I have a few things to say about the "I like what I like" response and I also want to expand on this post with the racism equivalence:
Two things. The first is that there's a reason we label this kind of material "problematic". It's because it's not evil, or that enjoying this kind of thing makes you a bad person, or anything like that. It's that this kind of stuff can make some people uncomfortable and that it can lead to the normalization on bad practices. I think that the most that we can ask of everyone is that they have some empathy for these other aspects of the media they consume. So as long as you can do that, then it's good.
The other thing is that I think that we overly condemn racism and put so far into the pale that it can't be discussed properly. Racism is a negative thing for sure, but it's also something that's pretty normal for people to feel. It's something that exists at all sorts of levels, from very mild racism, all the way to people willing to burn crosses. We really shouldn't treat it all the same, and I wish that we would be able to approach it in a more measured manner than just condemning it.
So I agree that we need to get better when it comes to discourse on racism. It's obviously a bad thing, but people have kind of broken the spectrum and assume it's all burning crosses and wearing white hoods, which makes the defense far more vicious and makes people incapable of self-reflection.
You aren't an irredeemable piece of garbage for having a racist thought once in a while, you're a flawed human being acting as a product of your own experiences and innate mental state just like everyone else. Being completely immune to biases is impossible in any culture with physical differences, even if you're externally capable of recognizing them as biases in the first place while subconsciously incapable of doing anything about it. Or as Avenue Q puts it best,
Everyone's a bit racist.
I'll put myself out there and give an example based on my own experiences. I work retail at a mom n pop carpet store. We get a lot of thick-accented Indian customers that 99 times out of 100, will try to haggle. So at some point, I started associating in my mind thick-accented Indian gentlemen as aggressive hagglers and maybe internally sigh when one entered the store. I would catch myself and think "wait a minute, I'm being racist right now" and yet I would still do it every time. I would of course help the customer as best as I could and never show any signs of displeasure, but those biases would remain regardless of how often I would condemn myself for them. Now were I to have any interactions with thick-accented Indian people outside of work, perhaps I never would have made that association in my mind in the first place. Lack of exposure and exposure in specific environments are a big part of what leads to those biases in the first place and outside of extremely rare cases, you're going to end up in situations like that where a pet peeve of yours will be triggered by shared behavior of certain groups, or at least the perception of such.
Now recognition of this is all well and good, but the problem is actually getting rid of those undesirable biases when they're already established, and often times that goes a hell of a lot further than slight annoyances over retail behavior. After WWII, Denazification programs were abandoned for being ineffective. People's mindsets didn't change, but society did because it was forced to by external powers.
But the problem here is race is largely a social construct and many of the issues of race relations come from the natural human reaction of "you're different!" alongside perception of other cultures and them forking off in seemingly incompatible directions. A "better luck next time" mindset with raising the next generation is possible on a micro level even if it isn't totally probable. There are paths forward, even if those paths are filled with thorn bushes and zig zag all over the place.
But when it comes to human sexuality, things get a bit more complicated. It's something more innate and resistant to change with "deprogramming" being all but impossible. It's why Paraphilias are considered mental disorders while "racism" isn't. That isn't to say there are no sociological aspects involved, but those are generally how it manifests itself in society more than anything else. In ancient Greece, women were actually the horny ones that would never say no to sex while men would hold back as being too sexually active would be an insult to a man's virility, a complete reversal of what the culture dictates now. But all that suggests is humans are sexual creatures by nature regardless of gender.
And because of that, the desire to objectify is similarly a very human thing to do as it's augmenting what's already there. When it comes to lust, there's no prerequisite to see the object of your lust as anything but just that, at least in that moment. Obviously that isn't true of love, but I don't think anyone will argue that the former is extremely prevalent in society as well. That seems to tie into humans being naturally selfish, with more pronounced empathy largely being a learned trait, but even then your mind may abandon it in those moments were objectification is appropriate.
So if people can recognize all that but have no desire to change, I wouldn't want to come down too hard on them for it because I do truly believe in many situations it's beyond their control. The problem I have with that though is whether showing empathy while feeling that way actually means anything. I mean if you're fine with it and don't want what you like to go away despite the protests of the side you claim to support, doesn't any display of sympathy sort of ring hollow?
I do think it's admirable when those in a position of privilege are capable of giving some of that up for the benefit and comfort of others, but I'm reluctant to call those that don't and even ones that are stubbornly incapable of recognizing that privilege monsters. And that's why, as I've said many times, I feel that objectification should be an equal two-way street, because putting a muzzle on something innate like that is far more limiting than doing it with social constructs.
