Sexual objectification, in the broadest terms, involves treating people as things. Philosophers have offered different accounts of what, more precisely, this involves. According to the conjoint view of Catherine Mackinnon and Sally Haslanger, sexual objectification is necessarily morally objectionable. According to Martha Nussbaum, it is not: there can be benign instances of it, in the course of a healthy sexual relationship, for instance. This is taken to be a serious disagreement, both by Nussbaum and by (...) recent commentators such as Lina Papadaki. However it isn't a serious disagreement, for the two theories have different aims and methodology, and are not rivals. They both could be apt, simultaneously. (shrink)

According to Martha Nussbaum, objectification is essentially a form of instrumentalization or use. I argue that this instrumentalization account fails to capture the distinctive harms and wrongs of sexual objectification, because it does not explain the relationship between instrumentalization and the processes of social stereotyping that make it possible. I develop an imposition account of sexual objectification that provides such an explanation and, therefore, should be preferred over the instrumentalization account. It draws on a contrast (...) between imposition and self-presentation and explains why sexual objectification, understood as the imposition of sex object status on women, is harmful and wrong. (shrink)

This thesis defends the diagnostic accuracy and political usefulness of the claim that women are complicit in their sexual objectification. Feminists have long struggled to demarcate the appropriate limits of feminist critiques of sexual objectification, particularly when it comes to objectifying practices which women both consent to and experience as empowering. These struggles, I argue, are the result of a fundamental misdiagnosis of what happens when women are sexually objectified, whereby the abstract notion of 'treating as (...) an object' is called upon to explicate the kind of phenomena which can only be properly understood in light of a more general set of social norms of masculinity and femininity. A more accurate diagnosis of sexual objectification, I argue, is provided by Catharine MacKinnon's radical feminist theory, according to which sexually objectifying acts are manifestations of the social process through which women are made into objects of male sexual gratification. One important implication of this account is that women themselves play a role in perpetuating the norms through which sexually objectifying treatment of women is enabled: insofar as they participate in the re-constitution of the social context which facilitates their sexual objectification, they are complicit in it. Although this idea lacks intuitive appeal from a feminist perspective, I argue that understanding the nature of the contribution women make to perpetuating their objectification enables a better understanding of what practices of resistance are necessary for effectively combatting the sexual objectification of women. I defend the explanatory power of the complicity account of objectification in light of two pressing debates in contemporary feminist philosophy: the question of how women can disidentify from femininity given the strong attachments they develop to it, and the question of how feminism can continue to appeal to the motif of solidarity considering the anti-essentialist commitments of recent feminist theory. (shrink)

Sexual objectification is a common theme in contemporary feminist theory. It has been associated with the work of the anti-pornography feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, and, more recently, with the work of Martha Nussbaum. Interestingly, these feminists' views on objectification have their foundations in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Fully comprehending contemporary discussions of sexuality and objectification, therefore, requires a close and careful analysis of Kant's own theory of objectification. In this paper, I provide (...) such an analysis. I explain what is involved, for Kant, in the process of objectification, what it really means for a person to be an object (what Kant calls an `object of appetite'), and finally deal with his reasons for thinking that marriage can provide the solution to the problem of sexual objectification. I then proceed to some contemporary feminist discussions on sexual objectification, showing how influential Kant's ideas have been for contemporary feminist thinkers MacKinnon, Dworkin, and Nussbaum. My analysis of these feminists' work focuses on the striking similarities, as well as the important differences, that exist between their views and Kant's views on what objectification is, how it is caused, and how it can be eliminated. (shrink)

This chapter defends a theory of objectification, conceiving of it as a species of what aestheticians have called ‘seeing‐as’, and more specifically, a kind of seeing‐as which to some degree is insensitive to the mind or mental aspects. An advantage of this view is that it covers both sexual and racial objectification, and can also explain how photographic images can objectify their subjects: namely, by encouraging the viewer to view in a way insensitive to the mind or (...) mental aspects of the subject. It also explains in what context objectification to can be harmless. This view is discussed in relation to several others. (shrink)

We critically analyze four images of female Paralympians posing nude in ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue from the years 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2014. Past literature shows that media portrayals of female Paralympians emphasize esthetically pleasing bodies, able-bodied images and asexualization. Weaving’s continuum of sexual objectification was applied to assess the varying degrees of sexual objectification showcased within each image. From a feminist perspective, discourses of heteronormativity and ableism were applied to outline the concerns with female (...) Paralympic representation in The Body Issue. We argue that by normalizing disability and sexual objectification, woman athletes are trivialized. (shrink)

