In a recent post, dotty reactionary antifeminist Sunshine Mary offers her thoughts on an idea that has become something of a cliche in the Manosphere, and which she agrees with roughly one thousand percent: that “[r]egardless of what feminism may purport to be about, the result of feminism is that women have been reduced to being nothing but sex objects.”
What on earth is she talking about? She quotes one of her readers, someone called Just Saying, explaining the peculiar logic behind this assertion in a little more detail:
Feminists lost long ago. Men are in control – at least the ones that understand. We get to call the shots – now instead of being able to keep house, have children, and cook (very, very few women can cook these days) women are ONLY sex-objects. It is the only thing they have to offer to a man, that will get a man’s attention and to hold it for a while. And we don’t have to marry them to get it …
Feminism has brought about all of the things they say they hate – women today only bring sex to the equation. So I have to thank Feminism – I doubt that young women would be as skilled, or as open to oral sex, anal sex, and every other type of sex, without it. And for that, I say, “Thank you Feminism.” If there were a patriarchy, I doubt they could have ever come up with something as beneficial to men. No one would have believed women were that dumb.
The Sunshiny One uses this as a starting point for a bizarre post purporting to show that “feminism has also reduced many women to being childless careerists who must purchase other women’s reproductive capabilities.”
But let’s forget about Mary for now and take a somewhat deeper look at this whole “feminism reduces women to sex objects” argument — which only makes sense if, like Just Saying, you define the worth of women as consisting only of 1) sex and 2) “housewifely duties” like cooking, cleaning, and bearing children.
If you simply ignore all of a woman’s other abilities and accomplishments, and basically her humanity, well, I suppose you could say that the worth of a woman with no interest in cooking, cleaning, or children was “reduced” to sex.
But what a strange way to look at the world, to base your judgement of a person’s worth on a small subset of human interests and abilities and to condemn them if they aren’t enthusiastic experts in these pursuits. You might as well go around dismissing everyone who’s not a proficient accordion player.
The other strange thing about Just Saying’s argument is that it doesn’t even make sense on its own terms; it requires a willful blindness as to how the world works these days. Women make up roughly half the workforce today. Yet babies are still being born and raised. Meals are still getting cooked. Homes are still getting cleaned. It may not always be a wife in a traditional marriage doing all the cooking and cleaning and baby-raising, but couples — and single parents — are making the arrangements they need to in order to get all these things done.
So is the “feminism reduces women to nothing more than sex objects” simply an indication that certain kinds of men — and women — have a hard time recognizing women as full human beings?
Well, to some degree. But I’m pretty sure that even the most backwards thinking misogynists of the manosphere recognize that there’s more to women than cooking, cleaning, baby-making, and sex.
No, I think their attempts to reduce women to these things stem from their own defensiveness over the gains of women — and not just in the workforce, and in politics, and the wider culture.
Consider how Just Saying describes the sex-having women of today. They’re no shrinking violets. They’re not passive receptacles. They’re “skilled … open to oral sex, anal sex, and every other type of sex.”
In other words, they’re women with sexual agency. They’re women who are engaging in sex for their own pleasure, for their own reasons — not simply as a lure to capture a man to marry.
And I think this makes a lot of men deeply uneasy — especially the sorts of men who inhabit the manosphere. That’s why so many of them are so quick to shout “slut” at the very same women they’re so obsessed with pursuing.
That’s why, when they’re lucky enough to find a woman who’s enthusiastically in charge of her own sexuality, they have to pretend to themselves that sex is all she has.
This. Apart from everything else, they’re shit scared of women who have some sexual experience and thus a better chance of knowing when some bloke’s sexually incompetent, selfish or both. Given the likelihood that MRAs are both, they have reason to fear women who know there are better sexual partners out there (I won’t say “lovers” because that implies love, or just liking, kindness etc, ever enter the situation with MRAs).
Plus, since women are able to earn our own money, and (if we’re not stuck in minimum wage or unemployed) we don’t invariably need men’s wages to survive. We’re not inevitably bound for life to a horrible douchebag whose idea of sex is shove it in and come, regardless of what the shovee thinks of the matter.
Sucks to be you, MRAs. Schadenfreude is a lovely thing.
This comes right after discovering there is an MRA group on deviantART. It really has me wondering how MRAs experience the world. Well, self-centeredness certainly is a big part of it no matter the rest. What I really fail to understand are the ones like Sunshine Mary. What could she possibly gain from misogyny?
People who think that all women are for is to provide men with sex, babies, and housekeeping services believe that if you remove the babies and the housekeeping services the sex is all that’s left? What a shocker.
Porn’s a big reason why so many women are so vulnerable to sexual abuse by men these days, which is what Just Saying is talking about: openness to be abused by men.
Right, sometimes I forget about the gourmet meals everyone ate in the Middle Ages. Those were the days!
