Objectification of Women, Rape Culture and Empathy
"Empathy is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the work that challenges the domination/subordination dynamic of existing hierarchies, and transcending that dynamic is crucial if there is to be a just and sustainable future."
In advertisements shown in men's magazines, women's body's have been used to promote products such as cars and food. Often the products advertised are ones considered to be traditionally masculine. Many a woman's body has been used to sell burgers for Carl's Jr. and even Burger King, both of whom have used athletes to advertise as well, keeping to the pattern of having 'The Player' represent. The prevalence of the ads in sports magazines, and the objectification in sports magazines in general lends to the idea that these magazines are only targeting a certain breed of man, which lends to the idea that sports are not intended to be for women or members of the LGBTQ+ community at all.
The biggest problem with these images is the role they serve as affirmative rape culture. Studies have shown that exposure to dehumanizing images is DIRECTLY linked to decreased empathy in viewers and even increased violence.
"The majority of the pornography that saturates our hyper-mediated lives presents not images of “just sex,” but sex in the context of male dominance. And over the past two decades, as pornography has become more easily accessible online and the sexual acts in pornography have become more extreme, women increasingly report that men ask them to participate in sex acts that come directly from the conventional male-supremacist pornographic script, with little recognition by men of the potential for pain, discomfort, or distress in their women partners."
Objectifying images and porn have always been a part of men's magazines. Even though the spreads a lot of them feature are not pornography by definition, they're incredibly objectifying and consequently have a similar affect on the brain to porn.
What a lot of people do not understand is that these images change your brain. When brain cells are stimulated, they release chemicals that reinforce connections between neurons. Dopamine, a chemical that is also released when one uses addictive substances, overwhelms the brain with too much porn exposure and the brain's response is to cope by removing some dopamine receptions, which in turn further desensitized the user so that they do not react to the image as strongly as before. Consequently, the brain then requires more and more and more dopamine to feel the initial affect. Frequent porn use spikes dopamine levels so high that the person can no longer feel true pleasure for other things that once brought him joy.
The chemical reactions that occur in the brain mentioned above actually fuel rape culture.
"The need for increased levels of dopamine to experience the high that porn first gave them, people tend to look for harder and more explicit or deviant images to feel that initial excitement. The brain connects the images to the sense of pleasure and excitement. This is how people can easily progress to viewing porn that used to shock or disgust them. Seeing these kinds of images over and over normalizes them to the user, making them seem acceptable and even common. Research also shows that porn users exhibit more dominating and harassing behavior toward women, have less compassion for rape victims, and have more violent attitudes toward women, even leading to actual violence against women [2]."
Porn teaches men that women are sexual objects, "ready at any time for anything sexual the man may want, and with no human or sexual needs of her own. She is neither given nor worthy of basic human dignity and respect; rather, she is objectified and used for men’s gratification."
Objectifying images kill empathy and desensitizes users to women’s humanity.
"When a person is putting a lot of time and energy into porn, the result is a turning away from a close human relationship and a turning toward the source of the stimulation on the screen or page. Porn can change sexual tastes and preferences toward things that are more deviant, dangerous, or illicit than what used to be arousing [5]."
Porn destroys a person's ability to maintain a healthy, long-term relationship. "When a person is constantly bombarded with images of explicit and anonymous sex aimed at gratifying the user without any consideration of the other person’s feelings, it’s not a far stretch to become overly self-involved and insensitive to others."
Furthermore, what men may or may not also realize is that porn really damages their self-image and self-esteem.
"The incongruity between his values and beliefs, and his actions can cause intense stress. He can simultaneously believe that what he’s doing is wrong and feel trapped in a never-ending cycle of addiction. Even when caught using porn, he can be torn between justifying it or minimizing its significance, and feeling powerless over it. He can question what kind of person he is that he is able to view and get excited by the scenes and images he sees. He can feel hypocritical and demoralized [7]."
These are just some of the harmful affects of objectifying imagery on individuals and the threat they pose to to human empathy is becoming more widely known.
The exposure to objectified women also increased self-consciousness in men because they are reminded that in order to be sexually or romantically involved with a woman of similar attractiveness, they need to conform to strict appearance standards which are as unattainable as the ones possessed by the those women on screen. Here, men are just as damaged by unrealistic expectations as women, and consequently, they judge the women they see everyday and the women in their lives harsher without realizing it.
The widespread objectification in men's magazines contributes to society's greater struggles in a HUGE way. Pornography directly affects a person's ability to empathize for other human beings, meaning that frequent porn users probably don't have as much empathy or understanding of the women's movements or the dangers of sexism and sexist entertainment. At the same time, they are training their bodies to only be stimulated by the most extreme of images, which essentially trains them to be sexually invasive, more violent, less aware of their partners pleasure or discomfort, and less in tune to the issues surrounding sexual violence in the world.