Introduction
Seeing or treating someone as an object, typically a woman, is known as objectification.
The practise of treating a person only as a sexual object is known as sexual objectification. In a broader sense, objectification refers to treating someone like a commodity or an item without taking into account their personality or dignity. Although objectification, a form of dehumanisation, is most frequently studied at the level of a community, it can also relate to an individual's actions.
Although both men and women can be sexually objectified, the term is typically used to refer to the objectification of women. It is a key notion in numerous feminist theories and psychological theories that are based on these theories. Several feminists contend that the sexual objectification of women and girls contributes to gender inequity, and numerous psychologists link objectification to a variety of risks to women's physical and mental health.
According to research, objectification of men has psychological consequences similar to those on women and can make men feel self-conscious about their bodies. The idea of sexual objectification is debatable, and some feminists and psychologists have asserted that objectification—at least to some extent—is a natural aspect of human sexuality.
Martha Nussbaum has identified seven features that are involved in the idea of treating a person as an object:
Instrumentality:
The treatment of a person as a tool for the objectfiers purposes.
Denial of Autonomy:
The treatment of a person as lacking in autonomy and self determination.
Inertness:
The treatment of a person as lacking in agency, and perhaps also in activity.
Fungibility:
The treatment of a person as interchangeable with other objects.
Ownership:
The treatment of a person as something that is owned by another (can be sold and bought by other's)
Violability:
The treatment of a person as lacking in boundary integrity.
Denial of Subjectivity:
The treatment of a person as something whose experience and feelings need not be taken into account.
Objectification of Women by:
Emmanuel Kant, MacKinnon and Dworkin, Bartky, and Haslanger:
According to Emmanuel Kant:
As soon as a person becomes an object of appetite for another, all moral relationship motives stop working because as an object of appetite for another, a person becomes a thing and can be treated and used as such by everyone. Sexual love turns the loved one into an object of appetite; once that appetite is stilled, the person is cast aside like one casts aside a lemon that has been sucked dry.
These scholars also covered a wide range of topics, such as cruelty, injustice, prostitution, concubinage, physical appearance, and many others.
According to Haslanger:
When it comes to women's sexual objectification by men, the above conditions are: men view and treat women as objects of male sexual desire
men desire women to be submissive and object-like and forced to submit. men believe that women are in fact submissive and object-like by nature.
Let’s see what scholars have to say: Views on Objectification
Although the idea of sexual objectification is crucial to feminist theory, opinions on what exactly defines it and the ethical ramifications of such objectification are very diverse. The idea of physical appeal is problematic in and of itself, according to some feminists like Naomi Wolf, with some extreme feminists opposing any assessment of another person's sexual attractiveness based on physical traits. John Stoltenberg even goes so far as to say that any sexual desire that entails visualising a woman is unjustly objectifying.
According to radical feminists, objectification is a key factor in relegating women to the "oppressed sex class" that they refer to. While some feminists perceive the media as objectifying in countries they claim to be patriarchal, they frequently highlight pornography as having a particularly heinous role in men's habitual objectification of women.
The television and film industries are frequently accused of normalising the sexual objectification of women by pro-feminist cultural critics like Robert Jensen and Sut Jhally. These critics accuse mass media and advertising of promoting the objectification of women in order to help promote goods and services.
According to individualist feminist Wendy McElroy, the term "objectification" of women, which refers to turning them into sexual objects, is useless because, when taken literally, the term "sexual objects" implies nothing because inanimate objects lack sexuality. She goes on to say that because women are both their bodies and their minds and souls, concentrating on just one of these aspects is not "degrading."
Criticizing the feminist support
Wendy Kaminer, a feminist author, attacked feminist support for anti-pornography laws, contending that such restrictions infantalize women and that pornography does not contribute to sexual assault. She has remarked that despite their severe disagreements on almost everything else, radical feminists frequently join forces with the Christian right to promote these regulations and oppose the portrayal of sex in popular culture.
Similar objections have been raised by Nadine Strossen and Nan D. Hunter, two of her ACLU colleagues.
According to Strossen, objectification may even satisfy women's own dreams rather from being inherently degrading.
Nigel Barber, a psychologist, contends that this focus on the physical attractiveness of people of the other sex (or, in the case of gays and lesbians, those of the same sex) is a natural tendency
for men and, to a lesser extent, for women, and that this tendency has often been mistaken for sexism.
CONCLUSION
There is nothing wrong with acknowledging a person's sexual or, as you pointed out in your case, professional roles (getting things done). Yet, the issue occurs when we view these people only as useful tools. When we sexually objectify people, we turn them into a masturbatory aid. They are only there for your sexual gratification.
On the one hand, this minimises people's individuality to one convenience they have for us, which flies in the face of the complexity of human identity. Contrarily, well-known philosophical schools like deontology argue that we should never use another person as a tool to achieve our goals and that people have worth that goes beyond what they can do for us.
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