Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ora!ora!daemon
From: dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Dave Gross)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Sex and Cards
Summary: A baseball card collector responds...
Message-ID: <26f282b6.d44@petunia.CalPoly.EDU>
Date: 15 Sep 90 19:36:22 GMT
References: <12619962177008@osu-20.ircc.ohio-state.edu>
Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Organization: League for Spiritual Discovery
Lines: 54
Approved: ambar@ora.com

according to PUTNAM-L@osu-20.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Lee Putnam):
>The older men
>bought the magazines and the small kids concentrated on the cards.  As
>I sat, I thought about the comparisons between the two.  Kids buy
>these cards so that they can "own" a certain person - say Pete Rose.
>By possessing a Pete Rose card the kid feels he knows everything about
>the person (from the info on the back) and also has ownership of the
>said person.  If the kid feels like it, he can trade the card, trade
>the person, for someone else if a deal can be worked out with another
>card owner.  They learn that people are commodities.  Later in life,
>they will treat women the same way, as commodities.  Traded with
>friends, valued highly (sometimes), and thrown out (if it's
>"worthless").

>Does any of this make sense???

Well...  I think it goes a bit overboard, actually.  My own interpretation,
which may also go overboard, is that in "adult" magazines, women and men
who meet a fairly common standard of "beauty" or "sexiness" are collected
by people who enjoy these qualities.  The people in the pictures are valued
according to how well they meet those standards, and not on much else (brains,
for instance).  Baseball cards depict men who meet a fairly rigid standard
of physical talent and success, and are collected by people who enjoy these
qualities (or by those who wish to vicariously participate in these qualities).
The people on the baseball cards are valued according to how well they meet
those standards, and not on much else (for instance, Pete Rose cards are
still worth a lot of money, regardless of the fact that he is now a
convicted felon and has fallen from public grace).

Treating pictures and baseball cards as commodities is not the same as
treating people as commodities; something has to bridge that gap.  If you
see a whole lot of beautiful women depicted as commodities; and not many
beautiful women depicted as people in their own right, you are going to
start treating beautiful women as commodities until you are educated as to
their personhood.
 
Similarly, if I were to meet Davey Lopes (Dodger 2nd baseman, hero of my
childhood), I would think of him as a hero and as a baseball player, and
probably wouldn't treat him like just a fellow human being.  I might even
be struck speechless with awe.
 
I'd feel like a groupie.  Which reminds me of the good discussion in Warren
Farrell's most recent book:  "She's a genetic celebrity; He's a genetic
groupie" about how inadequate men feel around good looking women because
of how they've been brought up to see these women as hard-to-pursue ideals.
 
But I'll let you look that up on your own if you're interested...


-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"We're the same fathers today as we were yesterday...  The term `visitation'
 implies that the father becomes a second-class citizen.  He's no longer the
 father.  He's the visitor."	-- Lamont Williamson