Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
As I observe much debate around social interactions and media and especially videogames these days, I see this word used a lot. However, the meaning is always quite vague. Sometimes it can make sense, other times it makes no sense at all. Here are some senses in which it seems to be often used:
1) Appraising or thinking about someone in regard to their sexuality when they have not expressed a desire to be thought of in that regard for that moment.
This one I think is the most commonly used these days. I feel it gets to the core issue of why it has become a point of social debate and puritanism. In an effort for empathy and mutual consent in all things at all times, it has in the minds of some become as a transgression to recognize of a person things they wish not to be recognized or acknowledged. While I think this is immature, fragile, and ultimately very unrealistic to expect some sort of control over the minds of others, I can see and agree with some level of effort to maintain respectfulness in comments and to not be leering in environments where we restrain our sexuality. It is similar to the way you can easily recognize if someone is from another country, but there are definitely situations where it is more permissible to grant open recognition of it and others where you let it be an entirely passive fact. However, I think it would be more accurate to say you are sexualizing the situation rather than the person. More on why later.
2) Viewing others sexually when they have not explicitly invited you in particular to do so.
Some people go out to clubs in the most sexual presentation of themselves and try to claim it is not for the purpose of being viewed sexually. Sorry but expression and reception go hand-in-hand in general and all the more in context of social engagement such as clubs. You're not going to deck yourself out like a biker gang and express yourself in a hostile way and go to church expecting a neutral reception from others. I find this use of "sexualizing" to be a total misrepresentation of their own intentions and it is a disingenuous desire to only be wanted by those whom you want to desire you. There is no "izing" in this case but only accurate recognition of presented sexuality and engagement with life.
3) Projecting upon or depicting children, animals, robots in sexual ways.
This one to me is obviously suspect and rightfully stigmatized. They aren't there for that and lack the capacities for it and it is a misapplication of your own sexual faculties. That said, I think it is important to not allow the stigma to make one willfully blind or disingenuous about difficult realities. As youth develop sexually they start expressing and engaging with the world more sexually. This does not make it appropriate for mature adults to engage with them in these aspects, but I have seen it portrayed as immoral to even recognize when a sexually maturing youth is doing these things, as though you have to actually deny it is happening until they are acceptable age and a magic switch is flipped, otherwise mere recognition marks you as a predator.
Sorry, no, that is ridiculous. Pushing adults into a separate reality like this actually prevents them from being role models, which makes the youth more susceptible to predators who are the only ones who will offer acknowledgement/validation to this side of their person. I get it, people think acknowledgement is grooming, nobody wants that. However, stigmatizing at too high of intensity only denies reality and makes the issues worse.
4) Creating characters in media that have a sexual presentation or practice or as the audience considering these aspects of the character.
With this one I can almost understand why the term would be used since you are literally applying aspects to a character and every character is a blank slate. So yes, in completely technical terms, you are adding the sexual component and thus are sexual-izing the character. However, the term is often not used in this generic, technical manner but instead offered as a critique, as though the character is not sexual by default and you have morphed them to be so. The fact is, every character is not neutral (whatever that is) by default but rather nothing by default. You are creating what they are, you are taking aspects of humanity as it is known and putting them together into an aggregate.
Behind all of these, however, there is to me something obvious that is being overlooked and then turned into something else that doesn't make any sense at all. It would seem that sexuality is being perceived as a social construct only. It is not being viewed as something that is but rather as something that is done and that thing is only done after it has been decided, which is only allowed after social negotiation. This perception is objectively entirely false.
Sexuality is completely intrinsic to what humanity is and essential for it to continue. Without sexuality you do not have humanity. This is actually true of all living beings but let's just focus on human sexuality for this discussion. Even if you have some sort of condition that makes it so you are psychologically entirely asexual, to not really perceive or desire sexual practice with anyone, your body still holds the faculties of sexuality. Your bodily design has the shapes of sexuality inherent to it. And for the vast majority of people, as neuroscience has comprehensively found, with every social engagement your body is making sexual appraisals and selections of response completely automatically, before you even perceive a feeling, let alone give a single thought to it.
