Whenever anyone brings up the concept of objectification of women in a blog, there are long and endless wrangles about what the idea means, and whether it is valid. One old-line feminist response to this would be, "Those men just don`t get it." I want to argue here that the concept of objectification really is in crisis. It may not be obsolete, but it cannot do all the things it is being made to do. This is going to be a fairly formal, not especially readable piece, because I think this is necessary to the topic.When things are emotional, it is especially important to be resolutely logical.
1. The notion of objectification has always had certain problems, especially in terms of communicating with men.
"Objectification" is a concept, an artificial way of bringing knowledge and experience together. This one is in the first instance a metaphor: a woman cannot really be an object, in the sense of being inanimate like a stone. Certain qualities of inanimate objects are imputed to her in certain circumstances. This is no different from a standard metaphor like "the girl is a rose." We don't say "the woman is an object," because of the way the metaphor is viewed. The point is not to assert that a woman is an object but rather to assert that this metaphor accurately presents the way men, or some men, view women. There is reference at once to "object’" as inanimate object and to "object" as grammatical object, the object of an action. In this case, the action would be male desire or some action coming from male desire, ranging from sex (construed as something the man does to the woman) through sexual harassment to rape.
Many women have found this concept helpful in formulating their experience, and women seem to communicate well with each other using it. In speaking to men, however, there are problems.
It seems like it should communicate to men about the way they should behave toward women, but it fails to draw any useful distinctions. If a man desires a woman, he is making her a grammatical object within the relevant category of verb. At the same time, not many would say that he is right away objectifying her in any negative sense. If he rapes her when she is unconscious, then he is certainly objectifying her, but no one needs this concept to think this action is wrong.
Between the two, how do we draw lines? Wikipedia remarks, "Objectification is an attitude that regards a person as a commodity or as an object for use, with insufficient regard for a person's personality." Well, that sounds bad, but in practice, what does that come down to? If a man sees every woman he meets purely in terms of the attractiveness of her body to him, he is objectifying her in these terms. But by this definition, if he pays some attention to her personality, he might still be objectifying her. It would be really difficult to literally pay no attention to someone's personality, given any exchange at all. How much attention is enough? As for "commodification," we are again in the realm of metaphor. A woman cannot possibly be a commodity, like copper, for instance. The idea seems to be that the woman appears as an aid to masturbation and not as a person. But once again, from the subject position, how does a man ever know where the line is? Obviously, there are times when a man focuses the bulk of his attention on a woman`s body, but is he in the wrong as long as he does this, and if he discusses Wittgenstein with her an hour later, does he put himself in the right? What if he cannot distinguish subjectively between his attention to her body and his attention to her personality? (The two seem to combine in the real world.) Should he analyze himself to find out if he is commodifying her?
The concept may serve as a starting point for talking to women about the way they experience men, but it is not a helpful principle for guiding ethical behaviour.
2. Certain consequences of objectification of women have been predicted which have not materialized.
One thing men have been told is that they shouldn`t consume pornography, because that's "objectifying women." We were told that if we looked at the centrefold in Playboy, our attitudes toward women would become bad, and we would surely compulsively become rapists. As Naomi Wolf remarked in a widely-circulated article in New York magazine, pornography is now everywhere, and yet this has not come to pass. Indeed, her claim is that we men are now failing to pay enough attention to women`s physicality. A study done at the University of Montreal involved in-depth interviews with 20 men in their twenties who are regular users of pornography. The study failed to find any bad effects on their relations with their sexual partners. On the sociological scale, studies carried out in Germany, Denmark and Japan traced the increased availability of pornography and looked for impact on sexual violence. All three studies concluded that after controlling for all the other variables they know about, increased availability of pornography results in reduced incidence of sex crimes. Another study shows parallel findings in the United States. There may be serious studies out there arguing the opposite, but all I see going the other way is moralistic, ideology-driven writing.
Is it time to discard the concept? Perhaps not. Women still find it helpful in making sense of their experience, and I take that seriously. It`s going to be hard, though, to retain the concept while discarding other ideas associated with it.
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Comments
On a larger social scale, as something that (while it does happen to both genders and in different contexts) is largely about the continuing perception of 'woman as commodity' it has much more usefulness. The adopting of this term to the simply everyday has squandered to some extent its more relevant meaning.
That is, two men in a bar might 'objectify' a woman, but the more important objectification is something one actually lives, related much more to the perception of the feminine as secondary, Other, and 'less than.' Objectification in this sense is part of the continuing/current patriarchal system, where both genders are seen as some form of commodity or some part of the marketplace.
Objectification of the female/the feminine gender translates most effectively into Woman As Less, because, once objectified, the real human being can be forgotten very efficiently.
But of course, such a term isn't just gendered. Objectification occurs almost as often when we are at war.
I will not whip out the Marx here however, because I really desire not to do that. But I guess you most certainly could. I just refuse to discuss commodities and fetishes this morning. I am too tired. ;)
Your sympathetic, intelligent remarks are always welcome.
I'm not sure "object" is the right metaphor for the things you set out. If someone or something is an object to me, I am completely separate from that someone or something. I have no empathy or ethical consideration for a chair. I do on the other hand have empathy and ethical consideration for my dog, who is certainly Other and secondary (even in her own view, dogs being hierarchical in their view of the world), though perhaps not "less than." My point is that such relative terms do not exclude empathy or ethical consideration.
We've all seen men and women both think that some boy or man is wonderful, in contrast to female participants in the same activity, who are seen as just ordinary. That is "secondary, Other, less than," but I don't see that it's useful to call it "objectification."
