Why is this wrong? Because grammar

I am only going to respond to half a sentance of Dita De Boni’s ridiculous article about slutwalk, because life is too short to pay attention to the rest. She says:

I can’t see the value in putting yourself out there to complete strangers as a sexual object – especially in social situations where alcohol blurs the ability of people to moderate their behaviour.

Actually I’m ignoring the second clause in the bit I quoted too – because it’s stupid. And I’ve been a feminist blogger too long to have new ways to say “That’s victim-blaming nonsense and if you don’t mean to victim-blame then you should stop talking.”

No the bit I’m interested tonight is the idea that you can put yourself out to strangers as a sexual object.

You can’t – it’s nonsense. If you are putting yourself out there you are the subject in that sentence, not it’s object. This is a really important and basic point, which can very easily get lost. You can’t objectify yourself – it’s not possible. If you are acting then you are the subject of that action – you can’t act to make yourself acted upon. Because in everything you do, even things that people suppose take away your agency, you are using your agency.

I keep saying the same thing, but getting increasingly more convoluted in saying it, because it’s a really simple grammatical point.

But it’s also an important political point; you can’t present yourself as a sex object. Objectification is something that is done to you, it is not something you can do to yourself. Without this understanding any attempt to talk about the politics of objectification descend into gibberish.

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30 Responses to Why is this wrong? Because grammar

  1. 1
    Clarissa says:

    “But it’s also an important political point; you can’t present yourself as a sex object. Objectification is something that is done to you, it is not something you can do to yourself. ”

    -Exactly! I so wish more people understood this before spouting inanities about how victims of assault have provoked their assailants.

    Beautiful post!

  2. 2
    Franklin says:

    “you can’t present yourself as a sex object.”

    Technically linguistically you are correct, however in reality you are spiting hairs. And this stems from your bias against what you misstate as ‘blaming the victim’.

    A person can put themselves in a position where they can expect that will be objectified by others, or put themselves where they are at risk for something bad happening to them (either from accident or criminal activity).

    Take this analogy: Assume a place where there is a history of hoodlums pushing people off a particular cliff when people walk along it. If a person walks along the edge of that cliff knowing full well that there are evil people who like to push victims off the cliff then when he gets pushed it is a tragedy, he is the victim, but one that could easily been avoided by staying away from the cliff. He put himself in a place where he knew it was likely that he would be made the ‘object’ of that crime. You would call me out for ‘blaming the victim’ for saying that they should not be walking so near a cliff.

    But he has a right to walk near that cliff and not be pushed off it! I hear you say. That is true, but this is not and never will be a perfect world and people need to take responsibility to not put themselves in a position that they will likely be made objects of situations that they do not agree with or would rather avoid. A stripper is presenting herself as someone to be objectified as a sex object. And I suppose that the phrasing should have been:
    “I can’t see the value in putting yourself out there to complete strangers in order to become a sexual object”

  3. 3
    Dreidel says:

    Franklin is correct, and your grammatical dissertation is simply silly. People present themselves as objects every time they go out in public or interact with other people.

    Crying “victim blaming!” is a silencing technique to avoid personal responsibility. Victims are often responsible to varying degrees for their misfortune.

  4. 4
    mythago says:

    “Misfortune” is an odd way to describe the deliberate choices of others. Apparently personal responsibility is only for victims.

  5. 5
    Dreidel says:

    @mythago
    A “deliberate choice” (crime) for the perpetrator = “misfortune” for the victim.

    My point is that personal responsibility works both ways. A criminal bears 100% of the legal and moral responsibility for his/her crime, but potential victims who refuse to take common-sense precautions are being irresponsible concerning their own welfare.

    You can make the argument that because we live in a car-jack culture, and cars don’t get stolen in the absence of a car thief, a victim of theft shouldn’t be criticized for parking his/her vehicle with the keys in the ignition and the doors wide open. After all, locking your car properly won’t prevent all car jackings.(Please don’t start shouting indignantly that property theft isn’t the same as bodily assault for a hundred reasons, blah blah. This is true, but the responsibility analogy is the same.)

  6. 6
    Emily says:

    A car-jacking only occurs when the owner/rightful driver of the car is in the car. It is a crime against a person. The scenario you describe is a regular old car theft.