With this is mind, it is very difficult for me to see how one could legitimately be sexualizing a sexually mature human being. Rather, the action of removing sexuality from your perception or regard of them is what would be something of active participation and distortion of their being. I have seen femininity removed from certain videogame characters, turning them into rather squarish blobs in an effort to avoid making them "sexualized" and yet women in real life constantly look exactly like what is being avoided and a great many of those women are not trying to make their bodies that way, they just naturally are. Men are sexually censored less often, but it is even starting to happen there as well.
Seeing this, I can't help but feel it is actually disrespectful to do this sort of antisexual depiction of characters. How can you say you are respecting something while trying to wipe it out of existence? To respect a person you must give due acknowledgement. If I respect a mother in her motherhood, I acknowledge and show respect to the sexual form and faculties of her body which allowed her to be and even further matured through the process of bearing children. For me to take the depiction of a character with that role and remove sexuality from even being able to be perceived, it is a contradiction and disrespect of human nature.
Granted, this does not mean that characters often need to be sexual powerhouses who flaunt and indulge their sexuality at a high frequency, however it is pretty uncommon to find any human in real life who doesn't display, express, and engage in their sexuality on at least a casual level. It is absolutely not sexualization to do these things, yet I see an attitude that perceives such is the case becoming much more prevalent in media. It is also, however, not terribly rare to find people who are rather comfortable, expressive, and even engaging with their sexuality. So including a few of such characters in a diverse cast shouldn't automatically be perceived as fanservice.
Yet even if it is fanservice, it is easily debatable which fans it is serving and in what manner. It is not the nature of entertainment to only make an accurate reflection of everyday life. Most characters in entertainment are showing sides of humanity that we do not often express, either because we are not in situations that call for what is expressed, or because we actively stifle feelings or desires for sake of social harmony. Yet by allowing characters in media to cast off these inhibitions or to be larger than life in different respects, we are drawing out and giving acknowledgement to the inner drama we all feel, we are affirming and celebrating our humanity, even the parts which we do not find appropriate for our present contexts of everyday life.
With that in mind, a character being "sexualized" for the fans isn't even necessarily for the base indulgence of those who would find their sexual aspects attractive, but for many people such a character is a sort of vicarious outlet for those taboo parts of their inner life, in the exact same dynamic as characters show heroism through violent battles or confidence through sassy comebacks. Where we must be bridled, they can be free. Through playing out their stories we can express, struggle, learn, and resolve without the mess of doing it. This is a major purpose of media and so it is really absurd to see people trying to remove sexuality, something that is such a major part of us, from being a part of this process and role of media in our lives.
A somewhat fun and wholesome example of the opposite of this is in Japan. They have the chibi art style where they basically take everything under the sun and try to make cute little forms of it. Why? Because they like cute things. Why not cutify anything and everything? So they have chibi main characters of all their media. They have chibi forms of monsters like Tyrant from Resident Evil. They also have chibi versions of sexy characters from various games and anime. I have seen some westerners disturbed by this because they associate cute-ness with child-ness and so to make a "sexy" type chibi character would be wrong to them. Yet this doesn't appear to be the intentions of the chibi artists (it does exist somewhere, Rule 34) but rather they just embrace all aspects of humanity as humanity shows itself through the medium of this art style in which they specialize. I personally don't even like chibi style, but I do like the open-minded neutrality of nothing being safe from getting chibi-fied.
I don't really understand all the why and how of this movement in the west to no longer recognize and receive humanity in their observable objective variety and nature, to censor some elements. It is all the more perplexing to me when at the same time there is such a massive push to celebrate and support LGBTQ+ which is described as equal recognition, acknowledgement, and celebration of the freedom of everyone in the rainbow diversity of personal sexual identity, expression, and practice. Doesn't the suppression of common human bodily forms and cishet expressions and practices of sexuality blatantly contradict this principle? The double standard here seems to be approaching levels of self delusion and insanity with how much it denies the chasm between the provided ideals from the reality in the manifestation.
Sorry that was so long but if you made it through, I hope you found it helpful in some way even if you disagree. If you agree then I hope you found comfort in another person saying what you may not have been able to find the words for or perhaps what you have even been shamed for somewhere else. No, you are not crazy. The reality is very clearly observable. Humanity is sexual and you are not doing anything wrong by recognizing that or wishing it to be recognized and expressed in depictions of humanity.
