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What is Sexual Objectification
Sexual Objectification
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
[FONT="]“Objectification is a notion central to feminist theory. It can be roughly defined as the seeing and/or treating a person, usually a woman, as an object. In this entry, the focus is primarily on sexual objectification, objectification occurring in the sexual realm. Martha Nussbaum (1995, 257) has identified seven features that are involved in the idea of treating a person as an object:[/FONT]
[FONT="](1) instrumentality: [/FONT]
[FONT="]the treatment of a person as a tool for the objectifier's purposes;[/FONT]
[FONT="](2) denial of autonomy: [/FONT]
[FONT="]the treatment of a person as lacking in autonomy and self-determination;[/FONT]
[FONT="](3) inertness: [/FONT]
[FONT="]the treatment of a person as lacking in agency, and perhaps also in activity;[/FONT]
[FONT="](4) fungibility: [/FONT]
[FONT="]the treatment of a person as interchangeable with other objects;[/FONT]
[FONT="](5) violability: [/FONT]
[FONT="]the treatment of a person as lacking in boundary-integrity;[/FONT]
[FONT="](6) ownership: [/FONT]
[FONT="]the treatment of a person as something that is owned by another (can be bought or sold);[/FONT]
[FONT="](7) denial of subjectivity: [/FONT]
[FONT="]the treatment of a person as something whose experiences and feelings (if any) need not be taken into account.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Rae Langton (2009, 228–229) has added three more features to Nussbaum's list:[/FONT]
[FONT="](8) reduction to body: [/FONT]
[FONT="]the treatment of a person as identified with their body, or body parts;[/FONT]
[FONT="](9) reduction to appearance: [/FONT]
[FONT="]the treatment of a person primarily in terms of how they look, or how they appear to the senses;[/FONT]
[FONT="](10) silencing: [/FONT]
[FONT="]the treatment of a person as if they are silent, lacking the capacity to speak…[/FONT]
[FONT="] [/FONT]
[FONT="]…[/FONT]
[FONT="] [/FONT]
It has been pointed out by some feminist thinkers that women in our society are more identified and associated with their bodies than are men, and, to a greater extent than men, they are valued for how they look (Bordo 1993, 143; Bartky 1990). In order to gain social acceptability, women are under constant pressure to ‘correct’ their bodies and appearance more generally, and make them conform to the ideals of feminine appearance of their time, the so-called ‘norms of feminine appearance’ (the standards of appearance women feel they should be living up to) (Jennifer Saul 2003, 144). Some feminists have argued that, in being preoccupied with their looks, women treat themselves as things to be decorated and gazed upon.
In her book Femininity and Domination, Sandra Bartky uses Marx's theory of alienation to explain the objectification that results from women's preoccupation with their appearance. A feature of Marx's theory of alienation is the fragmentation of the human person, this ‘splintering of human nature into a number of misbegotten parts’. For Marx, labour is the most distinctively human activity, and the product of labour is the exteriorisation of the worker's being. Under capitalism, however, workers are alienated from the products of their labour, and consequently their person is fragmented (Bartky 1990, 128–9).
Bartky believes that women in patriarchal societies also undergo a kind of fragmentation ‘by being too closely identified with [their body]… [their] entire being is identified with the body, a thing which… has been regarded as less inherently human than the mind or personality’ (Bartky 1990, 130). All the focus is placed on a woman's body, in a way that her mind or personality are not adequately acknowledged. A woman's person, then, is fragmented. Bartky believes that through this fragmentation a woman is objectified, since her body is separated from her person and is thought as representing the woman (Bartky 1990, 130).
