This is a comment by Quadruple A on the post “Too Much Ado About Women’s Asses – Equity Doesn’t Enter Into the Picture“.
Joanna Schroeder originally said:
“Objectification is natural, it’s even necessary. If you feel desire over Ryan Lochte’s appearance, you’re naturally going to make an object of desire out of him – because he can’t be more to you. You can’t know him, you can’t build a solid foundation of friendship or love with him. This is normal behavior.”
Quadruple A responded:
Well we might all tend to ‘objectify’ persons to some degree. And whether we admit it or not when we appreciate beauty we do perceive a ‘more’ to it. That is really what we are expressing when we say ‘beauty’ in the first place because beauty implies some kind of ‘meaningfulness’ which is more than just saying ‘that appearance is pleasant to my tastes.’ We sense that physical beauty symbolizes an inner more imperceptible quality.
“Whether or not that quality implies some kind of limitation on the freedom of an individual obviously is a question of some not inconsiderable concern but the fact is that is how we perceive beauty. I think this appreciation for beauty can be appreciated by both sexes with regard to both sexes but there is a particularly different way in which female beauty is appreciated.”
Photo credit: Flickr / roland.lakis
About the Editors
Didn’t Joanna Schroeder make the original comment attributed here to Austin Gunter?
Oh, good catch! Sorry about that. I thought you were quoting the original article. I’ve updated it to reflect the correct author.
Thanks!
This is the problem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4zSRkBMPng
That video has nothing to do with the quote. It’s stuff about how nice guys don’t get laid. It is spam.
I haven’t worked out the terms just yet, but I would make a distinction between “mild” objectification and “severe” objectification. (That makes it sound like acne or something. I welcome suggestions for better terms.)
Mild, run-of-the-mill objectification is simply noticing physical features and letting that influence your thoughts about that person in any way. It is not incompatible with seeing that person as a human being or treating that person with basic respect. It could just be a matter of not knowing anything about a person besides what they look like, because you know that person by sight before anything else. You may even begin to make some tentative predictions about what the person is like based on appearance, but you’re not committed to those predictions.
Severe, total objectification is totally reducing that person to only constituent parts. That person is just a body, divorced of all personality or intellect or individual identity. You make absolute assumptions based on that person’s body. They are not really human but just a collection of individual parts that exist solely for your pleasure or disgust.
I don’t think the mild version is a problem, and it is to some degree unavoidable anyway. You can find examples of the sever kind in many places, but it is not the same.
It’s comparable to “greed.” It’s a question of degree. Seeking individual economic interest, like going back to school in order to get a higher paying job, is actually commendable. Seeking individual economic interest by screwing over other people with fraud and theft is unacceptable.
To those who want to destroy all objectification root and branch, I have to ask you to model what that would look like. What would it look like to be attracted to someone on sight without there being any objectification whatsoever?
What you call ‘mild objectification’ I wouldn’t consider to be objectification at all. Noticing a person’s attractive parts is normal and great! It’s presenting parts without a person attached that is a problem.
I don’t objectify women. I consume magazines that have photographs of women, and photographs are objects. The camera does the objectifying, not me. : – )
Seriously, though, I’m still unclear on the boundaries here between objectifying and not objectifying. I’m not sure what it would look like to be physically attracted to someone, enjoy the appearance of that person, and even have a sexual fantasy about that person without objectifying that person to some degree. If objectification means *reducing* someone to being an object and only an object, then that is very dehumanizing, but also an extreme case.
This is not what happens EVERY time a man is physically attracted to a woman’s appearance. Visual attraction can be objectifying, but it doesn’t have to be. The number of men who really only see women as objects and not people is probably a tiny minority, however it may seem otherwise to many women. You could be visually attracted AND think of that person as a person.
I’m wondering about practical solutions. Let’s say I see an attractive woman walking down the street, and I file that visual experience away for later imagination. I guess that’s objectification because I’m not getting to know her as a person. So, I guess I should walk after her, start a conversation with her, try to get to know her better, so then I can feel better about imagining her naked. “Excuse me, miss, I wanted to ask you some questions about yourself, so that later when I’m imagining having sex with you I can fantasy about a more complete person and not just someone with a hot body. I don’t want to objectify you.” She ought to be grateful that I’m treating her so respectfully, right? Lotsa luck with that, buddy.
I think the word itself is a little misleading. The suffix “-ify” suggests transforming something or someone into something new, creating something that did not exist before. “Objectify” suggests there was no part of the original that was in any way an object before being made into an object. You can only “objectify” if the original was not like an object in the first place. However, even without objectification, people have bodies, and bodies are objects. People are governed by the same physical laws as all other objects – gravity sure does treat you like an object. Try to act like you’re non-corporeal and don’t need food, water, or oxygen. That really will make you a lifeless object.
To me the problem is treating people in all ways like they are ONLY objects, instead of treating them like they are only partly objects. It’s not possible to treat others completely as non-objects, whatever that would look like. Even a “ghost” is a thing.
I sympathize with the people pointing out that women objectify men. That’s an important point in order to keep a larger perspective. However, I tend to think of that as a related by separate question. I tend to think something is right or wrong regardless of how many people do it. Objectification could be something that only men do, but that fact alone would not make it wrong. Even _if_ men do something that women never do, that doesn’t make it wrong just because women would never do it. More people doing something doesn’t make it right, just more acceptable.