CAGE RATTLING, WOMEN OBJECTIFICATION & AI ‘ART’ (among other things) (first published in 'Medium')

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in the circumstances, wearing looser-fitting pants might have been more appropriate — but hey, that’s AI

Having begun rattling cages in my early teens at boarding school, several decades later (not having stopped) being temporarily suspended from using an AI text-to-image community ‘art’ platform prompted me to trawl the web for insights into the psychology of activism. The suspension followed months of complaining to platform personnel about the objectification and oversexualisation of women by community members.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, most of my free time was spent in Johannesburg’s African townships/ghettos, as a grassroots anti-apartheid activist. I’m a UK-born naturalised white South African. According to Shannon Goodhue (Understanding anti-oppression activists in apartheid South Africa), during those exceptionally dangerous times activism was motivated largely by moral outrage and “a profound commitment to justice and human dignity”. This in the face of “a system designed to dehumanise” people with birthday suits in various shades of brown. And — in challenging the status quo — personal safety and material interests tended to be sacrificed for the greater good.

Which pretty much sums me up.

Since then, I like to believe my activist streak has contributed positively towards improving accountability among stakeholders in the UK’s home-based care industry (a long story I prefer to keep to myself) and rooting out corruption in a large international ‘use-your-gap-year-to-make-a-difference-in-Africa’ non-government organisation (NGO). There have also been lesser triumphs at a local level.

For several years, I’ve been trying to persuade myself to turn a blind eye to social injustices — of which there are many in South Africa to this very day, sadly. Caring-based action can be exhausting, and I’m no spring chicken. As an online journalist mostly working from home on matters parliamentary, it’s relatively easy to wear blinkers to the outside world by focusing on producing insightful reports on public policy and legislation for paying clients — without becoming emotionally invested in the issues at stake.

So, when I joined an AI text-to-image community ‘art’ platform to create illustrations for work-related social media alerts, the very last thing I expected was to find myself exposed to female objectification on such a massive scale. The rest is history — covered in a series of articles published here, of which this is the eleventh.

As a relatively attractive woman, I know all about what some feminists refer to as the ‘male gaze’ and could well do without being a target, especially at work. But it happens, as most women know. It’s in that context that I despise pornography, the legalised aspects of which I find especially distasteful. And while I empathise with women whose circumstances force them into sex work, I loathe the men using their services. So, I guess I’m a bit of a prude by modern standards.

Whatever the case, the oversexualization and objectification of women by AI text-to-image community ‘art’ platforms is feeding into both ‘industries’ — at least, I think so. Which can’t be in the public interest, surely? Something must be done! But by whom? As far as I can tell, the penny hasn’t dropped among women’s issues lobby groups and NGOs about the negative implications of AI art for their constituencies.

“Being an activist means knowing what you care about” (Gregg Levoy, Psychology Today). It’s “a byproduct, not a motive” and begins with “passion, not strategy”. In Levoy’s view, “the more personal your connection to a cause — emotional, not intellectual — the more motivated you’ll be” — sentiments with which I fully concur. I hated seeing African people dehumanised under South Africa’s apartheid regime. And I hate seeing women dehumanised and objectifying themselves on AI text-to-image community ‘art’ platforms. It’s as simple as that.