In a Princeton University study, male students viewed images of women they did not know in bikinis. A brain scan revealed that, when looking at the pictures, the section of the brain that responds to tools, like hammers or wrenches, lit up. For some of the participants, the part of the brain that considers another person’s motivations or thoughts was completely dark.

“The lack of activation in this social cognition area is really odd, because it hardly ever happens,” Susan Fiske, a psychologist at Princeton, said. “It is as if they are reacting to these women as if they are not fully human. It’s consistent with the idea that they are responding to these photographs as if they were responding to objects, not people.”

Male students in a similar Princeton study also associated the women in bikinis with first-person action verbs such as “grab,” “push” and “handle” instead of the third-person verbs they associated with fully clothed women as in she “grabs,” “pushes” and “handles.”

In other words, the participants viewed scantily-clad women they did not know as objects or tools to be use any way they pleased instead of as people with thoughts, dignity, worth and freedom. “Sexy women in bikinis really do inspire some men to see them as objects,” National Geographic said of the Princeton analysis.

This data reinforces what we all instinctively know. Stripping, or dancing in lingerie for the pleasure of those watching, is demeaning and dehumanizing. If men view women in bikinis as objects, what effects does it have on us when people buy and sell tickets to view naked female bodies?

For women, at least, the conclusions are obvious. If women who strip are viewed as objects, they will be treated as such. This means a swing upward in emotional, physical and sexual abuse towards not only towards strippers, but other women too. The students at Princeton remembered the images of women in bikinis better than pictures of women who were fully clothed, though they viewed them for the same amount of time.

Imagine what a man who has frequented strip clubs is like in his dating or marriage relationships. Would you want to be in an intimate, vulnerable relationship with this man? Would you not have questions about whether he is comparing you to other women’s bodies? Is he attracted to you as a person, or as someone to potentially exploit? What happens when you gain weight or age?

If you think that’s just “how men are,” you have bought into the lie that you cannot hope for better than having your value determined by a pervert without self control who only wants to use you. Like, for instance, having value because of your inherent worth as a person.  

Aside from slavishly giving in to their urges, entering the strip club has other consequences for men, too. A man could miss out on his future bff because she doesn’t match up to the image he has seen in the dark room. He often will have difficulty developing the courage and skills needed for healthy connections with real people. Even if he wants to erase the mental images from his mind later, he might not be able to, and they could poison his relationship with another woman.

I think our natural instinct is to recoil when we think about stripping. Is it something we want for our sister or daughter? What’s tragic is that, despite what we intuitively know, stripping is supported not only by men who want to indulge their lust, but also, strangely enough, by many of my fellow feminists. These individuals have been duped by the idea that stripping frees the women enslaved by sexism because it is confidently “owning your body and your sexuality.” If we truly value women, we should have a much higher vision than of supporting the very mentalities and behaviors loved by those who disenfranchise us the most.