Marcus Williams thinks it’s possible to appreciate a woman’s sexiness without objectifying her, even when you appreciate it out loud.
Growing up Catholic, I was taught that the only good sex was sex between married people who were open to the possibility of procreation. (See Section 12 of Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae if you think it was just my parish or parents getting the theology wrong.) Any sex or sexual desire that did not fit that purpose was a sin. Although my parents were more liberal than the church on most matters, that liberalism was did not extend to teaching me to embrace my sexuality as a positive thing for anything other than marriage and having kids. Most sex and sexual thoughts were things to feel guilty about.
One of the most mortifying experiences of my early teens was my dad walking in on me masturbating one day (in my own bedroom, without knocking) and adding shame to embarrassment, he took me for a drive, not long after, where he popped in a cassette with some guy lecturing about “Sexual Solitaire.” I don’t remember anything the lecturer said, but the clear message was that I should feel guilty about masturbating or wanting to masturbate.
I started doubting my faith in my late teens and abandoned it altogether by my early 20’s (for reasons having nothing to do with the Church’s teachings about sex). It took me a long time to shed most of my guilt about having sexual feelings, much less expressing them, even if only using my own body. Besides the Church’s influence, I was saddled with a strong fear of violating someone else with unwanted advances, due to having my own boundaries violated at the age of 13. It was with some difficulty that I learned to have a sexual thought without feeling guilty about it, and greater difficulty to express any thought out loud that wasn’t strictly platonic.
When I wrote “From Librarian to Eye Candy in 20 Seconds”, it was without a shred of guilt. In that story, I described a woman I found very attractive and sexy, but did little to express that fact other than invent a private nickname that initially stayed between me and my dad, and made her laugh while she was wearing a bikini. Not only did I avoid breaking any of the guidelines suggested in “You Can Get Laid Without Being a Jerk,” I didn’t even try to get laid.
It was disconcerting, then, to read comments about the “eye candy” piece that characterized me a woman-objectifying jerk. What had I done or written that I should feel guilty about?
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Erin wrote:
It seems a little de-evolved for GMP standards. Yada yada yada…”men like to oggle women, lets joke about how men in bed with their wives and gfs think about other women , aren’t men so wonderful because of it, i’m a guy, isn’t it cute when I call women “eye candy” and talk about little anadotes about how I objectfy women, aww shucks”, it’s the same tired old speach that the media sells day in and day out about men.
That yada yadas the most important part, as yada yadas are wont to do. If the yada yada’d part was included in the paraphrase, it would include that I’d said, “It’s bad to…” That leaves me in agreement with Erin, that it’s not cute or OK to joke in bed with wives and girlfriends about ogling other women.
I think Erin took offense at my use of the phrase “eye candy”, and though no one specifically mentioned the risque etymology of “20 Seconds” as being offensive, I suspect those two phrases in particular triggered some of the comments about objectifying women. If my regard for Tanya or other women went no further than such phrases, I’d have something to feel guilty about. I never treated Tanya like all she had going for her was being beautiful, but from a distance, there was nothing else to know about her. I can’t notice beauty, and then think, “OK, I’m going to ignore that while I acquaint myself with the whole person, and then I’ll let beauty back into the equation.”
I’ve outgrown the guilt that says just thinking about a woman in a sexy way is a bad thing. I never had to outgrow a belief that women are only good for sex because I never believed that in the first place. When a man thinks a woman is sexy, that does not render him blind and insensitive to her many other qualities, so the more important test for objectifying behavior is how he acts (or chooses not to) around a woman he thinks is sexy.
Perhaps some readers were reading between the lines and assuming I left out details they’d object to, so let me point out some of the things I didn’t do to Tanya:
- I never thought of her or treated her as merely an object for my gratification.
- I did not corner her, chase her, or stalk her.
- When circumstances brought us close enough together to engage her in conversation, I made her laugh. Those circumstances were not manipulated, because I had no idea she’d be chaperoning that snorkeling tour until I showed up for it.
