Is Sexual Desire Dehumanizing?

Posted on | March 31, 2015 | 77 Comments

Studying feminist theory requires an ability to maintain sanity in the constant presence of madness. Today while making my rounds inside the online feminist lunatic asylum, I encountered this:

When women say “But I like to be objectified! Doesn’t everybody, sometimes?” it used to annoy me, but now it just breaks my heart a little. Because she can’t disentangle being desired or loved from being treated like a thing. And she’s right. That’s the world we live in: We cannot conceptualize desiring a woman without dehumanizing her. That is sexuality under heteropatriarchy.

Who thinks this way? What strange structures have you built into your mental universe so that aesthetic admiration or erotic interest toward another person means you have “objectified” them, reduced them to “being treated like a thing”? On what basis does one discern the difference between love/desire (good) and dehumanized objectification (bad)? Does it not occur to people who talk this way that they are simply overthinking this stuff? Only very unhappy people, deficient in ordinary animal vigor, could permit their minds to become so cluttered with intellectual theory that they view sexual attraction in such terms.

So, who thinks this way? An autistic 26-year-old white “butch” lesbian who is “still figuring out gender stuff,” that’s who.

They’re defective. Darwinian errors. “Broken people.”

Scratch a feminist and a kook bleeds.

UPDATE: How did I miss this? The same person who wrote that quote also blogs as “The Freelance Feminist,” and describes herself:

I hold a BA in Women’s and Gender Studies from Wellesley College and an MA in Gender and Cultural Studies. I’m currently finishing up a second master’s in public policy because I don’t want to stay trapped forever in the echo-chamber of academia.
More importantly, I’m an autistic butch lesbian. My politics are shaped much more by my own experience in the world than they are by my academic background. My work focuses on the intersection of gender, sexuality, disability, and embodiment. I have extensive experience with media analysis, and in my academic life I am trying to synthesize that with policy analysis. I want to draw attention to how cultural narratives inform collective attitudes which, in turn, shape policy. Stories are vitally important, and they reverberate through every aspect of our private, public, and civic lives.

Which just confirms everything I said previously, of course.

UPDATE II: Her name is Caroline Narby:

Butch is a trickster gender — and so, in a similar way, is femme. Lesbian gender expressions do not emulate heteropatriarchy, they subvert it. Femme removes femininity from the discursive shadow of masculinity and thereby strips from it any connotation of subordination or inferiority. Butch takes markers of “masculinity” and divests them of their association with maleness or manhood.

Read the whole thing, if you can handle the insanity.

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Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

77 Responses to “Is Sexual Desire Dehumanizing?”

RS
March 31st, 2015 @ 4:30 pm

When women say “But I like to be objectified! Doesn’t everybody, sometimes?”

Strawman alert!

Who says that? Who, in normal conversation says,”I like to be objectified?” Answer: No one. Do people like it when their spouse compliments them on their appearance. Sure. It lets us know our spouse still finds us attractive. It’s not objectification. It’s love. Feminists just can’t see the difference.
robertstacymccain
March 31st, 2015 @ 4:30 pm

“You Have to Be Carefully Taught”
Fail Burton
March 31st, 2015 @ 4:43 pm

I like the way they think the entire world’s sexuality is their business. You need a trigger warning to say live and let live around these nuts. You’d need a tank to tell them to shut up.
Fail Burton
March 31st, 2015 @ 4:44 pm

Isn’t that a quote from Dr. No?
texlovera
March 31st, 2015 @ 4:46 pm

I’m currently finishing up a second master’s in public policy because I don’t want to stay trapped forever in the echo-chamber of academia.

Holy effing F. You mean to tell me a freak that damaged finds academia to be an echo chamber???

Holy effing F.
texlovera
March 31st, 2015 @ 4:49 pm

Haven’t these freaks ever heard the phrase “the object of my affection/desire”???
Evi L. Bloggerlady
March 31st, 2015 @ 5:01 pm

“Is Sexual Desire Dehumanizing?”

