Women Are Not Consumer Goods: Lessons on Modesty and Chastity

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Content note: sexism, objectification of women, rape and sexual assault, victim blaming for rape and sexual assault.

Women are not consumer goods.

When women are given advice about sex and clothing, when we’re advised to be chaste and modest, a striking amount of that advice compares us to consumer goods. We’re told that we’re chewing gum, and nobody wants gum other people have chewed. We’re told that we’re candy, and nobody wants candy without the wrapper. We’re told that we’re iPads, so our manufacturer recommends using covers which protect us and make us more beautiful. We’re told that we’re diamonds or pearls, buried deep in the ground or the ocean, valuable because we’re hard to reach. We’re told that we’re shoes, and nobody wants used, smelly, second-hand shoes. We’re told that we’re apples: the best are the hard-to-reach ones at the top of the tree, the worst are the rotten ones that fall off the tree and can be picked up by anyone, and only the best of men will go to the trouble of climbing the tree for the apples that are hard to get. We’re told that we’re cars or expensive watches or wads of cash, and if we’re left unlocked, or are flashed in dangerous neighborhoods, we should expect to be stolen. We’re told that we’re meat, and if we’re dangled in front of hungry dogs we should expect to get eaten. We’re told that we’re cows and that sex with us is milk, and we’re asked why anyone would buy the cow if they could get the milk for free.

And somehow, all of this is supposed to make us feel valued, and is supposed to teach us to value ourselves.

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I have some important information: Women are human beings. We are not gum or candy; we are not diamonds or iPads; we are not watches or wads of cash; we are not cows or milk. Women are human beings — and when you treat us like consumer goods, you are not treating us as valuable. It doesn’t matter whether you’re treating us like expensive goods or cheap ones, whether you’re calling us diamonds or gum. When you treat us like consumer goods, you’re treating us as less than human. You’re teaching others to treat us as less than human. And you’re teaching us to think of ourselves as less than human.

Women are human beings — so we own our bodies, and make our own decisions about our lives. We get to decide who we’ll have sex with — one person, five people, a hundred people, no people. And we get to decide whether we want to have sex with people who think we’re disgusting if we’ve had sex with anyone else. We get to decide what to wear — sundresses, shirtdresses, jeans and T-shirts, khakis and polo shirts, shorts and tank tops, sweats, suits. And we get to decide if we want to be attractive to people who see us as candy, a consumable treat that only they get to unwrap.

Sex isn’t dirt or decay: it’s an experience, and human beings have experiences. And human bodies deteriorate with time, no matter what we wear or how many people we have sex with. Yes, human bodies often need protection: we protect our bodies from sun and weather, from glass on the sidewalk or parasites in the ground, from injury if we play sports, from heat and smoke if we’re firefighters, from the vacuum of space if we’re astronauts. We should not have to protect our bodies from other people who see us as candy or apples or meat, available to anyone with the right purchase price, there for the taking if they’re hungry enough.

I keep thinking about Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped from her Salt Lake City home at age 14 and raped repeatedly for nine months. She spoke at Johns Hopkins University in 2013 about how her abstinence-only sex education, and the sexual teachings she received as a Mormon, made it harder for her to run or call for help:

One of the questions that is most commonly asked of me, “Well, why didn’t you run away, why didn’t you yell, why didn’t you scream?”… I remember in school one time I had a teacher who was talking about abstinence and she said, “Imagine you’re a stick of gum and when you engage in sex, that’s like being chewed. And then if you do that lots of times, you’re going to become an old piece of gum and who’s going to want you after that.”… I was raised in a very religious household, one that taught that sex was something special that only happened between a husband and a wife who loved each other, and that’s the way I had been raised and that’s what I had been determined to follow, that when I got married then and only then would I engage in sex. And so for that first rape I felt crushed, I felt so dirty and so filthy. I understand so easily why someone wouldn’t run because of that alone.

But it isn’t only rape victims who are taught that sexual experience, even sexual experience against their will, makes them worthless. It isn’t only rape victims who are taught that if they’re not well-protected, they should expect to be taken and have no right to complain. It’s all women — every woman who’s been told that living her life makes her depreciate in value, that having experiences means she’s been used, that she has a manufacturer and should follow the care instructions, that she’s only valuable when she’s difficult to attain.

If you want to value women, and you want women to value ourselves, stop telling us that we’re iPads or watches, candy or cows. Women are human beings. That is what makes us valuable.

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Women Are Not Consumer Goods: Lessons on Modesty and Chastity
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12 thoughts on “Women Are Not Consumer Goods: Lessons on Modesty and Chastity

  1. 1

    Course, there is another side to the stupidity of the comparison being made – a classic car driven by someone famous, the last piece of gum from the same, a pair of boots that has actually had some wear, instead of being stiff, and pokey, and hard on your feet. Heck, a computer that has had all of your favorite software installed on it, whether you where the one that did that, or someone else, or for some, just finding out what is on a computer they just got, which no one remembered to erase. There are a million reasons why something “used”, some very good (like old furniture with a patina), to not so great (i.e., the last piece of chewing gum case), which makes “objects” far more bloody valuable for not being brand spanking new, and out of the box.

