1/26/16

I’m starting a Twitter campaign for 2016 called #objectifyme, because it’s totally hilarious, & as an overweight white man, I rarely get a chance to feel like an object. Which you, dear reader, may think of as a good thing, a fine thing, a “hey what are you complaining about you white privileged misogynist ugh ew die” kind of thing, but you’ve got to admit there’s something self-affirming about being gawked & squaked at on account of your sexability. It hurts to be reduced to my intellect & sense of humor & talent--am I ugly? Do my good looks not count? Should I trim my pubic hair? Must I rely solely on a plethora of learned skills & trickery to earn whistles in the street or overtly sexual snapchats? So the movement begins. #objectifyme. Join the movement that says “I understand--vaguely--that I have some kind of equivalent of an eternal soul & that ‘I’ am more than my body, that ‘I’ am a well-rounded human life form with love to give regardless of the size of my penis or whatever--but still, let’s not ignore the body, which, according to this pseudo-Buddhist philosophy, is the only part about me that’s truly temporary so, probably, it should be used (for the most part) for purposes of entertainment & ecstasy; & so I’d like it to be treated, from time to time, like the object that it is--here for amusement, both mine and yours.”

I did a quick Wikipedia search to gain a bit of knowledge as to the actual definition of objectification, & those definitions jived with what I had already thought. But I did find an interesting tidbit on the page. It’s a quote from a modern philosopher named Alan Soble, & it goes like this:

“The claim that we should treat people as ‘persons’ and not dehumanize them is to reify, is to anthropomorphise humans and consider them more than they are. Do not treat people as objects, we are told. Why not? Because, goes the answer, people qua persons deserve not to be treated as objects. What a nice bit of illusory chauvinism. People are not as grand as we make them out to be, would like them to be, or hope them to be.”

— Alan Soble, Pornography, Sex, and Feminism. (2002)

Which, I suppose, is a rather depressing thought, regardless of the truth that it holds. Anyhow, turns out this dude Soble has some books out & is just the sort of guy I should be reading. That said, dude is pretty fucking creepy looking. He kind of reminds me of the pedophile Santa in a Sifl and Olly video game review. Still, it’s telling that we’ve never heard of this fellow before, despite his long list of published works that, apparently, contain arguments that run against the philosophical standard of our generation (i.e., divisive feminism), which--correct or not--would surely add a nice counterbalance to what is right now a fairly one sided argument. It’s hard to say, considering my cursory knowledge of the man’s work. I invite you, reader, to join me in reading one or all of this fella’s books.

why are sexual philosophers always so creepy looking? Alan Soble.

the creepy Santa that Alan Soble reminds me of shows up at 2:10. Sifl and Olly!

As for the news around the FPIH, we’ve got a new piece of Stiff Fiction from N.P. Yuggoth. Read it here.

Frank X Maloney