    The difference between the scenario you describe and the situation of sexual assault/objectification is: 1) people do not tend to say that the theif is NOT at fault because the person left the keys in the car and the doors wide open. We still convict people for theft in those situations and 2) what in the hell is “reasonable precautions”? The problem with sexual victim-blaming is that people have ridiculous ideas about “reasonable precautions” and pretty much anything a woman does can make her vulnerable to being accused of not taking “reasonable precautions.” In addition, we all understand why in certain situations, someone might leave their car open with key in the ignition. If, for example, they are rushing someone to the hospital emergency room. If you were rushing your mother who just had a heart attack to the emergency room, and left your car unlocked and running in the ER driveway, you’d be pretty pissed at someone who, upon learning your car had been stolen in such circumstances, said to you, “well you did leave it unlocked and running, I mean, what did you expect?”

  7. 7
    Sebastian H says:

    I completely agree with you about blaming the victim in that sentence but completely disagree with you about whether or not you can put yourself “out there” as some type of object or another.

    A huge number of the interactions that we try to have with other people involve trying to have them see us in some particular light. Sometimes we want people to admire us for our witty comments. Sometimes we want people to like us for our athletic prowess. Sometimes we want people to desire us sexually. If we actively do things to to try to cause people to desire us sexually, especially in situations where we aren’t actively pursuing a potential mate, it certainly could be called “putting yourself out there as a sexual object”.

    Now saying that doing so explains why you get raped is blaming the victim (and ridiculously agency robbing from the rapist who clearly has some say in who they rape, and very often doesn’t select victims on a sexual attractiveness scale). It is the next step that is objectionable, not the idea that one can try to portray one’s self as a sexual object.

    Dreidel’s point is objectionable because it juxtaposes different uses of ‘responsibility’ as if they were the same thing. It is a rapists responsibility for raping someone when he chooses to rape that person. The number of people who cannot be expected to control themselves when presented with someone who appears ‘sexy’ or whatever is vanishingly small compared to the number of rapists who simply choose to ignore lack of consent.

    Talking about levels of responsibility as if they were symmetric questions between rapist and victim is just ridiculous. Even if we grant that there is some level of responsibility for dressing sexy because it might uncontrollably inflame some small subset of men (which I by the way am not conceding at all) it is still on the level of 999 to the rapist 1 to the victim. And even then you are suggesting that there is no positive value in dressing sexy that doesn’t outweigh such a thing. But I suspect many people believe that dressing sexy has lots of positive externalities which you aren’t addressing.

  8. 8
    Dreidel says:

    @emily:
    You are correct about the definition of “car-jacking” vs. “car theft.” I apologize for the sloppy terminology error.

    You are also correct that women who are assaulted are frequently and unfairly slut-slammed, as if they were in effect asking to be attacked. I don’t dispute that, or support such accusations, at all.

    What I do dispute are the extreme notions that 1) no woman can EVER do ANYTHING to reduce her chances of assault (whether she should need to do so, in a perfect world, is a different matter), and that 2) anytime anyone even dares to suggest that, in some situations, some precautions might be helpful to the woman’s safety, then the person making the suggestion is automatically accused of acting in bad faith and told, as Maia states, “That’s victim-blaming nonsense and if you don’t mean to victim-blame then you should stop talking.”

    Yes, knee-jerk victim blaming isn’t helpful. But neither is always dismissing all advice as “blaming the victim.”

  9. 9
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Short.

    To the point.

    Maia, you’re a verb!

  10. 10
    Franklin says:

    Emily:
    People victimized by sexual assault are not at fault: period. Neither is the person in my example walking near the cliff. The criminal is at fault. Prosicute them to the fullest extent of the law. I know no one who would say otherwise. The point is that people should take precautions to not unnecessarily put themselves at risk. The ‘it’s not my fault’ thing really becomes irrelevant when you have to live with the consequences of the assault. There are bad people out there – I wish there were not -but there are, so stay away and don’t provoke them. It’s not victim blaming for pointing out that one should have been aware of their surroundings.

    I really don’t get the keys in the ignition while I run into the hospital analogy. IS there a time you had to dress immodestly? is there a time you needed to strip to save a life? Outside of sit-com where your towel gets caught in the door of your hotel and you get locked out, I really don’t see how you might fit this analogy into the current context. seems a stretch to me.

