I’ve always been contemptuous of objections to objectification. We all do it to each other, men and women alike; I think it’s part of the human condition and to rail against is akin to railing against lust itself. What matters, it seems to me, is to pay sufficient attention to how much and especially how you do it. Hence I was amused to see this paragraph from the frighteningly-brilliant Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic:

A few weeks ago my wife asked me if I would ever engage in cat-calling. I told her that as I am now–respected writer with a son in private school, a wife studying at an Ivy, and latte at the ready–I would not. But had things gone some other way (as they easily could have) I can’t say what I’d do. Street harassment is a kind of implied violence, a tool most embraced by those who lack the power to set laws, men who are in doubt of themselves. Real men objectify women with dignity and decorum.