http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/10/r...am_n_96050.html

If she was a right-winger, she'd have gotten a TV deal out of it.

Boo f*cking hoo.

Seriously Randi, cut the vitriol. The last thing the left needs is its own Ann Coulter.

Yeah, that was my thought. Screaming about how evil someone is isn't likely to change anyones mind.

Randi Rhodes was doing a stand up comedy routine in front of a private audience at a club hosted by a local Air America affiliate. Suspending her for what she said in a comedy routine supposedly violated her contract, according to her, I suspect after consulting her attorneys after she and they looked closely at it for a week, so she terminated her agreement to continue to work for Air America.

Apparently there's no love lost there. And that solved whatever problems they were having with what some consider their "flagship" voice. Whether her voice is the reason for their other flagging popularity problems, is unknown, perhaps unknowable. Whether this controversy will help raise their falling ratings is unknowable.

The real issue that I see in this is about free speech and legal rights, contracts we make, and who can tell us what to say, when to say it.

Does that matter?

Or is it more important that everyone walk lock step as a liberal herd to the voting booths, since free speech doesn't matter anyway, certainly not to the conservatives who "learned" to walk lock step, there's no one listening anyhow.

And using shocking words as comedians, like Lenny Bruce, who suffered greatly to defend that right, feel they must, sometimes, is "off the table" if the right people don't like the source of those words and what they might do, like pointing out that a democratic presidential candidate is a voice bought and paid for by corporations, not the people -- though ironically, the president is the one office that was intended to represent the voice of all the people at once. Of course, that voice only speaks once every four years, so it needs to be clear, doesn't it?

Private property, what a wonderful dilemma for the concept of democracy. What if everything really were privatized, including the parks? Where would those straggle haired crack pots go to stand on their soap box and preach to the pigeons about presidential power and the loss of your privacy, the loss of habeas corpus, and all those other insignificant issues these ranting comedians can only rant about if and when someone wants them to?

So here's something I find ironic.

Thom Hartmann, of Air America, publishes an essay in Hustler magazine about Republican Doublespeak. (Thom Hartmann in Hustler Magazine on GOP Double Speak) Note that Hustler is a magazine pornographically oriented, generally objectifying women.



Randi Rhodes does a stand up comedy routine in front of a private audience in which she calls Hillary Clinton an objectifying, pornographically oriented name, and she's suspended from Air America.

If your sign a contract, willingly and with full knowledge of it's terms, you can't violate it and then say your rights are being trampled. The fact that she was at an Air America event, comedic or not, she should have been aware that her words were inappropriate.

It's like signing a non disclosure statement about something and then running to the nearest reporter in the name of free speech.

The rules aren't there to restrict liberty, but to protect it.

You always have the right to choose, but you must be willing to accept the consequences that come with a choice.

Irony and double standards duly noted!

How does your "what if' scenario relate to this actual situation? I think what you just said is nonsense without more clarification.

Which rules are there to protect liberty? What's liberty to you with regards to what Randi Rhodes just went through?

Do you grasp the simple fact that she says she did not violate her contract, but they did? I don't know if it's true, I don't have her contract in front of me, but that's her position, and why she quit.

I'm a contractor, I write my own contracts. I do them when I write documents for corporations, and I do them for other things I do as a self employed person, so when you start lecturing me about contracts, be forewarned.

Who decides what is appropriate? Can you detail what's appropriate in a contract? Think about it. Think about what you mean when you decide to legislate what's right and wrong to say for other people. Think about what that's going to imply in your society you conjure up in your mind. Liberals want to complain about the conservatives walking lock step and winning in elections? What does that really mean about your society, your democracy, when people have to walk lock step and watch what they say?

As a longtime admirerer I'm very disappointed to see Thom Hartmann's name under the title of this totally repulsive rag. I consider myself a proponent of unqualified free speech, but that doesn't mean I need feign respect for those who purvey the basest expressions of it. Someone can correct me if this is an urban legend, but I seem to recall that the 'artist' who did the popular Hustler cartoon called Chester the Molester was convicted of molesting his own daughter.
I've never understood why Flint has been afforded the respect of a free-speech hero of sorts to the degree that the likes of Hartmann and Dennis Kucinich would associate their names with him. Shame on Thom.

