RE: Sexualized Society: Women Who Enjoy Being Sexualized Tend to Have Lower Relationship Satisfaction
You've raised one of my favorite topics, but I could not disagree more with your conclusion. I posted on this subject months ago and explained why beauty standards are not externally imposed but rather evolutionarily determined: https://steemit.com/feminism/@sean-king/thoughts-on-impossible-beauty-standards-and-their-origin.
And I explain here how the idea that we "objectify" women when we value them sexually is preposterous and ultimatley undermines female power: https://steemit.com/steem/@sean-king/thoughts-on-women-oppression-and-porn
Here's a relevant excerpt from that last link:
But there is another reason that women don't have more influence in the world: Men over millennia have gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent them from exercising their birthright sexual power--that is, to prevent them from employing their sex appeal in ways that gain them great influence. For instance, via the tools of religion and tribal "custom", men have conned women into believing that gaining an advantage in life by "selling" what all men are "buying" (that is, sex appeal) is somehow shameful, at least when done outside of certain societally acceptable, male-dominated institutions (e.g., marriage).
Men almost always try justify restraints on female sexual power in noble terms. For instance, former President Jimmy Carter recently spoke out against legalizing prostitution on the grounds that society must protect women from the men who would objectify them. Really?! I'm reminded of the Imams who insist that Islam honors and protects women by requiring them to wear burkas. Bullshit. Islam controls and limits them by doing so. There is no honor in a burka, and there sure as hell isn't any protection in it. Likewise, we do not honor or protect women when we employ various devices (like shame or anti-prostitution laws) to deny them the benefit of their most evolutionarily valuable asset.
What's most disappointing to me about society's repression of female sexual power is that men have recently been aided in their efforts by the most unlikely of allies--feminists. Feminists have inadvertently joined men in promoting a rather insidious untruth--that it's shameful for women to compete with and for men using their birthright sex appeal. Feminist women, males and the religiously-minded have convinced most women that selling sex appeal "objectifies'" and "dehumanizes" the female.
Bullshit! Do we objectify or dehumanize men when we allow them, without shame or scorn, in fact with praise, to market their most evolutionarily valuable asset (their physical brawn)? Do we objectify or dehumanize the intelligent among us when we allow them, without shame or scorn, in fact with praise, to market their most evolutionarily valuable asset (their mental capacities)?
Women are simply born with what, at the most instinctual, visceral level, men want more than anything else. Consequently, women have enormous power. But they have been conned into ceding it, shamed into abandoning it. Given the centuries of scorn heaped on sexually powerful women, it's no wonder that so many now associate sex with misogyny and oppression. And it's no wonder that they would seek to deny their oppressors what they most desire.
Let me repeat one of my main points for emphasis: Women (on average) are born with what males (on average) want and will work, strive and even fight for. By conning women into believing that they are somehow being "objectified" when they seek to exploit this power (by marketing, selling and/or exploiting their sexuality), we do far more to demean and repress women than simply pandering to male preferences (which most women are bilogically inclined to do anyway) ever could.