- When I finally made a playful, lightly flirtatious comment about her appearance, she was wearing a bikini. We were also in an open space with many other people around.
- I did not ignore any signs of discomfort, and would have stopped my occasional comments and sneaking underwater glances if I had.
- I never copped a feel or otherwise touched her while trying to pretend it was an accident.
- I did not go up to her like a drooling idiot to tell her she was a hot piece of eye candy that I’d nicknamed “20 Seconds.”
- I didn’t cross any potentially creepy age-difference lines. She was less then 10 years younger than me, and well past “barely legal.”
- I never propositioned her for sex.
In sum, I did not treat her like a sex object. I found her pretty and even attractive, but being too shy to try to get to know her better, I enjoyed her from a distance without demeaning or disrespecting her.
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Another commenter, “R” wrote:
Ugh, this was pretty disappointing actually. I didn’t expect to read it on the Good Men Project! It doesn’t sound much different from a writer in Maxim congratulating himself on being subtle and classy when really he’s doing all the same objectifying but just a bit more inside his head than other dudes. While keeping it inside your head does do a favor to all the women (and men) who don’t have to hear it expressed, that benefit is kind of mitigated by eventually reading it online anyway.
In retrospect, I guess I shouldn’t have hung out in the lobby calling her “20 Seconds” to everyone within earshot and published my story in the daily shipboard bulletin after the snorkel tour so everyone would know how hot I thought she looked in a bikini. Oh wait—I didn’t do any of that.
“R” also wrote:
The article did NOT really describe you treating this woman as anything “more than” someone you thought was pretty. The story is built around you contemplating how hot she probably was underneath her professional “disguise,” and agonizing about how to convey your opinion to her. I wonder why it was so important that she know your opinion about her appearance, anyhow?
I was a guest on a cruise ship who thought a crew member was pretty, even in her uniform. (She wasn’t the only one.) Noticing beauty or sexiness is not a conscious act—it’s inevitable. What I do about that impression is not inevitable, and in Tanya’s case, I did what I usually do: kept it to myself. There was no agonizing over how to convey my opinion to her, nor any assumption that it was important that she know. When luck put me on a tour with her in a bikini, I made her laugh. Knock me for wanting her to think I was funny if you like, but if anything was important to me, as evidenced by how we interacted, it was that I not be perceived as just a guy telling her she was hot.
My first joke was about the tattoo in the small of her back, but it’s not like I spied it while she was leaning down in her regular work uniform and went out of my way to point it out. I also joked about stingrays, other passengers, and whatever came to mind, so there was “more than” me commenting on her appearance. She encouraged this interaction by laughing and making jokes of her own, which only made her more attractive. I won’t lie—I enjoyed being close to a beautiful woman in a bikini. But, at no point did I treat her as nothing more than a hot body, either in my head, or out loud.
If Tanya was to stumble onto this article and be embarrassed or insulted by it, I would feel bad and apologize, but I’m reasonably confident that’s not going to happen. I didn’t include personally identifying information and several years have passed since our encounter.
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There are so many feminist themes and causes that I agree with and support, but the most alienating theme I run into is that men (and therefore, me) are jerks for wanting sex. It’s not all feminists who say that, but it feels like any time I see a discussion about a man acknowledging or expressing his sexuality, there will be voices in that discussion calling him a jerk for it. No level of sexual desire is safe from criticism, because just thinking about a woman in a sexy way is enough to objectify her and deny every other quality that she might possess. It’s best not to do anything with those thoughts, but even then, don’t admit to having them, because that’s objectifying, too.
Sexual thoughts: bad.
Sexual talk (or writing): admitting you’re bad.
Actual sex: good men don’t go there, or want to.
It’s almost enough to make me yearn for the sex-is-fun liberalism of the Catholic church.
—Photo by Stephen Sheffield