It’s time for men to speak up about things that genuinely affect them instead of putting a spurious man-spin on typically female experiences
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Some of you may be aware that
Games of Thrones
actor Kit Harington complained
about his sexual objectification, saying: “It can sometimes feel like your art is being put to one side for your sex appeal and I don’t like that” and: “To always be put on a pedestal as a hunk is slightly demeaning. It really is and it’s in the same way as it is for women.”
Following the furore, Harington now says that he’ll be a “good little hunk and keep his mouth shut”. That would be Harington’s pretty little mouth spouting adorable nonsense from his fluffy little head? In fairness to Harington, he raised an interesting point: could it be seriously argued that male sexual objectification is in any way equivalent to the female variety? Because, from where I’m sitting, the concept is at once offensive and hilarious.
Harington has an uncommon perspective as an actor, but that’s the point. Generally, male sexual objectification is not equivalent to the female version– it’s not even close. This is not to claim that women don’t find men sexy. You have only to recall the infamous Diet Coke adverts where salacious female office workers objectified poor innocent topless construction workers. That’s what we’re all like on the quiet.
However, male sexual objectification is relatively rare – generally reserved for well-known males, fictional or otherwise (bare-chested totty “Ross Poldark”, brooding cutie “Jon Snow”, wet-shirted stud-muffin “Fitzwilliam Darcy”), and next to nothing to do with societal power structures.
By contrast, female sexual objectification is an ongoing socioeconomic-cum-psychosexual epidemic, affecting the vast majority of women at some stages of their lives. Even when they are no longer objectified (losing looks or fertility; ageing), it’s used against them in a routine way. Without meaning to be crude, from a female perspective, you’re screwed when you’re being sexually objectified, then you’re screwed when you’re not. This is the truth of female objectification – it’s less about personal sexiness and more about impersonal power structures.
How could a man begin to appropriate this gigantic, complicated, socio-historically entrenched mess as his own valid experience? It appears to be yet another low in the ever-continuing trend for specious gender-reversal – whereupon an issue in the realm of female experience is seized on and reversed, with a few arbitrary examples, to prove that men are suffering the same thing in the same way. A tiresome phenomenon you’d be forgiven for hoping would quietly die out, but it shows no signs of so doing. Thus, even something as quintessentially female as sexual objectification is given a clumsy man-spin, turned into “male sexual objectification”, and hey presto, everyone’s in the same boat. Except they’re not.
Which is not to say that men aren’t objectified in other ways. For instance, financial or attainment objectification – throughout their lives, success, more specifically the lack of it, is the stick with which males are often beaten. However, sexually objectified on a mass scale? I’m sure that Harington is receiving similar attention to
GOT
actresses Emilia Clarke and Natalie Dormer, just as
Justin Bieber
doubtless can’t walk onstage without getting 50 pairs of knickers thrown in his face, but, as celebrated high-profile young men, their experiences are close to irrelevant. Let’s get away from jokily presuming that there might be quite a few men who would happily sign up to be similarly objectified – even if it happened, they’d be unlikely to experience the full, deep-rooted, multifaceted impact.
Where sexual objectification is concerned, fame is a game-changer for men, while merely amplifying normality for women. To suggest otherwise seems misguided at least. Maybe it’s time for men to speak up about things that genuinely affect them instead of putting a spurious man-spin on typically female experiences.
It’s a song, Don: don’t try to explain it
When Don McLean’s manuscript for American Pie was auctioned at Christie’s (selling for more than $1m), the catalogue provided McLean’s clues about the “meaning” of the song. “Morality song, blah”. “Indelible photograph of America, yak”. Someone should have taken McLean to one side and said: “Don, mate, no one cares anymore, if they ever did, about what you were piping on about in your horrible over-rated hippy dirge. Chevy, levée, whatever! You just got paid loads of dosh for basically typing your song out – quit while you’re ahead.”
It’s not entirely the fault of musicians. When I was a music journalist, it was part of the job to hector all musicians, regardless of talent or stature, about what their songs were “about”. To which some would infuriatingly reply that they preferred this to be left to the listener’s own interpretation. I’d sit there seething, wanting to chuck my tape recorder at their heads, but in retrospect they were mostly right.
Occasionally there might be an artist or a band truly worthy of deeper investigation into their psyche, but this is rare. Most of the time, it adds little to the appreciation of material, especially if, as with American Pie, people are getting the lyrics wrong all the time anyway.
In this era of the live experience trumping recordings, it’s arguable that the intense, pure, exclusive relationship the listener has with music is to be cherished at all costs, regardless of whether their interpretation is correct. Songs are not aural documentaries – they don’t need to make sense. Sometimes the atmosphere they produce and feelings they inspire are more important. No one blames McLean for selling the American Pie manuscript if someone was willing to pay, but his explanations remain surplus to requirements.
Consenting adults in love affair shock
What isn’t there to love about the Ed Miliband “secret girlfriend at dinner party” story? It was his wife, Justine Thornton, who inadvertently dobbed him in, saying that, when they met at said party, long ago, she didn’t realise that he was already involved with the hostess (reported to be former political broadcaster
Stephanie Flanders).
There’s doubtless a perfectly reasonable explanation for this mix-up. Unfortunately. Miliband and Flanders were probably attempting to be private about their relationship, as adults often are. They may even have decided that, even though she was his (whisper) “secret girlfriend”, they were both allowed to continue conversing with members of the opposite sex in social settings should the need or opportunity arise, for instance at a dinner party she was hosting. Depraved I know, but no more than could be expected from the oft-cited “sinister north London elite”.
Now Flanders has been portrayed as a wanton hussy, brazenly embarking on two relationships with gentleman callers named “Ed”. How on earth did she think she was going to get away with it? Flanders urgently needs to explain herself, preferably while being violently ducked in the local pond.
Meanwhile, Miliband has been depicted as a womanising cad, who spends his days wandering around the corridors of power with his tongue hanging out, making “phwoar!” noises at any bit of Westminster skirt he can see. Scandalous behaviour, unbecoming in a party leader, and it makes no difference that it isn’t true.
What does all this say about Ed Miliband? Very little, you say, in fact nothing at all. Well, be like that then. In the interests of parity, I must demand that other leaders have their own ordinary, unremarkable, uncontroversial, past relationship non-dramas reported in this gutsy and necessary manner.