So I recently posted a fairly cute, sassy photo on my Flickr, wherein I was wearing a black dress and BRIGHT blue footless tights. Not even a day later, it had been viewed a hundred times and added to all these foot fetish freaks' favorites! There's some alliteration for you this Tuesday morning. I thought this photo was innocuous. I wasn't making a sexy face, posing suggestively, or anything else. I was kind of freaked out. There may be some women in the world who get off on the idea of someone else getting off on the idea of them. Not me. My husband-to-be is the only person I want thinking about me that way.
It's a weird thing, knowing there's nothing you can REALLY do to stop someone from making you the object of their dirty thoughts. I remember a time probably three summers ago when I was staying in the Portland area for a week-long writing conference in Freeport. I went to the mall to kill some time and I felt victimized by people looking at me, appraising my worth based on my appearance! It was a miniature breakdown, seriously. I was shaking, I couldn't look up at any man's face, I wanted to shrink and hide. To borrow a phrase from a book, this rise in "raunch culture" doesn't sit well with me. I don't appreciate the implication that anyone (particularly a woman, as male attention is generally more aggressive and intrusive) is public property, to be oogled, used, and then discarded, as if she is not even a thinking, feeling person. It could be argued that turning a person into your own personal fantasy fodder doesn't affect them, but I don't agree. Look at my experience at the mall; none of those people were even vocal or especially rude, by normal societal standards. Anyone who understands the emotional implications of being continuously made into a puppet in service to unchecked lust can not feel completely comfortable in the world.
I don't even know what to say about people who make their bodies their financial means, other than this: They must be unable (or unwilling, in the face of "success") to see the effects of encouraging such a mindset. Anyone who knows me knows this is kind of a "pet cause" for me. I have published columns about it, written features, poems, and spoken about it in person. I just feel so passionately that the lack of respect I and so many women feel from so many men comes down to the fact that in their "private, harmless" fantasy lives, men are turning any and all women into submissive, obliging playthings with no personal morals, discernment, or thoughts other than those which are fed into their heads by the director, the man who is fantasizing. I want to scream: "I AM HAVING A HUGE PROBLEM WITH THIS!!!!"
I mentioned the phrase "dirty thoughts" earlier; I'm sure plenty of people would say "It's talking like that about sexual desire that really stunts people," blather and blah blah blah. I'm sorry, but what I have heard men talk about (and surely what they feel comfortable talking about is only a FRACTION of what they are thinking) can only be described as dirty. I am willing to allow that there is even a huge difference between feeling sexually attracted to someone, and imagining that person debased to levels probably unimaginable to me. I think society has been too permissive in encouraging people to feel acceptance toward their any and every desire or inclination. When people have no self-control over their thought lives, that lack of self-control begins to be expressed in their behavior, which is completely unsafe.
How about this argument: "Men are more visual." Please! What a flimsy excuse! Show me the sighted person who doesn't respond to the visual stimulation of an attractive person. In rare cases, there may be people do not respond. But if you show any human being a good-looking person of their sexual preference, I guarantee they will be visually stimulated. I think the best reason I can find to explain the fact that more men are attracted to pornography is very easily expressed: a) many women (and some men) are able to discern, if not articulate, the fact that they are being personally degraded by a culture that accepts such "entertainment", and b) these people can see the personal and emotional implications of such viewing and acceptance.
I also resent the occasional implication by some men-- who else--that I am jealous of the women featured in pornography. I am very happy to be who I am, and I don't wish to be anyone else. I think that people who need the constant approval of a slobbering mass of emotionally stunted men and piles of dirty, secretive cash (let's face it, most men keep their porn stashes a secret from their wives/girlfriends) sound like the ones with the self-esteem problems, don't you? I feel like I have run out of thoughts and I am just a ball of frustration. I just want to see a change. I want to know that other people understand that I am an intelligent, thinking person who has no obligation or desire to bow to their warped senses of sex and gender roles. I was not created to play a simple role in fantasy and be quiet. I won't be quiet. My face is mine; my feet are mine, you foot fetishists; my body is mine, and no one else has any right to it, not even in his own thoughts
