| Adder |
03-19-2013 06:25 PM |
So
I've not read up on the details of the whole Steubenville thing. From the bits I've gathered, two football players did terrible things to an unconscious girl, documented it on their cell phones, and then a whole bunch of people talked about it without reporting it.
Whatever, that's not really the point. The point I want to get at is where Jezebel goes in talking about some thoughts on the case from Henry Rollins (which are generally good).
Where I think Doug Barry, writing for Jezebel goes a bit off the rails is in stating the issue in terms of female actors being "reduced to a mere assemblage of sexualized body parts." Anyone who has relationships with women, for example, can tell you that a woman can be both a sexual object and fully respected and empowered at the same time. Anyone who has clicked on Thurgreed's links can tell you how an image of a woman can be "commodified" and "sexualized" without women being commodified and sexualized.
I think it's convenient to blame "the media" and "sexualized culture" but I think that misses a big part of the problem, and, by assigning primary blame to amorphous and unaccountable forces, let's a lot of people off the hook. What is it about kids like the rapists here or their environment that allows them to (apparently) miss half of the equation? Why do they get only the object part and not the respect part?
And maybe it's just another manifestation of our sex-negative culture that teaches young people like these rapists that sex is a thing that is shameful rather than respectful.
Or maybe, as Rollins suggests, it's really about power and control, in which case, what does sexualized media have to do with it? |
