What is objectification?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve read up a bit about the concept of objectification, especially sexual objectification, and I’m still rather confused.

What does it mean to objectify someone? What are the criteria to determine whether or not A objectifies B? What are the implications of objectification?

Objectification is nearly always used to portray an act as immoral. Is there such a thing as objectification which is not immoral?
First, let me set up a few clarifications.

Sometimes, it seems to be used in the sense of not having empathy for the other person’s feelings. Yet, when I hire a cabdriver, I do not spend any time thinking about his feelings. I think about getting from point A to point B. Does this mean that i objectify my car driver? Is this immoral?

Sometimes it’s used to mean that someone is being analyzed in a way which does not relate to their feelings and intellectual abilities. Yet when a doctor does a physical, he might as well be a mechanic inspecting a car. The doctor analyzes you in a way that does not concern itself with your feelings and intellectual abilities. Is the doctor objectifying you? If someone compares athletes in terms of their acceleration, top speed and endurance, he may as well be speaking of race cars. Is it objectifying the athletes?

Sometimes, it’s used in the sense of only thinking of someone according to one particular aspect. Yet, thinking of someone under one particular aspect is not the same as denying other aspects. For example, when people look at bodybuilding contests, they may only pay attention to the contestants’ muscles, yet it does not mean that they think those individuals, or men in general, are only good for their muscles. If a client accused of a crime comes to see me, he may only be interested in me to the extent that I can save him from prison, yet it does not mean that he denies other aspects of me. Paying attention chiefly, or even exclusively, to one aspect is not tantamount to denying other aspects of that person.

If I have a one night stand with a woman, I may only be interested in having sex with her and only want to interact with her to the extent that I get sexual pleasure out of it. Does this mean I have objectified her? If she is only interested in having sex with me and only wants to interact with me to the extent that she gets sexual pleasure out of it, has she objectified me?
What if I do the same with a man?

If I see a woman and find her attractive but do not go further than that, have I objectified her? If a man looks at me and finds me attractive but does not go further than that, has he objectified me?
Sometimes, it seems inspired by a lacking understanding of Kantian morality. Most people who know a little about Kant remember the rule about “not treating someone as a means” which has a direct equivalent in “not treating someone as an object”. Yet that conception of Kantian morality is lacking. The expression “treating someone as a means” can mean “treating someone as a means among other things” or “treating someone merely as a means”, the distinction being whether is “merely” or “among other things”. Whenever we cooperate or contract with someone to get something other than the interaction, we treat the other person as a means. For example, when I hire a cabdriver, I am treating the cabdrivers as a means of getting from point A to point B. If I could get the same result by hiring a robot driver, I would.

Yet I am not treating the cabdriver merely as a means because I also treat him as an end. Only an end in itself can engage in autodetermination (deciding for itself what it will do) so as long as I act accordingly with the acknowledgement of the importance of letting the other person engage in autodetermination, I am letting him act as an end in itself, which means that I have treated him as both a means and an end. This is the case even if I have no empathy for my cabdriver or if the contract is more to my advantage than his or if I do not wish to learn anything about him beyond his ability and willingness to drive me from point A to point B.

To rape someone or make them into a slave, that would be reducing them to a mere means/mere object. As long as I let the other person engage in autodetermination, I have not reduced the other person to an object because if I really did think of and treat the other person as a mere object, letting him/her engage in autodetermination would be as ridiculous a notion as letting my desk engage in autodetermination. If I let them engage in autodetermination, I am not reducing them to an object.
When people start using arguments which seem like special pleading or do not stand up to scrutiny, I’ve found that it’s usually because they feel something or they have a particular concern but are fearful that if they talk about how it makes them feel or their emotional concern, they will not be taken seriously. So instead they start using some very cognitive and philosophical sounding terms like “objectification” when in fact, that’s just post hoc rationalization for a position which is reached because of their emotional concerns.
What are those concerns?

2

I don’t think the cab driver example fits, a cab driver only drives a cab for his shift and after that he’s just a regular person. When he’s in the cab you hail him, go where you need to, and pay. That’s fine, he’s consenting to it when he’s driving his cab but when he gets off work you might see him in a bar or the grocery store and you aren’t going to think, “there goes a cab driver, he’s only good for one thing.” A woman is a woman for every moment of her life. Say she’s a stripper, she does her job and gets objectified, fine, she’s consenting to it when she’s on stage. When she goes to the grocery store though, she’s still objectified, because she’s always going to be a woman.

It isn’t individual transactions like your cab driver or individual interactions like your one night stand example, it’s when a subset of the population is consistently presented as a commodity not for what they do, but for who they are.

