In Getting Real About Sex Addiction, there are several areas of ontological speculation, areas whose nature, existence, and organization are identified by the following terms: addiction, the mind, trauma, misogyny, misandry, and objectification. These abstractions, all made concrete to one extent or another by various pundits across intellectual disciplines, are discussed in mine and Joe Farley’s book within the intersecting frameworks of intrapsychic (one-body or instinctual), interpsychic (relational), or collectivist (broader social or systemic) models of thought. There. Take a moment to digest that mouthful of words before you move on, else you might get psychic indigestion. The terms presented for our offhand yet meaningful scrutiny—these things about which we ask, “is that a thing?”—are listed in no particular order of importance. And it’s not just their importance that seems arbitrary, so too do their meanings. Take, for instance, the term objectification, placed above in a fashion that is fittingly unfitting: a random sixth amongst a list of variably meaningful abstractions.
My passages in the book on objectification don’t so much present an etiology of this term as comment on recent research on the subject. In my reading of studies about porn use, for example, I found that some researchers are revisiting the question of objectification, especially as it pertains to gender. It seems that trends are shifting and that porn use is becoming more, shall we say, egalitarian. Meaning, women are quietly using porn in rates that are starting to rival those of men, according to numerous self report studies. This has led researchers in Amsterdam in the Netherlands to question whether the porn industry has adapted its depiction of men and women in porn scenarios to reflect this shift in viewer demographics. Specifically, they sought to determine whether contemporary porn objectifies men as much as it does women (or approximately so), which would be contrary to accepted social narratives. I’d suggest that what prevails currently is a tautological, as in circular polemic wherein men who use porn or prostitutes are said to be objectifying women, while women who use porn or act as prostitutes are said to be objectifying women. This latter phenomenon is explained by the concept of internalization, an object relations and psychoanalytic theory. The popular rhetoric suggests an underlying ontological issue relating to both porn and addiction and so I canvassed literature to see how the concept of objectification was being defined. Though I found some variance, the most common meanings attached to objectification indicated a reducing of a person to a thing; an implicit demeaning, at least. In Getting Real I don’t contest this meaning though I question its selective application. With respect to the aforementioned study, the researchers designated numerous criteria for objectification and found in several categories equitable instances of objectification from women to men as from men to women. This was especially true with respect to what is often dubbed performative sex.
My own critique extends beyond this kind of forensic examination of porn, though I shall use as a springboard to my idea a convention that I have observed more than once within the porn medium. With apologies, I ask the reader to conjure the following: a man standing, or lying flat, erect in every sense, and appearing soldierly. Physically, he is at attention, but he is not gripped by ecstasy; rather he is gruntingly stoical, or blasé, or—one might consider—dissociative. For the viewer, he may be faceless, as in off camera from the waist up. Whether this is to protect the performer’s identity (especially in amateur porn) or results from his irrelevance to the pleasure of a presumably heterosexual male viewer is debatable, but regardless, he is not exactly personalized. The soldierly pose of the male performer is further apt because it presents a subliminal link to the role that has traditionally (and still does) “objectify” men of this type. In this militant role, they put their bodies on the line, sacrificing themselves, becoming objects of violence or symbols of civilization’s defense. Now then, patriarchs and feminists might ally with one another on this point, bristling against my comparison and the implied moral equivalence between this historical subjugation of men versus the sexual humiliation of women. Firstly, feminists in particular might point out that today many women are also soldiers, thus sharing that sacrificial burden, though on the whole the military remains dominantly masculine. Secondly, they might argue that soldiers, or even their symbolic gladiatorial substitutes, athletes, are treated as heroes, not mere objects to be used by a lustful society.
Really? I would think that even a casual glance at that last sentence would cause dissenters to pause. After all, on the sports front, not all or even a majority of participants become celebrated, or even achieve a lasting or lucrative career (even if they did, does one become less objectified if making lots of money?). Some of them, especially football players, experience chronic health and even mental health problems relating to their playing careers. How much do we really care? Meanwhile, history and even contemporary reality shows that while society and media pay regular lip service to the heroism of veterans, a darker truth lies in the legacy of neglect that survivors of combat have long known. The legendary British analyst, Wilfred Bion, a World War I veteran, felt invisible and used by the military command that recruited him and thrust him and his comrades into no man’s land. My grandfather, a veteran of both Dunkirk and D-day, never acted like—nor was he treated as—a hero. Thomas Childer’s book, Soldier from the War Returning, likewise debunks the myth that WWII soldiers were revered as much as our sentimentalized histories suggest they were. Instead, they endured long-standing economic and psychological struggles, misunderstood episodes of PTSD, and even social backlash from a misunderstanding public. And what about today? How many stories of unattended veterans’ disabilities, or of veterans’ struggles to find jobs or housing do we have to hear before we drop the pretense that we have privileged their lives and service? I don’t begrudge feminist scholars for having drawn attention to the ways in which the sisterhood has been and still is being demeaned. Furthermore, I’m not sure how much any movement is responsible for its menu-minded consumers. But the myopic, femicentric bias invested in the objectification concept merits the critique and satire that I bring to mine and Joe Farley’s book. So there. The reader has been warned, and consumers should be reminded of what they habitually do and what our surviving soldiers weren’t prepared for—that ancient warrior’s tacit sacrificial bargain with his original commanders. We throw our things, our objects, away. They were never meant to return.
Graeme Daniels
Graeme Daniels Psychewriter 