Objectify This

So Lena Chen. Here’s a refresher course. She’s a sexblogger from Harvard who tells stories about her sexploits, with strategically placed psuedonyms and (presumably) enough privacy to retain her sanity and, oh yeah, sell some advertising.

Recently, some trouble was roused when her vindictive ex published naked pictures of her on the internet, thus ruining whatever mystery she retained through her confessional patter (Ivygate, who admit that she’s their ‘worst frenemy or best enemy’, does call her Lena “I lowered my mouth over his cock and slid his shaft between my lips easily” Chen). Ms. Chen, who is actually an intellectual and, from what I’ve read, ethical sexual agent (see The Ethical Slut for more sex-positivity, hat tip to Jeff) is now being subjected to a kind of character dissection that only occurs in anonymous forums or to celebrities, or both.

In Ivygate’s forum on her nudie pics, one anonymous ivy leaguer after another writes snarky comments under a classy nom de plume such as “harvard.” The debate rages– does Lena have a right to get upset, or is this merely a perpetuation of the self-objectification that she engages in for a living?

I’d have to argue for the former, and furthermore, that the latter is a morally untenable position. Why? Well, firstly, there’s an important difference between exposing yourself verbally or bodily in an interaction that benefits both you and the other party (parties) involved: agency. If Lena enjoys talking about her hot phone sex, so be it.

However, it’s her phone sex, and therefore her right to disclose it. In disclosing it, she enacts her power to distribute this information and is rewarded with advertising revenue. However, if she were to talk about someone else’s phone sex, she would be denying both their agency in control of their personal information and also denying them the right to profit financially or otherwise from this control.

Similarly, just because Lena’s had a lot of sex, even anonymous or semi-anonymously or casually doesn’t mean that it would be okay to rape her. The consent and the agency that she wields is the deciding factor when it comes to this type of sexual ethics. This all comes back to moral relativism- if it’s not okay to rape, it’s not okay to rape anyone, even a prostitute. And granted, Lena is no prostitute, but she is something of the modern Carrie (as in Sex in the City) for making her money from (discussing) her own sex life.

The use of the photographs without her knowledge or consent, however, violates Chen’s privacy and objectifies her, because it treats her body as an object without a personality which others can interact with at will. There is no male parallel in our culture for this kind of moral and physical degradation, because it results from a combination of prejudice and powerlessness that men are not subjected to.

As Chronicles of Whoredom’s Trixie Firecracker, another Ivy blogger, notes, the double standard when it comes to sexual behavior is alive and well: “you don’t really see guys getting the shit end of the stick for cheating. It’s not exactly condoned but more or less seen as typical guy behavior (“boys will be boys”). Apparently, guys have um, needs, and will act upon those needs and it’s seen as the norm whereas girls are still supposed to be “good” and suppress the fact that they have those same needs. Therefore it’s just a continuation of normal guy behavior and we’ll look the other way when he cheats. When a girl cheats, it’s seen as such a deviance from normal “good” female behavior that it’s *so* horrible and has to be punished. Girls cheat. Get over it. Guys cheat too.”

The fact that women like Lena and Trixie and cohorts can make money by just explaining their everyday lives to others is a symptom of our culture’s unhealthy obsession with sex. Not that sex isn’t, um, the shit. But you don’t see too many boys vying for a chance to talk about their sex lives online – i mean, ok, the 2006 Dirtyspoke Sex Blog awards did include a few, but in general, they are few and far between. Why? Because men who like sex don’t need to turn to the internet to find a community of like-minded peers. They could talk to pretty much any male, gay or straight, and the expected response would be, ‘hell, yeah, sex is great, and we should have lots and lots of it.’ Why has our culture made sexual morality so much of its own category that women have a separate standard than men? Perhaps its time to examine our assumptions about the ‘purity’ of sex and sex acts. After all, the original sin gave us the original orgasm. Could ignorance always be bliss?