What is objectification?

Question

Is it looking at someone you don't know very well with sexual desire? Is it looking at someone with sexual desire without being particularly interested in the non-sexual aspects of their personality? Is admiring someone's body without sexually desiring them but without thinking about their personality objectification? Can an image or film be said to be inherently objectifying, or does it depend on what the viewer is thinking?

Answer 1

objectification is treating a living being like an object.  That is having no rights or feelings etc.

Answer 2

It's when you look at a man, and evaluate his worth based entirely on his income.

Answer 3

I've always thought it meant seeing people as being objects rather than as human beings.

Answer 4

Objectification is when a normal human being actually enjoys the sexual appeal of another human being and doesn't concern oneself with a profound analysis of all aspects of the other.

When a woman looks at me I prefer that she see me as an object of pure sexual pleasure (I'm a guy).

Modern Feminists find this appalling, for they don't like it when men find women attractive on the basis of appearance; as men should have a degree of clairvoyance to truly understand the brilliant mind of a modern Feminist.

Answer 5

Treating them as objects. Could be associated with treating them as means to your ends which is wrong since people are meant to be ends in themselves at least according to Kantian theory lol

Answer 6

Objectification:

To present or regard as an object: “Because we have objectified animals, we are able to treat them impersonally”

Sexual Objectification:

Sexual objectification of a person occurs when a person is seen as a sexual object when their sexual attributes and physical attractiveness are separated from the rest of their personality and existence as an individual, and reduced to instruments of pleasure for another person.

Answer 7

It means to treat a person as an object. So the answer to any one of those could be yes. If your consideration of a person involves only what you consider to be their utility or function and does not take into consideration their feelings, opinions, personality, or will, that could be objectifying.

Admiring someone's physical form is not automatically objectifying; that's usually the first thing one notices about another person and there's nothing inherently wrong with it. Looking at someone with sexual desire while uninterested in their personality is not automatically objectifying either; being uninterested in personality and not acknowledging personality are not the same thing.

As far as pictures go, well, it's a piece of paper with an image on it, not a person. Say you look at an image repeatedly of a physically fit and attractive individual and certain desires come to your mind. And then you meet the person in real life. I suppose one could argue that you might have trouble thinking of that individual beyond the scope that you'd already been thinking of them. I think celebrities have this problem a lot. But for the most part, I would also think that most people can distinguish fantasy from reality.