You can go to his blog (linked in my post) and voice your opinion to him there . I really think he would like to know what his listening community thinks of this. You may have to join his board first, though. I can't voice mine. I've been banned from his board. Apparently something I said was deemed to have been "inappropriate" by the authorities in charge.

Flint has been to court many times [SCOTUS] ,too. He published real photos, [unfiltered] of VietNam atrocities, in '73-'74[?] I don't know the interview or the topic, but if it's a hot one, Larry Flynt is the way to go. [I'm also hoping he gives Lindey England a job when she gets out]

No matter how liberal and progressive Flint seems to be he's only getting HALF the story. "Rock n Roll MILFs" quite clearly betrays the half he's missing.

Someone else will cover the other angles. Flint owns this one.
Besides, he's paying out good money to people that snitch out GOP corruption and he gets the exclusive scoop.

I really do not see Hartmann giving an interview to Hustler as equivalent with Randi Rhodes calling someone a "f*cking whore" in her capacity as representing Air America. But I really have very little problem with Larry Flynt or pornography in general.

She didn't violate her contract. Management wanted her to agree to changes to her existing contract before they would put her back on the air. She refused.



She was at an event sponsored by an affiliate station. That may sound like the same thing to the general public, but contract law can tell the difference.



You think Randi's contract specified what names she could and couldn't use for a democratic candidate? Come on.



Irrelevant, because she didn't violate the rules. She said what she wanted to (which she had the right to do) and management suspended her for the duration (which they also have the right to do). No actual rules were violated.



Wrong, "consequences" are not a force of nature, and in appropriate circumstances they can definitely be challenged. Air America may well go out of business because they forced out their top talent. How's that for "consequences?"

Your call, your right to make it.

"Rock 'n' Roll MILFs"... I had to look it up. An acronym (interestingly, acronyms are a form of making symbolic objects out of a set of words) for "Moms I'd like to F**k." 49,300,000 hits for MILF in 0.08 seconds on a recent Google search. I didn't look through all the pages but pretty much every hit on every page I browsed was about pornography. So with MILFs, what you do, see, is you line up these "Moms" like cattle, evaluate their body parts, forget about whether they are human beings involved in families, have husbands, kids, brothers, sisters, any of that, you evaluate their body parts and determine if they are suitable to "f**k". That's, essentially, objectification, which is a form of dehumanization.

Objectification. We do it all the time. It's helpful, for instance, if you want to kill someone to think of them as an object rather than a human being you might be able to empathize with. Call them a hajji, or a gook, for instance, that helps. When I went into the military I was objectified in a process we called boot camp. My hair was cut off, my personal and self identifying individualized clothing taken away, my right to think for myself restricted into very carefully defined channels, and I was uniformed, ranked and filed. That's helpful, I expect, so I could be ordered around and sent into battle. Generals don't ask which personal individual will be killed while making battle plans before they attack, for instance, like attacking Iraq, they evaluate the potential body count, how many objectified bodies of their troops they will potentially lose, they compare it to the potential body count of the other guy's troops that will be killed and evaluate whether the objective is worth it, based on the loss of their expensive collection of objectified, trained, human fighting machines. Objectification is certainly necessary there, and it's fully understandable that we should expect no one to have any problems with that, I suppose.

Collateral damage is a handy term for real live human beings who end up unintentionally dead, civilians, who happen to be nearby in a bombing. We don't call them real live human beings, though, we objectify them and call them "collateral damage." We don't, however, call them collateral damage when they are passengers on airplanes or inhabitants of buildings flown into by "terrorists" (another handy objectifying term), especially if they are American civilians. We tell their individual stories, including all their grieving relatives left behind, on the news, over and over. So some objectified human beings (ours, objectified by "them") are more equal than others (theirs, objectified by us), apparently. Unless, of course, they are our own objectified women we love to "f**k". That's a different problem in objectification to analyze, especially if we don't want to have a problem with someone who is also saying things for "our" side who happens to do this sort of objectifying as well.



U.S. Doubles Air Attacks in Iraq -- June 06, 2007



US Forces Launch Airstrikes in Iraq March 28, 2008



Oops Our Bad... Catch 2,200: 9 Propositions on the U.S. Air War for Terror



Objectification, sometimes we "have very little problem" with it.

