Dehumanization and Research Findings on Men’s Sexual Aggression Towards Women
“Although in theoretical discussions it will usually not be disputed that narcissism, the libidinal investment of the self, is per se neither pathological nor obnoxious, there exists an understandable tendency to look at it with a negatively toned evaluation as soon as the field of theory is left. Where such a prejudice exists, it is undoubtedly based on a comparison between narcissism and object love, and is justified by the assertion that it is the more primitive and the less adaptive of the two forms of libido distribution.” Heinz Kohut, (1966)
How is one to explain a woman’s investment in herself through proper diet and exercise and the complete reversal of these activities, replacing them with completely self-destructive behaviors (excessive alcohol consumption, over-eating, and sedentary lifestyle) if ABUSE isn’t the root cause and reason for its manifestation? It’s manifestation at the hands of abusive clandestine remote neuromodulations.
When aggression and sexual aggression is a global, ongoing problem primarily perpetrated by men, how is it the phenomenon known as targeted individuals and electronically targeted individuals being virtually ignored? I want to scream the reason for this phenomenon from every rooftop in the global world so people may be made aware of its usurpations. Many victim blame and will say, “It’s the victim's own fault.” Claiming the victim is the one who is responsible for solving the reasons behind their own targeting. Does not a greater threat to man's existence present itself here!? If 118,000 people in America are being targeted through clandestine advanced technological means, how many other people are at risk for receiving this type of abuse in the near future!?
In a British study of 190 heterosexual men, researchers investigated the correlation link between dehumanization and rape proclivity. Dehumanization was also related to unfavorable attitudes toward rape victims. Also, could we not make a similar corollary between aspects of dehumanization and acts of hostile aggression outside of sexual assault? In a second British study conducted by the same researchers, they sought to experimentally manipulate and dehumanize a woman as a part of their experiment and measure its effect on sexual aggression attitudes and interests of the 190 British males. The researchers reported that 106 heterosexual British men seemed to be particularly driven by one aspect of dehumanization and that was the denial of human uniqueness. This voices a provocative psychoanalytic insight toward prejudicial attitudes surrounding feminine identity in all of its unique forms, at least in the British culture (Bevens & Loughnan, 2019).
“Beauty provokes harassment, the law says, but it looks through men’s eyes when deciding what provokes it.” ~Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (1990).
An interesting aspect of this study would suggest that when emphasizing and highlighting women’s human uniqueness, people unwittingly may draw attention to the female as a target. And this theory can be supported by the man cases of transgender women who are assaulted and killed for the peculiar human uniqueness. Most recently in presidential news was the appointment of Dr. Rachel Levine as Secretary to Health and Human Services by the Biden administration. This raised more concern for me than joy in the thought that our nation is moving much closer to a nation based on social inclusion simply because men who feel they are women on the inside and make the necessary changes to embrace their femininity are sometimes found dead in rivers, woods, and other public areas. Transgender people ARE targets (Schmidt, Wagner, and Armus, 2021).
The proclivity of men to engage in dehumanization and objectification represent two potentially important influences on, not only sexual aggression but, aggression in general. Dehumanization is the process of perceiving and/or treating people as less than human, which can manifest in several ways. Aspects of the dehumanization process are closely connected to perceptions of nonhuman entities that dehumanized people are compared to or seem to represent, or conversely to the nature of the attributes that are denied to dehumanized people. Two forms of dehumanization are proposed, involving the denial to others of two distinct senses of humanness: characteristics that are uniquely human and characteristics that constitute human nature. Denying uniquely human attributes to others represents them as “animal-like”, and denying human nature to others represents them as objects or automata. Cognitive underpinnings to the process of dehumanization and its pervasive presence within social contexts gives us an expanded sense of dehumanization and its emergence as a phenomenon that is not unitary, is not restricted to the intergroup context, and does not occur only under conditions of conflict or extreme negative evaluation. Instead, dehumanization becomes an everyday social phenomenon, rooted in ordinary social-cognitive processes (Haslam & Loughnan, 2014; Haslam, 2006).
Listed here are some ways in which human beings have dehumanized others over the course of history. The first example has been the re-occurring institution of slavery based on ethnicity, race, and gender in both its legally accepted forms as well as it as a hidden clandestine criminal operation as seen in modern day sex trafficking. Black slaves were thought to be associated with the Devil and there are many more examples of the dehumanization process with regard to the institution of slavery starting with the fact that ancient slavery started out of financial debt.
