Autism is my super blessing! I'm a high-school valedictorian, college graduate, world traveler, disability advocate. I'm a Unitarian Universalist. I'm a Progressive Liberal. I'm about equal rights, human rights, civil & political rights, & economic, social, &cultural rights. I do servant leadership, boundless optimism, & Oneness/Wholeness. I'm good naked & unashamed! I love positive personhood, love your neighbor as yourself, and do no harm! I'm also appropriately inappropriate! My self-ratings: NC-17, XXX, X, X18+ & TV-MA means empathy! I publish shows at 11am! Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/antonio-myers4/support
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episode 79: 6 Reasons Telling Women Their Power Is in Their Sexuality Is Not Empowering
"1. It Objectifies Women
The idea that women attain control by eliciting men’s desires plays into the age-old notion that women’s worth lies in their ability to produce erections.
“One of the greatest powers a woman has is the power of her sex,” author and speaker Rick Johnson writes in Patheos.
By making looks paramount to women’s empowerment, this attitude reduces them to objects. And by telling women to gain power through their sexuality, rather than their personalities or talents, it teaches them to focus on their looks.
Equating all situations where women are the objects of desire with empowerment has the effect of justifying objectification. “A young woman’s sexual power is effective with both sexes… Advertisers know that and use partially clad images of young women to sell products to both men and women,” Johnson writes.
This statement ignores all the ways women are disempowered by advertisements that use their bodies to sell products, depicting them in passive poses and even presenting them as inanimate objects. There is nothing empowering about dehumanization.
Furthermore, telling women their value lies in their ability to be desirable devalues women who are not widely considered sexually desirable. “Women tend to lose their sexual power as they age,” Johnson admits.
If women’s ability to get what they want is rooted in their demand among men, what about women who aren’t in high demand?
It’s true that people often favor women based on their adherence to ageist, racist, sizeist, and ableist ideals. But that should be challenged, not celebrated.
Placing value on women based on men’s attraction makes those who don’t possess the traits society considers attractive feel worthless, and it makes women of all appearances feel like objects.
We should be prizing inner qualities more important than the ability to provide or withhold sexual pleasure, like strength and wisdom.
And people should honor women’s wants and needs regardless of what they look like or whether sex will ever be offered in exchange."
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