You as always, make interesting points. I do disagree, however, with the idea that objectification is primarily expressed and gendered through only women as a way to express 'what men do'. I believe strongly it is a process in which both genders participate, to varying degrees, and a process in which human beings participate all the time, because they cannot help it (maybe--that one is harder to prove).
I think that objectification can certainly include a hierarchy in it; in fact, it must do so. I can be very sympathetic, and even empathetic towards the cat, but it is the cat, and so, as a human, I might feel a certain superiority. (Although with a cat, you are probably wrong about that. ;) )
My point is that objectification is part of, I believe, of a larger structure, one in which we must all participate, whether we want to do that or not. There's just no getting away from Western civilization, try as we might.
In other words, I think it's more than a mode of communication between women to describe their experiences. It is, instead, a way of communicating that experience in which we must all participate. After all, if a man sees a woman solely in terms of her physical being for example, they each must participate in that exchange.
I absolutely do see what you're saying in terms of individual experience. Pornography, for example, as 'the objectification of women' is that example. But I think it's a larger process than that. In other words, I feel it's a reduction to discuss it only in terms of gender politics, where it should be considered on a larger scale. When we reduce someone to a fetish (no! you made me dig up Marx! eek!), to an object of desire, the result must be that we make that person less than ourselves, less human, so that he or she can be 'consumed' in some way. We do this as well with people with whom we are at war. They become objectified, made something not ourselves, and so less, so that they can be dealt with without guilt, frankly.
We're about to go into an evil discussion about the Other, which I would rather avoid. Plus, if you make me dig up Irigaray, I might start to whine. ;) heh
I don't remember reading Irigaray herself, but I sure read a lot along that line at one point in my life. I think, despite postructuralist principles that said the opposite, they tended to Platonize the concepts they used. For instance, one of the slogans of poststructuralist feminism was "Woman is constituted as lack" (this from Lacan). I saw this slogan being treated as if it were a factual statement, but it is in fact just an instrument for bringing certain phenomena together. It was always perfectly clear that in even the most patriarchal construction of woman, she wasn't just an empty space, a non-penis. Motherhood alone has real content, never mind the rest of femaleness. Too much abstraction. Experience rules.
To objectify is simply to see a particularity in its suchness as opposed to seeing a social construct or a figment of one's own imagination. If I perceive an individual standing before me and think "poor white trash" or "rag-head" or "slut", then I have subjectified: if with that same individual before me I think "look it's Jane", now I am at least on the path of objectification.
"It's just as easy to love a rich man as it is to love a poor man."- that right there is the result of subjectification, men as interchangeable part. "A woman ain't nothing but a fuck-hole"- that right there is subjectification too, unless the speaker was wont to notice the suchness of the particular fuck-hole that was before him- which puts him in serious danger of noticing the particularity of the woman in front of him and objectifying her as well.
Assuming the existence of an all-knowing intelligence-"God" if you will. Would you rather that God see you as "some chick" (subjective) or more like "Yorick...I know him" (objective)? Turns out objectification is just another word for love.
Still, larger structures are important to consider, in terms of understanding smaller situations (and vice versa!).
I've been thinking about this as an example. When slavery ruled the states (unfortunately), everyone was caught up in it as a system. Whether you were a slave, an owner, one who did not care, or one who fought against the system, the system affected you. Slavery hurt everyone involved, even the damnable slave owners whose very being was crucially changed into something rather terrible, and in many cases (as in our founding fathers), it created some terrible contradictions. We still pay for that extremely hideous choice made by our ancestors.
The same is true of the state of objectification, in terms of men and women. We are all affected by it. I believe it very much connected to the need human beings appear to have involving stereotyping. There is clearly some sort of survival connection involved.
When considering this situation on a smaller scale, on a personal level, I'll tell you this ... until I reached a certain age, when suddenly I became invisible (about 41) and was no longer objectified in the same way, I could not clearly see how my value as a woman was mostly considered in terms of how I looked, what I could be to a man.
Then, when I became invisible in that way, I knew. Because I'd lost that power. When I sought other types of power, as one is want to do, many of those were limited in scope, not by my own choice. It was fine to be smart, but my career choices are much more limited. The female adjuncts go first. Women still have trouble being hired in academia, and it's not for lack of credentials. I've been overlooked in classes, made a comment, and then listened as, a few minutes later, a male colleague says the same comment and gets lauded for it. If I speak up, I'm an aggressive bitch. If I don't, I'm either behaving or I'm told I'm meek, like so many other women. I sort of can't win.
But I will keep trying, of course. I think it's very interesting what happened to the blogger who let everyone think she was a male. Her opportunities opened up exponentially as a man. But the question men kept asking is 'was she acting differently, when posing as a man?" There was a disconnect in understanding that it was most likely not her but the perception of her that was at play.
That's why these issues must remain global in scope. Because they affect everyone so much.
Slavery, of course, differs from objectification in that it had visible existence in all sorts of ways. There were laws on the books about it. There's nothing hard to understand about "Do what I say or I'll beat you with a whip." There were ideological things, too, but with a visible centre. With sexism, we're looking at many different situations, hard to bring together. "Objectification" was an effort to bring them together which, in my view, failed. Other terms are still valid: discrimination, sexism, gender imbalance.
When I was in my twenties, in trying to be serious about ethical issues, I tried to use the idea of objectification to regulate myself, and my own behaviour. I never succeeded. At that time, I thought it was my own failing, but I think now that it wasn't.
It may be true that there are other bad effects of pornography--or good or neutral effects, for that matter. What seems clear is that the notion of objectification does not explain it, and we need a new model.