And thus it has been so as long as there have been people on this planet.
This is absolutely nothing new, and the recourse is to be on the moral high road, while at the same time remembereing that we are ALL sinners.

Is that a fact... Do you think you can back that up? I wonder how you could.





Recourse to what? Treating people like objects rather than relating to them as fellow human beings? Treating species in nature like objects, as resources to be used, rather than our relatives?

What does sinning have to do with any of this? How does that concept come up? What is moral high and low ground? How is that determined?

This is very puzzling.

I'll give Flint the same amount of respect he gives me: Zero.

So calling someone a whore is wrong, and punishable by suspension, yet giving tacit approval to a publication which systematically objectifies women and treats us like pieces of meat is OK? I'm surprised that you can't see where the double standard lies here.

Porn, in and of itself, may be perfectly acceptable, depending on ones personal point of view. I have no objections to consenting adults engaging in what-ever sexual activity they choose.
But the porn industry tends to go out of its way to humiliate and objectify many of the women who work within it. Judging by the cover posted hereby Ren, I'd say Flints publication certainly objectifies women. I'm afraid I do have a problem with that!

Flynt cannot spend enough money pandering to self-righteous liberals and punishing those he feels are responsible for his self-loathing to purge himself of it. I don't have ren's extraordinary ability to articulate the contempt that the content of his magazine deserves, but I do know that it doesn't represent any values that I recognize as progressive. I have no idea what it's like now or even if it exists, but I was an adult when it was first published and it was repugnant to anyone with a modicum of decency, taste, or social conscience. Beyond misogynistic, it must surely have validated its audiences world view that rape, incest and molesting children are normal, entertaining and humorous.
The publications preoccupation with feces is telling. I have no doubt, now that we've come to a place where news of our children being stolen, used, killed and discarded like garbage is commonplace, that much of the responsibility lies with the mainstreaming of magazines like Hustler.

I don't think you need to feel you are taking a back seat to anyone. You said it just fine.

This whole issue brings out a deep seated sense of revulsion in me. I apologize if my words are in any way offensive. The first shock of it began for me about 1967. I had no idea what the contract I'd just signed actually meant, or what the oath they had me repeat really meant. I don't think any kid does, and no one takes the trouble to help you understand it.

I was thinking, karen, after I read your feisty response, that you may have the solution to the puzzle of the objectification box right there.

Then this morning I read this little essay by one of my favorite writers, someone who believes history is ongoing, and that every effort we make to do something is a plunge in the dark, and we will never know all the results of what we do, or whether we will succeed, but we should never give up! So I enjoyed her prickly little essay, it starts like this:

Speaking for myself, I never implied respect of any kind for the man or his magazine and all that it represents, EXCEPT for the money it generates that is used to expose Republican Corruption, some of which would still be hidden in the dark without these efforts. (Gotta admit I also enjoy seeing anyone thumb their nose at the powerful American religous base)

I do not in anyway endorse the magazine or it's objectification of women.

My only objective here is for honest reality, in that though I cannot support the man or agree with his misogynistic principles in even the slightest way, there ARE some aspects and actions that are worthy of at least a passing interest.

Unfortunately the two are joined at the hip.

I don't want to get off on a "porn tangent," but what about the women who, of their own free will, decide to participate in a dehumanizing, objectifying industry? Have they been duped? Are they victims of the system? Are they playing men for fools for economic gain?


OK, point well taken, but there is a pretty significant difference between objectifying people who decide to be in a magazine based on their physical characteristics, and objectifying people to assure yourself that you are justified in killing them because they are somehow subhuman. It certainly is not right to objectify women, or to suggest that their only value is as sexual playthings. But most women, particularly in America, are not forced into pornography, at least not the way Arabs are lumped together for collective punishment for the misdeeds of a relatively small segment of the population.

Fantastic essay Ren! I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend it! I have just one question: Why has it not yet been posted in TWM?



Yes.

