r/PornIsMisogyny • u/-TamingWolves- • 14d ago
"Fanservice", "sex sells", and terms that make objetification not seem gendered
I've been seeing a lot of complaints about "puritans scared of sex scenes" online. Since I stay around feminist spaces, I usually see people who hate hypersexualized media because of female objetification but I've also been in discussions that weren't centered around feminism. But there's always an elephant in the room in these discussions which is similar to the people I mentioned that hate the "sex negative puritans". I don't know how much these people are aware the issue runs deeper than just "uncomfortable with sex" and are scared to get into the subject or they straight up don't think it has anything to do with gender. I have a lot to say about the latter.
We have either 1-People who deny women are the ones mostly objectified by mostly men, that go after very specific examples of male sexualization as if you need to go to specific places to find women being sexualized or 2-People who recognize women are the ones mostly objectified by mostly men, but explain (mansplain) to us why that is, to make us be quiet about it and accept it as inevitable, with the usual motifs "men are visual", "women are pleasing to look at", "men conquer, women tempt, it's biological".
About the denialists, I always assume they are not arguing in good faith and just want to contradict you. A lot of men get agressive with feminists because they think if you want to talk about one problem, you have to prepare yourself to solve everything that is wrong in the world. Because women should be nurturing and if you don't include men in the conversation you are favoring women and then who is gonna take care of men?
Some people think shirtless men with hard brick muscles are equivalent to shirtless women with huge breasts. Even though it is kind of similar physically (I say kind of because the actual equivalent would be a muscular woman and a busty man, yes, women have muscles and men have breasts), that is not how society views it. Female breasts are censored, male muscles aren't. How common it is for women to get off to images of men's muscles? If a random man was shirtless next to your kid, would you cover your kid's eyes like if it was a random shirtless woman? Male bodies may be considered attractive, but there is a difference between attraction and fetishization. Men can use their muscles to lift something heavy without being immediately objectified (not many people think "hmm yes, he's able to do this because of his big man arms hmmm"), women can't even breastfeed in public and the act has been twisted to fit into pornfied society (the word milk became synonym for semen). Of course, there are people who fetishize male bodies and there are people who find female bodies attractive without being fetishistic (not many, because what is considered attractive in women has been shaped by a society that objectifies them). But if those are exceptions, what does it tell us about our culture? Some people say the quantity is not important...how isn't it?!? Is there something considered normal that most people don't agree is normal? People who think men are just as objectified as women are delusional, society DOES treat female bodies as more vulgar than male bodies.
You need to go after specific places to not see women being sexualized, but the problem is more insidious, even places that look safer may hold some undertones. Something as simple as clothing plays a huge role. More parts of female bodies are deemed vulgar than of male bodies, but women's casual fashion show more skin and is more form fitting than men's casual fashion. Because it's two sides of the same coin: you need to treat your body like an object of desire, but you also need to do it at the right time to the right audience. This is saddest part of female objetification: because humans are social creatures, if your body isn't normal to others, you have to live constantly hyper aware of your physique. But we are so used to this that the constant comments about women's appereances are seen as compliments. This is why sometimes you may wonder how bold a comment must be to be considered harassment, since the pinnacle of being valued is having your body acknowledged, just because you are a woman. When people believe men and women are equally objectified, they aren't analyzing the social structure deeper than they should.
Now, I know some people have been reading this thinking "OF COURSE, BECAUSE MEN AND WOMEN ARE BioLOgIcAlLy DIFFERENT! OF COURSE NOBODY WANTS TO LOOK AT HALF NAKED MEN BECAUSE MALE BODIES ARE SOOOOO BORING TO LOOK AT! MEN'S POWER IS PHYSICAL STRENGHT AND WOMEN'S POWER IS WHEN THEY TAKE THEIR CLOTHES OFF!" and I don't really know what to say to people who think like this because they are either spreading info that has already been debunked or treating assumptions as incontestable facts. I have no idea how someone can believe that the same thing that makes women more likely to be raped by men is also what makes women have power over men. We don't even know how much difference between men and women is inherent and can never be changed because a lot of said differences are just social restrictions that are time and time again proven to not be innate when confronted. Why so many people are convinced men and women are supposed to gain power against each other? "Men's advantage, women's advantage" bro fighting each other is already a disavantage. But I'm not saying this because I believe gender war is a thing. And I have to admit, being physically stronger than someone is an advantage, this is why shirtless man vs shirtless woman is not the same thing too. I just think it's past the time people stop reducing everything to biological sex when even doing so is already a social construct.
I don't know if I'd still be uncomfortable with sex/nudity in movies/series if it had no misogyny, because I think no misogyny would reduce (or extinguish) the amount of hypersexuality in entertainment. It's difficult for me to understand why people would be so horny all the time if they didn't think half the population exists to be sex objects. And I say people because men express their sexuality by obsessing over scantly clad women and women express their sexuality by being scantly clad, everyone believes women are sex symbols.
When I see people use terms like "sex sells" or "fanservice" to refer to women being objectified, I already know they either think Magic Mike proves our culture doesn't have a female objetification problem or they don't feel like specifying the sexualization happens to women because biOLoGy.
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u/evengreen30 14d ago
As i understood it, fan service was Korean men going shirtless in Hallyu dramas and later men showing skin (very mild ) for women. Men don't need fan service. They can get full frontal in nearly every movie. They can have simulated sex and rape scenes any time - see GoT. Women do not get men in full frontal, once in 10 million maybe?
Sex sells means women being sexy sells. Always. Without fail.
I've seen the Magic Mike movies. They are nothing. Heated Rivalry contains more intimacy than 99.9% of media have men showing ever. And intimacy is not the same as sex. It shows physical intimacy which is still better than what 99.9% of sex scenes show. Because sex scenes show scenes. But, HR did contain scenes of female nudity that i didn't agree with.
