For years postmodern feminists have told me that women are empowered by commodifying themselves as sex objects in their male dominated societies. This conversation is usually to do with the rights and wrongs of PeTA's "I Rather Go Naked..." events. My response has been simple: I ask them to recognise that no-one is an isolated individual and acknowledge that it may be one thing for a powerful female individual to choose to display her body to make a point but it is important to look at the wider picture in which less powerful and therefore more vulnerable women who are likely to be trafficked into modern-day slavery or bonded labour, for example.
How are such women connected?
They are connected by the ideology of patriarchy and that means that every gendered "choice" that occurs is mediated by and seen through the lens of a value system which devalues women and tells them that the way they get ahead is act like a man in a Thatcherite sense or make themselves attractive to men in order to elicit their gaze and ~at least then~ have the opportunity to be heard.
Recent advertisements (above) for a crisp company have caused controversy in Ireland on the grounds that they amount to "blatant exploitation of women." Perhaps the feminists who insist on their right to take their clothes off "for the animals" on the grounds that, like it or not, "sex sells," can see the power of the criticism by looking at the use of women here?
3 comments:
also, they should recognize that while sex may sell, it does little to convince or convert or spark a real dialogue.
Well said, Roger. I agree with the anonymous commenter as well. And re: PeTa campaigns - does sex sell AR? No. It sells PeTA, and funds more campaigns featuring naked women. And while we're all distracted by sex and money, what is changing for nonhumans?
Actually, I would argue that the "feminists" who claim this are often asserted to be feminists via PETA's answers to the challenges; that is "feminism" is invoked as a justification with almost all feminist values emptied from it. I would say, for more than twenty years there have been many feminists who have challenged this while also articulating a feminist defense of animals.
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