There are many, many factors to consider here. We life in a society which systematically devalues women on almost every level, reducing us to very narrowly prescribed stereo-types. Wife, mother, sex object. Yes, we can be other things, we can choose other avenues, but those choices involve stepping outside of our prescribed roles and encountering bigotry and discrimination in a much more direct way. Take a look at the essay Ren posted if you wish to be enlightened further.
Yes, many woman are duped into thinking of themselves in particular ways, and some even find economic gain in those roles. I'm not entirely sure who's fooling whom though...

One other point - The objectification of women in this manner does not contain itself to those women who 'willingly choose' to enter the porn industry. I could tell you many stores of being objectified and leched after, and of the effect that has on a whole human being , even once she has learned to stand up for herself against this kind of objectification..
It is dehumanising. It is humiliating. It is not remotely complimentary (as some men seem to think).




What you seem to be saying here is that some objectification is OK, or at least acceptable, but some objectification is not OK. Yet we're discussing human beings and all the complex simplicity that we contain.
Is it worse to herd a group of humans beings together in order to punish them for some perceived wrong doing of some other human being, than to heard another group of human beings together to be viewed as mere flesh for the sexual gratification of some other, more powerful, group?
I suggest that both are equally dehumanising, that, as individuals we need to start to recognise the processes which cause us to dehumanise and objectify (ourselves and) each-other, so that we may question our own participation in them.

So, many of the women involved in that industry 'choose' to participate. Do you think if we lived in a world which viewed women as wholly equal to men, the power structures which lead to the 'choices' these women make would be in operation?
In other words, all things being equal, would those women be, in general, more likely to pursue, enhance, develop other aspects of themselves? I suggest they would.

Libertas, I feel that karen made all the necessary and significant points that can help you work this out for yourself. Objectification is a deeply embedded societal process, and we all take part in it, both doing it to ourselves and to others. Each of us is free to make of it what we will. Or you can convince yourself of something else.

I discovered how the objectification process works to rob me of my own humanity and my personal freedom over forty years ago, in what I would call stark Technicolor, and I've made a life long project of understanding it as a result.

You could call it duped if you want. I don't. I see it as simply the result of our cognitive makeup and the societies that have evolved with growing human complexity in our problem solving endeavors, and something we can become aware of, but many don't take the trouble, they are too "busy," or something along those lines. Some people may be more aware of it than others, some of those may be the artists, novelists, comedians -- all sorts of people we enjoy hearing from because of their sometimes very uncommon insights. Maybe they don't need to be all that uncommon, but apparently they are. Of that group I think of writers like Rebecca Solnit, for instance.


karen,

I don' speak acronym very well! What is TWM? I Googled it for help, got none.

Tom Englehardt is often ahead of many others in breaking new essays from his group of friends who are, by feat of primary association, also essayists. After all, his life work has been as one of the best editors in the business, so he knows some of the best writers around. I look forward to most of his essayists, Rebecca has become one of my favorites. Her book on walking, Wanderlust, one of my favorite forms of meditation, touched me to my core with her acute observations and ironic turns of phrase.

Saying that you shouldn't have to deal with consequence is like a ten year old whining because he got in trouble for calling another student names.

Child "But it's a free country!"

Teacher "Yes, but we still have to follow the rules."

Child "Why!"

Teacher "Because without rules there would be no boundaries, no limit's. The bigger and stronger would always win, the weak would have no recourse."

Heil Hitler!

Your missing the point, she had every right to say what she did, she can go rave about Clinton in the streets for all I care. But it's no different than the whole Don Imus thing, her employer had every right to suspend her if they felt she was damaging their image, since she is a public figure that is representative of them.

Yes, there are rules and this in of it's self isn't so much about power or control.
It's about limits so that YOUR freedoms don't impose on someone else's freedoms. (as much as possible)





About the objectifcation issue.
This is n't gonna stop or go away, no matter how right or wrong these issues are.
Not as long as there are men and their are women,
and as long as men are what they are, and women are what they are.
That doesn't mean we might as well let it all go, but it does mean to be a reminder about being realistic and understanding what the limits are in this issue.

Prostitution (and in essence that's what this is) is the worlds oldest profession, literally.

Is it really mine ..."missing the point"? (that's a bit of a joke, if you look at the grammar)

I wonder if you have really grasped what you have imagined is mine...

And how is that so in this case? I don't follow your logic.

