2025-02-22 22:05:28 ¶ ●

@sicklyseraphnsuch said (in response to Jake’s apotheosis-as-objectification):

> I havent collected my thoughts completely. But I noted this opening line: “this development represents not Manhattan’s increasing detachment from humanity, but rather an escalation of his ongoing objectification-as-woman.”
> Wouldn’t it be essentially the same though? If I understand this essay correctly, objectification and a “a sexy powerful” being in the shape of a woman go hand in hand. Wherein if object, then not woman/human. It’s like that saying - angels have more in common with printers than people. Objects bear a function, and internally morally neutral, especially as they are devoid of human faults, especially missish ailments like emotions.
> as you later say: “a woman is ‘allowed’ to be a person or to be powerful, but never both simultaneously, because, crucially, a woman who is allowed to be a person makes mistakes.”
> then jake at the height of his power, and objectified as a woman, would make him more object than person at this point? unless im like way off base

well pointed-out! don’t worry, I think you got my point; the confusion is an ambiguity of wording on my part, but it’s an ambiguity that serves well to illustrate the gendered colours of the point I’m making, so I’ll go into it a bit.

Manhattan’s apotheosis and woman’s objectification absolutely are both forms of “detachment from humanity”: the purpose of my distinguishing the two is that Manhattan’s detachment is self-imposed. He deliberately removes himself from personhood by strict adherence to what might be best described in this context as rigidly masculine values: a suppression of emotional responses and total dedication to logic above all else - put another way, rigid adherence to 'objectivity’. The objectification-as-woman is in contrast pressed upon Jake by outside forces: though we observe that Jake is a highly emotionally-driven being, his feelings are necessarily stifled by external actors who seek to project their own desires unto him.

I should also point out that in generalising apotheosis-as-objectification I have engaged in a degree of willful conflation, between objectification-by-author or by-audience (external to the story) and objectification-by-characters (within the story). Rei is such a strong example of the all-powerful woman cliche in part because she is equally subject to both; her transformation into the Giant Naked Rei is essentially the successful completion of a lifetime of grooming into sexual and maternal object by Evangelion’s various conspirators. But for Rose Tyler and Jean Grey, their objectification is only implicit; the minimisation of their human agency is not the agenda of a shadowy cabal but rather the simple result of living as human women in a patriarchal society. In this sense their apotheoses are almost in spite of objectification, rather than a logical extension of it (think again of Jake’s powers flaring up the most dramatically when his emotional agency is stripped from him) - as I say, at least within Doctor Who’s established paradigm of power, Tyler becoming the Bad Wolf is an act above her station. The Bad Wolf and the Phoenix’s objectification is exterior to the text; a re-claiming of the powerful woman as sex object for male consumption, just as the mundanely powerful woman like Lara Croft is empowered within-text but objectified from without. To the point: I believe that Beyond Canon’s reflective nature (and Homestuck’s generally) puts it in the perfect position to tackle the history and tropes associated with objectification-by-audience using a character like Jake who has a history of being objectified by his fellow characters.