The thing is, religion and culture both assume that a woman cannot have both faith and be a sexual creature simultaneously. Religions have for centuries taught that sexuality in women was a thing to fear, a thing to repress, a thing to destroy because desire in women was bad and a tool of the devil, much like women's intellect. By making a woman into an object, as you say, and good for only one thing (and I will play polite) - as a vessel for a man's seed - you remove all trace's of god's grace from a woman. In essence, you start to dehumanize her and place her on a level lower than herself. If you remove the issue of gender from the debate, you also see this historically when countries (Japan/China, Bosnia/Serbia) invade and then attempt to enslave other countries with whom they have had a long running conflict. The loser in effect becomes a lesser being, and somehow less than human. In effect, making women "fit for only one thing" makes them less than human.

I suppose that is what bothers me so about things like Bratz dolls and, at the other end of the spectrum, Burqas. Bratz dolls tell little girls they amount to nothing more than tits and ass. Burqas send the same message, except it is said in a more insidious way.

"You are not even the sum of your parts. You are only your parts"

Thanks for your comment, Jennifer:Eliza:Cassandra... Seriously, you emphasize exactly what I was getting at, which is demonization, marginalization and sexualization all amount to dehumanization...a lesser than situation. Blessings, Michael

Michael -

Interestingly, honor killings to me imply that honor can only be kept by the females of the family. This implies that the male is so weak that he cannot uphold the core values of the religion; yet simultaneously he decries the females of his family and of his religon as being weak vessels meant for subservience.

If women are the keepers of the families honor, doesn't that imply that they play a more significant role in religious and moral life? I've always wondered.

And thanks for your comments on my blog.

As a sociologist, (philosopher and interfaith theologian) what you say to me is and has always been obvious: regardless if it is pre-, and/or post-modern.

Both genders are socialized into stereotypes (and stigmatization) of themselves as well as the other gender, and of course transsexuals, asexuals, homsexuals and heterosexuals, etc.
Such stereotypes may vary in accordance with factors such as: different cultures, societies, socio-economic classes, education, etc, etc.
I agree with what you imply, but men are also being turned into a thing, often a sexual object. An Orthodox Jewish researcher remarked on the freedom such male stereotyping he experienced when he began to vest as an Orthodox Jew. Of course another stereotype would come into play with his vesting. As would that of Buddhist, Xtian and other monks/nuns, Muslims, and other forms of 'religious' vestment. All part of streetcred and style-warrior sociological and soico-psychological study.

HERMIT (now which stereotypes and de-individuation and -humanization types do my admittance of my own state in life call up? Especially by those uninformed about this ancient 'socio-cultural role'?

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/monasterion List for monastic, contemplative, spiritual and other subjects and info and news.

I have to apologize. I never considered it even possible that men could consider themselves objectified.

I consider myself chastened.

Michael -

So in essence men can only be objectified in a sexual context, and even then they like it (if I extrapolate a wee bit on your comments)?

This is an interesting debate....

Jennifer

True, too true. Objectification and sexualization are different topics although closely interwoven in certain debates, certainly in the twin strange bedfellows of religion and politics.

I wonder if the shift toward objectification really had as much to do with competition amongst religious sects as it did with the prevailing social economics of the time. Sociologists tell us that when there is a shortage of women, societies become more rigid and controlling with regards to gender roles. We know that close to half of all European women in the Middle Ages died in childbirth, but could this number have been less disconcerting in the prior Roman age? Or did the cultures of conquering societies have a broader view of gender roles because conquering men had easy access to both subjugated women and their own women? It's really hard to make a case for either religion or social economics, in fact, because very few pagan societies, from Greece and Rome to the Nordic countries and Germany, had anything like a desirable gender dynamic, nor did Hindu India or Buddhist Asia. Cultures that give women an elevated role are usually small and randomly located-- in the the days of the first Christians, they included the Celts and certain tribal groups in Africa and the Americas. Mother Earth was second to her husband even in the Greco-Roman, Sumerian, and Eqyptian traditions, so why blame the Christians, Jews, and Muslims?

The article did not intend to suggest that there was a competition between religious sects. It suggested that there was competition between the matriarchial and patriarchial versions of culture, and the patriarchy got the upper hand by demonizing the matriarchy. In addition, no one is "blaming" anyone. Christians, Msulims and Jews are responsible for architecting modern society -- and we are talking about modern society. Further, the article deliberately focuses upon Western culture, as the multiplicity within Asian, Germanic and pre-modern culture are too vast to consider. Finally, the statement that the matriarchy was subjegated in Greco-Roman, Sumerian and Egyptian cultures is rather questionable. Nordic cultures had the Valkrey, warrior princesses. The Egyptians were ruled by women like Cleopatra, Nefertiti, Neferteri. To say that cultures that elevated women were small and spotty is, at least to the best of my knowledge, also a fairly unsupportable generalization. Blessings, Michael

"Societal objectification means turning a woman into a thing. Sexual objectification, or sexualization, means turning a woman into a sexual thing."

We need better definitions than these.

The overall debate on the objectification of women ignores a lot of intricacies, which if considered might dramatically alter the conclusion.

The cognitive roots of objectification. The objective nature of sex and erotic perception. Voluntary objectification. The root of objectification. The existence of objectification that does not deny other aspects of one's nature.

All these issues, when considered, go against the presupposed conclusion. They definitely need to be addressed, because the current state of the objectification debate does a tremendous disservice to men.

JR: These definitions are simplified to fit more conveniently into this forum. You bring up valid points, and if you were to pursue an investigation into Objectification Theory and Cultivation Theory, as well as take a look at the 2007 APA Task Force study on Sexualization, you would find that all of the issues to which you refer are addressed in detail. I can't do that here, as the topic would monopolize the blog space. Blessings, Michael

Michael - your article is refreshingly "right on" (I realize this is not an academic term). We need more discussion about this painful subject as from my seat in the grandstand of life, these problems appears to escalating.

Many thanks for your illumination.