"There are rules" is too vague for me to work with. We live in common agreement with what is often called "the rule of law." Is that what you mean? Perhaps you could connect some dots, or at least give me more dots to play around with.





So, are you suggesting "men" and "women" are the basis for objectification? How does that work? In what way does that establish "limits" for instance.

Which or what's prostitution in all this?

We have a society, and in a society that society sets it rules. Fact of life even if we don't agree with the social norm.
However, the real point here is what Boot says. When you are under someones employ, the employeer sets the rules.
You have the right to say what ever you want, but NOT as an employee. They have every right to fire you if you break company rules in EXACTLY the same way this forum has the right to ban a member for breaking "THE RULES".

You need to be more clear about which rules are societal decorum rules, where and how those are codified, if they indeed they are even codified, and which are rule of law rules, which include the legal aspects of this case. You haven't said anything so far but a bunch of generalized mush.

You actually sound an awfully lot like a strict parent who's run into a recalcitrant and questioning child, which I find amusing.

If you had followed the points so far you would be able to refer to concepts like: "contracts." Contracts are legally codified agreements. That point has already been made. Therefore Boot hasn't introduced anything to the discussion that's developed here any more than you have.

As I said earlier, I'm a private contractor. I write contracts. I therefore recognize that contracts not only can be, but they should be negotiated between both parties. At this point, Randi can be said to have either violated an agreement with Air America that's in her contract, or to have not violated such an agreement. We are already long past the kindergarten level of telling the children there are rules. Without knowing what her contract is, I can't go any further than I did quite a few posts ago on that. Someone since has introduced the wrinkle that Air America attempted to stipulate the contract be renegotiated before they would allow her back on the air, and that's when she quit. But that doesn't tell me a whole lot about the legalities of the situation. Just another vague point. However, I'm not interested in debating any legalities I don't have in hand to refer to, and which I don't have any way of knowing about specifically without that. I'm not even particularly interested in the contract legalities of this issue, frankly, because I figure Randi has better law advice than I could give her -- or at least she should, she can afford it -- and she's probably long since dealt with contract issues as a mature adult in a highly volatile legal environment, where she speaks her mind and opinions putting both herself and the stations that carry her at risk. To that extent you are barking up a tree, and I'm not in it.

Your concept of rules as you've presented it is too mushy to apply in any definitive way to this situation, for me. I have asked you a number of specific questions to try to clarify what you might have going in your mind about that reference, and so far I haven't been able to get to anything I can respond to. I don't have a way to respond until you clarify what you are trying to tell me.

Codified = legal laws.

Social decorum = it's not nice to sit in church and call the preacher a sombitch because you don't like his sermon.
Odds are you will be forcefully asked to leave!


If and when Randi owns a radio station she is absolutely free to say anything she wishes on the radio airwaves, just as long as everything she says is legal to say.

I like Randi. But I agree that she went over a line and has many times. However, because she says things I kinda like, I never complain even though I realize that if Rush or one of the other conservative pundits said something similer in a conserrvative vane, I'm sure they would get the same sort of reaction from the public at large.

If it's not OK for Imus, then it's not OK for Randi.

You're repeating authoritarian nonsense. Yes, Air America has the right to suspend Randi, I never denied that, so you're misrepresenting my position.

What you have is two parties who disagree, and have parted company. You DON'T have one authority and one transgressor, that implies that the parties do not exist as equals. Randi has just as much right to punish Air America as Air America has to punish Randi.

And don't get didactic with me, you pedagogue.

Well, that's essentially the irony I introduced in the first place. Some people are going to judge Randi went over the line, some won't. Some people will judge that Thom Hartmann went over the line, some won't. Arbitrary social subtext, i.e., unwritten codes are also, I pointed out, the very things that comics attempt to call to our attention, sometimes very joltingly -- more joltingly than some people tend to appreciate. Your assessment may be in agreement with many others in the society, but it's certainly not codified. That therefore becomes not only an issue of personal rights, but a worthy point of examination of what we actually consider society, as in social agreements and social control issues. Private property, for instance, is a significant juncture for meeting of individual rights and social control issues. That's why I'm a private contractor and refuse to work under someone else's rules without a lot of legal leverage of my own going in. It's not an altogether easy road to go, but for me, it's preferable to all those axiomatic authoritarian pretexts of which you've demonstrated your keen awareness.