3

This “Kantian morality” stuff sounds to me like a way of distancing oneself emotionally from one’s own actions and therefore rationionalizing any depraved or immoral act. Just by intellectualizing away the guilt.

4

You use the term “objectified” without defining it. Could you tell me which criteria you use to determine whether or not someone is objectified? You also say “presented as a commodity”, is this the same as being objectified? If not, how does it differ?

You say that the stripper is objectified when she’s on the job. Is the cabdriver objectified when he’s on the job?

You seem to think that objectification is about thinking that someone is only good for one thing. In your example of the woman at the grocery store, how does the fact that I look at her sexually mean that I think she’s only good for sex? I can want to only interact with her for sex without thinking that’s the only aspect to her.

5

Well, a slave always has the option of suicide, right?

You seem to be arguing that if a person has ANY opportunity for autodetermination, then you’re not objectifying them. But it’s not a black and white line. There are degrees of objectification. The girl at the supermarket may have the power to walk away from your sexual advances, and you may have a mixture of different feelings toward her, but if you’re treating her *primarily *as a means for your gratification, and not as an individual with her own desires and wants, then you’re objectifying her.

6

King,

The inference you make is understandable but inaccurate.

I said “as long as I act accordingly with the acknowledgement of the importance of letting the other person engage in autodetermination”. When I threaten the slave with harm if he leaves, I am not acting “accordingly with the acknowledgement of the importance of letting the other person engage in autodetermination”. I am threatening him specifcally because I don’t want him to decide for himself what he wants.
Are you saying that when you treat someone primarily as a means to X and not as an individual with its own desires and wants, you are objectifying them? If so, this also applies to economic relationships like the cabdriver.

If she comes up to me and says “wanna fuck?” and doesn’t want to learn much about my desires and wants, is she objectifying me?

7

From what I read it sounds more like “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
“Objectification” is basically treating people as if they are either tools to be used at your benefit and convenience or obsticles to be circumvented or eliminated without any regard to their feelings, interests or goals.

For example:
My wife’s job is to clean the house, cook my dinner and pop out (and care for) children.

My girlfriend only has value as a steady source of sexual pleasure.

All other women only have value as a source of sexual pleasure.

My “friends” are people who are people who can help my career, increase my social status or provide some other benefit

My staff at work are idiot drones who I expect to perform all the bullshit work I don’t want to do

8

It’s when you see a person as an object. A means to an end. I think the dictionary definition of it works pretty well. Being presented as a commodity means a person has been objectified, but without necessarily consenting to it themselves. It’s like if somebody put a taxi sign on the side of your car even though you aren’t a taxi driver. Everywhere you go people will try to flag you down for a ride and you have to deal with it. You have to explain, “No, I’m not a taxi, sorry. Somebody else put this label here and I can’t get rid of it.”

Yes. To his passengers he’s a service, a commodity. When he’s on the job. You take a cab, you don’t care if he wants to drive you around. He probably doesn’t, he probably hates it and wants nothing more than to go home. Even if he doesn’t hate it you can be damn sure that if he won the lottery he’s not going to drive a cab anymore. When he gets off work though, he’s just ‘Regular Joe’ and his objectification is over. For women this isn’t necessarily so and that’s the problem.

You can, absolutely. And objectification isn’t always wrong. You mention a one night stand, that’s often two people objectifying one another. That can totally be ok. As long as you aren’t a dick the problem doesn’t come from any single interaction. It’s when you start to view the entire demographic as a 24/7 service provider that things go wrong.

9

I think objectification is more of a social-level thing.

For example, you may have individual women that you have no-strings-attached sex with. That’s awesome, as long as everyone is having a good time.

The problem comes is when you start thinking that all women are or should be available to you for NSA sex, and not recognizing the other roles that women may have. For example, I get angry at the construction workers who yell “hey baby” at me as I walk to the metro, because I am not their baby. I am an office worker walking to the subway. It’s no more appropriate for them to yell “hey baby” at me because I’m a woman than it is for me to yell “Hey gardner” at them because they are Latino. I’m fine being a sex object if I am, you know, actually having sex. But I’d prefer to be able to commute to work without being a sex object.

In other words, sexual situations are fine. But my sexuality shouldn’t really be a factor in non-sexual situations with people I have a non-sexual relationship with. I can do other stuff, as well.

10

When I hear complaints about objectification (and not just about women and sex, I once heard a teacher say that workers are treated as a commodity by the law) it’s said in a way that implies that objectification on its own is sufficient to be immoral.
If one uses the term “objectification” to mean using someone as a means/object without also meaning that their humanity/autonomy is being denied, then it is trivial to say that they are objectified.

