Poirot, "Ever asked yourself why "women's workplaces" aren't festooned with pictures of scantily clad blokes? It's because women don't feel the need to reduce men to merely a sexual entity. One can only assume that it's men's way of "putting them in their place" as an expression of a will to power and rising in proportion to women's increased autonomy."

That's given some food for thought. The workplaces I've been have not generally been ones where festooning is allowed, the closest I can recall was a welders bay many years ago and the impression was more of shrine than putting anyone in their place. I've little doubt that the other occurs but it's worth remembering that different people have different reasons for their choices.

I have seen the fireman's calendars hanging from more than one woman's office desk in environments where similar pictures of women would have earned at best a requirement for swift removal and possibly disciplinary action.

I do think that overall there are some difference in the way men and women think about that stuff. Men do seem to be more driven by looks in the same way that women are more driven by a males ability to provide. Neither are absolutes nor do they encompass all that most see in the other gender.

I don't think that a lot men reduce women "to merely a sexual entity". It's an aspect of women that's important to men but not the only one. More easily pot into a picture than the others perhaps and probably more relevant in a picture of someone you are never likely to know.

I'd also been thinking about the contents of women's magazines and how much of the content of them is scantly clad women.

R0bert

Yes R0bert, I agree: "I don't think that a lot men reduce women "to merely a sexual entity". It's an aspect of women that's important to men but not the only one. More easily pot into a picture than the others perhaps and probably more relevant in a picture of someone you are never likely to know."

I think that when a man looks at a picture of a beautiful women he doesn't just see a body; he sees a human being, and as well as thinking she's beautiful and sexy-looking he makes a judgement about the sort of person she is. It might be wrong, it might be an idealisation, but it's there, and it doesn't just consist of sex-related thoughts."Shrine" is an excellent way of describing what you'd find in a welder's bay. I quite like that.

One of the difficult things about talking about pornography is that there are so many presumptions that exist in our culture to the effect that men "experience certain things", that you need to unpack them all in the course of the discussion - which is difficult because these things so dominate the language that is used to talk about pornography that without them it's hard to find the words to talk about it with. To say for example that men "objectify" women is totally absurd, and misanthropic, but for whatever reason (as in, men have been saying "whatever" to that accusation for longer than is good for them), that concept has become so ubiquitous that it is now the default that men have to defend themselves from, even though they never did it to begin with.