Dehumanization occurs in pornography most often as the female sex object. Women have historically suffered forms of dehumanization as they have been historically relegated to secondary positions as caregivers and domestic housekeepers, serving in menial jobs like cooking. Women have also historically been denied rights. They have been associated with fantasies of animality, nature, and being childlike. But within the realm of pornography, it is interesting to note seven components of sexual objectification have been identified. The first “instrumentality” and “ownership” involve treating others as tools and commodities; “denial of autonomy” and “inertness” involve seeing them as lacking self-determination and agency; “fungibility” involves seeing people as interchangeable with other of their type; “violability” represents others as lacking boundary integrity; and “denial of subjectivity” involves believing that their experiences and feelings can be neglected (Nassbaum, 1999). Sexual objectification of women extends far beyond pornography to the mass culture at large as the normative emphasis on female appearance leads women to take a third-party perspective on their bodies. Many women resort to beauty by proxy in the fantasies of castration using extensive plastic surgeries and breast implants.
People with disabilities have been dehumanized, especially those with cognitive deficits. Cognitively deficient people have been subject to “organism metaphors” that compare them to parasites that infect the social body. “Animalization” also occurs, where the “feebleminded” are denied full humanity on account of their reportedly high procreation rates, their inability to live cultured lives, their presumed insensitivity to pain, their propensity for immoral and criminal behavior, and their instinctual rather than rational nature (Haslam, 2006).
In the field of medicine, people have historically been dehumanized since the institution of the modern clinic. “The concept of dehumanization features prominently in writings on modern medicine, which is said to dehumanize patients with its lack of personal care and emotional support; its reliance on technology; its lack of touch and human warmth; its emphasis on instrumental efficiency and standardization, to the neglect of the patient’s individuality; its related neglect of the patient’s subjective experience in favor of objective, technologically mediated information; and its emphasis on interventions performed on a passive individual whose agency and autonomy are neglected.” This form of dehumanization has been described as objectification and the denial of qualities associated with meaning, interest, and compassion (Haslam, 2006).
Technology in general and computers, in particular, are a common theme in work on dehumanization. Montague and Matson discussed the “technology of dehumanization” or “the reduction of humans to machines” in their book The Dehumanization of Man. Evidence of this dehumanization is reflected in the “pathological pursuit toward mechanization” that involves a pursuit for androids, robots with efficient regularity in an automaton-like rigidity and conformity, and an approach to life that is unemotional apathetic, and lacking in spontaneity (Haslam, 2006). This very aspect was “joked about” in Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives, and with the invention of neuromodulation that regulates brain activity along with synthetic implants (silicone breasts) and plastic surgery, humanity may be very well on its way to a new level of silicone-plastic usurpations of human bodies. Human objects that are regulated by superior men in order to control their behavioral responses.
With regard to criminality, the paranoia that can spark feelings towards the dehumanization of objects has transcended levels previously known. As technology has evolved at an explosive rate with global positioning systems, Android computers, Smartphones, Smart TVs, Smart Houses, Android systems, Google Earth, and Find My Device features on cellphones can now track people’s whereabouts, and biological implants that respond to electromagnetic fields which are contributing to some individuals phenomenon of gang stalking and electronic targeting and are re-enforcing and supporting the same seven components found in pornography and the sexual objectification of Objects; “instrumentality”, “ownership”, “denial of autonomy”, “inertness”, “fungibility”, “violability” and “denial of subjectivity”. In particular, it is the Object’s “violability” that is amplified with regard to electronic assaults as it strongly “represents others as lacking boundary integrity”. This holds true because the invisible nature of the electronic assaults gives the victim no way of defending him/herself. How is one supposed to protect one’s boundary integrity if that person can’t see their attacker? Theories found in the psychic life of power and theories in subjugation might help explain this abnormal psychological approach and the phenomenon known as the targeted individual (Butler, 1997).