1) Appraising or thinking about someone in regard to their sexuality when they have not expressed a desire to be thought of in that regard for that moment.
This one I think is the most commonly used these days. I feel it gets to the core issue of why it has become a point of social debate and puritanism. In an effort for empathy and mutual consent in all things at all times, it has in the minds of some become as a transgression to recognize of a person things they wish not to be recognized or acknowledged. While I think this is immature, fragile, and ultimately very unrealistic to expect some sort of control over the minds of others, I can see and agree with some level of effort to maintain respectfulness in comments and to not be leering in environments where we restrain our sexuality. It is similar to the way you can easily recognize if someone is from another country, but there are definitely situations where it is more permissible to grant open recognition of it and others where you let it be an entirely passive fact. However, I think it would be more accurate to say you are sexualizing the situation rather than the person. More on why later.
2) Viewing others sexually when they have not explicitly invited you in particular to do so.
Some people go out to clubs in the most sexual presentation of themselves and try to claim it is not for the purpose of being viewed sexually. Sorry but expression and reception go hand-in-hand in general and all the more in context of social engagement such as clubs. You're not going to deck yourself out like a biker gang and express yourself in a hostile way and go to church expecting a neutral reception from others. I find this use of "sexualizing" to be a total misrepresentation of their own intentions and it is a disingenuous desire to only be wanted by those whom you want to desire you. There is no "izing" in this case but only accurate recognition of presented sexuality and engagement with life.
3) Projecting upon or depicting children, animals, robots in sexual ways.
This one to me is obviously suspect and rightfully stigmatized. They aren't there for that and lack the capacities for it and it is a misapplication of your own sexual faculties. That said, I think it is important to not allow the stigma to make one willfully blind or disingenuous about difficult realities. As youth develop sexually they start expressing and engaging with the world more sexually. This does not make it appropriate for mature adults to engage with them in these aspects, but I have seen it portrayed as immoral to even recognize when a sexually maturing youth is doing these things, as though you have to actually deny it is happening until they are acceptable age and a magic switch is flipped, otherwise mere recognition marks you as a predator.
Sorry, no, that is ridiculous. Pushing adults into a separate reality like this actually prevents them from being role models, which makes the youth more susceptible to predators who are the only ones who will offer acknowledgement/validation to this side of their person. I get it, people think acknowledgement is grooming, nobody wants that. However, stigmatizing at too high of intensity only denies reality and makes the issues worse.
4) Creating characters in media that have a sexual presentation or practice or as the audience considering these aspects of the character.
With this one I can almost understand why the term would be used since you are literally applying aspects to a character and every character is a blank slate. So yes, in completely technical terms, you are adding the sexual component and thus are sexual-izing the character. However, the term is often not used in this generic, technical manner but instead offered as a critique, as though the character is not sexual by default and you have morphed them to be so. The fact is, every character is not neutral (whatever that is) by default but rather nothing by default. You are creating what they are, you are taking aspects of humanity as it is known and putting them together into an aggregate.
Behind all of these, however, there is to me something obvious that is being overlooked and then turned into something else that doesn't make any sense at all. It would seem that sexuality is being perceived as a social construct only. It is not being viewed as something that is but rather as something that is done and that thing is only done after it has been decided, which is only allowed after social negotiation. This perception is objectively entirely false.
Sexuality is completely intrinsic to what humanity is and essential for it to continue. Without sexuality you do not have humanity. This is actually true of all living beings but let's just focus on human sexuality for this discussion. Even if you have some sort of condition that makes it so you are psychologically entirely asexual, to not really perceive or desire sexual practice with anyone, your body still holds the faculties of sexuality. Your bodily design has the shapes of sexuality inherent to it. And for the vast majority of people, as neuroscience has comprehensively found, with every social engagement your body is making sexual appraisals and selections of response completely automatically, before you even perceive a feeling, let alone give a single thought to it.
With this is mind, it is very difficult for me to see how one could legitimately be sexualizing a sexually mature human being. Rather, the action of removing sexuality from your perception or regard of them is what would be something of active participation and distortion of their being. I have seen femininity removed from certain videogame characters, turning them into rather squarish blobs in an effort to avoid making them "sexualized" and yet women in real life constantly look exactly like what is being avoided and a great many of those women are not trying to make their bodies that way, they just naturally are. Men are sexually censored less often, but it is even starting to happen there as well.