And I forget how husbands never cheated on their wives in Early Modern Europe (they didn’t because cheating was legally defined as a woman-only behaviour, but that’s just a detail). Women who cheated were put away (usually death penalty). They probably cheated because they dared to do agricultural work instead of living in a non-existant Christian utopia.
Since sunshine mary is so deep in piggybacking political conservative ideology to Christianity, I wonder what she thinks of Saint Augustine’s view on women and sex. Namely, a well functioning Christian society must have a large group of women as sex slaves for the masses of men, because a good Christian man doesn’t have sex with his good Christian wife (in “Confessions”). Since men – sex = chaos, the problem can only be resolved with having a category of women as sex slaves, and another as housekeeping slaves. Ah, the fourth century! Those were the days when even being used as a sex object to ensure men remain good Christians was not thought of as literal objectification.
They basically see women as merchandise. She needs to be “bought” by a man to be considered worthwhile. That’s the only way someone could think this way. To everyone else in the world, who sees women as people, this is completely absurd.
@ M.H.
So Just Saying is just saying that men are inherently terrible people? Interesting, but I would disagree with that assertion.
Wow, M.H., it takes special talent to look at a situation and get it exactly backwards. You could make the argument that porn leads some men to feel entitled to be sexually abusive towards women by demanding stuff that a lot of women don’t like, but arguing that it makes women “open” to abuse is pretty messed up. But hey, blame that victim!
So this man is saying that men are only interested in sex, at least from their partners, and that even then their attention spans are short. Once again, an MRA says something so anti-male it’s a wonder they can ever accuse us of misandry.
@M. H.
Explain please.
M.H., he’s talking about feminism, not porn. Reading comprehension, sheesh.
Also, where in the Feminist Handbook does it say that knowing how to keep house is forbidden? All I can find in the book is a short paragraph about how men aren’t entitled to unpaid female housemaids. When I cook and clean for myself, am I doing feminism wrong?
I hereby apologize to feminism for the dinner that I will cook later this evening. And also for cleaning the bathroom over the weekend.
I apologize for the black bean burgers I just put in the oven. Also, for raising a lovely son (who also cooks.) Sorry, feminism!
Tbf, when I was first into feminism, and admitted I wanted to be a housewife, I got a lot of sideways looks and lectures from older feminists… but! after I explained that I was, in fact, aware of how my desire did reinforce traditional gender roles and mentioned it when I talked to people who were unaware of how that did reinforce it, suddenly it was no longer an issue. Wonder why that is… maybe because feminists think that people should be able to choose what they want like they’re humans with agency and not objects.
The hand-wringing over “childless career women” is getting very tiresome to me. Maybe because I am a childless career woman? It wasn’t like this was part of the master plan, it just worked out that way — and yet my life seems pretty much worth living! The stereotype of the bitter, lonely middle aged spinster is not confined to MRAs, unfortunately.
Oh my god, I spent the day doing laundry andthe dishes andcleaning the living room! Does that mean I’m kicked out of the feminist clubhouse now?
“Feminists lost long ago.” Wait, I thought evil feminists (and other assorted “secular humanists”) rule the world and use their unholy influence to destroy families, kill babies, enslave men and practice witchcraft?
Wait, what happens if we use witchcraft to clean the bathroom?
Only when it suits their purpose to bemoan how awfully put upon that men are.
Honestly, I sort of feel bad for Ms Thiry. Her blog is horrible and stupid but I think because she’s really unhappy and her blog is one of the few places she finds truly stimulating– I mean, hundreds of comments’ worth of male attention/validation, maybe that feeling of being slightly dangerous and alive (in a way that doesn’t pose a direct threat to her current family setup…)
Not that that excuses it.
I’ve sort of been there, though I didn’t start a hateful blog about it. Life with a bunch of kids underfoot and simmering marital issues ain’t fun. You want all your former and current sacrifices to be recognized by SOMEONE, damnit. Classic mid-life crisis stuff.
Hopefully one day she’ll figure out what her problem is and solve it, instead of trying to drag everyone down to her level.
Hey, do giant feral dust bunnies mean you’re doing feminism really well?
auggz – and if she initiates it, it means she might have preferences or knowledge and he’ll be shown up for the self-centred, entitled loser he is. Why, it’s enough to make a man have a sad boner.
If the dust bunnies are feral, does that mean they run away when they see you? That sounds like a great cleaning plan – I’m on it!
“Just Saying”‘s world view, rather than “elevating” women, is really desperately sad for women. It views women’s only opportunities for fulfillment and meaning as coming through serving a man. From such a pathetic perspective, of course feminism is terrible! It’s like saying we should reform the prisons by cutting off food to the prisoners. Not that Soylent Sunshine or Just JAQing Off would ever acknowledge the poverty of their world-view.
Serrana – nah, they’re so feral they just sit there exuding attitude. Or cattitude, since they’re more dust kitties than dust bunnies in our house.