Regarding the feminist concept of sexual objectification, Bauer explains that it was coined as part of a feminist shift in how to understand the world and one’s experience in it. According to the shift in question, in a context in which women experience widespread, systematic, diachronic, and structural disadvantages, certain ways of perceiving and representing women tend to cause them material and psychological harm. Bauer argues that once someone participates in this shift, the term ‘sexual objectification’ will ‘light up’ the relevant phenomena, and the person in question will see objectification everywhere she looks in contemporary culture. This is the case even if she is not in a position to specify exactly its marks and features.

Finally, I have read my first SEP entry in full. This reading has definitely strengthened my understanding of common positions, but no real illumination was had with respect to what to do about this whole thing. Sigh.

But I will also in many ways be a man – for once the term has meaning and distinguishes me from the feminist women with whom I politically identify – and sometimes that will mean that my eyes will see you, woman, and there will be sensations and emotions, lust and eroticized longings, and this will be true even though I don’t want to be your colonizer and your oppressor. / What I will also be feeling is my own defenseless sensitivity to those very feelings. I’d like it if women understood that. It’s a bit scary when women I’m attracted to hold it against me.

The sissy must behave against a patriarchal backdrop, not in a vacuum. Sexually assertive behaviors which would not be considered oppressive otherwise are open to being interpreted that way precisely because other men, in general, have behaved as they have. Nowhere does this have greater impact than in the matter of the simple, honest declaration of sexual attraction. Surrounded by females complaining of the exploitative, insensitive nature of men’s raw sexuality, and often confronted head-on with the generic automatic female response to all male expressions of immediate sexual interest, the sensitive young male who identifies with and respects women is likely to be rapidly polarized. He ends up being driven towards a masculinizing track of ceasing to feel hurt by such interpretations of his sexuality, or else towards complete cessation of expressing appetite for women in order to avoid being accused of, to put it tritely, “being only after one thing.”

see: https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353592023005

‘Sexed bodies’ reviews how sexed bodies have been classified historically, which provides useful insights into cultural perceptions of men and women. If social prejudices and practices can shape physical development, amplifying or creating differences between the sexes, recent developments in neuroscience suggest that the brain is also likely to be affected by these processes. Advances in endocrinology have also promoted a significantly different view of the relationship between the body and sex. It concludes with the views of the contemporary feminist, Judith Butler, who has argued that the sexed body attains its social significance and appearance of substance as a result of the performances people engage in.

Gender socialization is terrifying, bro.

This video fucking ripped. So many links to crawl.

see: https://garfieldkermit.wordpress.com/2026/04/27/why-arent-games-sexualising-men-sources/

Conservative SCOTUS block has taken a huge L.

I am not convinced that there is an epidemic of low libido. Instead, women are exhausted, and invisible labor and a pay gap make 10 pm sex feel like another chore. There is a shortage of skilled partners, a century of missing anatomy, and a menu that was never designed for female biology. And there is definitely a culture that maligns female pleasure and forces you to swim upstream to get what you want and need.

Patriarchy looms over all things, like a haunting shadow. Biology and sexual wellness are no exception.

Boobs, breasts, baps, jugs, tits…what’s the fascination? And why on earth are they SO politicised?

Really great series on Nebula I’ve been following.

When Amia Srinivasan published The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century in 2021, it sparked widespread debate about the politics of desire, consent, and sexual justice.

In this episode of The Exchange, the Oxford academic joins Tanjil Rashid to discuss how philosophy can illuminate some of the most contentious questions in contemporary culture: from incels and pornography to whether our desires are shaped by society.

In this chapter, we review an impressive body of research conducted during the past 20 years on sexual objectification, self-objectification, and their attendant consequences. We start with a description of how sexual objectification comes to be internalized as self-objectification in many girls and women. We then highlight exemplary research on the facets of sexual objectification and the deficits incurred by self-objectification. We review theories to explain the functions of sexual and self-objectification as a psychic defense against mortality concerns, as a bolster for justification of the patriarchal system, and as a vehicle for oppression by the powerful. Finally, we spotlight exciting directions in which the study of sexual objectification and self-objectification is forging ahead.

see: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tomi-Ann-Roberts/publication/365409232_Objectification_Theory_Continuing_Contributions_to_Feminist_Psychology/

Paper abortion, also known as a financial abortion, male abortion or a statutory abortion,[1] is the proposed ability of the biological father, before the birth of the child, to opt out of any rights, privileges, and responsibilities toward the child, including financial support. By this means, before a child is born, a man would be able to absolve himself of both the privileges and demands of fatherhood.

Interesting.

Why does this have to exist…

I used to be a sex writer. I wrote about feminism and gender, too, but really what I found most interesting was sexuality, and sexual identity. I wrote under the name Clarisse Thorn. I had a blog. The blog got semi-famous. I traveled and gave talks. I published some books. Sometimes people still read and buy the books.

via: https://lydialaurenson.substack.com/p/social-contracts-moral-order-weaving

Drawing a one-to-one correspondence between media consumption and behavior is always dicey—and never more so than when a high percentage of the audience is consuming a very different text than the one that is there. And it’s important to take a step back and check for alternate interpretations of the media we’re criticizing. All too often, feminist critiques of heterosexual porn wind up saying more about our views of women and sex than they do about the porn itself.

Maybe the problem truly is with capitalism in that the nature of consensual sex relies on a supply-demand dynamic.

Something I’e had come up a couple of times.

To me there’s nothing powerful or subversive about this lexicon: it smacks more of a (literally) infantile fixation. Which makes it difficult to see why women would want to reclaim it.

just existing as a fem presenting person sucks so bad 😭 irl or online, my physical body or my fursona, it literally doesnt matter. i want to be more than just a piece of meat to people

Trying to pick a pathway through forty years of the ugliest conflict in feminism.