This seems a little uncalled for, frankly. I was expressing frustration that this thread is examining the same ground as the other one, and I was pointing to an explanation given on the other thread that addresses objectification beyond sexuality.
I’m not a sociologist or gender studies professor either. I found that definition through discussion here on BB, and it’s one of my favorite things about this place – helping me to think about ideas in different ways.
One thing I do not like are purely defensive replies to genuine posts.
Did @Jilly attack you somehow? I read her comment as expressing frustration at us having to make the same arguments over and again, and kind of not being heard? Is that not something we should be frustrated about or that we shouldn’t express that frustration when we have it? Would you rather us just smile and nod, and NOT express ourselves here when it deviates from issues that involved gender?
Couldn’t possibly be that we have very common experiences relating to our gender, could it? NAH, must be because we all have advanced degrees in gender studies!
Usually your comments are astute, well reasoned and very insightful; I’m not sure why you seem so defensive over what seems to be a mere miscommunication.
To be quite clear, I never stated nor implied that @Jilly attacked me. At all. Of course I assumed that she was expressing her frustration about the response I made to the opening post. Why on earth would @Jilly attack me?!
She expressed frustration, quoted the definition I used when answering the question posed to women in the OP, and pointed out that there was an academic definition (in another thread). I apologized, thinking I had caused her frustration by using an inappropriate definition.
She then quoted my apology and said[quote=“Jilly, post:110, topic:101530”]
This seems a little uncalled for, frankly.
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So, I did not cause her frustration, but made it worse with an apology. What to do, but apologize? and further disappoint, and … well, here we are
Thanks for the recommendation! I have my feelers out for some of those books now.
Not at all! Objectification refers to an object of desire. By desire I mean a condition which one interprets as a motivation that can only be “satisfied” by others. For example a baby is quite aware of the physiological feelings associated with hunger, but does not desire food as an object, because they don’t know what it is or how it relates. Likewise, “there is a stirring in my loins”, “I feel insecure”, or “my life is ending” are awareness without positing desire which can be fulfilled by an object - although people in some cultures are conditioned to do this as a reflex. The notion of “power over others” I think also certainly qualifies as a desire with an object. This is what I meant by a “gloss” - not that gender studies people or others aren’t doing their homework, but that adopting objectification as a disciplinary term sidesteps the more fundamental question of whether or not there truly is desire, or whether it can really be said to have an object.
That might seem kind of aloof and academic a concern when contrasted against how one is treated in their daily life. But I think it is worth considering to what extent objectification serves as an accountable model of a process or if it might be more of an arbitrary idiom or metaphor that we use as an arbitrary label. Eurocentric cultures often presume a philosophical bedrock based upon individuals and their desires which goes largely unquestioned, but the outlook is quite foreign to Eastern thought, where the individual and desire are often framed as outright illusory. But even for working from different models of self, society, and motivation, many Eastern cultures still likewise have deep problems of patriarchy.
This I think risks giving patriarchy too much credit. Not everybody subscribes to or lives within patriarchy. Not unlike when people posit capitalism as an inside which has no outside. Just because it exploits flaws in human reasoning in no way makes it universal. Not unlike when feminists have written, in effect “Even women enact the male gaze, because we can’t truly know what the female gaze would be.” I guess it is tempting, but still preposterous to think through. People need to create institutions which reflect more complete views of life, rather than succumb to despair and the entropy of dumb reactionary power. More easily said than done, I know!
Maybe some kind of semantic drift is happening there, but the model of “objectification” seems to have been based not upon people as “an object” in the same inert sense as a rock, but specifically an object of desire. Like the difference between saying “I am aroused” or “We enjoy each other’s company”, and “That person is my objective.” The latter could be seen as bypassing critical reasoning and introspection by using The Other a projection for their own inner motivations.
I think that attraction and desire (with it’s objects) are neither the same, nor necessarily in opposition. They are two models, and certainly not the only ones.
Sure, but survival itself tends to be just another desire which people prefer to leave unexamined rather than consider deliberately. Anything which you need, where doing without is literally unthinkable, effectively defines you. The only emancipation lies in completely letting go of desiring anything - including “one’s own” very personality and existence. The apparent paradox is that lacking a compulsion towards a desired thing in no way means that you might not happen to have some of it anyway! Discipline and control are phenomena internal to ourselves, and attempts at subjugating others serve to distract from this process, and are never a real substitute.
Perhaps you did, perhaps I did, perhaps both. The link @Jilly posted leads to the Gendered Objectification thread, specifically, to the post in which @Jilly appears to quote Wikipedia.
I do not find the post to which you refer here: [quote=“anon61221983, post:109, topic:101530, full:true”] I think @jilly was noting that the question that @AndreStmaur asked was the very same one that you asked.
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Could you please provide a link? (I do try to <3 rather than repeat previously posted posts.)
Its obvious that when we ladies are complaining about objectification, the men here only hear “sexual objectification” - hence all the discussion about attraction and desire.
However, the objectification of women is much larger than that.
This is an excellent article and has what is now my favourite double entrendre:
Yet, an overemphasis on the ‘sexual’ aspect can obscure the much more problematic aspect of ‘objectification’, the iceberg of which sexual objectification is the visible tip.
If I may pose this question. Assuming sexual objectification and objectification are separate issues.
Is it fair to say that sexual objectification is far more heavily weighted towards women; however, objectification is geared more evenly between the sexes?
I keep thinking of an above post regarding an ad wherein the woman on abicycle is considered to be objectified (albeit not sexually) and I think of a huge part of marketing and advertising that uses both genders as objects to pitch their products and messages.
It’s not a matter of turning it down. It’s a matter of acknowledging all non-men’s libido is turned up to about the same level as men’s. The difference is that in the current situation only men get to express that libido.
It seems clear from your posts that you’re really into essentialism and evolutionary psychology. Okay, but please be aware both those things have been debunked for years, at least in terms of how they conventionally describe gender expression and sexuality.
That would be speciesism, to suggest that a person needs to be human in order to have agency or equal value. Respect need not depend upon what species one belongs to. I think that it is understandable that people striving to overcome racism and sexism try to step up acceptance to a larger, more inclusive category. But in terms of process and protocol, the underlying mechanics of social organization, it still works pretty much the same us-vs-them way.
Coincidentally, this seems to be one of the areas Martha Nussbaum, the feminist philosopher @Jilly recommended above deals with in their work.
They use identity generally, and can internally be witnessed in their pseudoscience of striving to appeal to people, to get them to identify in order to sell to them “lifestyles”. Any hyper-realized depiction of “you” as “the happy customer” makes one the object of their stratagem, of moving units, or of shaping perceptions.
But gender itself as well as its representation are also The Product. As a queer person, I tend to be acutely aware that there are far more than two genders, and that they don’t have innately visible coding. Sex and gender are used, but they are also simplistic stereotypes, such as with race and class. I often wonder about the merit and effectiveness of debating the content of stereotypes versus their use at all. But identity as a mode of being seems to require some template to compare oneself to. For better or worse, identity sells, in both the commercial and conceptual sense. So the challenge then might be how to have such an image grow with us in our social awareness and have some dignity to it.
