Right.
The issue is not with the pictures, it’s with the intent behind the pictures.
There is and I think always has been a tendency for MEN to imagine women as simply a place to put one’s penis, without considering the woman as a human being. I didn’t really understand this at all til I spent a summer working with the council 😯 Now, if a man is talking like this about any pretty woman, then it would be reasonable to see it as a slight against woman-kind.
Now I’m sure there are many women who like to be treated as a sex object, but there are a great many who do not. So when men are behaving as above, it is offensive and a little upsetting.
I think this is down to what could be the underlying issue on which the feminist struggle is based. Most men could overpower most women and treat them as a sex object if they wanted, because on average we are bigger and stronger. I think this results in an underlying tension in many male/female interactions. On my last project at work for instance my two colleages were three inches taller than me, putting me in the unusual position of having to constantly look up at people during the ocnversation. It felt rather strange, and it did make me wonder about the gender balance.
So if you are 5’4 and 9st, and there’s a 6’2 15st bloke talking in a very unpleasant way about rough sex, that must surely be quite indimidating.
So when you read a thread full of blokes oohing and aahing over women’s looks, I can easily imagine how all the above issues would come to mind. It’s all about baggage. I’m sure the majority of middle class STWers are quite enlightened and mostly feminist themselves, but it’s important to remember that the readership doesn’t know this generally, so whilst you are simply admiring a beautiful face from an aesthetic point of view, this is not always obvious. Especially if read by a woman who might have (or in fact probably has) experienced a lot of negativity in this particular area.
In fact most of the posters here are probably so middle class that they don’t see anything wrong at all with what they are doing.
I have skimmed the thread in question, and there are some really beautiful people on it. But given all the unavoidable baggage associated with the act of admiring women in a non-personal context and over the internet, it’s perhaps best to steer clear in case you upset someone without meaning to.
It’s all well and good to say ‘well I should be able to admire women without being considered sexist’. Yes, you should, but you can’t, so don’t. Simply doing it anyway isn’t going to improve the situation.
