Anna Grant
Less Than Human? Media Use, Objectification of Women, and Men’s Acceptance of Sexual Aggression (2019)
Psychology of Violence
Rita C. Seabrook, L. Monique Ward and Soraya Giaccardi
The authors of this article begin their argument by bringing the audience’s attention to the violence and sexual portrayal of women that appear in sexually explicit media. The authors state that 88% of sexually explicit media involves some sort of physical aggression towards women and that frequent exposure to this form of media consumption is one of the many factors that lead to a mindset that is accepting of sexual aggression towards women. They then continue to expand their media argument past sexually explicit media, and to other types of media that portray women in some sort of sexual context, like sexualized music videos. This type of media can be associated with a mindset that is supportive of rape myths and an acceptance of non-consensual sexual attempts. Male-dominated media environments like sports or men’s magazines can also feed into a mindset that is supportive of rape myths and a further acceptance of non-consensual sexual attempts. The authors question why general media consumption is linked to a mindset that is supportive of rape myths and sexual violence attitudes when the media being displayed is not explicitly sexual. They hypothesize that the objection of women might be the reason that men who have consumed media that degrade the image of women might be a leading cause as to why women are treated the way they are socially. To “objectify” something means to see it as a mere object rather than as an individual. So if men objectify women, then they see women as lesser than they are, and as objects for their own personal needs and desires. This acceptance of objectifying women is hypothesized by the authors to be associated with a mindset that is supportive of rape myths and an acceptance of non-consensual sexual attempts.
The authors decided to conduct their experiment by replicating and expanding on an experiment that was conducted by Wright and Tokunaga back in 2016. They changed three major study fields with their experiment though. While Wright and Tokunaga focused specifically on reality TV media, the authors of this article focused also on sitcoms and dramas. They also asked participants what their media consumption was like to gauge a better understanding of what specific genres of media resulted in the highest degree of an altered mindset that objectified women. Also, while Wright and Tokunaga only examined rape myth acceptance, the authors of this article measured the behaviors of the participants and how likely they would be to accept sexual aggression, in addition to an acceptance of rape myth. They also measured sexual deceptive behaviors, which gauged the participant’s sense of respect for their sexual partners. Likely hood to use nonconsensual drugs or sexually deceptive means was also measured in this article’s experiments. The authors state that they believe that having a measurement of sexual deception will add an elevated level of understanding to their study of media, objectification, and sexual violence acceptance.
To conduct their experiment, the authors had 411 undergraduate men take a survey that focused on sexual violence towards women and excluded the results of men who did not identify as either straight or bisexual since men who are exclusively gay do not have any sort of attraction towards women. The authors were left with 238 undergraduate men who ranged from ages 17 to 27. Six different surveys were conducted: sexual deception, rape myth acceptance, acceptance of objectification of women, TV exposure by genre, sports programming exposure, and pornography exposure. The first survey conducted, sexual deception, asked questions like if participants had ever gotten a woman extremely drunk in order to have sexual relations with them, or if they had ever said ‘I love you’ to a woman just to coax them into having sexual relations with them. The second survey, rape myth acceptance, asked questions like whether the participants believed a woman going over to a man's house on the first date meant she is willing to have sex. The third survey, acceptance of objectification of women, asked participants questions like if they thought it was okay for a man to stare at the body of a woman that they did not know. The fourth survey, TV exposure by genre, presented participants with a list of TV programs and asked them if they had watched said programs, and if so, how many episodes they had watched. There were 15 reality shows, 14 sitcoms, and 12 drama shows that participants were asked questions about. The fifth survey, sports programming exposure, asked participants how many hours of sport-related programs they watched per week. The sixth and final survey, pornography exposure, asked participants to indicate how often they watched pornographic media.
After examining their data, the conclusion that the authors found was that the consumption of reality TV shows, sports programs, and pornography has a high association with the acceptance of objectifying women, as well as a higher acceptance of rape myth acceptance and more frequent acts of sexual deception. The authors suggest that in order to combat the effect that media has on men and their mental image of women, media literacy programs that educate men and people in general on proper sex education and the portrayal of women as individuals, as opposed to overtly sexualized objects, could be a step in the right direction. I agree with the study that was conducted in this article, and am quite disappointed that this mindset that some men have is a part of our current society. With the media portraying women the way they are right now, we may never resolve this issue that puts women around the world in danger every day. So I agree with the authors when they suggested that we should try and re-educate the men and people who hold this mindset that objectifies women.