  11. 11
    mythago says:

    Dreidel @8: I don’t think anyone has suggested that it is wrong to proactively give advice (“Do/don’t do _______”). That is different than after-the-fact blaming (“well of course this bad thing happened, it’s your fault for doing/not doing _________”). And as I don’t think any of us dispute, when it comes to rape there is a fairly unique level of blame-shifting and excusing the criminal’s action. Nobody tells the car-theft victim that he secretly wanted his car to be stolen, or that it wasn’t theft theft, or that the car thief ought not to be blamed for reacting to his uncontrollable impulse on seeing an unlocked vehicle.

    Emily points out in @6, the question is really what is “common sense”, because rather a lot of ‘advice’ and post-facto blaming is rooted in myths about rape and, yes, victim-blaming, than real advice. I’d refer to The Gift of Fear as an excellent resource for advising people on how to protect themselves from predators which nonetheless does not descent into victim-blaming or nonsense like ‘don’t wear slutty clothes’.

  12. 12
    nobody.really says:

    Why is this wrong? Because grammar

    * * *
    If you are putting yourself out there you are the subject in that sentence, not it’s object. This is a really important and basic point, which can very easily get lost. You can’t objectify yourself – it’s not possible. If you are acting then you are the subject of that action – you can’t act to make yourself acted upon.

    Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord explain the grammatical problem with being both the subject and direct object of a sentence. (I hope I’m not shooting myself in the foot here.)

  13. 13
    Myca says:

    Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord explain the grammatical problem with being both the subject and direct object of a sentence.

    Why is this Religion wrong? Because grammar.

    —Myca

  14. 14
    Simple Truth says:

    Not to nit-pick, but in your first sentence, you spell “sentance” wrong. Unless it’s deliberate, which seems weird in a post about grammar.
    Sorry! *goes back into her hole with her red pen*

  15. 15
    Stefan says:

    Maia, I don’t understand; are you saying that you see no problem if a woman chooses to sell her body, without being pressed to do this by other persons?

  16. 16
    KellyK says:

    “Don’t wear revealing clothes” is frequent advice, but have there actually been studies showing that women are more likely to be raped based on what they’re wearing? Can you actually predict who a rapist is going to choose to target based on their clothing? I haven’t seen any evidence that this is the case.

    Even if you’re not deliberately victim-blaming but just trying to give *pre-emptive* advice, it still has to be accurate and valid advice.

    The cliff example is really flawed because the danger is specific and known in ways that don’t actually translate to real life. Walking near that cliff almost guarantees that you’ll get pushed off, but lots and lots of people go out in revealing clothes and aren’t raped. And lots of rape victims were wearing sweatpants and t-shirts.

    The cliff analogy also has the implicit assumption that the cliff is in some out-of-the way location that the walker could easily avoid without any damage to their quality of life. Frequently, the admonitions to women to avoid being raped spiral quickly into “just don’t have a social life at all, and don’t ever be alone with a man or–even worse–a group of men.” What if the cliff-side path is between your house and your job, or the grocery store? What if you walk for stress relief and exercise and it’s the only walking path anywhere near you?

    Everything that anyone does *ever* is a risk. To the extent that you had other choices (even if they suck), it’s an unnecessary risk. But with most risks except rape, we seem to accept that people make choices and trade-offs and that you can’t just hide in your house from the world (not only because it’d be a miserable life, but also because even in your home you’re not totally safe).

    Every day, for example, I take a risk by getting in the car and driving to work. And yet, if another driver ran a red light, injured me, and totaled my car, no one would tell me “Well, you should live closer to your job so you wouldn’t have to take unnecessary risks by driving.”

    Basically, unless you can demonstrate that wearing revealing clothes significantly increases a woman’s risk of being raped *and* that it’s a greater risk than the everyday risks that people take without ever being criticized, conversations about what women wear are more about blaming the victim than about reasonable precautions.

  17. 17
    RonF says:

    Nobody tells the car-theft victim that he secretly wanted his car to be stolen, or that it wasn’t theft theft, or that the car thief ought not to be blamed for reacting to his uncontrollable impulse on seeing an unlocked vehicle.

