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Objectification is a Useless Term

The American upper-middle class have plucked the word ‘objectification’ from Philosophy, and turned it into an internet buzzword. It’s become a tribal term, and therefore won’t budge easily, but I think it should budge off and join whatever graveyard ‘tubular’ currently lies in. In fact, it’s an anti-useful idea, with a sordid history.

A Brief History of Nonsense

Prussian Philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, invented the term while trying to solve the problem of Ethics. Part of his solution came when he realized Ethics should work like Latin grammar.

Subjects act, objects are acted upon.

That’s grammar, and it’s no more useful to the field of Ethics than taking platitudes from Spectroscopy.

I know the standard reply.

‘No, no - grammar is part of the history of the word, it’s not how it’s used now. Pay no attention to that, it’s meaning now is quite distinct’.

I invite anyone who hears this word used to try to believe that while ‘objectification’ is so persistently skirting around the edge of its own origins. It flickers back and forth like a trick of the light, here being a grammatical term, there being a term of intention, later turning into a comment on the effects of certain beliefs, and then back to its natural state of grammatical deconstruction. Notice how objectification chat cannot go too far from talk of subjects and objects. Notice how everyone introduces the term with that same quote from above.

But getting back to blaming the Germans - Kant. It was Kant who first suggested these terms as part of a Metaphysics of Ethics and explained his own peculiar way of looking at them, mostly in his Lectures on Ethics. According to Kant, humans have a special something he calls ‘dignity’ while objects do not. Dignity is derived from one’s ability to reason, so this does not extend to animals - there are no inherent moral problems with murdering one’s way through fields of animals, just so long as one does it in a dignified manner; they are objects. Treating someone as an object is to treat them as a means to one’s own ends - which is fine according to Kant just so long as they is also treated as a means to their own ends, which is to treat someone with dignity. It strikes me as a circumlocutious way of saying ‘Remember other people have desires too’ but I can’t say it’s a terrible idea until we come to Kant’s implementation.

Sex

Kant believed that all sex outside of a legally recognised marriage constituted using someone for pleasure, without regard for their own autonomy; that a woman who had sex outside marriage was like a lemon with all the juice squeezed out for someone else’s use. Exactly why, isn’t clear. It’s further unclear why he thought that women were objectified within this process while men were not. Prostitution was something he saw as the selling of oneself, while other work such as manual labour (or writing dull Philosophy tracts for money) were not selling oneself.

Rather more worrying, he characterised monogamous marriage as two people owning each other. He even went so far as to say the key difference between marriage and a non-legally bound monogamous relationship was that each partner would be legally bound to ‘surrender one’s person to one’s spouse’. This is how Kant defended the notion of ‘no rape within marriage’.

After getting off to such an awful start it’s time to look at how some Feminist writers have started to use the term.

Modern Varieties

Modern Philosophers who use the term have a variety of ideas about what it means, which is an oddity in and of itself. If they all studied and wrote about the same thing, they should have similar descriptions, but they definitely do not.

It seems obvious that each one has used the word to write about their own world-view.

Nussbaum

Starting our examples with Nussbaum, she characterises objectification with the following list:

1. Instrumentality: the treatment of a person as a tool for the objectifier’s purposes;

2. Denial of autonomy: the treatment of a person as lacking in autonomy and self-determination;

3. Inertness: the treatment of a person as lacking in agency, and perhaps also in activity;

4. Fungibility: the treatment of a person as interchangeable with other objects;

5. Violability: the treatment of a person as lacking in boundary-integrity;

6. Ownership: the treatment of a person as something that is owned by another (can be bought or sold);

7. Denial of subjectivity: the treatment of a person as something whose experiences and feelings (if any) need not be taken into account.

The most obvious problem with this list is that it applies to too much. There’s no stipulation in (1) that using someone for one’s purpose must be done without any regard for their dignity, as Kant did. Other items on the list seem to be things sufficiently covered in other moral discourse - why do we need (5) - the idea of boundary-integrity? Is there something special in this which isn’t covered by non-violence edicts already? Isn’t ‘Don’t hit people and don’t be in their space’ far clearer than ‘Don’t objectify people, which would include respecting their boundary-integrity, which probably extends to their house and definitely their body, but nobody’s sure because Philosophy’s really deep and not always clear’? Why do we need ‘objectification’ to say what’s wrong with owning people? Kant suggested the idea of objectification without a peep on slavery. It seems ‘Don’t own people’ was a more effective slogan than ‘Don’t treat people like objects, e.g. when trying to own them’ and it’s hardly surprising.

I’m not even sure why 4: Fungibility, is a problem. We don’t usually care which person fixes a problem, so long as they fix it, so we see every janitor and sysadmin in the world, and I don’t see a problem with that. If you have space for a fifth friend in a car and you’re going on a road trip, it’s quite possible to have two friends who are equally suited to the trip. Why not flip a coin when deciding which one to ask?