It is now a platitude that sexual objectification is wrong. As is often pointed out, however, some objectification seems morally permissible and even quite appealing—as when lovers are so inflamed by passion that they temporarily fail to attend to the complexity and humanity of their partners. Some, such as Nussbaum, have argued that what renders objectification benign is the right sort of relationship between the participants; symmetry, mutuality, and intimacy render objectification less troubling. On this (...) line of thought, pornography, prostitution, and some kinds of casual sex are inherently morally suspect. I argue against this view: what matters is simply respect for autonomy, and whether the objectification is consensual. Intimacy, I explain, can make objectification more morally worrisome rather than less, and symmetry and mutuality are not relevant. The proper political and social context, however, is crucial, since only in its presence can consent be genuine. I defend the consent account against the objection that there is something paradoxical in consenting to objectification, and I conclude that given the right background conditions, there is nothing wrong with anonymous, one-sided, or just-for-pleasure kinds of sexual objectification. (shrink)

“James Tiptree Jr.” is a pseudonym of Alice B. Sheldon, US Air Force intelligence officer, CIA analyst, experimental psychologist, and one of the most important and highly acclaimed science fiction writers of the twentieth century. Sheldon’s work as Tiptree deals with a variety of important feminist concerns—among them, sexism, misogyny, objectification, sexual assault, the “otherness” of women, and silencing. This paper explores in a philosophical mode some of the important insights about objectification conveyed in one of Tiptree’s (...) most well-known stories, “’And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side.” These insights lead naturally to a characterization of sexual objectification that both avoids problems with standard philosophical characterizations and also sheds important light on the relationship between objectification and silencing. (shrink)

If desire is conceived as investment in a sex object, why is sexual objectification regarded as intrinsically degrading? The distinction between the "objectification " of pornographic depiction and the "beauty " of erotic depiction can be understood as a difference in degree between the uni-dimensional enframing of one treatment and the multidimensional enframing of the other. The phenomenon of context includes the anticipations of the participating witnesses: the object of pornographic or erotic depiction cannot be isolated from (...) the posture, situation, and desire of the persons participating in the revelation. Erotic depiction which strives to represent the full range of structures, connections, and relationships constitutive of sexlove-that is, forms of mimesis that elaborate the horizons of erotic encounter, that seek to contextualize the intertwining of flesh rather than focus on the slappings of meat-might well meet the most discerning standards of artistic production. (shrink)

The paper discusses Kant's view of sexual desire in connection with Aristotle's account of sexual temperance, arguing that if the Kantian view is correct, the Aristotelian account is false (or that if the Aristotelian account is true, then the Kantian view is false). One cannot be both an Aristotelian and a Kantian about the ethics of sexual desire.

In the current research, we examined whether ostracism and sexual objectification affect the tendency to blame the victim of sexual harassment. Previous research concerning victim blame examined the attribution of blame considering the characteristics of the victim, the perpetrator, and the relation between them. However, no research to date examined whether situational factors of the perceiver can affect their perception and judgment of blame. We propose that sexual objectification and ostracism may elicit empathy toward the (...) victim, and in turn, reduce victim blame. In two experimental studies, women were instructed to imagine interacting with a videotaped man who either gazed at their body, away from them, or at their face. Then, they were asked to read a newspaper article or watch a video portraying encounters in which the man's sexual advances continued after the woman expressed discomfort and lack of interest. In study 1, we found that sexually objectified women attributed less blame to the woman compared with the women who were treated well, with ostracized women falling in between and marginally different from both. In study 2, using mediation analysis we found an indirect effect such that sexually objectified women experienced greater empathy toward the victim, which was associated with reduced attribution of blame. It appears that greater similarity between the situation of the perceiver and the situation of the victim elicits greater empathy. This adds to the previous knowledge that personality similarities result in higher empathy. (shrink)

Rae Langton here draws together her ground-breaking and contentious work on pornography and objectification. She shows how women come to be objectified -- made subordinate and treated as things -- and she argues for the controversial feminist conclusions that pornography subordinates and silences women, and women have rights against pornography.

(No abstract is available for this citation).

