Disclaimer: I’m hetero-male. I strongly consider myself a feminist. It’d be nice if we didn’t need a word for moral equity of the sexes. But we have far enough to go that it’s still an issue. I work in media production, and media production is heavily steeped in sexism. I have to make a conscious effort to make sure my work doesn’t contribute to the problem. I read a few feminist blogs to keep myself thinking about issues I would likely forget about otherwise, or at least not consider as strongly.
I don’t consider objectification an inherent bad thing, but in many contexts it produces similar, repetitive detrimental effects on society. You will probably be able to argue about individual cases and find that some aren’t that bad or whathaveyou. But the problem is big, and real, and complex enough, that for purposes of encouraging widespread action, it’s a lot easier to tell people “objectifying women is bad” than telling them to “carefully analyze how individual artworks are likely to impact society, measure their utility, and censure the ones that cause the most harm.”
The people-in-mud photo is objectifying people in general. But what makes objectification bad is that it makes some people into objects and others into people who use objects. The people-in-mud photo is fine because it doesn’t make any kind of statement (conscious or otherwise) about specific groups of people. It’s just a bunch of folks in the mud. They could be anyone. Because they’re covered in mud, it’s not even clear what race they are.
The playboy picture is explicitly objectifying women, and setting men up to be the ones who do the objectifying. It’s creating an imbalance of power, which is the kind of objectification that’s actually wrong.
So, just to be clear: Is it your suggestion that what makes objectification wrong is the imbalance of power it (sometimes) creates, because the power imbalance causes harms to the disempowered group?
It’s one thing. There’s a lot of interconnected things going on, but it’s the most obvious difference between the two photos. I’ll have more to say later, but this is a big topic and I want to get it right. As Alicorn says, you should stew for a while.
Disclaimer: I’m hetero-male. I strongly consider myself a feminist. It’d be nice if we didn’t need a word for moral equity of the sexes. But we have far enough to go that it’s still an issue. I work in media production, and media production is heavily steeped in sexism. I have to make a conscious effort to make sure my work doesn’t contribute to the problem. I read a few feminist blogs to keep myself thinking about issues I would likely forget about otherwise, or at least not consider as strongly.
I don’t consider objectification an inherent bad thing, but in many contexts it produces similar, repetitive detrimental effects on society. You will probably be able to argue about individual cases and find that some aren’t that bad or whathaveyou. But the problem is big, and real, and complex enough, that for purposes of encouraging widespread action, it’s a lot easier to tell people “objectifying women is bad” than telling them to “carefully analyze how individual artworks are likely to impact society, measure their utility, and censure the ones that cause the most harm.”
The people-in-mud photo is objectifying people in general. But what makes objectification bad is that it makes some people into objects and others into people who use objects. The people-in-mud photo is fine because it doesn’t make any kind of statement (conscious or otherwise) about specific groups of people. It’s just a bunch of folks in the mud. They could be anyone. Because they’re covered in mud, it’s not even clear what race they are.
The playboy picture is explicitly objectifying women, and setting men up to be the ones who do the objectifying. It’s creating an imbalance of power, which is the kind of objectification that’s actually wrong.
So, just to be clear: Is it your suggestion that what makes objectification wrong is the imbalance of power it (sometimes) creates, because the power imbalance causes harms to the disempowered group?
It’s one thing. There’s a lot of interconnected things going on, but it’s the most obvious difference between the two photos. I’ll have more to say later, but this is a big topic and I want to get it right. As Alicorn says, you should stew for a while.
This post seems to be making the same point, and the ensuing discussion is interesting.
Interesting quote: “No objectification without due subjectification.” (Holly.)