Quote:
Originally Posted by Arya Stark
Honest question, what is sexist about that thread?
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Well the obvious thing is that it's very existence normalizes the idea of sexualizing and objectifying women. After all, it's simply taken for granted that a supposedly gender neutral hockey forum has a massive girlie pic thread.
Second, it's mostly just very heavily photoshopped pics. Some of the photoshops are so grotesque that I honestly think only people who have not seen a lot of naked women in real life could find the pictures attractive. At least for me it's
uncanny valley galore.
This seriously distorts the ideas of beauty, and the thread is only about women, so again, sexist. This if course is not a CP thing, it's just the world.
Third is of course the types of pictures in those threads. It's the part where it gets complicated, which is why I'm going to skip the more radical feminist views (which I'm aware of, but it really is a complicated topic) and just point out some stuff which I think is more blatantly problematic.
It's not a CP thing as such, if anything that thread is actually pretty wholesome as far as threads like that go. It's just the way that our culture thinks a sexy woman should look and pose, which a lot of the time is
very subservient or pretty much like
a piece of meat.
And then there's pics where there's a decent chance
the girl in the picture did not mean for the pics to start making the rounds in the internet. And of course just
random pics of celebs doing everyday stuff. Admiration, sure, but also support of an extremely disturbing paparazzi culture around women celebrities.
Links are recent examples from that thread, and pictures which made me seriously cringe. That thread is not the place for that discussion however. But when there's a thread about this stuff where you're supposed to accept things as they are, it does perpetuate a problematic culture.
All that said, I don't think it's a major issue. It's just CP being the way the world is. Yes, you have to change the world one piece at a time if you want to get it done, but the hot women thread of CP is not a hill I'm ready to die on.
Maybe some day I'll start an actual topic about whether or not it should be removed, and I would honestly be happy if it did.
(I could also go on about the problem with presenting so many women so subserviently, but I think it would just be derailing.)