This paper criticises Miranda Fricker's account of the primary harm of testimonial injustice as a kind of epistemic objectification, where the latter is understood on the model provided by Martha Nussbaum's influential analysis of sexual objectification and where it is taken to involve the denial of someone's epistemic agency. I examine the existing objections to Fricker's account of the primary harm, criticising some while accepting the force of others, and I argue that one of Fricker's own central (...) examples of testimonial injustice in fact offers the basis of a particularly telling objection. While Fricker's other critics have mostly concluded that we need to look at alternative theoretical resources to offer an account of the primary harm of testimonial injustice, I aim to show that this is premature; both Fricker and her critics have underestimated the resources provided by Nussbaum's analysis of objectification when offering an account of the primary harm, and something very much in the spirit of Fricker's account survives the objections. (shrink)

In this article I offer an analysis of harms associated with sexual objectification. Objectification can be benign, but harm tends to occur in three circumstances: (i) when objectification is non-consensual, (ii) when a phenomenon that I term ‘context-creeping’ occurs, and (iii) when the objectification is also enacting or reinforcing some kind of oppression. I defend the view that objectification is not always harmful, and I explain the popular intuition to the contrary by demonstrating that (...) these three harm-generating circumstances are especially prevalent. The phenomenon of ‘context-creeping’ objectification is introduced to capture what is intuitively wrong with much objectification in media and advertising. This phenomenon describes when instances of sexual objectification (which may be, in themselves, benign) regularly occur outside sexual contexts, in a way that reinforces particular rape myths and thereby contributes to harms. This means that the ubiquity of discussion of pornography in the objectification literature is misleading, and a shift in focus to other media is warranted. I end with a warning, though: we should be very careful in how we respond to these problems, as attempts to mitigate any harms associated with objectifying media can badly misfire. (shrink)

Objectification involves treating someone as a thing. The role of images in perpetuating objectification has been discussed by feminist philosophers. However, the precise effect that images have on an individual's visual system is seldom explored. Kathleen Stock’s work is an exception—she describes certain images of women as causing viewers to develop an objectifying ‘gestalt’ which is then projected onto real-life women. However, she doesn’t specify the level of visual processing at which objectification occurs. In this paper, I (...) propose that images can affect a viewer's early visual system. I will argue that if a viewer is exposed to a lot of images that depict women as sexual objects, this will bias their early visual selection mechanisms in a way that can result in an objectifying way of seeing. This is an important contribution to work on objectification as it incorporates empirical studies on vision and findings from philosophy of mind. It also examines some of the epistemic and moral consequences of objectification occurring at this early visual stage. (shrink)

Objectification is a foundational concept in feminist theory, used to analyze such disparate social phenomena as sex work, representation of women's bodies, and sexual harassment. However, there has been an increasing trend among scholars of rejecting and re-evaluating the philosophical assumptions which underpin it. In this work, Cahill suggests an abandonment of the notion of objectification, on the basis of its dependence on a Kantian ideal of personhood. Such an ideal fails to recognize sufficiently the role the (...) body plays in personhood, and thus results in an implicit vilification of the body and sexuality. The problem with the phenomena associated with objectification is not that they render women objects, and therefore not-persons, but rather that they construct feminine subjectivity and sexuality as wholly derivative of masculine subjectivity and sexuality. Women, in other words, are not objectified as much as they are derivatized, turned into a mere reflection or projection of the other. Cahill argues for an ethics of materiality based upon a recognition of difference, thus working toward an ethics of sexuality that is decidedly ­and simultaneously ­incarnate and intersubjective. (shrink)

성적 대상화 문제는 현대 페미니즘 철학의 핵심 쟁점 가운데 하나이다. 「Objectification」(1995)에서 누스바움은 기존 페미니즘 연구에서 대상화가 부정적인 것으로 간주되어 왔다는 사실을 비판하며, 상대에 대한 인격적 존중이 동반될 경우 긍정적인 대상화 또한 가능함을 주장한다. 그런데 문제는 누스바움이 설명하는 긍정적 대상화가 주체의 선의에 의존한다는 것이다. 주체의 선의에 따라 상대가 인격적으로 대우받을 수도 그렇지 않을 수도 있다는 점에서 누스바움이 제시하는 긍정적 대상화란 근본적으로 임의적인 지위를 가지며, 나와 타인의 관계에는 언제든 폭력이 침입할 여지가 남는다. 이 글은 대상화에 대한 누스바움의 논의가 ‘임의성’의 문제를 가진다는 (...) 사실을 보이고, 사르트르의 대타관계 모델을 바탕으로 대상화 문제를 성찰하는 새로운 방향을 제시할 것이다. 누스바움과 달리 사르트르에게 있어 타인이 대상이 아닌 주체로 거듭나는 것은 나의 임의적 선택에 맡겨질 수 있는 사안이 아니다. 오히려 타인의 시선은 나에 의해 대상화될 수 없는 나의 주체성의 한계를 형성한다. 사르트르의 철학을 경유함으로써 우리는 대상화에 관한 페미니즘 논의의 바탕에 타인, 그리고 주체에 관한 허위관념이 전제되어 있다는 사실을 밝히고, 대상화의 문제를 사유할 수 있는 새로운 관점을 발견할 수 있을 것이다. (shrink)

