WHY DO WE STILL OBJECTIFY WOMEN?

Photo from Tom Watson/forbes.com

“I’m every woman” is a song written by Chaka Khan and made famous by Whitney Houston. It may seem as if it is an old song for my age but it’s something I downright cherish. With the line, “I’m every woman, it’s all in me”, it explains my empathy every time I find out about issues on women objectification.

Nowadays, social media has been a platform for criticizing and bashing other people most especially women. There has been a current issue that broke out everyone’s Twitter feed, which has now been put down by the user account herself. It is about a circle of college boys who made a group chat to talk about a high school girl. This though is not something you would think as usual because of the kind of conversation that happened among them. Apparently, these boys have sexually objectified this girl without her knowing up until when they included her in the group chat they were having. Because of this, she was able to see how disgusting what they were saying about her.

Moreover, there has been another incident when an Anti-Marcos girl protester received rape threats and sexual harassment online. All of the comments on the Facebook post are men fetishizing the protester, downright crude and offensive in the most sexual way. “Come to papa, I’ll fill your mouth, and your pockets, too.”, this is just one statement from the numerous salacious comments of the Facebook user who engaged in the indecent conversation online.

The two recent incidents are just a pinch of salt to the countless episodes women have experienced and are still experiencing on sexual objectification and harassment.

I cannot fathom how this is a daily occurrence and an expected behavior of men as other people reason out that “boys will be boys”. No, it is not. And it will never be enough of an explanation as to why they degrade and look at women no more than as an object to objectify.

This objectification is not normal and respecting women should not be considered “unusual”. A man respecting a woman is and should be an expected behavior. Because praising men who don’t objectify women is like applauding a fish for swimming.

Back from the time when women achieved suffrage, there have been a lot of improvements feminists were able to attain yet this is something that women are still struggling to end.

Putting into words a thought for everyone to mull over, take a moment and think of your mom, sister or daughter. Consider all the women in your life. What would you do if such things happen to them? You would not want that, would you?