I think Randi probably knows far better than you the details of what she can and can't say on the airwaves -- unless of course you are a professional talk radio host like she is. It's her bread and butter business and she's not only obviously quick of mind and intelligent, she's a pro. That's not a relevant point, though, is it? She didn't say anything on the airwaves that got her suspended. Therefore this does not equate to Don Imus or the other guy who recently got suspended for suggesting that Hillary was pimping out her daughter by having her campaign for her, which was also said on the air waves (although I recall Rush Limbaugh never got suspended for comparing Chelsea to a dog, and thus back to the lead post of this thread; a young vulnerable girl of thirteen visually pictured as the White House dog on television, if I recall, so once again we get a little taste of iron in our discussion). I think it's important to keep clear just what the parameters of the discussion actually include, so we can then be clear about which issue is which.

Sorry Ren! TWM = This World Matters.



Sorry Sky, but I have to disagree on a couple of points.
First, Objectification is not limited to 'men and women'. It happens in many spheres of life - war, for example. And I don't believe it's something that we can't change. I appreciate that you say it's something that should be addressed, whether we can change it or not, but I believe it's a mind-set that we've become accustomed to, that's deeply entrenched in our perceptions of 'self' and 'other', therefore a change in this perception could eradicate the objectification of 'other' altogether. At least, that's my opinion.

Also, prostitution and and the objectification of women are not the same thing.

Ahh, Well, I guess it's worthy of its own thread there. I picked the two places I did because both threads were relevant to what she said, though with different twists.

I didn't say we can't change it, and I sure as hell hope we don't stop trying. That would be a disaster.

What I did say was it's a physical fact of life as much as it's an emotional fact, and will continue forever, one way or another. Denial of the physical reality isn't wise.



Consider for a moment the woman that "dated" a well known governor of New York.
Do you really think she'd prefer to work as an assistant office clerk? I don't think so. She seemed quite rational and pretty sure of herself. She also seemed emotionally quite strong. She knows full well what she's doing and why. This doesn't have anything to do with objectification, other than the objectification of money, lots of money for a few hours "work" doing what she might well be doing under different circumstances on any other saturday night.

Objectification isn't about the sex trade industry exclusively. However, because of the REAL issues, it's awfully easy to cover up and gloss over what's wrong.

Look, I have personally known women who were married to men they were not in love with and have never been in love with. They are married for the economic security. He gets his house and clothes cleaned. Sex happens, but usually because there's money involved. IE, new clothes, car, travel etc. How is this sort of activity not considered objectification and any more of a sin than the "sex trade industry"? Isn't the married woman in this case pretty much just a live in hooker?

Whay about beauty contests? (Or talent contests that exclude male participation)

What Flint does with his magazine is quite clearly objectification of women. After all, it's only images, or an object representing the women. However, to discuss the issue correctly, an issue of which Flints magazine is only one small part, requires getting into one of the deepest and heaviest subjects on the planet. (more so than even politics and religion) Something this forum does not have the capacity to do.

What Randi knows, or what I know is beside the point. A distraction.

The simple fact is, the employeer has the right to hire and fire. (Unless there is a Union and in this case the Union does that aspect for the employer) If what Randi said offends her employer, they have the right to fire. Hell, if randi pierced her nose and they don't like it, they can fire her for it! They can fire her because they don't like the sound of her voice!\

Yes, Randi has every right to punish them as well, with in the capacity that she has to punish them. She isn't without recourse. For instance, she's already got another job lined up. It might suit her new employer for Randi to attempt to pull listeners off AA and over to the new show. If Randi has the clout, she might well do that.

I doubt very seriousely that in Randi's contract it states she can't say what ever. She wasn't fired for anything in her contract. She was fired because the boss didn't like what she said. Period.

Free speech does NOT come without consequences.




Ren. You are a smart and capable human. Please don't assume that I'm not one as well, simply because we disagree.

Did you even read what I wrote?