The central argument of Ann Cahill’s Overcoming Objectification is that the concept of sexual objectification should be replaced by Cahill’s concept of derivatization in order to better capture the wrongness of degrading images and practices without depending on an objectionably narrow and disembodied conception of self. To derivatize someone is not to treat her as a non-person, but rather to treat her as a derivative person, reducing her to an aspect of another’s being. Although not perfect, Cahill’s (...) approach advances the conversation about what we should find objectionable in certain types of sexual representations and interactions by helping us to talk about sex in a way that does not start from the presupposition that physical expressions of sexuality are inherently debasing. I describe the thesis of the book, how I used it in my Philosophy and Women course, and some criticisms that I have and that arose from class discussion. (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum attempts to improve the clarity of the obscure talk of feminists and conservatives about objectification in connection with sexual matters. Her discussion is a substantial improvement. However, it is inconsistent and opaque, and she continues to apply the pejorative term ‘objectification’ to activities which she herself admits are morally unproblematic and which may even be a joyous part of life. I explain the deficiencies in Nussbaum’s discussion, including the fact that she does not notice the (...) one way of objectification that seems inherently problematic, and I show that casual sex, prostitution and pornography are normally not morally problematic even while they exhibit some of Nussbaum’s ways of objectification. The term ‘objectification’ should be eschewed because it is a barrier to clear thinking. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to show that part of the harm of male on female rape in patriarchal societies is explained by seeing rape as making good on the threat of sexual objectification. I argue that what takes place in an encounter of sexual objectification can be thought of as establishing an implicit threat which permeates the lived experience of being a woman under patriarchy because of the prevalence, meaning and place of sexual (...) class='Hi'>objectification in hegemonic patriarchal ideology. The act of rape makes good on this threat. (shrink)

This essay discusses Rae Langton’s recent collection of essays, Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification. After introducing some of the major themes of the collection, I raise questions about two of the central concepts in the book. The first question has to do with Langton’s notion of subordination. I ask why she takes pornography to be a subordinating speech act, rather than a subordinating practice, and argue that the latter view has several advantages. The remaining questions (...) have to do with Langton’s notion of objectification. Looking first at the moral dimension of objectification, I raise some concerns about Langton’s strategy for distinguishing instances of objectification from non-instances. Then, turning to Langton’s discussion of the epistemic dimension of objectification, I ask under what circumstances certain belief-forming mechanisms, such as desire-driven projection, are objectifying, on her view. (shrink)

In Method in Theology (chapter 3) Lonergan points to a parallel between instances of a mediated return to immediacy: “Finally there is a withdrawal from objectification and a mediated return to immediacy in the mating of lovers and in the prayerful mystic’s cloud of unknowing.” Soto’s essay explores the question: “If it is possible, as some couples report, for the mating of lovers to be a prayerful, mystical experience, what does this mean?”Soto explores the physiological, psychological and spiritual dimensions (...) of the lover’s immediacies. She finds three centers of natural immediacies in the lovers’ return via their lovemaking, and one supernatural immediacy. They include a primitive psychological state, Lonergan’s notion of spontaneous intersubjectivity, and the self-presence of contemplation. All three immediacies have transformative potential for the lovers, and position them for mystical experience. The fourth center of immediacy is the supernatural gift of the indwelling Christ. His presence in the lover’s awareness is mystical immediacy. Christ is mediator and mediated in the couple’s objectification of their mystical immediacy and their ensuing graced living, or, life of prayer.Through scholarly research and supporting, concrete interviews of couples, Soto sketches out some of the ways the lovers cooperate with the precept to “be in love.” The ethic is framed around the developments and conversions in Lonergan’s trajectory that moves from eros to friendship and to a special order of charity. (shrink)