Bartky explains that, typically, objectification involves two persons, one who objectifies and one who is objectified. (This is also the idea of objectification put forward by Kant as well as by MacKinnon and Dworkin.) However, as Bartky points out, objectifier and objectified can be one and the same person. Women in patriarchal societies feel constantly watched by men, much like the prisoners of the Panopticon (model prison proposed by Bentham), and they feel the need to look sensually pleasing to men (Bartky 1990, 65). According to Bartky: ‘In the regime of institutionalised heterosexuality woman must make herself ‘object and prey’ for the man. … Woman lives her body as seen by another, by an anonymous patriarchal Other’ (Bartky 1990, 73). This leads women to objectify their own persons. Bartky argues that the woman ‘[takes] toward her own person the attitude of the man. She will then take erotic satisfaction in her physical self, revelling in her body as a beautiful object to be gazed at and decorated’. Such an attitude is called ‘narcissism’, which is defined by Bartky as the infatuation with one's bodily being (Bartky 1990, 131–2).
In being infatuated with their bodily beings, Bartky argues that women learn to see and treat themselves as objects to be gazed at and decorated, they learn to see themselves as though from the outside. Narcissism, as Simone de Beauvoir also points out, ‘consists in the setting up of the ego as a double “stranger”’ (Beauvoir 1961, 375). The adolescent girl ‘becomes an object and she sees herself as an object; she discovers this new aspect of her being with surprise: it seems to her that she has been doubled; instead of coinciding exactly with herself, she now begins to exist outside’ (Beauvoir 1961, 316) (For more on Simone de Beauvoir, see the entry ‘Simone de Beauvoir’.) However, this ‘stranger’ who inhabits women's consciousness, Bartky writes, is hardly a stranger; it is, rather, the woman's own self (Bartky 1993, 134).
Bartky talks about the disciplinary practices that produce a feminine body and are the practices through which women learn to see themselves as objects. First of all, according to her, there are those practices that aim to produce a body of a certain size and shape: women must conform to the body ideal of their time (i.e. a slim body with large breasts), which, Bartky holds, requires women to subject their bodies to the ‘tyranny of slenderness’ (put themselves through constant dieting and exercise) (Bartky 1990, 65–7). Susan Bordo also emphasises the fact that women are more obsessed with dieting than are men. This is linked to serious diseases like anorexia and bulimia. 90% of all anorexics, Bordo points out, are women (Bordo 1993, 143, 154). Furthermore, a large number of women have plastic surgery, most commonly liposuction and breast enlargement, in order to make their bodies conform to what is considered to be the ideal body.
According to Bartky, the second category of these disciplinary practices
that produce a feminine body are those that aim to control the body's gestures, postures, and movements. Women, she holds, are more restricted than men in the way they move, and they try to take up very little space as opposed to men, who tend to expand to the space available. Women's movements are also restrained by their uncomfortable clothes and shoes (Bartky 1990, 68–9). The final category of the disciplinary practices, Bartky holds, are those that are directed towards the display of a woman's body as an ‘ornamented surface’: women must take care of their skin and make it soft, smooth, hairless and wrinkle-free, they must apply make-up to disguise their skin's imperfections. Our culture demands the ‘infantilisation’ of women's bodies and faces (Bartky 1990, 71–2).
According to Bartky: ‘… whatever else she [a woman] may become, she is importantly a body designed to please or to excite’ (Bartky 1990, 80). Iris Marion Young adds that women's preoccupation with their appearance suppresses the body potential of women: ‘Developing a sense of our bodies as beautiful objects to be gazed at and decorated requires suppressing a sense of our bodies as strong, active subjects…’ (Young, 1979).
Who is responsible for women's situation? According to Bartky: ‘The disciplinary power that inscribes femininity in the female body is everywhere and it is nowhere; the disciplinarian is everyone and yet no one in particular’ (Bartky 1990, 74). The message that women should look more feminine is everywhere: it is reinforced by parents, teachers, male partners, and it is expressed in various ways throughout the media. Men, then, are not the only ones to blame for women's situation. Because of the pervasiveness of this ‘disciplinary power that inscribes femininity’, women's constant preoccupation with appearance has come to be regarded as something natural and voluntary; it is something that women have internalised. Therefore, it is far from easy for women, in Bartky's view, to free themselves from their objectification.
