Women are More Than Just a Slab of Meat
Do men view women as a slab of meat and bones because of their upbringing or because of the way science views the human body?
Throughout the years, the way women have been treated has made little if any progression. Women are consistently considered to be an accessory to the male gender. Why is that?
Men seem to have this stigma that they have been and will continue to be the more superior sex. There seems to have been an implementation of this standard due to the how men have always been considered to be the breadwinners in their households. Throughout time, since men were always the head of their households, it is assumed that men have acquired this way of thinking through the experiences that they have encountered. An elite position for a man to hold that would have given him a strong sense of dominance over women would be in the medical field. When experimentation on the human body became something that was prominent in the medical field, it appears as though the body was looked at as more of a set of organs, flesh and bones; completely dehumanizing how people are looked at. Could the medical standpoint have had an effect with how there has not been any progression for how women are viewed?
Michel Foucault discusses this idea that doctors, during his lifetime, considered the body to be more of an accessory to experimentation, i.e. a piece of meat that did not really have any purpose. This has since become an issue because doctors have only considered medical issues that are physical within the body, this leaves out mental illness. Mental illness affects people everywhere of all ages, races and genders. Though mental illness affects both men and women, this stigma promotes the idea that it is okay to look at anyone as merely a being who does not have any necessary purpose other than to live. “The body now serves as an instrument or intermediary: if one intervenes upon it to imprison it, or to make it work, it is in order to deprive the individual of a liberty that is regarded both as a right and as property.” Foucault talks about how when bodies are removed from their purpose or viewing, for example making a public execution private, they serve no other service than to represent that of science. The body is no longer a living person and is considered to be a piece of property than can be used for medical means.
When a person is looked at as an accessory to science, they lose all aspects of being considered an individual and they are grouped into a large category of an existing being that does not have any other purpose. It allows for people to become numb to the idea that people are more than just a body; the idea that people are capable of having substance, a soul even. This stigma allows people to look at people in an unrealistic way, and forget what brought them to come to this conclusion in the first place.
Because men were the only ones able to have successful careers in the medical field, they were able to promote bodies only capable of being objects. Since men were the majority gender that dominated this career field, it is safe to say that in addition to doctors thinking of people as a whole as objects, that women were more subject to this treatment because of this place in society. Women are already considered to be the lesser of the two genders that it becomes more acceptable for men to treat women as objects. If a man is the only one capable of obtaining and maintaining a career in which they are able to look at people as a type of object then it should seem normal for men to look at women as a more “worthy” test subject.
Since women are lesser of the two genders, the stigma has continued through time in which it is no longer scientists and doctors looking at people as objects, but it is entire groups of people. An important issue within this subject is that men are fully aware of what they are doing. In the 1978 Hustler magazine, Larry Flynt has a quote on the cover that reads, “We will no longer hang women up like pieces of meat”. He is aware of the objectification of women and uses it as a catch phrase in order to catch the attention of his audience. He clearly states that he is aware that women are repeatedly referred to as pieces of meat and uses it to emphasize how he will continue to think of women.
The history of looking at the human body as an object gives people the permission to continue to look at women in such a way and though there is this very large assumption that it is mainly men have objectified women, it is true that the way that people are wired that anyone can be looked at as an object. This is true because of the way that people are identified. When we walk into a large group of people, we are more likely to notice that there is an alien standing in this group rather than the majority of which gender occupies the room. It is because we have become so accustomed to the idea of a human body that our brain is able to process people as merely an object.
Whether or not our brains can actually identify human bodies as objects, it does not excuse the objectification of women that happens every hour of every day.
