House of Eratosthenes

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.

The research was presented this week by Captain Renault, professor of psychology at Princeton University, at the…

Hah hah! Did I just type “Captain Renault” in there? Oh, dear me, naughty, naughty fingers. I slap my own hands. Let’s get back to business…

The research was presented this week by Susan Fiske, professor of psychology at Princeton University, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“This is just the first study which was focused on the idea that men of a certain age view sex as a highly desirable goal, and if you present them with a provocative woman, then that will tend to prime goal-related responses,” she told CNN.

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.
:
Men also remember these women’s bodies better than those of fully-clothed women, Fiske said. Each image was shown for only a fraction of a second.

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

Wow, that Obama sure did deliver up some “change.” Any week now, we’ll be seeing that phony egghead study that says “Study: Men actually appreciate women.” We’re dogs, I tell ya.

You do realize what’s going on here? If I were to hop in a time machine and travel back by — let us say — three or four years, and say “Hey guess what, in 2009 it’s treated as a scientific discovery that men see screwing women as a thing to do, like a household chore, albeit an exciting and pleasant one.” It would be looked upon as very poor, very low-grade, very unfunny, sarcastic humor. Nobody would take it seriously. They’d lock me up in a loony bin.

And yet, here we are.

If it wasn’t for the swindle-us bill passing, I’d say we need a complete overhaul and audit of all scientfikal studies being done, anywhere, inside government as well as outside.

But now, everyone’s paying for everything — save for those who don’t pay taxes. So now I don’t see the point. But good heavens. Where do they get these asexual, passionless, sex-deprived scientists? “Susan Fiske” isn’t even a hyphenated name. Must be a typo or omission of some kind.

I read these stories, and I feel like I must’ve been frozen and thawed out again. Geez people, it’s called testosterone. It’s not a relic from a bygone era…well, not yet anyway…and it’s the source of every single good thing you have, & then some. Am I really Buck Rogers here? Who’s been sawing logs for a century or two here, me or everyone-else?

Past studies have also shown that when men view images of highly sexualized women, and then interact with a woman in a separate setting, they are more likely to have sexual words on their minds, she said…Taken together, the research suggests that viewing certain images is not appropriate in the workplace, Fiske said.

My God! You realize what this is? This is one step removed from saying…Study: Men enjoy looking at women in bikinis. It’s one step removed from saying “Study: Castrate men before allowing them to work in an office with women.” It, in contravention to useful science, belabors the obvious. In contravention to useful science, it views people as two-dimensional creatures, unable to see or incapable of seeing each other as both beautiful and talented. It unscientifically reads these two perceptions as mutually exclusive, when there is no substantiation for such an axiom. In that sense, it is bone-crushingly stupid. It’s also European — and I don’t mean that as a compliment. I’m talking about synapses in your noggin, by being jumped, becoming everybody else’s concern. Everyone’s business is everybody else’s business.

What do you need to do, to get some policies enacted on this…and then enforce them to the extent needed? The mind boggles. Why, I, a straight male, could be interviewing female job candidates, or giving annual reviews to women who work for me. You would have to go through a complete history of all my ex-girlfriends to see if any of them resemble the female professionals I’m appraising. You’d have to do that before you could allow me into the room with them…wouldn’t you? I mean, I don’t think I’m that unusual here, but if you were to go through a history of all the women I considered girlfriends, gee I hate to admit this, but I’ve seen all of them buck-ass naked. And naked is almost as scandalous as wearing a bikini, of course. So who knows what those unsuspecting females could be unleashing in that degenerate male noggin of mine?

No way could you depend on grown-ups to just…y’know…act like professionals or anything.

And here’s some full disclosure for you: In my case, you’d better not stop at girlfriends. You’d have to sound the alarm bells anytime I had to interact with a female subordinate who resembled any of my movie-actress fantasies. You might as well.

I suggest you start off with Natalie Wood. Yummy, yummy, Natalie Wood. Mmmmm…

Jeez, this Fiske lady sure has an inflated idea of what men think of her kind. She has it all wrong. I see their boobs and booties as objects. The women themselves I don’t see at all.
- Andy | 02/20/2009 @ 11:30
I wish they’d get over it. In the end, we’re all objects, as in definition 1 in Websters : something material that can be perceived by the senses. Many’s the time when, in the rush of the morning, my wife has tried to walk right through me only to find that I am, in fact, an object… and while not quite immovable, I can be something to be reckoned with.

Any discernible thing made out of some material is an object.

Some objects are pretty. Some objects are merely useful. Some you want to put on your fireplace mantle. And some you want to put on a pedestal 😉

The fact that there is more to a woman (or a man) than the object that she is … does not make her any less an object.

I, for one, enjoy both facets of womanhood… the way she appeals to my senses and to my heart. If my heart’s not going to get involved, I appreciate the object aspect as i would a flower or a lake or a mountain. Big whoop!

Yeah, Natalie was a fine object, wasn’t she?
- philmon | 02/20/2009 @ 16:42
I wish they’d get over it. In the end, we’re all objects, as in definition 1…

Precisely. This whole thing seems to be an exercise in making an observer & interpreter, out of that which should be the object of study, and vice-versa. I mean perhaps I’m biased, but to me it’s so elementary as to be embarrassing: Intelligent woman == intelligent woman, talented woman == talented woman, beautiful woman == beautiful woman, any combination of those == whatever combination it is. What t’heck am I supposed to be seeing? Does this female-perfesser type live in some world in which, if a woman has a wonderful looking pair of breasts and happens to know what she’s doing work-wise, her breasts suddenly cease to exist? Or does she have some kind of expectation that this is how men should see the “objects” in their world? If she does, why doesn’t she just come out and say so?

I’d sure like to know about her, and all the other egghead busybodies cluck-clucking over this “study.” What’s their sexual preference — and, if & when they see splendid physical specimens therein, that happen to be half-dressed, and quite by chance housing a wonderfully competent intellect as well, do they pretend not to notice the sexy body parts? Just shut off that signal like a valve? Because if they do, wonderful for them, the rest of us are content to have the impulses but restrain them. That’s what civilized people do. And if they don’t…then SHADDAP.

And yes, they broke the mold when they made Nat.
- mkfreeberg | 02/20/2009 @ 18:02
Imo, all of this is just more of the same “Feminist” crap, which does now and has always amounted to nothing more than an attempt by insecure “women” to control men by guilt.

In the ’60s we referred to this crap as “mindfucking.” I’m not sure that locution has been improved on.
- rob | 02/21/2009 @ 14:49

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Men See Women in Bikinis as ObjectsFriday, February 20th, 2009

Men See Women in Bikinis as Objects
Friday, February 20th, 2009