Last week, we published an editorial after a rash of masturbation incidents, including one involving a man who flashed and masturbated in front of ASUO President Rachel Pilliod. The point of the article was to reinforce what we thought to be things that young women could do in case they encounter a similar situation.
However, we did not include the other side of the equation, and this omission was brought to our attention by readers and by Pilliod, whose response to that editorial is running today as well.
Obviously, men need to stop harassment and assault, but the issue is deeper than that — it’s a social problem. Originally, we didn’t discuss the social forces that create a culture where men commit sexual crimes because we felt helpless.
It seems impossible to change the whole world, and if we can’t change the culture, women at least need to be able to protect themselves. But that’s not the whole story. Women do need to stay safe, but safety will never be enough until everyone works to stem America’s objectification culture.
The United States is gripped by a culture that changes women from humans into body parts for men’s sexual gratification. Television commercials are famous for using women, often in skimpy clothing that maximizes their “assets” — even that commonly used term implies women’s value is in their body parts — as window dressing or as a subtle message to men: Buy this beer or eat this pizza or drive this car, and you will get women’s body parts.
Anyone who has picked up a Victoria’s Secret catalogue or seen beer commercials knows what we’re talking about. Objectification in mass form leads to a mass
unconscious understanding that women are there to be used.
So if you want to know how to stop men from committing sexual crimes, here’s a start that everyone, men and women, can participate in: Stop buying products that are advertised using objectification. Stop saying it’s acceptable for our culture to portray women in this way.
Stop patronizing movies that glorify rape and sexual violence or that show women as existing only for sexual reasons. Stop listening to music that refers to women as “whores” or seems to infer that it’s OK to rape. In short, tell those in the media who set the culture’s agenda that objectifying women is unacceptable. Tell them you want to see women portrayed as full, complete humans.
Certainly, it is naive to expect that reversing objectification culture will completely end the problem of rape and sexual harassment. But if American culture retrains young males and tells them that women are not simply items to be used for sexual pleasure, there is a chance of reducing harassment and date rape. Frankly, one more incident of sexual assault is too many. It’s time Americans looked at their culture and tried to change it.