"Female Chauvinist Pigs" review at The F-Word

The F-Word has a review up of Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs. The book is strident in its views, so I was glad to see that they had viewpoints from several women, rather than simply posting one woman's view on the subject.

I particularly liked this remark from Holly Combe

“objectification” (as I understand it) is only dehumanising when it excludes all other possibilities

She goes on to say that she can see why the incredibly large amount of objectified images of women

leads some of us to say a big final “no more” to anything that could be perceived as “raunch”.

I think her original remark is spot-on, though. The biggest problem is not that there are images out there that objectify women sexually. The biggest problem is that there are not enough images out there that portray women sexually without objectifying them.

I don't think we can get rid of the former without first creating the latter.

I think trying to get rid of the former sometimes prevents us from creating the latter because we are too afraid we will mis-fire and end up back at the dreaded, demonised objectification of women. A big final "no more" can get in the way, sometimes.

But I have hope.