- This ('sex is bad', objectification) is in principle independent from misogyny or devaluation/low social status for women per se; 'sex is bad' could exist (and influence objectification) in a society where men and women are basically equals at all levels.

A false premise if there ever was one. Men cannot bear children, rendering your assertion that there can be a gender equal society a fraud or an oversight, but not true. Not by ANY stretch.

You think this does not matter? That women are the only ones who can breed? Well why do women feel entitled to dangle men like so many accoutrements? IT is not the WOMEN chasing the men, not because women do not have legs, but because men, ironically, by not being able to bear kids, are freed to do as nature intended, which is to make things jiggy with those who CAN reproduce and make babies for them.

This is completely natural and feminists naturally seem to DESPISE that men have this natural drive.

So, where do objectification and devaluation meet in the situation of women? Now, the devaluation of women (anti-female stereotypes, happily weaker and weaker as time goes by) is different from the devaluation of other groups because of the existence of sexual desire. Other groups -- say Whites and Blacks -- don't have any biological interdependence at such an important level (without sex, we'd simply go extinct as an animal species). So the relation is: because sex is an obviously important issue for men and women, one that nobody could forget about, many of the stereotypes that are used to devalue women have something to do with sex, the sexual impulse, and reproduction. Men are 'hunters', women are 'game'; men 'want it', women 'give it'; men are 'active', women are 'passive'; etc. etc. etc. So, when sex comes into the picture--when, say, a man shows sexual interest in a woman (admiring her breast, etc.), all those elements, all the devaluing stereotypes are brought back to mind: this guy finds my breasts beautiful, he is aroused by them; there's sex in the air; in sex, a man is 'active', a 'hunter', and a woman is 'passive', she is the 'game', an 'object'.

What is devalued, by your simplistic description, is the intricacy of the sex game between men and women. Men chase, for sure. Women place themselves in positions to be chased. Is this therefore PASSIVE? Of course not. You could place yourself in line to be a candidate for president and not be active, yet win the candidacy based on other qualifications. The outward actions of who chases who are only but an intricate dance puzzled out by billions of generations of breeding. To place all the blame onto men, as if they are the sole instigator, is a peculiarly feminist notion, one that is the TRUE source of why men put down women-- women have an inability to take half the responsibility in the game, preferring to slough it off onto men. Yet women are the holders of the prize too. A 100% irony if ever there was one.

Did any of THIS reality enter your calculations about why women are put down by men? Of course men feel slighted and disrespected by women AS A RESULT OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR NATURAL INSTINCTS. So they throw it back at the women.

Now, and this is perhaps the important point: because old habits die hard, we keep remembering/being influenced (consciously or unconsciously) by these associations even when they aren't (mostly) true anymore, when we've already conscioulsy transcended them. So even if the man admiring beautiful breasts does not mean to "objectify" the woman (=see her as a mere source of sexual satisfaction), even when the woman also finds sex OK... the old associations come back to mind. By lusting after me, by being aroused by my breasts, it suddenly seems to me that this is all he cares about, that he is acting on the basis of the devaluing stereotypes ('man'='hunter', 'woman'='game'), even if he is not. In truth, responding to that, I'd say: maybe he is, and maybe he isn't; and regardless of what he is thinking, I can always refuse to engage in the situation as if I implicitly accepted the devaluing stereotype too. I can think of myself as something other than 'game' while he looks at me, as, say, a 'source of sexual power' that mesmerizes him and keeps him under my control; or as anything else I want.

So, your inaccurate analysis led to the wrong conclusion. Old habits? Maybe women need to step up tot the plate and quit considering any man who looks at them as someone beneath THEM. that might be a good start. BUT THEN AGAIN, IT WOULD BE TOO MUCH WORK on women's parts, and we men know women quite often seem to want to take the easy way out.