Yes, it was a Joke. But it points up a real question.

[redqueen]

1. Wow. *smh*

I'll leave it to this group to attempt to work out the hugely confusing issue of which behaviors are more socialized and which more innate. I hope you do realize you're on well-trodden ground here. (As was the case with the Watson / Dawkins debacle.)

IMNSHO: it's quite obviously often a mix, but as for the issue of the all too common insistence that objectification is somehow justified, that's simply laughable. We have an innate desire to shit wherever we feel like it, steal things, and all manner of other primitive behaviors. We get that socialized out of our systems fairly early.

As for the idea that men have some innate tendency to want to engage in such oppressive behavior, until we smash the patriarchy, and disabuse ourselves of its insistence that women ARE sex objects, we won't ever have any idea how much of men's disrespectful and oppressive treatment of women they can honestly claim is just 'boys being boys' and how much is simply a socialized mechanism to reinforce and maintain the sexist, misogynist status quo.