Depends…
http://www.infoniac.com/uimg/female-robot.jpg
texlovera
March 31st, 2015 @ 5:04 pm

Well she’s a very freaky girrrrl…..
concern00
March 31st, 2015 @ 5:08 pm

Why the heck would you choose to identify as a disabled demented pervert with behavioral issues?
The original Mr. X
March 31st, 2015 @ 5:14 pm

Wait, I’m confused. Feminists go on and on (and on, and on) about how any attempt to limit people’s sexual behaviour is “slut-shaming” and evil, but actually wanting to have sex with a woman is “objectifying” and evil? I know that feminists aren’t the best people at logical thought, but surely even they must see the contradiction here?!
Adobe_Walls
March 31st, 2015 @ 5:18 pm

I think objectifying women demeans them and I’d never do that. I know when I see an attractive women the first thought that pops into my head is yeah, ”I’d discuss quantum physics” with that.
Daniel Freeman
March 31st, 2015 @ 5:38 pm

This, of course, calls for a re-posting of Fred On Everything:

Women, who had always regarded men as commitment objects and pre-med objects, became enraged that men regarded them as sex objects. Men were puzzled. They didn’t know what else to regard as sex objects.

I was confused myself. I remember a woman screaming at me, “Women don’t want to be objects!” Trying to be conciliatory, I said, “OK, you can be subjects.” That didn’t suit her either.
DeadMessenger
March 31st, 2015 @ 5:48 pm

When you use words like “intersection”, “synthesis”, and “narrative” to describe your experience, you’re never going to get a proper job. She might as well wear a “loser” sign.

My CV, by contrast, uses words like “insightful”, “actionable”, “performance metrics” and “forecasting”, and I’m gainfully employed.

Cripes.
Adobe_Walls
March 31st, 2015 @ 5:49 pm

One can never go wrong quoting Fred.
concern00
March 31st, 2015 @ 6:00 pm

If I sexually desired one of these feminist odd balls, I would definitely be dehumanized.
PeterP
March 31st, 2015 @ 6:13 pm

I had a gal just the other day say in the throes of sex “objective my brains out, baby!” ; )
Jeanette Victoria
March 31st, 2015 @ 6:36 pm

“Intersection of gender, sexuality, disability, and embodiment” more word salad, my head hurts reading all this nonsense. Remember when academics were educated and not crazy?
Quartermaster
March 31st, 2015 @ 6:38 pm

“Does it not occur to people who talk this way that they are simply overthinking this stuff?”

Stacy, they aren’t overthinking anything. They aren’t thinking at all. Just emoting based on a very sick world view. What they emote about does not even rise to the level of theory, no matter how much they wish it did. It’s simply idiocy masquerading as intellectualism.

Sexual desire is, of course, not dehumanizing. Misdirected sexual desire, such as that of a man towards a man, a woman towards a woman, or either of them towards an animal is, indeed, quite dehumanizing. But, then, all of leftardism is dehumanizing.
Quartermaster
March 31st, 2015 @ 6:39 pm

I often laugh at Fred’s writing, but he gets down where the morons live.
Quartermaster
March 31st, 2015 @ 6:41 pm

In more ways than I would like to enumerate….
Quartermaster
March 31st, 2015 @ 6:42 pm

So she’s gonna get a degree to take her into another academic echo chamber. Makes sense, I guess, if you’re insane.
Quartermaster
March 31st, 2015 @ 6:43 pm

You expect them speak/understand English too? How quaint!
Daniel Freeman
March 31st, 2015 @ 6:45 pm

I haven’t read his other stuff yet. I just stumbled across that one article awhile back and liked it.
Zohydro
March 31st, 2015 @ 6:53 pm

Well… This is a free country—for the time being anyway!
Phil_McG
March 31st, 2015 @ 6:54 pm

I’m currently finishing up a second master’s […] because I don’t want to stay trapped forever in the echo-chamber of academia.

http://tamilwire.net/images/2008/07/jackie.jpg
DeadMessenger
March 31st, 2015 @ 6:58 pm

For another 5…4…3…2…
DeadMessenger
March 31st, 2015 @ 7:05 pm

Gee Walls,,,…I like to talk about quantum physics.

Hahahahaha!
Zohydro
March 31st, 2015 @ 7:07 pm

Well… You, my dear, should do well just to get a tattoo that says,”Oppressed Victim Of The Patriarchy”…somewhere discrete, of course!
Zohydro
March 31st, 2015 @ 7:08 pm

Perhaps even more so were you to actually “score”!
DeadMessenger
March 31st, 2015 @ 7:09 pm

Make a good tramp stamp, eh? Have to be kind of a small font, though.
DeadMessenger
March 31st, 2015 @ 7:11 pm

How is one feminist lesbian sexually desiring another feminist lesbian substantually different than, say, a man sexually desiring his wife? How is one allegedly objectification and the other is not?
Zohydro
March 31st, 2015 @ 7:12 pm

