...that there needs to be a study to "prove" that sexually objectifying women can actually impair their cognitive abilities, since "OMG that dude's ogling has made me so self-conscious that I can't even remember what I was going to say" strikes me as one of those experiences of womanhood so universal that it's tough to believe it would warrant investigation.
But that's gender privilege in a nutshell, isn't it? An experience understood intuitively since the age of "I'm getting boobies" for women is something necessitating study as a a not-fully-understood aspect of human experience.
Or, more simply, straight men are still considered the norm and women are still considered a deviation from that norm.
Straight men's experiences (ogling women) are hence widely represented; our entire mainstream media culture is based on the straight man's gaze. But women's experiences at the end of that gaze are still uncharted, unexplored territory.
Huh. I wonder what happens to women when they're ogled?
This is the result of women's experiences being routinely relegated to "specialized" human experience and thus not comprehensively incorporated into narratives about Being Human.
[H/T to Shaker Clare.]
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