Nussbaum later argued in favour of the positive or at least unobjectionable properties of being objectified. So just to make matters worse, it’s unclear what objectification means, it’s unclear when it’s happening, but when we know it is happening it’s unclear whether or not it’s a problem. I’ve had clearer definitions of quantum physics from people who were so full of mushrooms they couldn’t tie their own laces.

Bartky

Bartky’s view on objectification isn’t so much a tick-list as a story. The story is that young women are valued by their appearance and are sometimes tempted to buy into their own appearance. When this happens they start to make themselves look pretty which is something people also do to some objects. It’s also something people do to themselves but apparently young women bear enough similarity to Easter Eggs that it’s fair to say that any decorations they inflict upon themselves is objectification. In addition to women objectifying themselves, men also objectify them. Exactly how is unclear, but apparently telling women they look nice is sufficient.

The entire thing’s unclear at this stage, and while it might be clearer once we get more of Bartky’s story that strongly suggests that everyone who’s been using the word without reading the apparently necessary background material has been jumping the gun.

Green

Others, such as Green have recognised these problems and suggested that being objectified is great - at least you’re useful to others. Apparently it’s being ‘subjectified’ that’s the problem, which we can only imagine is the property of being unable to be objectified, which is once again a rather circumlocutious way of talking about being useless.

Where it Falls Down

Public Ideas & Shibboleths

When we speak with friends or strangers, we implicitly accept a lot of things, and objectification cannot reasonably appear on the list.

We accept scientists broadly know their own field. We accept cruelty towards dogs should not happen. We can reference these ideas without justifying them.

We cannot reference the importance of Christian values, or demand people stop using Adobe software because of the licence. People may understand these ideas, but we don’t all care about them

Using a term like ‘objectification’ looses all the demandingness of a point, because nobody’s accepted it as a real thing. You can’t berate an inappropriate billboard on the basis if Kantian theory, because we haven’t all accepted Kantian theory. We can’t all agree that some guy should never have made the comments he did on the basis of Nussbaum’s armchair Sociology, because nobody cares what these people think.

You can argue that nobody should eat meat, because it requires animal cruelty. You can argue that because the idea that cruelty sucks sits squarely inside the realm of public ideas. But relying on objectification to complain about wage discrepancies seems like explaining the problem with someone’s burgers by referencing Marxist alienation.

All demandingness has been lost.

Indeterminacy

The concept of objectification is meant to mark out a particular type of badness, and to elucidate ethical concepts. And this is where it really falls down.

Someone employs a woman to have her photograph taken next to some depressing product for an advert.

The various ethical theories have transparent things to say. Contract theorists can see that she and her employer are happy with the agreement of cash in exchange for pictures. Utilitarians are happy so long as everyone else is happy. Marxist exploitation, perhaps less transparent, at least asks basic questions like ‘How much wealth is she producing and how much is she paid?’, allowing us to start with one minus the other in order to see how much she’s being exploited.

What does this idea of objectification say? It seems it could say anything. Some people, seeing her photographed next to an object with some make-up on might say she’s being objectified (just to be clear, she’s wearing the make-up, not the object). Others might demand that sex be explicitly used to sell the product before objectification has taken place. But whatever your opinion, it’ll remain that way - a basic gut-reaction devoid of any definite statement of a problem because there’s really not way to tell if this is ‘true’ objectification. We don’t know if she’s being used as an instrument without regard to her dignity, and how exactly are the employers meant to respect her subjectivity? They were supposed to pay her in money but if that doesn’t suffice how exactly could they promote her dignity? Maybe allow her a play-boy style side-panel where she talks about her stamp-collection next to the advert of the item? Maybe Bartky’s objectification is a bigger worry, so we need to make sure that while she can be as attractive as she likes she can’t wear any adornment. No make-up, no clothes. We’ll just have young, naked women everywhere - if that doesn’t keep Bartky happy I don’t know what will.

And if anyone feels unhappy with my analysis of what counts as objectification, remember that there are no wrong answers here, only continental language games thinly masking gut reactions. We cannot demonstrate that my ludicrous display works less well than any other interpretation.

Breaking It Down

Instead of wrapping problems in theory, people could just state the problem.

Young people persistently looking at Photoshopped bodies on Instagram makes them depressed, because they don’t like their own bodies.

Focussing on people’s appearance makes them feel demeaned, and replaceable.

When people only receive positive attention for their ass, they end up focussing on it, where they might have focussed on their education.

We don’t need to wander around ‘they are objectified, which includes the notion of fungibility, and we should not objectify people’, we can just go straight for the neck with our words. Nothing here requires going to University to learn special language, and nothing requires people to accept the ideas of wig-wearing weirdos.

The direct approach will always have more teeth.