#sexualising

I’m right wing myself, but God showed me not to focus my whole life on lust!

But.

I’m seventy pages in and already I have issues with the way he describes the relationship between men and women. Not in the superior/inferior way, but in the sensual/objectifying way.

One of the characters, Cecilia, undresses herself to her underwear - for entirely non-sexual purposes - in the vicinity of Robbie, a young man of around her age. They’ve known each other since their youth. After this incident, Robbie is lying naked on his bed, thinking about it. His thoughts are that before, he had thought she was horse-like, but now, he sees her beauty.

Next, he ponders why Cecilia could have been angry at him, and he thinks that her anger may have been used to guise her ‘unconscious desire’ for him, and that she had wanted to show him her beauty and ‘bind him to her’.

Now, these quotes may seem innocuous enough, but they are at the root of a bigger problem in our society, namely, as I said before, the objectifying and sexualising of non-sexual actions of women. These few thoughts of Robbie show some kind of belittling view on women, it describes women as seductive vixens that want nothing more than a man lusting after them.

And sure, these are the thoughts of a young man in a book, these are the thoughts of a character. But that’s a distinction that is difficult to make. When reading the book as a book and not looking at it critically enough, one might start to think that these reasoning are normal.

Sure, you could say that I’m overreacting, and that I’m reading too much into it, but it’s a reoccuring irritation of mine: most often, these scenes of young men pondering the underlying viciousness of women, are written by men, and lately I don’t feel right reading them anymore. It’s starting to bother me, the unthinking negative portrayal of women in men’s literature.

Hey lovely,

I’m sorry to hear that your dad has done that. I can imagine it made you really uncomfortable and that you hated it! But when you’re at that age, it can be really hard to stand up against these kind of things. You don’t really have any reference material so you don’t know whether it’s supposed to be normal or not, so you let it happen even if it makes you uncomfortable. Now that you’re older you realise that regardless of whether it’s normal or not, if it makes you uncomfortable you’re allowed to stand up for yourself! 

Do you think you can tell your dad that you don’t like it when he criticises your friend? His criticism is very superficial and what matters in a friendship is how much fun you can have together. What she looks like is so unimportant. Friendship is based on so much more than looks, often everything but looks. Is this something you can try to explain to your dad and? If you’re able to explain why it bothers you, he might stop doing so. It can very well be the case that he simply has no idea this is bothering you but that he definitely doesn’t want his comments to upset you so that he’ll stop right away when you tell him. 

How is your relationship with your dad in general? You mention two aspects that don’t seem to be great, but I’m curious as to whether overall you do have a good relationship with him or if there’s more underlying issues there. I think that if you do have a good relationship then it’d be worth considering to not only tell him about his upsetting comments about your friend, but also about that you didn’t like it when he poked you when you were younger. If your relationship isn’t as good, then it’s still something you might want to consider but I can understand if you don’t feel comfortable opening up to him about.

I don’t know if there’s another parent or guardian in the picture, but maybe it’s something you can talk to them about as well? It can help a lot to have someone by your side, whom you can talk to whenever anything happens that makes you uncomfortable. Your comfort is what matters most here! I hope this helped at least a little bit. Remember you’re allowed to stand up for yourself! <3