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[FONT="]http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fe...bjectification[/FONT]
I thought this was really interesting, and I really liked the linkage between objectification of the body and alienation. It made a lot more sense to me this way.
I do have a question though. I find my partner to be physically attractive and I like to look at her body, but I don't see this as a separate aspect of who she is and I have a lot of respect for her mind and what she does with her life. Would you, TC (or anyone else for that matter), consider me finding her physically attractive and enjoying the way her body looks to be objectification in the sense described above (in a fundementally destructive - what else is alienation but destructive? - way)?
The defeat of the revolutionary movement was not, as Stalinists always complain, due to its lack of unity. It was defeated because the civil war within its ranks was not worked out with enough force. The crippling effects of the systematic confusion between hostis and enemy are self-evident, whether it be the tragedy of the Soviet Union or the groupuscular comedy.
formerly Species Being
I would answer this but, you wrote to me randomly in a PM:
And my policy is to dissincentivize trollish flaming by not responding to people who insult me unless they apologize and behave decently towards me in the future.
Yes, despite popular belief, people on the Internet are real people who remember things - you can't behave inappropriately towards someone, then wait two months and think that you can start interacting with them again with no explanation.
Do these two things qualifying as objectifying mean that promiscuous sex is wrong? Because obviously promiscuous sex is based on initial attraction, as are a lot of relationships.
You don't have to reduce people to how they look to have sex with multiple people. But if you are only using someone as an object for your pleasure, reducing them to body parts, to appearence, rather than connecting with them as a subject, as a full human being - than yes, there is something wrong about that - not necessarily wrong as in "hurting" them (though it might- it might not too, they might be so used to being treated that way it has no emotional affect on them) - but wrong because in the background of gender hierarchy it reinforces that hierarchy. It does so by crystalizing the relationship between man and woman as one where women are merely instrumental as tools or objects for men's pleasure. This is not to say that women do not also sometimes regard men only with respect to their appearence, but because the gender hierarchy formed by patriarchy favors male dominance and female submission, this view of men has no objectifying effect in that there is no force behind it so it is unable to transform men into objects for women's pleasure.
Uh, can you explain that in a clearer way?
Also why would I want to connect as a human being with someone who I very clearly just want to have a one night stand with? If you meet someone at a club and you have sex with them and then don't see them again, you do it because you think they're good looking. Not because you really connected about views on literature.
Forceful sex? That is called rape, but I'm guessing thats not what you mean?
I have no idea what you mean by "force".
From what I can tell, one-night stands come from a variety of factors that often have little or nothing to do with appearance. Some folks look for a temporary sex partner for complex personal and emotional reasons that include concerns like comfort, health, and status.
"Unless revolution uproots the basic social organisation, the biological family - the vinculum through which the psychology of power can always be smuggled - the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated."
- Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex
I'm estimating that the majority of them are because a real lot of people just wanna have sex with people who are attractive.
You're basically just saying that you would want to objectify them. I can imagine other reasons for having sex outside of a monogomous relationship (such as wanting physical and emotional intimacy with a real person who matters as an individual, rather than a sex toy). But if you would just want to objectify them then I'm sorry but I don't need to confirm that that is okay and not problematic in a society with gender hierarchy.
Force in this context meant the ability to enforce one's view of another - to take what you believe to be the relevant features of another person to you and to make them the socially relevant features of that person. That is the nature of objectification and it is why men can sexually objectify women and not vice-versa, because men have social power behind their views of women as sex objects but no social power exists behind a parallel view held by women.
To use a more vivid example less close to heart, a slave master's view of a slave as a tool for the slave master's desires is not entirely illusionary, in that while the slave is not naturally a tool for the slave masters desires, the fact that the slave master views the slave this way reinforces a social reality that the slave is in fact reduced to a mere tool or object.
