Thus, “objectification” isn’t a problem in a Busby Berkeley dance number, but it is a problem with an erotic pole dancer. Because the former isn’t sexual, while the latter is.

That’s the idea, anyhow.

David Alexander,

That is the only point I was making. Perhaps someone could explain the concept of “objectification” in such a way that I would understand how it justifies a negative view of erotic dancing. But I don’t get it. Take this (amazing) Busby Berkeley number, for example. The dancers lose their individuality and sometimes even their human form. The same is true for pornography. There may be all kinds of valid arguments against it, but I don’t see how claiming it turns people into objects is a convincing argument.

Is all dancing, whether strip-tease, ballet, or ball room, to be reduced to the same thing, merely a matter of skill? I am not sure whether the concept of objectivization is best in addressing prurience but I don’t think it is used to question whether strip tease is dancing or skillful but rather whether it appeals to a persons prurient desire or not. The desirability of not excessively stoking lust seems to me obvious in male/female relationships. It seems to me that self-control in this is rightly based on an exalted view of human personhood which is desirous to protect human flourishing in fullness. It seems to me those women attending strip joints, as well as the men, are contributing to the undermining of depth and wholeness in the relationships between the sexes.

The Pécresse Commission, a commission appointed in 2006 by the French National Assembly to report on children and the family, described the “traditional family” in this way: “in this country, the model has long been the peasant family, structured around a patriarch and expanding from hearth to hearth. Children were raised within an expanded group and not by two parents.” They saw the “PME” family – [père, mère, enfant – father, mother, child] as a relatively modern, and not particularly welcome, innovation.

Similarly, where I live, in the rural West of Scotland, more than half the local farms contain three generations and, even in the towns, especially in the poorer areas, many women live in the same street as their mothers. Among the well-to-do, the “granny flat” is becoming a down-sized version of the Dower House.

David Nickol,

I could not agree more. Perfectly stated.

Family structures of a single married couple and their children were present in Western Europe and New England in the 17th century, influenced by church and theocratic governments. With the emergence of proto-industrialization and early capitalism, the nuclear family became a financially viable social unit. The term nuclear family first appeared in the early twentieth century. Alternative definitions have evolved to include family units headed by same-sex parents, and perhaps additional adult relatives who take on a cohabiting parental role; in this later case it also receives the name of conjugal family.

My older sister and her husband took care of my grandfather in his old age, and after he had to go into a nursing home for professional care, they had my parents share a big house with them. It was a mutual arrangement, not one of necessity as in the Times article, but the benefits were the same. I think my sister and her husband, my niece and nephew, and my mother and father were all much happier, healthier, and economically secure than it they had lived separately. If we look at history as telling us what God “intended,” then it appears to me he intended for children to grow up not just with their mothers and fathers, but with their grandparents, their aunts and uncles, their cousins, as well as other members of the community.

If, on the other hand, there is a difference, then the subject deserves our most serious attention.

I have to confess I don’t fully understand the concept of the “objectification” of women (or men). If a person is dancing with any degree of skill, he or she is a dancer. Many dancers, particularly in such things as chorus lines, are “objects” in a certain sense. I suppose there might be some ultra-feminists who would object to, say, the Rockettes, but I wouldn’t take them seriously. If I were going to be concerned about something, it would be the rappers and the rap music more than the pole dancers.