This entry considers the question “What is objectification?” After preliminary remarks about different methodological approaches, several possible answers, or groups of answers, are introduced, separated out in terms of broad themes. Each is situated in relation to historical and more contemporary authors. These themes are: objectification as instrumentalization; objectification as reduction to the body; objectification as negation of subjectivity or agency; objectification as naturalization. Objectification is considered in relation to both sexual and racial (...) contexts. Finally, these themes are discussed in relation to the wider category of “mind suppression,” and its relation to objectification in the familiar context of imagery. (shrink)

Inspired by posthuman feminist theory, this paper explores young people’s entanglement with the bio-technological landscape of image creation and exchange in young networked peer cultures. We suggest that we are seeing new formations of sexual objectification when the more-than-human is foregrounded and the blurry ontological divide between human and machine are enlivened through queer and feminist Materialist analyses. Drawing upon multimodal qualitative data generated with teen boys and girls living in urban inner London and semi-rural Wales we map (...) how the digital affordances of Facebook ‘tagging’ can operate as a form of coercive ‘phallic touch’ in ways that shore up and transgress normative territories of dis/embodied gender, sexuality and age. We conclude by arguing that we need creative approaches that can open up spaces for a posthuman accounting of the material intra-actions through which phallic power relations part-icipate in predictable and unpredictable ways. (shrink)

Numerous studies have found that many people believe that a provocatively dressed woman is at greater risk for sexual assault and bears some responsibility for her assault if she is attacked. Furthermore, in legal, academic, and public debates about sexual assault the appropriateness of the term ‘provocative’ as a descriptor of certain kinds of women’s clothing is rarely questioned. Thus, there is a widespread but largely unquestioned belief that it is appropriate to describe revealing or suggestive women’s clothing (...) as ‘provocative’ and that women who wear such clothing could provoke sexual assault and harassment from men. Yet it is rarely noted that only women’s clothing is described as sexually provocative. Men’s clothing, no matter how revealing, is never described as provocative. Why is this the case? This Article challenges the assumption that it is appropriate to describe women’s clothing as provocative. Drawing on on models of the legal defense of provocation and research on objectification and responsibility, this Article demonstrates that continued use of ‘provocative’ term normalizes and entrenches deeply problematic attitudes about women’s responsibility for men’s sexual behavior. The social interpretation of women’s clothing as provocative arises from the privileged social and legal status of men’s sexual arousal and the objectification of women’s bodies. Describing women’s clothing as provocative thus reinforces a problematic conception of women’s bodies and sexuality that is connected to women’s experiences of their bodies, their clothes, and shapes their vulnerability to sexual assault and social and legal attitudes to such attacks. (shrink)

This article examines the media representation of Swedish elite sport from the end of the 1960s until the present day in terms of objectification, sexualization and pornification. During this period, Sweden became one of the world’s most gender-equal countries. Applying a critical qualitative textual analysis, the article shows that the media discourse on gender and sport is, however, not equal. Even if the discourse over time has become less condescending and less explicitly sexist, there are still more or less (...) subtle allusions to women as a sex. From the latter half of the 1990s onwards, it is possible to talk of a pornification of sport which is strongly linked to market adjustment and commercialization. Since pornification affects women to a greater extent, the media image of Swedish elite sport becomes a bastion for the reproduction of inequality. (shrink)

This is a detailed encyclopedia entry on sex and sexuality, explaining the main issues and debates in philosophy about them.

I begin by describing the hideous nature of sexuality, that which makes sexual desire and activity morally suspicious, or at least what we have been told about the moral foulness of sex by, in particular, Immanuel Kant, but also by some of his predecessors and by some contemporary philosophers.2 A problem arises because acting on sexual desire, given this Kantian account of sex, apparently conflicts with the Categorical Imperative. I then propose a typology of possible solutions to this (...) sex problem and critically discuss recent philosophical ethics of sex that fall into the typology's various categories. (shrink)

With its implicit vilification of materiality, the notion of objectification has failed to produce a coherent and effective ethical analysis of heterosexual sex work. The concept of derivatization, grounded in an Irigarayan model of embodied intersubjectivity, is more effective. However, queer sex work poses new and different ethical challenges. This paper argues that although queer sex work can entail both objectification and derivatization, the former is not ethically objectionable, and the latter, although the cause for some justified ethical (...) concern, must be analyzed within the context of structural sexual injustice. (shrink)

This is an entry that covers the basic issues in the philosophy of sex and sexuality, both conceptual and normative. It is a revised and updated version from the 2018 entry.

