Warning: This entire post is kind of tangential, dealing with the fundamental ideas behind a post in this thread. It is not actually relevant to the OP, so it may well be considered off-topic. Sorry about that.
Having a crush on someone is your bodies way of reducing her to a piece of fuckmeat (excuzes le mot) and willingly giving in to that means you're dehumanizing her.
You think sexual desire and personal respect can't coexist?
Maybe they can, but sexual desire is objectification no mater what way you turn it. As such, it's inherently inferior to personal respect without sexual desire.
Why is sexual desire necessarily objectification?
I'd be willing to grant that certain subsets of sexual desire are, simply because if you divide it down far enough you reach a point where there's a category of "I want you to use your body to help my body give me an orgasm." And that does, indeed, reduce the bodies of both participants to objects to be used to generate the experience of an orgasm to the person in question. I'm actually not sure if that's exactly objectification, since the bodies in question
are objects*, and if it is, I'm not sure it's harmful since it doesn't preclude respect or free will on the part of the other party.
But all sexual desire isn't about orgasms and skin-on-skin sensations of pleasure. Many people have a desire for physical intimacy that is based on emotional sensations that being so close and naked to somebody can create (whether because of cultural indoctrination or biology, whatever), and enjoy the sense of trust that comes from knowing somebody is willing to be that vulnerable with you (and that you are so willing with them).
And the problem with objectification is when it makes you define a person as having value based on whatever you want to use them for, and failing to think of the person
as a person. If your relationship still is based on mutual respect, I don't see how sexual desire necessarily undermines that. It
could lead to a relationship less based on respect and more on sex, and I'd even be willing to grant that there's an inclination for it to do so, but it's hardly a necessary consequence.
I don't think "Women have no sexual value" is any more progressive than "Women have only sexual value", except possibly if you want to discuss the concept of people having "value", which is a completely unrelated topic as far as I can tell.
I'm assuming a bit of mind-body dualism here, but the relevant thing here is that I assume it's safe to say that there are clearly body parts that are not a part of the mind, minds are what it is important to respect, and that it's not demeaning to call a body an object because "just" an object is a stupid phrase - an object can have extreme personal value and a great deal of emotional impact on a mind, and that's no less valid because the object in question is not a mind. Whether there's actually a firm divide between mind and body is, I think, irrelevant, because I think all of this is far enough on one side of the blurry transition zone.
Author
Topic: Crush on a friend (Read 2482 times)