux intellectual English"! It makes me feel yucky!

Hey! Show this embarassing sentence to your socially awkward dry humping friends! They will read it and laugh at you! You will feel ashamed -- and then you will all be even!

And you thought that you were doing so well with the "whom" and all.

Bradley R. Weissenberger wrote:

betty wrote:[T]hese are not people whom I would not hang out with.

Jesus H.! This sentence features the worst use of the English language that I have ever seen! I'm not kidding! Its construction is hopelessly tortured, it uses a double negative ("not" and "not"), and it ends with two prepositions ("out with").

oh dear! betty, please pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. sometimes bradley gets a little cranked up and all (yes, on crank, literally) and he's been in an especially troubled mood lately, what with the cubs not making the playoffs and all.

i implore you, Dr. Weissenberger, PhD in Linguistologisticities, how would convey her point as effectively, concisely, and in your case, like the grammar machine that you are? the point is this : to opt for discontinuance of the "hang out" with these folks is something she will not be doing. how do you better say that than how she did? heh? what? i can't hear you from behind your super-SUPER THICK GLASSES! NERD!