Don’t worry guys, its natural to objectify women.

This is NOT an object.

I am no scientist, but this kind of thing always makes me just a little bit uncomfortable. It’s as if they’re trying to find an excuse for bad behavior.

It may seem obvious that men perceive women in sexy bathing suits as objects, but now there’s science to back it up.

New research shows that, in men, the brain areas associated with handling tools and the intention to perform actions light up when viewing images of women in bikinis.

See, the scientists say that this is natural, and somehow a consequence of evolution, and men needing to pass on their seed, or some BS like that…

Although consistent with conventional wisdom, the way that men may depersonalize sexual images of women is not entirely something they control. In fact, it’s a byproduct of human evolution, experts say. The first male humans had an incentive to seek fertile women as the means of spreading their genes.

I guess it couldn’t possibly be caused by living in a society that teaches men that women are nothing but “tools” to be used for their service or their sexual pleasure.  Nope, just the way evolution built them.  I’m curious though, didn’t women have those same incentives to find fertile men to spread their genes?  I mean the tone of this article just reinforces the (in my opinion) learned tendency to see women as passive objects while men are the ones doing the action.  But not only are men not responsible for their actions, they don’t even know that they’re doing them.

“They’re not fully conscious responses, and so people don’t know the extent to which they’re being influenced,” Fiske said. “It’s important to recognize the effects.”

Like I said, I’m not a scientist, but I call bullshit.  Grown men are not incapable of controlling their “primal urges” when they see a pretty woman.  Give me a break..

I guess women must have the same kind of glazed over drooling reaction to a hot man too, right?

This study looked specifically at men, and did not test women’s responses to similar images.

Oops, my mistake.  I guess they just don’t need that data to make any kind of judgment about their results.  They have all the proof they need from the “real world” anyway:

The findings are consistent with previous work in the field, and resonate, for example, with the abundance of female strip clubs in comparison to male strip clubs…

I guess they’re talking about straight male strip clubs, because I could probably find them a 1:1 ratio for gay strip clubs in any major US city…but then again, in these brainy scientific “women are from venus, men are from mars” type studies they just pretend that gay people don’t exist.  And perhaps its all that socialization that women are put through to repress any sexual urges they might have that might explain the lack of straight male strip clubs…just sayin’.  

But don’t worry girls, because most guys aren’t evil, they just succumb to “benevolent sexism”…..{{ducks to miss the shrapnel of exploding heads}}

The participants, 21 heterosexual male undergraduates at Princeton, took questionnaires to determine whether they harbor “benevolent” sexism, which includes the belief that a woman’s place is in the home, or hostile sexism, a more adversarial viewpoint which includes the belief that women attempt to dominate men.

So I guess you should be happy that he thinks that you should exist to serve his every need instead of harboring resentment about your attempts to make him look bad. —just a side thought, I wonder if they measured the penis length of the guys in this study…wonder what that might show…oh well, I’ll leave it up to the professionals.

And although he thinks of you in the same way as he thinks of a drug addict or a homeless person, there’s one big difference:

Previous research found that people tend to similarly dehumanize those who are homeless or drug addicts, although the phenomenon in this case is somewhat different, Fiske said. People have reactions of avoidance toward the homeless and drug addicts, and the opposite for scantily clad women.

You lucky girl, you.

But the most important thing they learned in this study is that women should further self-censor and be aware that it is their fault when men act inappropriately, because of course, they can’t help themselves.

Women should be aware of how they are perceived when wearing provocative clothing…

 ”Many men make foolish choices because of sexual attraction,” he said.

“The suggestion might be that there’s some hard-wiring there that can interfere with the average man’s ability to interact on deeper levels with really hot looking stranger women in bikinis,” he said.

Yeah, it’s called being a sexist jerk. 

Crossposted at Electric Blues