A rant for the critters and the objects and the people.

[flexagon]

To preface this rant: right now I'm halfway through the six-book series by Orson Scott Card called The Tales of Alvin Maker (correct me if I'm wrong, grammar freaks, but you don't italicize a series name, do you?). It's set in the American midwest at at time when slavery was a contentious issue and there were cultural clashes with American Indians. As a result there's a fair amount of race-centered thought in the book's characters, and there are a lot of capital letters where I'm not used to seeing them: Black men, White women, Red people. I'm also reminded that black men used to be called bucks... indeed, there's a rapper out there named Young Buck, isn't there? And as a result of all this reading, I thought of the word 'buck' when I noticed a well-built black man in the gym today. And that started me on a much longer thought process.

First: 'buck' is kind of a neat thing to call someone. Deer are pretty, graceful animals that are easy to idealize. When I thought of that person as a buck it was easier to see the beauty in him (which wasn't particularly hidden anyway, but I digress). And I was thinking damn, it's too bad we've messed up yet another word with our stupid racism.

I also thought of the one time a waitress in New Mexico touched me on the shoulder and said "What pretty markings you have from the sun!" and for just a moment, something about the word markings made me feel like a beautiful wild animal. I smiled and believed her, and those were the only two seconds of my life that I haven't thought my freckles were anything but disgusting.

I remember my dad in his worst PTSD-stricken, Vietnam-remembering moments sobbing about not being an animal, or that other people thought he was just a [fucking] animal. Someone, whose throat I would like to excavate with a fork, must have told him this back when he was a Marine. And then there was one time he was asking me desperately how he was going to keep going after my mom left him, and I almost came out with "Because you're an animal!"--meaning, of course, that the animal drive and patience and will to live that's within all of us would save his life. I didn't say it, but god... if I had, I don't think the fallout would have been good.

So in the end, what I'm wondering is why we don't take pride in our animal nature any more than we do. It has nothing to do with not being human... we are human too, and inside/underneath that, we are, quite obviously, animals. Why then is it an insult? Why is it assumed, if we call someone an animal, that we are calling them just an animal? I have always taken so much comfort in knowing I have a primal drive to live that's much stronger than all the Gordian knots my brain can tie itself into, and animal comforts available that can soothe me better than logic. Our animal nature lies at the center of us, and if we don't like it, that seems like a terribly self-destructive thing to me.

* * *

That's as far as I was going to take this thought, until on the way back from the gym I realized it could go a step further: under our humanity and animal nature, we are another thing whose word has become an insult (at least in verb form), and that is: we are objects. No denying that one unless you want to go the "we are eternal patterns of energy" route, and even then you have to admit we are housed pretty deeply in our physical bodies for the moment. And yet, again, to objectify someone seems to necessarily mean to just objectify them. I wonder why that is. We are objects and something more. Objects that move and live and speak. And if we don't want to be objects, what? We don't want bodies, we just want to be ideas? And if we don't want to be animals, what, we want to be inanimate? Dead? No... we have a lot of layers, and if only the outermost one is civilized and urbane, that doesn't seem like a reason not to love them all.

This rant brought to you by a sculpture, a chair (ask the cats), a toy, a mammal complete with reptilian primitive brain, a blogger, and an MIT graduate. Who has pretty markings from the sun. :)

Comments

I lke being both an animal and an object.

[jg26.livejournal.com]

Our 'animal' instincts and resultant pleasures, when combined with a healthy amount of intellect/logic, round out life by making it enjoyable and fulfilling. I grant you, it would be somewhat shallow to except the animalistic pleasures w/o any higher purpose, but to reject them would make life seem pretty empty... or at least that something was missing. One of the things that I found so liberating about my relationship w/ bluechromis, especially at the beginning (because it was such a contrast), was my ability to express & satisfy my animal self all while I was satisfying my need for an intellectual match (if not superior).

The reciprocation of this: when bluechromis expressed her animal side to me, made me feel like a bit of an object. Which I LOVED. How wonderful does it make you feel when you feel desired by someone... both intellectually and not, who you have the same desires for. The 'not' in the previous sentence is how I loved being an object.

Sorry to low-brow this and take it down a somewhat sexual path, but it was inevitable. :)

Re: I lke being both an animal and an object.

[flexagon]

Sorry to low-brow this and take it down a somewhat sexual path

It was pretty much inevitable. Though as far as I'm concerned that's just one more weirdness tied into our idea of "objectifying" people... that as objects we're probably not only just objects, but probably just sex objects. Why is that the most culturally common assocation, when ALL of us, from babies to elders and certainly incuding the sexually inactive, are in fact physical objects?

Actually, I think when people are used as objects, simple decoration is most common. A lot of non-sex-related ads (for banking, dish soap, anything) simply portray happy people. Second to that, though, I admit using someone for a sex aid probably happens next often.

I don't know if I'm really responding to your thoughts here, but this is what your comment made me think of, so it's what you get. :)

Re: I lke being both an animal and an object.

[jg26.livejournal.com]

That's interesting, it makes me ponder just what objectification is. Would you think that a good definition be "to see someone only in the context of your own point of view, a complete lack of empathy". If you see someone you want to fuck, but you don't particularly care for them, you're not going to particularly care about their experience, thus they are a purely sexual object. A nice combination of objectification and empathy is probably necessary for a healthy loving sexual relationship.

What made me think of this was your examples of ads containing happy people. I would not consider these people objectified, because you see them from their point of view (as happy people), and wish to get yourself into that state of mind.

empathy: The attribution of one's own feelings to an object. HA, nice circular reference!

Re: I lke being both an animal and an object.

[flexagon]

I ponder that too. Objectification would seem to mean 'to make into an object', but that's impossible because we are already objects. So I would think it means 'to see only as a [not necessarily living] object', which would kind of imply no empathy, because I don't really think of objects as necessarily being conscious.

I'm surprised by what you say about the ads. In cases where someone is actually saying "I bought product X and it made my life worthwhile", sure. But there are plenty of ads where a smiling face is placed next to a message that's coming straight from the bank or whatever. In those cases I have always seen the faces as pure decoration.


A nice combination of objectification and empathy is probably necessary for a healthy loving sexual relationship.

Yeah, true dat!

Re: I lke being both an animal and an object.

[jg26.livejournal.com]

Sometimes the smiling faces placed next to a message may imply happiness w/ the product... but I see you point. I would say that if the advertisement's goal is to make you want to have the same satisfaction as someone else... that's not objectifying. However, if the object is there purely to give you a warm fuzzy feeling, whether that be a smiling face, a chubby baby (Michelin ads), or a scantily clad model, and they want you to associate their product w/ that fuzzy feeling even though it has little or nothing to do w/ the product itself... that is objectification.

Thanks for this, flexy. It's been fun to ponder. =)