Maybe I just haven’t read enough of this research, but the way this CNN article portrays the results seems… rather misleading.
It may seem obvious that men perceive women in sexy bathing suits as objects, but now there’s science to back it up.
Sure, no doubt — but here’s their summary of the research:
New research shows that, in men, the brain areas associated with handling tools and the intention to perform actions light up when viewing images of women in bikinis.
I’m not sure that sentence justifies the first. I think what it’s saying is that men see a scantily clad woman, and are motivated to do things to impress the woman — since that’s how males evolved to acquire mates. And in fact, that’s precisely what the presenter of the research states:
“This is just the first study which was focused on the idea that men of a certain age view sex as a highly desirable goal, and if you present them with a provocative woman, then that will tend to prime goal-related responses,” she told CNN.
I’ve mentally filed this under the “things I would’ve told them for only a small fraction of the funding” category. Also perhaps under the “I wish to volunteer to be a test subject for this research” heading.
A supplementary study on both male and female undergraduates found that men tend to associate bikini-clad women with first-person action verbs such as I “push,” “handle” and “grab” instead of the third-person forms such as she “pushes,” “handles” and “grabs.” They associated fully clothed women, on the other hand, with the third-person forms, indicating these women were perceived as in control of their own actions. The females who took the test did not show this effect, Fiske said.
That goes along with the idea that the man looking at a woman in a bikini sees her as the object of action, Fiske said.
I’m not sure this is the same thing as “objectification” or “sexism.” Assuming that you can exclude the men who are willing to use force to acquire what they want, this is basically how everyone interacts with anyone who has something they wish to acquire — and doesn’t really imply that one is ignoring the humanity of the other person. Men see bikini clad women and desire to demonstrate to them their relative qualities. I assume (though the article does not say) that since the women in the trial were heterosexual, the bikini clad woman in the picture provided nothing they might want, and so felt no need to jump to action to persuade them. If only someone had done a similar study with regard to women viewing desireable men:
Women may also depersonalize men in certain situations, but published research on the subject has not been done, experts say.
I find that hard to believe, given that I just managed to think of it, but at least we got this:
Evolutionary psychology would theorize that men view women as objects in terms of their youth and apparent fertility, while women might view men as instrumental in terms of their status and resources, Fiske said.
Well of course — this is how everyone interacts with nearly everyone else in their lives. I recognize that my boss is a person with dreams and hopes and free will, but it doesn’t change the fact that I view her as someone I want to impress so as to retain my job and perhaps get a raise. I recognize that the used car salesman is also a fully aware human, but it doesn’t change the fact that I haggle with him to get a better price on the car. You could even outline these interactions as a black box “object” into which I place “actions” such as hard work or clever negotiations into, and then it dispenses promotions or cheaper Hyundais.
Surely, there are men who see women truly as objects to be acquired. But research proving that men are “primed to goal-related responses” does not help us understand this phenomenon, because even a man diametrically opposed to such disreputable individuals will still be thinking “what actions can I perform to impress this fully independant, self-motivated woman?”
Research that might let us see the difference would have to be constructed in a different way.
