520. An Irrational, Unjustified And Outrageous Distinction
Under German law, being caught having child pornography on his computer usually suffices to send a man to jail. But any man is legally free to consume as much pornography as pleases him, as long as the abused objects in the pictures are above a minimal age.
The prohibition of child pornography is justified by its goal to prevent abuse. Pornography has been produced by the abuse of real life children and there is the probability that consuming pornography is the first step of lowering the threshold towards subsequent real life abuse.
This makes perfect sense. But it makes just as much sense concerning grown up women. Restricting this form of prevention to the protection of children cannot be rationally justified. It is an absurd outrage to deny to women the same entitlement to be spared abuse by all possible methods of prevention, which are recognized as necessary for children.
1. Abuse is as bad for women as it is for children.
Any man of average physical strength has sufficient physical power to force the same amount of harm upon a woman of average strength as he has to force it upon children. Women have no better chances to defend themselves against physical violence than have children. Women are as much at the mercy of men's civilized self-control as are children.
Any variety of real life abuse, no matter if rape, manipulation, taking advantages of someone's helpless and dependent situation or apparent self-objectification, is enabled by the abuser's mental process towards replacing inhibitions, self-control and restrictions by subjective justifications and excuses.
The first step in this mental process is objectification. (More about the perceptive objectification in entry 519.) Objectification is an attitude concerning the essence and quality of other humans, which usually follows desensitization until the abuser's perception is distorted. The abuser is void of the ability to perceive other humans as persons with human dignity, instead they are only perceived as objects, utilities, commodities.
While some people objectify others due to some mental defect in their brain, like psychopathy, objectification is also the unavoidable result of desensitization and habituation. This can happen both by the passive observation of role models abusing other human beings and by actively participating in and practicing abuse. When women and children are objectified as existing for the purpose to be used sexually, pornography is one major source of this effect.
There is always the hazard of objectification, because a body is perceived as a visible object, while the personality, the qualities of the mind are not directly visible. Their discovery is only accessible indirectly by communication. Therefore there is an unfortunate vicious circle. Any attempt to communicate requires at least a minimal expectation of the other's ability to communicate as a person. Nobody expects to communicate with an object. Objectification precludes communication, while communication can reduce objectification. Thus, once there is objectification, it reinforces itself further by the loss of any chance to rediscover the person hidden inside of what is perceived as an object.
2. No differences justify abusing women more than children.
Objectification includes the general fallacy of believing in and accepting, that the alleged purpose of the objectified person's existence is being used. Whenever abuse of women becomes normal, common and regular behavior, some men are not even aware of the alternative of appreciating, noticing and recognizing women's mind and personality.
This fatal process, that pornography leads first to desensitization and objectification and then to lowering the threshold towards real life abuse is the same, no matter if the degraded human being is a woman or a child. Any distinction cannot be rationally justified. Whenever men justify such a distinction, it is based upon a fallacy.
Male fallacy 1:
When the victim is a woman, biologically her body is apt for male homeostation, while a child's is not. This difference leads to the fatal fallacy, that abusing a woman's body as an object for sexual homeostation is often considered as less evil, less harmful and less traumatizing.
The implicit implication of this fallacy is an outrage. Those men, who objectify women by perceiving and believing, that women's ultimate purpose is to serve men's needs for homeostation, often also see nothing as really wrong in getting the fulfillment of this purpose by hook or by crook from reluctant and resistant women. It is a monstrous fallacy to believe, that forcing women into their alleged natural purpose is more acceptable than forcing something upon a child, who is not considered to exist for the same purpose.
Male fallacy 2.
There is one difference between children and women: Only women can be made to appear preempting male objectification by self-objectification, while children are usually accepted as being too young for consent.
The general male fallacy, that women exist for their homeostation is reinforced by the subsequent fallacy of believing in some women's apparent free choice of self-objectification. Men often succeed to usurp control over resources for survival and they use this control to coerce women by dire necessity into submission to the objectification. When hopelessness and resignation cause women to refrain from resistance to their fate, this is often mistaken as agreement. This alleged choice of self-objectification facilitates the abuse and it allows men to condone and justify the objectification of women. Manipulating women to comply by self-objectification is in reality a part of men's strategy and method to succeed in achieving the benefits of objectification with the least effort.
Male fallacy 3.
Some women are as much the unhappy victims of their instincts as are men, they too are feeling the urges of dishomeostasis. This female dishomeostasis is the unfulfilled breeding instinct. These women only appear superficially to cooperate with men's objectification by self-objectification. It is men's fallacy to misinterpreted it as women's acceptance of existing to serve men. In reality, these women's self-objectification is their method to restore homeostasis by becoming pregnant.
Once they have reached their breeder's homeostation, they have no longer any reason to continue the self-objectification to men. These men are dissatisfied when the women's breeding homeostation ends the men's recurrent sexual homeostation. The women continue the self-objectification, but they shift the target away from the men and towards the slavery of raising the children.
Objectification of people is not restricted to sexual abuse. Whenever someone reduces his evaluation of a human being to the benefits and advantages to be derived from a utility, this is a form of objectification. Whenever self-objectification blurs the awareness of both the abusers and of the victims for the true outrage, this perpetuates the abuse.
When a person is forced by slavery to labor for the owner's profit, the objectification of slaves cannot be denied. Therefore when and where slavery was abolished, it was done based upon the acceptance of the principle, that no human being exists for the purpose to be used for another person's economic benefits.
It is time to abolish all sexual abuse too by this principle:
No human being, no matter if child or grown up woman, exists for the purpose to be used for men's homeostation.
Apparent self-objectification is no ethical justification for the objectification of human beings.
A man, whose self-worth and self-esteem depends on his own correct and decent behavior only, refuses to participate in any objectification of women, even in spite of alleged and apparent female self-objectification. Unfortunately, such men are a minority of men, they are the ethical quality elite.
The majority of men are gullible and self-deceiving by willingly mistaking any appearance of women's self-objectification as sufficient justification for abusing women. As long as they can maintain their false belief in female self-objectification, they allow themselves to feel decent and no jerks.
They are oblivious of being jerks and abusers, when they objectify women directly as users of prostitute's bodies or indirectly by consuming the actors' images in pornography. They really believe the absurd myth, that women prefer this form of earning an income over a decent job, where they could use their brain instead of their body. It needs a lot of moronity in men to really believe such a myth.
