Thanks for persisting with me. I appreciate it! However, with all due respect, it seems to me that you’ve once again simply restated your position without explaining it. Sorry for not getting it! Saying “I couldn’t see much difference” doesn’t really explain your position.
I’ve tried to explain why I don’t see the comments about beggars and women as equivalent according to my (perhaps idiosyncratic) definition of objectification. The discussion about beggars seemed to me to assume that beggars are people with interests, and that we are generally concerned to further those interests—the question was how best to do that. This stands in stark contrast to talk about “getting” women, which (I think) promotes thinking about them as prizes whose main value is their instrumental value to the men “getting” them.
This seems to me to provide a clear distinction between the two conversations. Given this, I can see a few possible sources of our disagreement:
You do not think the distinction I am drawing is tenable, either because:
(a) you disagree that the sort of language Roko used tends to promote treating women as prizes of primarily instrumental value;
(b) you think the the discussion of begging did in fact neglect the fact that beggars have interests or tended to promote viewing them as objects without interests; or
You think that my definition of objectification is wrong (or at least differs from that relied on by others, such as Alicorn), and that on the “correct” definition there is no difference between the two cases.
Could you perhaps tell me (a) which of these you believe, and (b) why you believe it? (Alternatively, if you don’t think any of these is the source of our disagreement, then perhaps you could let me know what you think the actual source is.)
Thanks for persisting with me. I appreciate it! However, with all due respect, it seems to me that you’ve once again simply restated your position without explaining it. Sorry for not getting it! Saying “I couldn’t see much difference” doesn’t really explain your position.
I’ve tried to explain why I don’t see the comments about beggars and women as equivalent according to my (perhaps idiosyncratic) definition of objectification. The discussion about beggars seemed to me to assume that beggars are people with interests, and that we are generally concerned to further those interests—the question was how best to do that. This stands in stark contrast to talk about “getting” women, which (I think) promotes thinking about them as prizes whose main value is their instrumental value to the men “getting” them.
This seems to me to provide a clear distinction between the two conversations. Given this, I can see a few possible sources of our disagreement:
You do not think the distinction I am drawing is tenable, either because: (a) you disagree that the sort of language Roko used tends to promote treating women as prizes of primarily instrumental value; (b) you think the the discussion of begging did in fact neglect the fact that beggars have interests or tended to promote viewing them as objects without interests; or
You think that my definition of objectification is wrong (or at least differs from that relied on by others, such as Alicorn), and that on the “correct” definition there is no difference between the two cases.
Could you perhaps tell me (a) which of these you believe, and (b) why you believe it? (Alternatively, if you don’t think any of these is the source of our disagreement, then perhaps you could let me know what you think the actual source is.)