The Buggy Sport­ing Her Brand New Tires and Wheels Out­side Radical.FM

June 21, 2011

“All women live in sex­ual objec­ti­fi­ca­tion the way fish live in water” — Martha Nuss­baum. Fair enough, but when does appre­ci­a­tion of phys­i­cal beauty become objec­ti­fi­ca­tion? And when does objec­ti­fi­ca­tion go from harm­less to dan­ger­ous? Prob­a­bly when­ever it becomes the exclu­sive way that a man relates to women, as clearly this would not be con­ducive to empow­er­ment or love. It could even lead to misog­yny (hatred or dis­like of women). Cer­tainly most misog­y­nists exhibit such behav­ior. But all men who appre­ci­ate the phys­i­cal beauty of women are not misogynists.

BTW, this is meant to be a polit­i­cally cor­rect cover for the ‘R’ rated update “Earth­quakes and Ass­holes” below. There is con­cern among my advi­sors that when Radical.FM takes off, evil crit­ics may find can­non fod­der in that text, so sen­si­tive souls and unfriendly reporters should not peek. In the debate that ensued upon my writ­ing of “E&A” my very moral­ity was brought into question.

Do I objec­tify women?

Clearly.

Am I a misogynist?

Quite the opposite.

I am in fact a philog­y­nist (a friend/lover of women; one who esteems females as the higher type of human­ity). Per­mit me an anecdote;

Years ago when asked to join some guys for a beer after work I said, “Sure, are the girls com­ing along?”

“What for, we’re all mar­ried — if you’re not going to sleep with them who needs women?” Laugh­ter ensued.

“I need them” I replied seriously.

The jovial mood was bro­ken and the guys wan­dered off mum­bling ‘suit your­self’ and ‘have fun’. And it dawned on me that not all men loved women’s com­pany as I did. I’ve always been com­fort­able around women. I need women in my life whether I’m sleep­ing with them or not. That’s a fact.

I love all of my sis­ters. I love most of my ex-girlfriends. I even love my ex-wife. My daugh­ters… well, what do you think? I have myr­iad female friends (though few in LA thus far), won­der­ful long­stand­ing rela­tion­ships with ex-secretaries and female employ­ees, and I’m reg­u­larly friended on FB by women I haven’t seen since child­hood — and I love that.

But I sup­pose I’ve slept with more than my share. And I am obvi­ously drawn to cur­va­ceous women with exotic faces whom I don’t mind show­ing off, so it would be fool­ish to argue that I never objec­tify them. But my objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of women does not pre­clude my lov­ing them. Nor does it pre­clude gen­uine friend­ship with them. Nor does it pre­clude empow­er­ing their pub­lic per­sonas, sup­port­ing their edu­ca­tions, or find­ing their intel­lects stimulating.

My sis­ters are accom­plished pro­fes­sion­als. I mar­ried a highly intel­lec­tual jour­nal­ist. My daugh­ters are con­fi­dent mature and inde­pen­dent. It’s dif­fi­cult to imag­ine how I could empower co-workers more than I do Radical’s female staff. I took Yoshiko across Africa in a Buggy. And I put Mercy through high-school and tried to steer her into col­lege. So what if I admire the asses of those women not related to me more than most men do? Uh oh, I’m drift­ing towards polit­i­cally ques­tion­able con­tent again…

So, how about those Mets!

By the way, I objec­tify the Buggy too, even though I love her. What’s that you say, the Buggy IS an object? How dare you! She is my friend and has car­ried me through many tough times. But she is not much into dia­monds or dresses, so I got her new tires and wheels instead. Quite the lit­tle head-turner this Buggy of mine, no?