    I went to a White Sox game in Chicago once and instead of parking in one of the parking lots parked in a legal parking spot on the street. I returned to it to find my car’s stereo speakers missing, as well as the window used to bypass the vehicle’s locks. I did not get told that I must have subconsciously wanted them stolen. But I certainly did hear “What were you thinking?” and “What did you expect would happen when you didn’t park in a lot?”. Kind of like “What did you expect if you went to the bar dressed like that?”

  18. 18
    Jawnita says:

    IS there a time you had to dress immodestly?

    I can’t speak for everyone, but I can tell you that in the summer where I live, I pretty much have to wear a tank top, or I’ll overheat. Does that count?

    But more to the point, I have reasonably large natural* breasts and let me tell you, there is nothing I can wear that everyone will agree is both modest and professional. Sure, I can wear baggy T-shirts when I just don’t want to deal with the catcalls (although I’ve found there is a certain category of aggressor that gets more insistent the more unkempt I look), but I certainly can’t wear them to a job interview, and honestly they restrict my freedom of movement.

    I almost cried with recognition when I heard a story once in which a high school girl at a school with uniforms was told that her shirt — which was identical to everyone else’s, it being a uniform and whatnot — was “inappropriate.” What she was really being told, of course, was that her body was inappropriate, and that solely by being made out of the meat she inhabited, she was somehow sinning. I go out of the way (and pay more money, which I can’t really afford) to buy the least-cleavage-y shirts I can, to minimize these comments and try to command some respect in the misogynistic world we live in, and I get catcalled/insulted anyway. So whether or not I think these clothes are immodest (hint: I try my hardest for them not to be!), the average person-judging-me-on-the-street thinks their opinion trumps mine, and that they can read my personality based on the shape of my body.

    What you’re failing to see in your cliff analogy is that “walking along the edge of the cliff” is your analog for… leaving the house. At all. You know, to not die of starvation, it’s usually important to get groceries, or go to a restaurant. Or even open the door to the delivery man, if you have the kind of money where you can do that instead. You don’t think there’s something wrong with society when ever leaving the house while female is considered a dangerous behavior?

    *as in, I certainly don’t have them “on purpose.”

  19. 19
    Protagoras says:

    Without wishing to agree with those you criticize, I do think you may oversimplify things. I am of the opinion that those who talk about objectification are usually far too fuzzy about what it means for something to be a subject or an object anyway for much of what they say to be of any use. But among those who have actually wrestled seriously with the problem (I’m thinking of Kant, and more relevantly here Simone de Beauvoir), the common view is that the fact that you are inevitably acting as a subject when trying to make yourself an object may make your action inherently irrational, and perhaps doomed to a certain kind of failure (and for Kant morally wrong; de Beauvoir seems to think things are a little more complicated), but it is not the case that there is no meaningful category of actions people take which are best described as efforts to do precisely that.

  20. 20
    KellyK says:

    Jawnita, you bring up a hugely important point, and I’m sorry it’s such a struggle for you to find clothes that count as both modest and professional. (I’ve started buying the little “cami secret” fake camisoles because a lot of shirts that are dressy enough for work also show some cleavage.)

    I think people read the same clothes (as in, the same clothes in their respective sizes, fitting them equally well) on a larger woman as less modest than the same clothes on a smaller woman. (Whether that’s “larger” and “smaller” in terms of breast size, overall body size, or both.) Whether it’s because bigger breasts are just more noticeable no matter how you cover them, or because of mental associations and stereotypes. And that further complicates anyone’s attempt to dress “modestly.”

  21. 21
    mythago says:

    RonF @17: Did anyone suggest that it wasn’t really car theft because you parked it on the street, or that the car thief obviously couldn’t help stealing your car because you left it right there, or that “everybody knows” you don’t drive that nice a car and if you do, you’re careful to let it stay dirty so that it doesn’t look like an attractive item for theft?

    Yes, people victim-blame in all kinds of situations. AGAIN, the problem with rape is that to a ridiculous extent, the victim blaming is based on stupid things that have nothing to do with the risk of crime (“don’t go out in anything less than a burqa!”) or excuse the criminal.

