Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by: Andrea ... - Feminish

ment. It can also be seen as the culmination of a trend inevolution. ”43 In Tripp’s rather surreal portrait of progress, theperson in question is male, since Tripp, a disciple of Kinsey, insiststhat women have virtually no sex drive at all; and psychologists ofall persuasions concur that real objectification is a male event, sinceobjectification is necessary for arousal and arousal always meanserection. Objectification signifies the male’s capacity for individualismand also his extreme selectivity and discernment, most clear,according to Tripp, in the situation of the homosexual male, whereboth partners by definition objectify:Homosexual promiscuity, in particular, frequently entails aremarkable amount of discrimination. Even a person who neverwants a second contact with any of his partners may spendmuch time selecting from dozens or even hundreds of possibilities.In fact, some of the most promiscuous individualssustain considerable frustration not from any lack of opportunitybut from being exceedingly selective. 44T ripp believes that this evolutionary summit has a biologicalsource: “The cortical organization of human [sic] sexuality is suchthat it eventually becomes keyed to specific cues, or to wholecontexts of association. ”45 The cortical organization of the male—responsible in Tripp’s view for the fact of sexual objectification andall its attendant virtues (individuality, selectivity, discrimination,and promiscuity itself)—is superior to that of the female, wholumbers along with her mere capacity for unlimited orgasm and herdull taste for personality. T ripp’s phrase “whole contexts ofassociation, ” which sounds expansive rather than constricting, inreality means a program, a scenario, a response to preordainedevents that must proceed according to script for the male tomaintain arousal. “On close examination, ” Tripp explains, fullyarticulating the wisdom of our time, “nearly every adult’s [sic]highest level of response is limited to relatively few situations thatfulfill specific personal demands— demands that are decidedlyfetishlike in character. ”46