You made what I considered an irrelevant remark, and I was calling attention to what I perceived as you misappropriately tying it to the radio:



Now you are going off on the general dogma of employers and employees. As I've said, I'm not particularly interested in those issues. I'm not anywhere seriously questioning any of that. I've explained why. I'm far more interested in the "gang" rules of behavior. Social pressure, public opinion, that sort of thing, the subtext of rules that go into that. The ones that I feel expose the latent misogynistic, racist, and objectifying attitudes in people, and so forth. The ones that have to do with tolerating what another person chooses to do. The ones that the rule of law is designed to protect us from. The only "physical" aspect of those is in our cognitive biological system.

I guess I should respond to your last remark, though I'm inclined to ignore it, because such remarks are character oriented and generally troublesome in nature. I don't have any reason to assume anything here about you or anyone in order to participate, and I don't. I'm addressing what I see in the words. It's my concern and interest to point out what's being said, how it's being addressed as I perceive it, and how the points are or aren't being covered, as I perceive it. To me, that's what discussion entails. Each person sharing their perceptions, making clarifications, and so forth. Maybe it's unique, I don't know, but that's how it is for me to have discussions.

Whether I'm smart or not isn't important either, at least not to me. If it's of concern to you, that's not something I'm interested in. You don't need to tell me about it, but if you want to I don't mind one way or another. I'm just telling you my interest, you can, of course, put whatever you want in your posts.

Most of what interests me about this topic has already come out, I might add. I've asked for some clarification on certain things, if that clarification were ever attempted, perhaps there might be more to explore. But at this point I figure you aren't that interested.

The objectification of human beings is a 'physical' fact, Sky? How so?
If I were to judge you on your penis size, and that alone, would that be a perfectly natural thing to do simply because it is fact that you have a penis?





In what way does this woman's relationship with that man demonstrate 'objectification' - sexual or otherwise?




First, I refer you to my previous question.
Second, though it's somewhat off-topic, I feel I must point out that the sexual imperative isn't the province of men alone, that women have sexual desires too, and that sex without love is something we too can enjoy. And we don't even have to be paid, or receive any 'financial' gain to indulge!
You seem to be suggesting that women who benefit financially from a relationship which includes sex must be somehow prostituting themselves. I see that as absolutely incredulous!





Yes. With or without male participation, these are generally examples of objectification. (Was that the question?)



Personally I think the members of this forum, including you and me, are more than capable of discussing such weighty issues, and even drawing/reaching conclusions. But if folks aren't interested, than so be it.

And proud of it.

Karen,


Because men are men and women are women, and we both have hormones.
Men are always gonna want sex and women will always have what men want (generally)
Men will be expected to be the agressors, while women will hold the prize.
(even the great Bill Cosby has a comedy routine about this reality)

Law of the jungle ma'am. It's not pretty in such terms.
The hope is that we can be civilized and evolved enough to make it beautiful.

Dear Sky,
Could it be that you are confusing 'objectification' with 'sexuality'?
Hmmmmmmm.... Not the same thing at all dear heart!

Sexuality is often expressed quite beautifully, objectification never is.

To return to something closer to the original topic and offer a slightly less nuanced opinion, there is not only a correlation between Randi's comments and Thom's choice to lend his name and image to Hustler magazine, but Hartmann's breech of propriety is even greater. Hustler, IMO, has tangibly hurt people, in a social context at best, physically at worst. Randi might have offended some people, probably less than they think, who already hold true liberals in low esteem.

It's not easy to seperate sexuality and objectification.
I mean, it's not that simple. Sometiems ya can other times it's not practicle, and some times it's just not possible, or even desirable.

Men and women are different, and for several hundred thousand years that difference and the energy it creates has been what made the world go round.

Hmmm. I wonder if you could help us out here so our pretty little heads can understand why this is all just too complex to figure out. Maybe you can start with what you mean by "object-if-ication" Like, is there a relationship of some sort with "object-de-fecation"?

Maybe if we knew why it was too complex for our pretty little head, we could just stop worrying about it and go to the ball game.


From Laurie Anderson's Babydoll

Unfortunately, you answered your own question.
I just don't know if you realize it?



BTW, please note that I haven't made any recommendations or suggestions as to what is or is not acceptable
OTHER that to say it is what it is. The animal in us all cannot be denied, and when we do trouble follows.
(see republican "family values" hipocrites)