Women are taught from birth to view ourselves as valuable primarily because of the pleasure others experience when looking at us. I am always aware of myself as an art object, what others see when they look at me. This is extremely debilitating. It prevents us from fighting outright for what we want. It prevents us from expressing reasonable hostility towards people who are harming us. It turns us into dissociated photographs, with our real selves staring down at our bodies.

Imagine if we thought only about being valuable for doing things, or for giving things, or for being loving, or for stuff we actually care about, and we were only interested in being pleasurable to look at for the partner we actually loved.