Sexual Objectification

Sexual objectification is the process through which women are constructed as sex objects. In feminist philosophy, as well as in public discourse, sexual objectification is used to describe a wide range of phenomena from pornography, music videos with sexual content, sexist advertising, men’s magazines, and photographs of topless women in tabloid newspapers, to lap-dancing clubs, cat-calling and other forms of everyday harassment in public places, and many more. Sexual objectification is usually, but not always, used as a moralised concept. To say that something is sexual objectification is to say that it is morally wrong. However, some philosophers have argued that sexual objectification is not necessarily morally wrong. Indeed, at least one philosopher has argued that, in interpersonal relationships, seeing or treating one’s partner as a sex object can be ‘necessary or even wonderful features of sexual life’ (Nussbaum 1995:251).

Philosophical discussions of sexual objectification have been concerned with the clarification of conceptual and normative questions about this wide-ranging phenomenon. What exactly makes a particular attitude, behaviour, practice, or process one of sexual objectification? Some philosophers analyse objectification in Kantian terms and conceive of ‘making something into an object’ as ‘seeing or treating something as a thing’. In this case, the normative question of what makes sexual objectification wrong when it is wrong concerns the permissibility of instrumentalisation. Other philosophers analyse sexual objectification as the imposition of sex object status on women. In this case, sexual objectification is always morally wrong. There is also philosophical discussion of the kind of harm and wrong that sexual objectification does. If it wrongfully instrumentalises women, sexual objectification may be thought to be a form of disrespect or dehumanisation and a harm to autonomy. But it can also be seen as a harm to equality, because it undermines women’s equal social standing. Finally, one critical question arises for all critics of sexual objectification: what if women embrace sex object status voluntarily as their self-image?