Objectify Yourself

Those of you who have been around long enough will remember this one…

Simple Minds’ attribute their gospelly tune from 1986, in part, to the influence Sly and the Family Stone and the music exec, Jimmy Iovine. The lyrics go like this… and anyway… have a listen; it’s a great tune. Anthem-like.

Is this the age of the thunder and rage
Can you feel the ground move ‘round your feet?
If you take one step closer, it’ll lead to another
The crossroad above is where we meet
I shout out for shelter, I need you for something
The whole world’s out, they’re all on the street

Control yourself, love is all you need
Control yourself, in your eyes
Sanctify yourself, sanctify (sanctify)
Be a part of me, sanctify (sanctify)
Sanctify yourself, sanctify (sanctify)
Sanctify yourself, set yourself free

In pictures of living, in bloodshot a vision
Sweet miracles and strange circumstances
I see the sun up, the showdown, the cool winds that blow down
On the big beat that lifelong romance is
You’ve got a gun in your hand, you’re making self-plans
Stay with me all through the night…

Sanctify Yourself is one of countless songs about hope and love. As we know, love songs run the gamet of emotions, though often they are about broken hearts or betrayal. Occasionally, they are uplifting and inspiring too.

What are your favourites?

I have a couple battling for top spot — With or Whithout You by U2 and Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls. I’ve had the good fortune to see both performed live and sobbed my way throughout.

But I digress…

So, recently I was listening to this Simple Minds’ song — and then unbidden, the chorus rewrote itself in my head.

Endorse yourself, charge a little fee,

Endorse yourself, let them in to see,

Objectify yourself, ‘jectify (‘jectify)

Be a thing for me, ‘jectify (‘jectify)

Objectify yourself, ‘jectify (‘jectify)

Objectify yourself, you’ll think you’re free…

In that moment of song slaying, I realised that I was a long way from being done with exploring the topic from my previous Medium post about the commodification of intimacy and the sinister hijacking of our ability to build close and enduring relationships.

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

Before you start howling at me, hear me out. I’m all for people (particularly women) making a living from a world of digital super-connectedness. But I am seriously angsting about how that plays out in reality, especially after listening to Victoria Sinis speak about her time as a recruiter for Only Fans, and following Laila Mickelwait’s epic battle against Porn Hub to stop child trafficking and exploitation.

So I’ll say it again… I feel like we’re constantly being sold a line here by those who stand to make money from the business of objectifying women (and men and children). In this case it’s the illusion that you can make bank on OF from simply wiggling your toes for foot fetishists.

So here are some 2024 stats about OF to think about — from Signhouse:

• Top 1% of the creators earn 33% of the income
• Top 10% of the creators earn 73% of the income
• The average OnlyFans subscription is $7.20. Out of that $5.76 is kept by the creator and $1.44 is kept by the platform
• The average OnlyFans account has 21 fans
• The median account makes $180/mo. That means ~$140/mo after taxes

There are many creators on OF who quickly find out that the only way to build their audience is to stretch past what they orginally intended to do and take more risks.

And just an fyi…. from the TechReport:

• 90% of the OnlyFans users in the survey were married. (I don’t know how they sampled their survey, so there is that to consider, but I guess it shows a trend.)

At this point, I should add that I have no particular faith-based agenda underlying my discussion pointers here. I’m probably closer to being an aethesist than an agnostic (though I am, maybe, still secretly hoping to have a spiritual epiphany). BUT I am invested in human relationships, and how our deep imperative to connect and build communities is being eroded by the hidden architects of our society — Big Pharma, Big Tech and Big Porn. And no, this is not a conspiracy theory. It’s about money.

I want humanity to thrive. To be better. I really do want love — in all its positive, life-affirming forms — to prevail.

And it jerks my chain to see the falsehoods our young people are being dished up in the guise of liberty, equality, and self empowerment. Get rich, get adored, get power, get love, work on your own terms… all you have to do is obectify yourself. What’s the harm in that?

Well, let’s look at the research. One study from NYU says:

The current literature makes it clear that sexual objectification is both directly and indirectly linked to various mental health distresses and disorders in women, including anxiety, depression, disordered eating, and reduced experiences of flow and productivity. Constant experiences of sexual objectification cause women to internalize society’s scrutiny; the resulting self-objectification leads to habitual body monitoring and self-consciousness, which in turn increases feelings of body shame and appearance anxiety and diminishes states of flow. These variables can then lead to depression, which may be a risk factor in the development of disordered eating habits (Augustus-Horvath & Tylka, 2009; Szymanski & Henning, 2007; Szymanski et al., 2011)

And it’s linked to domestic violence:

The results of the first study (including 154 heterosexual women) showed that general sexual objectification victimization indirectly leads to higher psychological and physical violence through the internalization of self-silence schemas. The second study (including 165 heterosexual men) demonstrated a link between general sexual objectification perpetration and psychological and physical intimate partner violence.

Of course, it’s not only women who are are objectified, though historically and predominantly it is a larger problem for them.

Some of this can be explained through research around the perception of sexualised women as objects, who therefore cannot feel pain. This dehumanisation of women has been shown to impact outcomes for domestic violence perpetrators who go unsentenced. A second report on the same subject says that… Our results provide the first evidence that the neurophysiological responses to the vicarious experience of physical pain are dampened or even absent for sexualized women. These findings expand our understanding of the neurophysiological signatures of empathic processes and highlight the detrimental effect of a sexual-objectification bias in everyday contexts.

Wow. Sexual objectification = dehumanisation = reduced empathy for sexualised victims of violence.

It doesn’t take much to join those dots on why there has been an explosion of DV globally. According to the World Health Organisation, about 1 in 3 women have experienced intimate partner or non-partner violence.

My takeaway here, I guess, is simply this… sexual objectification might give a short-term high, but in the long term, it packs a literal knockout punch on our ability to have meaningful, safe relationships. And only those who have rigged the game are geting rich.

Nobody is getting sanctified here.