Seeing this, I can't help but feel it is actually disrespectful to do this sort of antisexual depiction of characters. How can you say you are respecting something while trying to wipe it out of existence? To respect a person you must give due acknowledgement. If I respect a mother in her motherhood, I acknowledge and show respect to the sexual form and faculties of her body which allowed her to be and even further matured through the process of bearing children. For me to take the depiction of a character with that role and remove sexuality from even being able to be perceived, it is a contradiction and disrespect of human nature.
Granted, this does not mean that characters often need to be sexual powerhouses who flaunt and indulge their sexuality at a high frequency, however it is pretty uncommon to find any human in real life who doesn't display, express, and engage in their sexuality on at least a casual level. It is absolutely not sexualization to do these things, yet I see an attitude that perceives such is the case becoming much more prevalent in media. It is also, however, not terribly rare to find people who are rather comfortable, expressive, and even engaging with their sexuality. So including a few of such characters in a diverse cast shouldn't automatically be perceived as fanservice.
Yet even if it is fanservice, it is easily debatable which fans it is serving and in what manner. It is not the nature of entertainment to only make an accurate reflection of everyday life. Most characters in entertainment are showing sides of humanity that we do not often express, either because we are not in situations that call for what is expressed, or because we actively stifle feelings or desires for sake of social harmony. Yet by allowing characters in media to cast off these inhibitions or to be larger than life in different respects, we are drawing out and giving acknowledgement to the inner drama we all feel, we are affirming and celebrating our humanity, even the parts which we do not find appropriate for our present contexts of everyday life.
With that in mind, a character being "sexualized" for the fans isn't even necessarily for the base indulgence of those who would find their sexual aspects attractive, but for many people such a character is a sort of vicarious outlet for those taboo parts of their inner life, in the exact same dynamic as characters show heroism through violent battles or confidence through sassy comebacks. Where we must be bridled, they can be free. Through playing out their stories we can express, struggle, learn, and resolve without the mess of doing it. This is a major purpose of media and so it is really absurd to see people trying to remove sexuality, something that is such a major part of us, from being a part of this process and role of media in our lives.
A somewhat fun and wholesome example of the opposite of this is in Japan. They have the chibi art style where they basically take everything under the sun and try to make cute little forms of it. Why? Because they like cute things. Why not cutify anything and everything? So they have chibi main characters of all their media. They have chibi forms of monsters like Tyrant from Resident Evil. They also have chibi versions of sexy characters from various games and anime. I have seen some westerners disturbed by this because they associate cute-ness with child-ness and so to make a "sexy" type chibi character would be wrong to them. Yet this doesn't appear to be the intentions of the chibi artists (it does exist somewhere, Rule 34) but rather they just embrace all aspects of humanity as humanity shows itself through the medium of this art style in which they specialize. I personally don't even like chibi style, but I do like the open-minded neutrality of nothing being safe from getting chibi-fied.
I don't really understand all the why and how of this movement in the west to no longer recognize and receive humanity in their observable objective variety and nature, to censor some elements. It is all the more perplexing to me when at the same time there is such a massive push to celebrate and support LGBTQ+ which is described as equal recognition, acknowledgement, and celebration of the freedom of everyone in the rainbow diversity of personal sexual identity, expression, and practice. Doesn't the suppression of common human bodily forms and cishet expressions and practices of sexuality blatantly contradict this principle? The double standard here seems to be approaching levels of self delusion and insanity with how much it denies the chasm between the provided ideals from the reality in the manifestation.
Sorry that was so long but if you made it through, I hope you found it helpful in some way even if you disagree. If you agree then I hope you found comfort in another person saying what you may not have been able to find the words for or perhaps what you have even been shamed for somewhere else. No, you are not crazy. The reality is very clearly observable. Humanity is sexual and you are not doing anything wrong by recognizing that or wishing it to be recognized and expressed in depictions of humanity.
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The initial definition it provides (objectification, viewing someone in a sexual manner exclusively) is far more narrow than the ways the term is used and leveraged as a judgment in common discourse. My post examines those other ways and offers the counterpoint that sexuality is intrinsic to humanity, not a mere social construct, and giving it due place and recognition is the only way to respect it.