    Yet, women are supposed to be devalued for experience, for having wear and tear, for actually having some F-ing clue what they want, or practice in doing those things. How about the next idiot that tells a women who has read this offer to replace the assholes classic car, or signed baseball, or some other item with the, so obviously much more valuable, “mint from the box” version? See what they think of that idea. Because, seriously, while there is probably some level of fantasy involved in the idea of being the “first” to help a woman explore her own desires, and there may, like building your own, well, anything, be a certain value in it, most of us don’t even want to buy a limited edition figurine, when looking for a relationship – and not just because, if that was what sort of woman you think you want – you’re not supposed to take it out of the box at all, and play with it, moron. We certainly don’t won’t the logical equivalent in, so, a cell phone – case, screen, battery, but no OS, phone app, app store, or anything else installed on it. We at least want the damn thing to be “a phone”.

    What the heck actual value is there in a woman who is completely ignorant about things – especially if the guy is too? All I can think of is the insane story, from like 15+ years ago, in one of those mags that sometimes published details of medical cases – two clowns, trying to figure out how to get pregnant, all tests saying there should be no problem, years married, and.. it turns out, so deeply religious, and so “chaste before marriage”, and all that BS, that they had no clue the penis was supposed to go “in” the vagina to make babies… I mean, seriously… Isn’t that the logical conclusion of this nonsense, if certain people had their way?

    If you plan to make bloody comparisons to food, or products, pick something that actually makes sense – where actual time “living” makes the result more valuable, not less. Or, just stop making them, like Greta suggests.

  2. 3

    Kagehi @ #1: You make some valuable points. But can you please not use words like “stupidity,” “moron,” “idiot,” and “insane” as insults in my blog? Please read the Ableism Challenge by Ania Bula: it explains why, and suggests that people try not using this kind of language for a month. Thanks.

  3. 6

    Kagehi: Or the whole “New Lamps for Old” bit in Aladdin. What’s important isn’t whether your partner is “fresh” or “used”, it’s whether being with them makes all your wishes come true.

  4. 7

    Hmm. I would say, unless you are pretty vanilla, “all” is either going to be naive, or involve at least some thing that would give these purist types even more hives than they already give themselves, when ever they, as someone once put it, “contemplate someone else, some place, actually having fun.” 😉 lol

  5. 9

    and of course, the ultimate objectification: women are like cars.

    You wouldn’t leave your car unlocked…and if you did, you’d expect it to be stolen….

    …which is code for the ultimate in victim blaming. If you wear this, go here, say that, then you’re a bit like an unlocked car: you didn’t take precautions; and therefore you are at least partially complicit in any subsequent assault.

    Ugh.

  6. 10

    “When you treat us like consumer goods, you’re treating us as less than human”. It’s a pity that our society is such that an analogy between women and consumer goods is almost certainly offensive, objectifying, or restricting. You almost seem to be charging against the concept of women-object analogy itself, the fact being that although exceptions are conceivable (a woman can be strong like diamond, for example), they are almost nonexistent in the real world.

    I’ve realized that trolls will almost certainly interpret this article as a “language police” one in which you promote the prohibition of all women-consumer good analogies. Fortunately you have a heavy hand against them!

  7. 11

    and of course, the ultimate objectification: women are like cars.

    And.. ironically, also a really really bad analogy for them to use. Sure, the might be pissed if someone stole there car, but they sure as heck wouldn’t mind if it was an older model, a classic, or was owned by someone famous, or used in some famous way, or someone else customized it. The analogy just gets creepier if you use “motor bike”, I think. But.. yeah. Lets see any of these people reject a custom made model of some famous bike, used in a major film, in which a dozen other people rode it, and which is.. like 90 years old, or something. Then.. they can whine about a woman that has so much as “one time” been “test driven”, and is thus no longer “new”.

    Yeah, like Ignacio says, its not about “language”, its about using the comparisons in only one freaking way, which is always negative, and often absurdly so. Since, as I said before, though.. somewhat poorly, and again here – there is almost nothing they compare women to that wouldn’t be a positive, if they where not intent on making a negative statement, and which, when talking about the real thing, would get them looked at, and asked, “What? Is there something seriously wrong with you that you don’t want that?”

    Well, the exception is, obviously, those really horrible comparisons to things you just flat throw out, and no one actually would ever buy used, but.. heck.. even then there is some clown out there that would buy a partial glass of freaking water, if there was documentation suggesting that Elvis was the last person to drink from it, and similar insane things. Bets that someone would want, to use one of their most famously bad analogies, the last stick of gum the man chewed too…

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