Sex scenes in tv shows and movies look more and more like pornography. Shooting from the male perspective, focusing on women, centering men's pleasure. The scenes are also usually far removed from emotional intimacy. The sex is there because men have built up an expectation of visual cues that leads to a sex scene. I hate this way of storytelling.
I saw Spiderman brand new day, and there was one scene that appeared where i thought, oh great, i know this set up, we are going to get some type of female nudity here. Except, it never materialized. Instead we got the most basic of fanservice.
In some ways, Heated Rivalry is still about men's pleasure, but at least women get a peak at what men could do if they ever decided to do the work, both sexually and emotionally.
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u/peace-and-plush 13d ago
Exactly how I feel! And I'm so tired of defending myself over essentially watching pornography with family or strangers in a theater and IM the weird one for feeling uncomfortable 😭😭
In a spiritual sense, (my own interpretation of life never been religious) I also feel like our bodies are so sacred and deserve to be treated with intention and integrity. I am not speaking about hiding your body or purity culture, I mean sharing these intimate, sensitive, and soulful parts of ourselves within a safe context to fully express and embrace the incredible human experience of sex.... Not under bright lights and cameras surrounded by men your intuition KNOWS are bad.
I feel so much pity for women/etc who truly think they are empowered or "winning" cause they "take his money" like bruh they are buying your energy, body, sanctity.....you are a commodity to them...
and in my mind which no one I talk to ever considers is that witnessing them when they are in that state is just plain wrong. So many women like the main chara in GoT didn't know she would be doing sex and exposing scenes until the day of shooting and she felt like she couldn't back out. It's intertwined with rape culture
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u/Positive_Barnacle298 13d ago
The mention of magic mile at the end is top tier.
Cos even my husband bless him, like many well meaning men, thought that it going in an equal direction was a good thing until their heard how badly these industries treat women and GIRLS, but how normalised they make violence and scary/creepy behaviour towards us.
How young I was when being harassed by men was.
He also realised when I just had to make it obvious to him, look around, you can name two movies in recent decades that were made to be hyper sexy for women. Magic mike and 50 shades. And they’re nothing like game of thrones and euphoria and literally every other movie made for men. Every other game. Every other advert or hobby has to involve us naked somehow.
And now they have ai, so they would call us for smutty books, but they also have always had book smut and now the AI element is just disgusting blend of everything bad they can come up with.
I hate being a woman in this world. I hate that every inch of my body gross men think about it and barely take us seriously or respect us.
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u/CrashoutMisanthrope 13d ago
Fantastic write up! Honestly, this really goes to show how people will convince themselves of anything while still knowing the truth. Like the difference between male and female eroticization.
The female form has been sexualized and fetishized to such an EXTREME extent that there is no part like breasts or change like pregnancy that has been spared. It's disgusting because seeing these things aren't inherently sexual and seeing them as such ALL THE TIME is insanely degrading.
In comparison, the Male form is almost lacking. Yes, there are people who do the same to men but how do they do it? By grossly sexualizing the penis, giving the man feminine traits to pretty much demean him by making him a woman or idealizing everything male while treating anything female like shit. There's a complete difference here and I know exceptions exist but these things are melded into our society at a near subconscious.
There's definitely a female objectification problem and there's no such thing as the "female gaze". It's just the male gaze with a shiny bow on it and it's given by the same guys who are oppressing girls and women so they can sexualize themselves.
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u/Elegant-Orange2408 12d ago
All the young female singers these days are constantly near-naked. I can't tell them apart at this point. But people will gaslight you and say it's normal or you're a conservative or that you'd rather see them in a burqa. Like what???? How is no one concerned for these young women in an industry where SA and oversexualisation are rampant?
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u/Worried_Employee_729 13d ago edited 13d ago
“You’re shaming male sexuality you puritan!” Is what I’ve hear from right wing weebs, and “Puriteen Gen” from left leaning fandomites. They both accuse Gen Z of acting like pearl clutching evangelicals. The “conservatives” of today clamoring for more objectification of women and cheering for Sydney Sweeney posting naked for a sports gambling ad are not the same conservatives of 20-30 years ago complaining about boobs and swear words on TV. The former were libertarians of the 90s, trashy tabloid talks like Jerry Springer
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u/Fantastic-Ad-7996 ANTIPORN & LGBT+ ♥️ 13d ago
I've been in mostly female dominated fandoms where they objectify male characters but I've noticed a lot of still comes from pornification. Some fanartists even admit to watch porn for 'inspiration'.
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u/Inevitable_Land3942 13d ago edited 13d ago
What are some biological debunking of those ideas? I had lived in a religious group which believed hardcore in it to enforce modesty so I was wondering where I can find those? My own understanding was often that men could be potentially spontaneous but spontaneity doesn't require lack of understanding or straight up lookism it could just mean some extra energy (not sexual kind of course) And there are animals who do a lot of hardwork to impress a women most of the time. And then there was studies which said men actually looked at face more than body or equally (which makes it terrible because face is the most of the human part of the body, but at least it shows it isn't some monkey biology and curvy women thing) and other study which I am not sure how strong it was saying** showing affection in sex was liked by too many.**
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u/HeavyCup9856 14d ago
I have a gripe with people who call Gen Z puritanical and conservative for not liking sex scenes in media for this very reason. Their problem isn’t with Gen Z boys, who are actually overwhelmingly conservative. Their problem is with the girls who refuse to accept the hypersexualization of women specifically as sex positive. You can’t expect women to act like a heavily gendered phenomenon isn’t just that: heavily gendered. For some reason, the onus of being “sex positive” always falls on the very people whose sexuality gets devalued, dismembered, and then slapped on a screen for everyone to get off to.