Smaller still and you could wedge “cisheteronormative” in there too!
Feminism Requires a Theory of the Moral and Intellectual Inferiority of Males : The Other McCain
March 31st, 2015 @ 7:12 pm

[…] my previously described encounter with a Wellesley graduate, I continued my tour of the online lunatic asylum that is Feminist Tumblr, and came across this […]
Zohydro
March 31st, 2015 @ 7:19 pm

I’m only old enough to remember “educated (and crazy)”…
Zohydro
March 31st, 2015 @ 7:31 pm

They look so happy together! (I wonder if she’s waterproof, or is it just a moistened cloth only…)
Zohydro
March 31st, 2015 @ 7:53 pm

It’s a dichotomy… There’s a distinct difference between “desiring sex” and “desiring sex with someone else in particular”! Of course, the homosexual must content herself with whatever substitute for actual sex presents itself… Honestly, I don’t know how they manage!
Fail Burton
March 31st, 2015 @ 7:59 pm

Yeah, it’s so dehumanizing. I wish I could be more like monkeys and insects and bork each other in the woods with no clothes or central air conditioning.
Fail Burton
March 31st, 2015 @ 8:00 pm

What’s that cute girl doing with a robot?
robertstacymccain
March 31st, 2015 @ 8:24 pm

The contradictions in feminist “logic” multiply exponentially because their fundamental premise is flawed. “Sexual equality” requires that men and women be fundamentally the same, and vast forests have been destroyed to publish the books elaborating the “gender theory” by which feminists insist that differences between male and female are socially constructed. Ergo, androgyny — male and female are really identical and our perception of sexual difference is an illusion.

Simultaneously, however, feminists insist that men and women are different, so that males can be described as inherently inferior — violent, selfish, lacking emotional depth or intellectual insight.

In other words, the feminist theory of “sexual equality” actually is premised on an assertion of female supremacy — women are superior in every quality that feminists consider praiseworthy, qualities which males are said to naturally lack, so that what is necessary (and here we reach the final deal of it all) is for women to tell men what to do, because men are so fucking clueless we don’t know anything.

Translation: SHUT UP AND DO AS I SAY!

it’s a formula for totalitarianism.
Daniel Freeman
March 31st, 2015 @ 8:25 pm

Just get it translated into kanji.
ChandlersGhost
March 31st, 2015 @ 8:30 pm

Does her second degree mean that she’s going to be an angry autistic lesbian who works for the government?
Daniel Freeman
March 31st, 2015 @ 8:40 pm

Because she wants to get out of an echo chamber!
ChandlersGhost
March 31st, 2015 @ 9:09 pm

Angry lesbians who lack empathy and don’t work well with others writing public policy. Actually, it all makes sense now.
DeadMessenger
March 31st, 2015 @ 9:26 pm

😀 That would actually be pretty cool, if one were into tramp stamps.
M. Thompson
March 31st, 2015 @ 9:26 pm

Insanity is not a political platform.
Daniel Freeman
March 31st, 2015 @ 9:44 pm

Story time!

My dad has an MBA, but he had to move for a job, and did his capstone course in a state capital with a bunch of public administration majors. He had a completely different background, so this one time he questioned something in class and used the term “public servant.”

Simultaneously, several students turned and said, “Public servant? Public servant?! That’s old hat! We know what’s good for the people.” It was so weird, even to them, that they just kind of looked around, ignored it and moved on.

My point was, if she’s going into public administration to get away from an echo chamber, then that just speaks to her lack of social perception.

Autistics aren’t sociopaths; it isn’t that they don’t care about how they will affect you, but that they have difficulty reading your reaction, let alone anticipating it. This, of course, is nearly as bad in someone making public policy.
Gender Insanity for $45,078 a Year : The Other McCain
March 31st, 2015 @ 11:21 pm

[…] case you haven’t figured it out yet, Caroline Narby is the blogger we met earlier, complaining of the “dehumanizing” nature of “sexuality und… She now has a master’s degree in Gender and Cultural Studies and is “currently […]
concern00
April 1st, 2015 @ 2:07 am

Have you considered getting a masters in gender studies?
concern00
April 1st, 2015 @ 2:09 am

I’m looking forward to her practical application of her education and talents outside of academia. The Democrats are always on the lookout for good sorts.
concern00
April 1st, 2015 @ 2:11 am

But everything is a political platform. You’ll need to read forward into “Gender Insanity for $45,078 a Year” to learn that.