women objectify themselves by using their sexuality to get their way.

If you read what he says, he argues that the first thing that pops in is sexual attractiveness but that a greater appreciation for the intellect, etc. is not innate, but rather experiential. What you are arguing is that sexual attractiveness is the same as sex, and I disagree that this is the intent of the author at all.

The point of the article is that feminism has muddied the waters by trying to deny that what is actually innate is somehow the way things should be. Why? Because feminists don't want men and women to be different on any front - physical, emotional, or economical. They deny that gender does in fact exist.

No idea where you are coming from on this or where you are going, to be honest. Not sure how The Communist Manifesto comes into play here at all. The question at hand is whether innately men objectify women based on their sexuality and attractiveness. I'm not sure what you think "already existed" because what the author is arguing is that sexuality is innate - not taught - and that feminists in particular are attempting to shame people into avoiding sexuality.

Capitalism indeed frees people to pursue their economic interests. Not sure how one equates that with sexual liberation, however.

I disagree about the pedestal denying a women's equality...so maybe "Pedestal" is not the right word.

Don't much care for any so called defined "Roles" these days...I think they are all wacky and the paradigm is upside down.
No one should be subjugated but placing a value on women, a deep appreciation...unless one is an idiot too,...doesn't hold anyone back.
Caution: unconscious antilectual liberals will not agree and may get violent...Laughing

PS...no fan of the Romans nor the Catholics...they screwed everything up.

I can grant that you are a nice guy and all, but consider that the "pedestal" is still distant from you. When you put a woman on a pedestal, you deny her equality. And, the other side of that coin - the gutter - is always implied.

Appreciation (value) is not the same thing as objectification. Dennis Prager is a paleo-conservative. His Prager University does pretty good at lectures on free enterprise. The social side of life, though, he clearly does not understand. He cannot get past recent historical gender roles.

Do you know what a Morganatic marriage is? Women in Germanic cultures had more rights than Roman women. Roman culture informed and defined Roman Catholicism. That's where Prager is coming from: the road to hell starts between her legs.

Are you under the impression that good looking people of either gender don't have an advantage in the hiring process? Even in jobs that don't involve a lot of customer contact and especially in those.

Perhaps I should be been more specific than "people" and made it clear that when I said "it attracts you sexually" I was referring to the subset of humanity that the viewer is attracted to. I rather thought that went without saying, but apparently not.

Men looking at women, women looking at men and all the myriad combinations that people are attracted to each other in.

As to what you say to someone, you have now met them and, as I said, if you don't move beyond that at that point it becomes a problem.

It's starts off saying education makes people foolish, which isn't a promising start.

I think it comes down to what is a "sex object". I would think maybe the author means someone we're sexually attracted to, but #1 of his "eight truths" is it's normal for men to see people their sexually attracted to as sex objects. This implies that it's possible to be sexually attracted to someone without seeing her as a "sex object".

This article would make more sense to me if the author gave an example of sexual attraction with and without objectification.

Good point...

I come from the "Pedestal" aspect and I think most men do...some may not admit it though. I also think that the "Physical" objectification is a result of that appreciation; whereas the gutter aspect is a false sense of superiority and it's perverse.

Capitalism rests on individualism which depends on reason and the identification of reality. In this discussion, "what already existed" was anti-life, anti-human, anti-reason. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels said in The Communist Manifesto that among the crimes of capitalism was that it took women out of the home, denying them their natural roles as wives and mothers. As a result of capitalism women became engineers, astronomers, telegraph operators and telephone operators, stenographers, secretaries, and administrative assistants.

Recognize that in the century before capitalism, those jobs were held by men. Then ask yourself how you would react to hiring a man based on his looks, or his physical endowments.

"What already existed" was in fact what needed to be changed as people were liberated by capitalism.

That Town Hall column by Dennis Prager is total nonsense. First of all, the key word is object. Objects can be property. Objects have no humanity. Indeed, objects have no life.

Moreover, grammatically, the object is that to which an act is done, and thereby changed.

Furthermore, Dennis Prager's attempts at universals only deal with the immediacy of our culture, the West, and the last 500 years. Equatorial peoples go mostly naked most of the time. How does a leg or an abdomen become a sexual cue? That happens here because of denial. Hide the ankle, and you create foot fetishists. In fact, that is known among people in Tibet, where women often went bare-breasted (in good weather), but everyone always wears shoes. In his biography of Cato the Elder, Plutarch noted that the old Roman republican worked naked in the field alongside his slaves. Again, since the entire body was exposed, how can anyone be suddenly aroused by the sight of a limb... or a penis?

And yet they did experience sexual arousal, as their art works clearly show. It is just that the cues were different. The point is that Dennis Prager exhibits gross ignorance in his generalizations.

Our objectification of each other is a consequence of the anti-life aspects of Christianity, which denies the validity of sexual desire.

Do you have to ask?

See above: Virgin or whore; pedestal or gutter.

The reason that straight guys are uncomfortable around gays is that they do not want another guy to think of them they way that they think of women.

But by your logic, there is nothing wrong with that. It is "natural." Well, I agree that it may be "natural" but so are many behaviors, such as aggression and predation, that we circumscribe in order to have civilization.

Bullshit. Do you see other men as sex objects? Do you talk to another guy while looking below his belt to size him up? Do you say that a stupid guy is blond or that blond guys are stupid? Do you think that a guy who is well-built is dumb? Did you ever tell a guy that he looks smarter and cuter with his glasses on?

Not funny,

Virgin or whore. On a pedestal or in the gutter. Open a door or prevent her from leaving the room. Anything but as a human being and an equal.

On the sixth phrase: now that you know, watch for it in the movies or on TV. A woman starts to exit, and a man takes her arm, preventing her from leaving. Men never (seldom) do that with each other.

lol. nice!

I thought thats what objectivism was all about.
I've been waiting for all the objectification to start.
Did I join the wrong forum? Damn!

And what's wrong if we do?..cause in a relationship it usually comes down to the entire package anyway...it's not like we act like islam or the state dept, (most like little boys) and ex demoncrapic presidents.

Bingo.

Everyone sees people as sex objects. If you see a person across the street or a picture of a person, you don't know their personality, you don't know how smart they are, their sense of humor. You know what they look like. So your first impression is of that. If it attracts you sexually, you are seeing them as an object.

This is only a problem if you don't move beyond that when you actually meet them.

They exploit the objectification, but they can't create what already existed.

Does advertising sexually objectify women?