Last week, for this space, I clacked out what I assumed was a fairly innocuous column about gender bias in Olympics coverage. Finally, I thought, a topic on which the internet and I could peaceably agree.

It goes without saying that if, right before your eyes, a woman has just thrown a 4kg iron ball 20.63m like a human cannon, the question of whether or not you would like to have sex with her – a person you do not know who is very busy winning a gold medal on TV for her job – is irrelevant to a degree that defies calculation.

There’s nothing controversial about the notion that, when a teenage girl has just run a short distance, leapt into the air, unfolded like an origami flower in a perfect Joe Montana spiral, and alighted upon the earth with a puff of white chalk and the unflappable cool of Polychrome, Daughter of the Rainbow stepping off a cloud, observers should WRITE ABOUT THAT instead of her mascara, how much she probably loves shopping, or whether or not she smiles “enough”. Surely one couldn’t argue with the suggestion that sports writers should … write … about sports. But the web, like frog sperm, always finds a way.

The bulk of the response to my piece was positive. To the thinking people of Earth, this concept is not challenging. It’s not even new. People are bored of women’s judo being referred to as a catfight, and hearing more about Michael Phelps’s frowny face than Katie Ledecky’s world record. People get it. Things are moving.

But there are always a few stragglers (or a few stragglers plus half the media and all of your uncles), and I got quite a bit of pushback in one particular vein. “What,” the internet howled, “about the terrible, terrible objectification of male Olympians by horny PC feminazis?”

How could gender inequality possibly exist when Jeremy, third seed on the Franklin high school debate team, saw a Buzzfeed listicle about Ryan Lochte’s sexual armpits one time? “LMAO,” some guy who is definitely probably a lawyer said to me [sic]: “It was the female broadcasters on NBC ogling & objectifying MEN during parade. SUCH feminist hypocrisy.” Oddly, when I suggested he try the library, where decades of abundant feminist scholarship on objectification is available for free, he dissolved into sea foam and drifted away on Thalassa’s wild bosom (he blocked me).

However, on the remote chance that any of this supposed concern about male objectification is in good faith, I’m happy to address it. (Once.) I will go to the mat protesting about male objectification as soon as the following three criteria are met:

1. When sexualised analysis of men’s bodies begins to obscure men’s achievements and negatively affect their careers.

Feminists don’t critique objectification because we are mad that people sometimes have sex feelings for each other. Some of my best friends are sex feelings. Feminists critique objectification because our society is running a millennia-long deficit on the acknowledgement of female humanity, to the measurable detriment of women as a class. The fact that we are assessed as decoration first and athletes/politicians/musicians/accountants/CEOs/presidential candidates second has a transparent impact on women’s upward mobility. The issue lies not in sexualisation itself, but in that either/or – attention to women’s bodies not supplementing, but supplanting respect for the breadth and magnitude of women’s skills. If that erasure is not present, then it is not the kind of objectification I am talking about.

2. When the objectification of men’s bodies begins to make their lives unsafe.

The relentless coding of women as sex things puts women in lifelong, simmering, physical danger. Look at how many domestic violence cases and murder-suicides begin with a wife’s attempt to leave her husband. Pay attention when we excoriate rape victims for walking alone at night and wearing “provocative” clothes, as though the mere act of going outside in possession of a body makes one public property. Listen to the proprietary way male politicians talk about uteruses, like they know what is best for our body parts – because how could we? We are just silly, pretty things. A straight, cisgender, white man can feel creeped out, or taken for granted on an individual level, but his personhood is unassailable. Ours is up for debate.

3. When I hear men bring up their own objectification as anything other than a disingenuous attempt to undermine women advocating for themselves.

Seriously, if any of you are really concerned, start a movement that does more than just lash out at feminists on Twitter. Hey, you know how you can tell when a societal issue genuinely affects your life? You can’t not talk about it. It tugs on your guts all the time. It makes you tired and furious. You would never dream of reducing it to a petty thought experiment.

And if this still doesn’t make sense, try the library.