How men should be looking at women

In Scott Sander’s essay, he shares some personal thoughts and experiences throughout his life with various exposures to viewpoints. He talks about how the physical beauty of women affects men. He talks about how important it could be if girls were to walk naked in order to reduce man’s imaginations. He proves this when he says, “Until that moment, it had never made any difference to me how much or little a girl’s clothing revealed.” Scott explains how both of them, with the friend Norman, they were warned against looking at women with such lust, because their mother were women too and they would not have liked to be stared at like that. At 11, the girl older than he was revealed her body stimulated the author sexually.

Sanders defend men arguing that biology and nature plays a role in men’s sexual desires for women. He gives an example of a goat to explain how the desire is biological by stating, “Billy goats do not fret over how they should look at nanny goats. They look or don’t look, as seasons and hormones dictate.” For a man to secure the survival of his genetic line, he has to successfully, produce children. He blames biology and his DNA for the reason he desires women in a sexual way.

The author exploits another avenue, where he questions whether women intrigue men’s desire because they want the men to see and notice them. Women should try to respect themselves before impressing other people with their looks. To defend his claim, Sanders says,” Whatever their motives, these women had chosen to put themselves on display.”

According to Sander’s description of physically perfect women used in playboy’s magazine with no imperfections, is not true because not every woman has the perfect descriptions. This theory puts pressure on the other women lacking these qualities, making most of them begin revealing their body part to be noticed. Women therefore should be treated with dignity and not assumed to be sexual objects. However, in the new generation feminism would challenge Sander’s thinking, as most women tend to fight for equity with the men.

Women should stop blaming men when they look at them with sexual motives, as the attraction always comes naturally. The natural sexual attraction occurs a lot in men and therefore, they should stop being so judgmental. Men are at the same time required to look at different women differently, given each woman is solely different from another. Therefore, men are not required to judge all the women with same standards.

The growth of equity among men and women, challenges Sander’s argument of men using women as objects. Most women have stable and well-paying jobs and therefore do not find need to depend on men for material support. This has led to respect from men to women, because some of the women are their bosses and managers and therefore men have to respect them. Equitable provision of education has made many changes, and led to women being viewed as academicians and intellects and not by their sexuality.

Women are concentrating on their jobs and projects and therefore, do not have time to impress men with the way they wear or by revealing their body parts. The women managers would have to wear official cloths that do not expose any part of the body. Competition between men and women over positions in organizations and institutions, has improved some level of respect to the women because they see them as equals. This has helped the women to know their place in the society.

Stage 2

The article, Global Issues/Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, the article defines gender equality as a human right permitting women to opportunities such as economic, education and right to make their own decisions. Attainment of gender equality can be fulfilled when women are given enough opportunities to attain the potential, and the international development objectives. The article discusses gender parity in education and claims that the female gender is still given less opportunity as compared to the male ones. This can be proved from the article stating, “The higher percentage of school drop-outs includes more girls than boys.”

The article continues in the discussion of gender equality in terms of economic and political power. The author compares women’s population in the world, almost half the total, with the worth of the wealth they own less than 5 percent. Some injustices done to them include; long working hours for both girls and women, lack of rights to own land or inherit property, in most of the African cultures, reduced rate of promotions to women at work places and underrepresented in making of important decisions in various institutions. A statement from the article, “Even though political participation of women is important for the achievement of gender quality and true democracy, they are still underrepresented in the legislatures” support this. These factors discussed in the article discover Sander’s discussion on how men use women as objects. (Global Issues/Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment)

Another article by Tamara Cohen, “Not just a pretty face: Modern men prefer intelligent women to beauty” shows the evolution of the current man from being interested in the physical attractions such as curvy figure, to preferring intelligent women. The author states by saying, “When a man steals an admiring gaze at a woman, then he has been notified of the woman’s intelligence.” The article states that previously men preferred curvy women meaning they had to be fertile to give him a family, other factors that men considered include women with wifely skills such as being good in cooking. The western societies has given opportunity to women, making both genders to be equal, this has led to women choosing their in terms of appearance and not material as it used to be. The author supports these arguments by stating, “Women are less concerned with men’s health as most of them are stable financially, and therefore the only they look in man is his looks.” (Cohen, 2012)

The last article in this discussion is Ian Brown’s “Why men can't - and shouldn't - stop staring at women.”

Similar to Sanders, Billy also provides a personal life experience, where he met a girl on a bicycle wearing a miniskirt on his way to work. Even though Billy acknowledges that the girl is young enough to be her daughter, he explains how the body of this girl and her intention to wear the miniskirt and her youth triggered his interest. He explains, “My first sight of her felt like a light blow to the chest.” The author reveals men secret of feeling guilty when they see something they like but fails to act immediately. He felt guilty for failing to tell her how he felt, even though he was married and had a daughter the age of this girl. The author wonders why the act of men watching girls was posed as a bad reputation, while all the girls he interacted with told him they had no problem even if their partners observed girls passing by. He tells of a 26-year old woman about the matter and gives him this answer, “Just looking, I don't think it is offensive. But I think it's offensive if there are comments.” (Brown, 2012).

Stage 3

Both stage 1 and 2 have discussed factors that lead to how men look at women. Sanders talks about how the physical beauty of women affect men how they look at them. He shares his personal life experiences from when he was 11 years old and could still be stimulated sexually by a girl older than he was. However, the articles, “Global Issues/Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment” and “Not just a pretty face: Modern men prefer women with brains rather than beauty”, prove how facts have changed and the women have been empowered and realized their rights and position in the society, and therefore improve the respect from men.

Men should respect women, and stop treating them as objects. When a man sees a woman, he should see something else in her and not sexuality. Women should cease from dressing in an exposing manner, for the men to notice them. They should observe moral and ethics in dressing.

Works Cited

Brown, I. (2012, March 23). Why men can't - and shouldn't - stop staring at women. THE GLOBE AND MAIL, pp. 1-3.

Cohen, T. (2012, September 9). Not just a pretty face: Modern men prefer women with brains rather than beauty. Mail Online, pp. 1-2.

Global Issues/Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment. (n.d.). Peace Corps.