That women tend to see harassment where men see harmless fun or normal gendered interaction is one of the more robust findings in sexual harassment research. Using in-depth interviews with employed men and women, this article argues that these differences may be partially explained by the performative requirements of masculinity. The ambiguous practice of “girl watching” is centered, and the production of its meaning analyzed. The data suggest that men's refusal to see their behavior as harassing may be partially (...) explained through the objectification and attenuated empathy that the production of masculine identities may require. Thus, some forms of harassment and their interpretations may more accurately be seen as acts of ignoring than states of ignorance. Implications for anti-sexual harassment policies and training are explored. (shrink)

The last decade or so has witnessed a wave of empirical studies purporting to show that men’s sexual focus on the female body leads to increased hostility and aggression against women. According to what I call “The Objectification Hypothesis”, the explanation for this phenomenon has to do with the fact that, in such circumstances, men “objectify” women, that is, regard them as mere objects or as means only. The paper rejects this hypothesis and offers an alternative explanation for (...) the connection between men’s sexual gaze and their aggression against women. This explanation makes no reference to the notions of seeing-other-as-object or of treating-as-means-only. Instead, it locates the dynamic at hand within the theoretical framework of misogyny along the lines developed by Kate Manne. (shrink)

Background: Body touch and close physical proximity are inevitable in some healthcare procedures and can evoke feelings of shame, humiliation, and anger in patients. Given the increasing recognition of human dignity, exploring the occurrence of these negative emotional experiences and identifying mechanisms for their prevention are crucial.Aim: To develop and define the concept of “patient’s sexual dignity discomfort.” Design: A hybrid model of concept development was utilized.Methods: In the theoretical phase, a scoping review was conducted to establish a working (...) definition of patient’s sexual dignity discomfort. This definition was refined and validated using qualitative data collected during the fieldwork phase. In the analytical phase, a final conceptual model of patient’s sexual dignity discomfort was proposed by integrating findings from both the theoretical and fieldwork phases.Ethical considerations: All participants completed an informed consent process, and interviews were conducted via Zoom or phone by a certified psychiatric nurse to ensure confidentiality, anonymity, and comfort.Results: Four themes describing attributes of patient’s sexual dignity discomfort were explored: experiencing shame and embarrassment, vulnerability-induced loss of control, dehumanization and objectification, and uncertain sexual autonomy. Patient’s sexual dignity discomfort occurs when patients perceive care procedures as sexually inappropriate or as involving unnecessary sexual activity, particularly when healthcare providers display unprofessional attitudes or when patients lack consent or are not mentally prepared for the procedure because of insufficient information. This discomfort leads patients to refuse or avoid healthcare treatments and prioritize finding better healthcare services over their health. It can also prompt providers to avoid patients, resulting in a compromised quality of care and poor health outcomes.Conclusions: Patient’s sexual dignity discomfort poses a significant threat to the quality of patient care and preservation of dignity. Nurses can trigger this intentionally or unintentionally, highlighting the need for comprehensive education and training to prevent it. (shrink)

In “The Wrongness of Rape”, Gardner and Shute argued that the English offence of rape primarily targets the wrong of objectification. They tie objectification closely to instrumentalization—to the “conversion of subjects into instruments or tools”. In doing so, they explicitly purport to follow Nussbaum’s understanding of what is morally problematic about objectification. In this paper, I want to explore more closely just what Nussbaum understands by instrumentalization, focusing in particular upon the meaning and role of mutuality in (...) her analysis. Doing so gives us insight into why sexual touching in three broad contexts may not be considered instances of instrumentalization: spontaneous sexual touching in a romantic context; non-spontaneous sexual touching in the context of intimate relationships; and prostitution. The last point may be most controversial given Gardner and Shute’s own stated view that prostitution involves instrumentalization. Even when we look to sexual touching in intimate relationships, however, Nussbaum seems to introduce ideas of implied consent that appear nowhere in Gardner and Shute’s paper. (shrink)

There are at least three senses of sexual objectification: the moral sense of treating a person as if she were primarily a sexual object, the political sense in which women socially count as instruments for men’s sexual pleasure, and the epistemic sense of forming a belief that a person is as one sexually desires them to be. These different senses have been treated as rivals, competing about what the correct account of sexual objectification is, (...) or they have been treated as entirely different projects. I argue for a third relation between them: each sense grasps an aspect of the existing social phenomenon of sexual objectification. Each further points out a wrong involved in sexual objectification. And the three aspects interact—we cannot fully explain any one sense of sexual objectification without the other two. To properly understand this interrelation I lean on an analogy: commodity fetishism as described by Marx helps make sense of the complex social reality of sexual objectification. (shrink)