For example, Playboy objectifies women, right? If Playboy objectifies in the sense that it treats the women depicted as means/objects, but that this does not imply that their humanity/autonomy is denied, the complaint is trivial.

11

Objectification of workers can be immoral if the employer is exploiting them beyond reasonable levels. If you’re employ illegal immigrants and tell them that you’ll only pay them half of what’s a fair wage and if they don’t like it you’ll report them to INS, then you’re being immoral. If your company lays off half the workforce and expects the remaining employees to pick up the slack without extra compensation then you’re being immoral. If you pay a decent wage and treat them well it’s still objectification but it’s not immoral.

It can be trivial, yes. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Context plays a crucial role.

The issue doesn’t have to arise from the model’s point of view. If enough people think that Playboy models are what women are, or what they should be, then women who never posed for Playboy will be judged by Playboy standards and be expected to be like Playboy models. Even if they can’t fit the bill they are expected to try. They will be expected to offer to the world the same things that a Playboy model does (beauty, exposure, a willingness to please men), they will spend their lives driving a taxi cab when they aren’t taxi drivers.

12

In the example you provide, objectification has nothing to do with it, it’s the exploitation beyond reasonable levels that’s immoral.

If I hear someone saying “X objectifies women”, I should take that as a neutral statement that may or may not be negative? What questions would I ask to find out if the person who just said “X objectifies women” thinks it’s negative? Every single time I’ve heard someone say that A objectified B, it was negative and there was never a nuance made that this particular sort of objectification is immoral.

If enough people are stupid enough to mistake a woman in Playboy with how women are or should be, why is Playboy to blame? The people at fault are those who think that because the women of Playboy have characteristic X, all other women have or should have X.

A woman once dumped me in large part because I did not act like men in Harlequin romances. Have Harlequin romances objectified me? If so, was it immoral of the writers?
The language denounces using someone as a means yet the complaint seems to be that a stereotype or ideal is propagated. Those are distinct. I can use someone as a means without propagating a stereotype or ideal and I can propagate a stereotype or ideal without using someone as a means.

13

How is this different? If you can exploit somebody like that then you have no empathy for them as an individual, the results might differ but the root of the issue is the same.

No, if something objectifies women (note the plural) it’s bad. I leave it to you to decide if whatever situation really objectifies women. Life and human emotions aren’t a tidy little logic puzzle and at some point you have to make a judgement call.

If enough people do a stupid thing when exposed to something, then the smart thing to do is to take that obviously common stupid human reaction into account before you do that something again. People smash other people to death at concerts and sports venues. The thing to do is find a way to fix it, not to talk about how stupid people are.

Honestly I’ve never thought about this before. This has to be such a rare thing. Maybe? At least among the small set of women who read Harlequin romances and then judge men by them? I know you dodged a bullet, for certain.

Yes, on an individual level you can use somebody as a means without propagating a stereotype. But when there’s a systematic use of people as a means you have a problem that ought to be addressed.

14

I’m not sure what your teacher meant by that statement. In the sense that the law treats all workers the same, then yes, they would be similar to a “commodity”.

Objectification has nothing to do with engaging with someone is a business transaction. The term is usually used in reference to sexual objectification, usually towards women. It basically refers to treating a woman as if she has no other purpose than as an instrument of sexual gratification.

15

Whitney Cummings does a funny bit about a man taking her on a date to see Twilight and she gets all pissed off at him because he doesn’t have vampire powers like flying.

16

The teacher was complaining about it. He meant that the workers were not being treated as they should be by the law.
I get what you mean about objectification, specifically sexual objectification. That’s the way I usually understand it to mean. Whenever I hear the term, it’s almost never in the simple of of using someone as a means without necessarily lowering them, as Terraplane uses the term.

By the “treating a woman as if she has not other purpose than as an instrument of sexual gratification” definition, I can see how that is immoral. But then I don’t get some of the inferences I commonly see and which feminist such as Dworking or MacKinnon make.

If you treat someone as if they had no other purpose than X, you will necessarily only focus on X in a given context. But it does not follow from this that if you only focus on X in a given context, you are treating someone as if they had no other purpose than X.

If I read an article in Forbes about wealthy people and the magazine only focuses on their wealth, it does not follow that the subjects in the article, the journalists, the editor or the readers think those men have no other purpose than wealth. It’s just what they focus on at that particular time. To decry Forbes for financial objectification of men would be paranoid, even though men have historically been associated and valued for their wealth and that some women only/primarily care about men for their wealth.