In the area of moral exclusion and disengagement the moral dimensions of dehumanization in the context of sanctioned mass violence, focusing on the conditions under which normal moral restraints on violence are weakened. Hostility generates violence indirectly by dehumanizing victims, so that no moral relationship with the victim inhibits the victimizer’s violent behavior. Dehumanization involves denying a person “identity” — a perception of the person “as an individual, independent and distinguishable from others, capable of making choices” and “community” — a perception of the other as “part of an interconnected network of individuals who care for each other”. When people are divested of these agentic and communal aspects of humanness, they are deindividuated, lose the capacity to evoke compassion and moral emotions, and may be treated as means toward vicious ends (Haslam, 2006).
In the British study I mentioned at the beginning of this paper, the researchers reported that 106 heterosexual British men out of 190 seemed to be particularly driven by one aspect found in the demonstration of dehumanization of a woman who was manipulated as part of the research study and that aspect was the denial of human uniqueness as this research study was based in man’s proclivity towards sexual assault might we not draw a connection to the anal-sadistic universe and forms of archaic sadism? I am not suggesting that these men be considered any less human than other men because sadism is an aspect of human consciousness and all men must learn how to navigate sadistic and masochistic tendencies.
In psychological accounts of dehumanization, the delegitimizing beliefs regarding the other group or person are analyzed. These beliefs assign extremely negative characteristics and attributes to the other group or person, with the purpose of excluding it from acceptable human groups and denying it humanity. Delegitimizing beliefs share extremely negative valence, emotional activation typically from contempt and fear, cultural support, and discriminatory rejection of the outgroup or person.
In the attempt to assign delegitimizing beliefs surrounding a group or a person, the pathological attempts of using electromagnetic frequency stimulation and sedation (electromagnetic fields such as RF fields) are a part, in my opinion, of the dehumanization process as it suggests the group or the person has been “labeled inhuman, a nonhuman entity” in some way, representing them as some type of negatively valued fantasy of evil such as a “demon”, “monster”, or “Satan” as a way of providing the other person or group with a sense of superiority (Haslam, 2006).
Another way people dehumanize objects is based on a sense of their own personal values. People’s values “express their distinctive humanity,” so “beliefs about a group’s value hierarchy reveal the perceiver’s view of the fundamental human nature of the members of that group.” When an outgroup is perceived as having dissimilar values to the ingroup, it is perceived to lack shared humanity and its interests can be disrespected (Haslam, 2006). In the opening of the paper, I included a quote by Kohut. If the libidinal interest in the self is neither pathological or obnoxious, then why is it always perceived with a sense of negativity? This negativity has been labeled “prejudice” by Kohut. What makes this an “understandable tendency” to house this sense of prejudice towards objects? For example, take a woman’s libidinal interest in keeping her body healthy by routine exercising and healthy dieting? I know some women, and perhaps some men, may receive this knowledge with a sense of negativity or repudiation? Or take, for example, a woman’s or man’s libidinal interest in their aesthetic object selection with regard to marriage. What would make his or her selection be received with a sense of negativity? Would it be misogyny or misandry? Perhaps racial or ethnic prejudice? Perhaps a lack of shared values? Or is it just part of man’s tendency to delegitimize objects? Is it based on the human tendency to morally exclude and disengage certain groups and individuals from the community? The answer to this question is certainly a profound and possible yes! These all could represent a reason why certain individuals within a social order are electronically targeted and tortured.
Source:
Kohut, H. (1966). Forms and Transformations of Narcissism. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 14(2), 243–272.
Bevens, C., & Loughnan, S. (2019). Insights into Men’s Sexual Aggression Toward Women: Dehumanization and Objectification. Sex Roles, 81(12), 713–730.
Wolf, Naomi. (2002). The Beauty Myth. New York. Harper Collins.
Schmidt, Samantha, Wagner, John and Armus, Theo. “Biden selects transgender doctor Rachel Levine as assistant health secretary.” The Washington Post. Published online January 19, 2021. Retrieved online January 21, 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/19/rachel-levine-transgender-biden-hhs-pick/
Haslam, N. (2006). Dehumanization: An Integrative Review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(3), 252–264.
Haslam, N., & Loughnan, S. (2014). Dehumanization and Infrahumanization. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 399–423.
Nussbaum, M.C. (1999). Sex and social justice. Oxford, England. Oxford University Press.
Montague, A., & Matson, F. (1983). The dehumanization of man. New York. McGraw-Hill.
Ira Levine. (1972) The Stepford Wives. New York. Random House.