  22. 22
    RonF says:

    Nope. I’m claiming that it’s an exact analogy. I’m just showing that the reaction of “You did legal thing ‘x’, so you should expect someone to commit crime ‘y’ against you.” is not limited to rape/sexual assault. I actually think that strengthens the case. Lots of people will say things like “You dressed like a slut when you went to that bar, so what did you expect would happen?” because they themselves would never “dress like a slut”. But just about everyone owns a car and if you live in an urban area has either had an issue with a break-in or modifies their behavior to try to avoid it. Give them the analogy and say “Do you think that the person who parked that car deserved to be broken in to? Does the fact that they parked it there provide so much temptation that a passer-by can be excused for committing the crime?” Yeah, well, the sex drive is pretty powerful. “So is the ‘eat’ drive, and there’s a lot of people around the Cell who are pretty hungry.”

    The Cell being U.S. Cellular Field, where the White Sox play – the neighborhood around it is poor and black and while hardly the most dangerous it’s also hardly the safest in Chicago.

  23. 23
    mythago says:

    RonF @22: Except that, as shown in this thread, people have motives other than defensive attribution to blame rape victims. It’s a little harder to slut-shame car owners.

  24. 24
    Franklin says:

    Jawnita,

    Fair enough. I would say that there are tank tops that are more appropriate than others and there are places that they are appropriate and places that they might not be. and no – I am not suggesting that you should wear a burqa. It sounds to me you take reasonable precautions. I am talking about the women (and you know who they are) who intentionally dress in a manner in order to provoke the catcalls etc.

  25. 25
    Jake Squid says:

    I am talking about the women (and you know who they are) who intentionally dress in a manner in order to provoke the catcalls etc.

    I’m curious. Who are these women? Do you have any names? I can’t say that I know who they are, but maybe you can refresh my memory.

  26. 26
    Protagoras says:

    I was more interested in the agency/objectification issue, but on the general victim-blaming, I have an extremely attractive friend who’s a bit of an exhibitionist who once mentioned when this topic came up that all of the men she knew apparently had some kind of magical not-being-a-psychopath powers, because none of them ever seriously crossed the line with their behavior around her.

    Rapes are committed by rapists. Most rapes are committed by repeat offenders, so that although rape is sadly not all that uncommon, rapists are; only a tiny percentage of men are responsible for nearly all the rapes. One of the main factors rapists take into account in planning their rapes is avoiding getting caught; for example, going after people they know can often help them avoid getting caught because it means they may be able to convince people there was consensual sex instead. Of course, there are other things which can make it easier for them to get away with their crimes and so can encourage them; victim-blaming generally can have that effect.

  27. 27
    Elusis says:

    Jake, you know the answer: Sluts.

  28. 28
    mythago says:

    Franklin @24: Actually, yeah, you are telling her to wear a burqa. Because ‘don’t dress like a slut’ is really saying that there is an objective level of inappropriate dress, and that rapists will be able to read your mind to determine that you deliberately dressed that way in order to provoke male attention, as opposed to “I can’t hide these features without wearing a muu-muu”. The only safe alternative, therefore, is a burqa.

  29. 29
    Grace Annam says:

    It sounds to me you take reasonable precautions.

    That’s the problem, right there. You are arrogating to yourself the right to judge another person’s right to safety on the basis of what she chooses to wear and how she chooses to wear it. Nowhere in her post did she talk about anything other than selecting clothing on the basis of how it contours over her body, and you refer to that process as “taking precautions”. You are deciding whether her “precautions” (her choices on clothing) are “reasonable”, which decision carries within it the necessity that if her choices were not “reasonable”, she would in some measure be responsible for being assaulted.

    And that’s where the disconnect is: outside of people with pathological impulse-control problems, attention is not assault. Yes, how you dress will factor into how much attention you get, and what kind, in ways which are problematical and non-problematical. But that’s utterly irrelevant to the question of assault and responsibility for it. Every human being has a right not to be touched generally, and an even stronger right not to be touched sexually, and that is the standard to which we should hold responsible adults.

    “But she wanted it, I could tell by the way she dressed, and by the fact that she didn’t say no, and so it’s partly her fault that I assaulted her.” Even granting good intentions, that’s what you’re defending. Are you really sure you want to be on that side of the line?

    Grace

  30. 30
    mythago says:

    You are deciding whether her “precautions” (her choices on clothing) are “reasonable”, which decision carries within it the necessity that if her choices were not “reasonable”, she would in some measure be responsible for being assaulted.

    This.

    Which is especial bullshit because, as far as I’m aware, there is no evidence whatsoever of a correlation between square inches of flesh revealed and chance of assault.