Exchanging the High Brows for the Low (and still preferring a unibrow)

When faced with a crisis, one has two options: 1. Engage in introspection 2. Go on a Jezebel binge. I chose the latter option. Here are the results:

Of course, it was small time until pop culture's recent vampire fetish was used as en excuse to opress women/(alleged) rapists will sometimes use any excuse:

http://jezebel.com/5831614/violent-man-uses-the-im-a-500+year+old-vampire-excuse

The fascinating question is: Does he beleive his own story?

I snitched this from a friend's Facebook page. To me, the saddest part is how unshocked I was by this story:

http://jezebel.com/5831447/school-allegedly-made-girl-write-apology-to-her-rapist

Also snitched from Facebook:

http://thenewgay.net/2011/08/separation-of-church-and-self.html

While I agree with the court's decision about the following case, (http://jezebel.com/5831704/sexy-lollipop-sleepover-shots-are-constitutionally-protected-speech), in which the court found it unconstitutional for a school to punish female students for sexually suggestive pictures posted on Facebook, I think that posing this as a free speech issue detracts from what this case is really about: These girls have learned to sexually objectify themselves. The girls took pictures of themselves sucking on phallic objects - ie, pleasuring men. If the pictures were of girls pretending to pleasure themselves or each other, at least it would be about their sexual autonomy, not about being men's sex toys. Even if they had taken other pictures that were more about mutual heterosexual sex acts - but blowjobs, while some women (and men) may find giving them enjoyable, are ultimately geared towards the pleasure of the receiver.

One photo shows the girls kissing - which is great if they are interested in women, but in context, speaks more to the fetishization of lesbianism by our society, and to objectifying oneself by doing something sexually unstimulating to oneself in order to sexually turn on men. Then there are the pictures where women hold pretend phallic symbols protruding between their legs. While I think Freud's "penis envy" theory is no more than thinly veiled mysogyny, I do think that our society equates a penis with power, reserves the highest power for those with a penis (there are exceptions, but in terms of general social heirarchies), and equates sticking one's penis in someone as dominating them - which is why rape is perceived by the man as an expression of his power over the woman. These pictures make me wonder if these women somehow had "picked up" on that subconsciously.

One more thing: These picures are all of sexual actions that need not involve face-to-face contact (anal sex, blowjobs), with the exception a) of the kiss, because two kissing women is considered "hot" b) of another photo, but in that, one of the people is on the phone, showing that they are not really engaging in focused face-to-face contact with each other. This shows that the photos are of people relating to each other as sexual objects, not as people engaging in sexual acts (or perhaps, more accurately: sexually suggestive/pseudo-sexual acts). According to Emmanuel Levinas, it is our face-to-face contact with the Other that constitutes the formation of ethical relationships. While I have nothing against nights (or days) of debauchery, I do think that having a society in which sex is seen only in terms of physical gratification, almost as one would go to the bathroom, is kind of depressing. Sex can also be a sign of affection and an expresison of love - and I wish society would remember that, and teach young women that they do not need to objectify themselves or engage in sexual relationships that are solely sexual in order to be cool.

A friend of mine once told me she felt like a prude, because ever since liking this guy, she no longer felt comfortable engaging in random hookups at parties. She continued to do so however, in order not to lose face. Social coercion that leads people to do things they are not sexually comfortable with is extremely prevalent in our society. In gaining the right to say "yes", have we given up (in a social sense, obviously in a moral/ethical sense we always have this) the right to say no?