When the powerful people in a relationship hold a view of subordinates, they give that view social reality because social expectations and standards conform to the views of the powerful.
Sorry, I don't need your approval to have sexual desire and find attractive women attractive and not be particularly interested in every woman who I find attractive's personal life.
This is one of the most insensitive and downright offensive comparisons I've ever heard on this site.
Not at all. Dude supremacy exists as a constant global human rights crisis. We're not talking about some minor or superficial issue here, but the daily oppression of billions.
"Unless revolution uproots the basic social organisation, the biological family - the vinculum through which the psychology of power can always be smuggled - the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated."
- Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex
That statement isn't evidence to support the idea that what's being discussed in this thread is similar to enslaving entire races....
I don't see how anyone, regardless of sex or orientation, finding another person physically attractive is generally harmful. In fact, when I find out someone genuinely finds me very attractive, which is often, I feel pretty damn good.
Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. -Malcolm X
Wait, are feminists against male masturbation? Since the act involves picturing or using a picture of a women, does this count as objectification? Does this mean guys pleasuring themselves is an act of patriarchy? Because really those who aren't able to have sex for whatever reasons might not be too happy about the thought.
The social revolution means much more than the reorganization of conditions only: it means the establishment of new human values and social relationships, a changed attitude of man to man, as of one free and independent to his equal; it means a different spirit in individual and collective life, and that spirit cannot be born overnight. It is a spirit to be cultivated, to be nurtured and reared, as the most delicate flower is, for indeed it is the flower of a new and beautiful existence. - Alexander Berkman
Wait just a second. Dudes can't masturbate without imagining or seeing the image of a woman? Really? That's not in any definition of the term I've ever come across. The extent that dudes believe this shows the level of gender conditioning prevalent in this society.
"Unless revolution uproots the basic social organisation, the biological family - the vinculum through which the psychology of power can always be smuggled - the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated."
- Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex
I think when doing something sexual most people would think of something sexual.
Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. -Malcolm X
Are you suggesting that "woman" = "something sexual" to dudes? This would support the radical feminist concept of women as the sex class. Also, what do two or more humans engaged in sex acts think about?
"Unless revolution uproots the basic social organisation, the biological family - the vinculum through which the psychology of power can always be smuggled - the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated."
- Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex
Given that in many cultures, contemporary and historical, women have been considered a quite literal item of property, I'm not sure that it's at all inappropriate. A master-slave relationship has repeatedly demonstrate itself to be the logical conclusion of patriarchy. (I mean, Roman women weren't even allowed their own names until the Imperial era! Even male slaves had names, but they got numbers. Numbers!)
That's a bit unfair, I think. Revolutionary Awesome's statement could equally apply to women and queer men- which, in my admittedly limited experience, holds true. The problem isn't that straight men see women's bodies as potentially sexual, but that women's bodies are seen as sexual above all else, and that only the sexualisation of women by men (and no other combination) is deemed socially acceptable.
Or men if they are gay. I just meant that people may usually need to observe something stimulating to engage in the act. I don't think I could just sit and think about televisions while doing that.
The social revolution means much more than the reorganization of conditions only: it means the establishment of new human values and social relationships, a changed attitude of man to man, as of one free and independent to his equal; it means a different spirit in individual and collective life, and that spirit cannot be born overnight. It is a spirit to be cultivated, to be nurtured and reared, as the most delicate flower is, for indeed it is the flower of a new and beautiful existence. - Alexander Berkman
I would suggest that whatever people think or don't think about while masturbating comes from human constructions of gender and sexuality. There's no natural option. Everything deserves critical scrutiny. By my values, if dudes currently only wank by objectifying women, then that indicts dudedly masturbation habits more than objectification theory.
"Unless revolution uproots the basic social organisation, the biological family - the vinculum through which the psychology of power can always be smuggled - the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated."
- Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex
