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What is objectification, anyway?

7 Jun

The following are philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s criteria for objectification, that is, the act of treating a person as an object:

instrumentality: the treatment of a person as a tool for the objectifier’s purposes;

denial of autonomy: the treatment of a person as lacking in autonomy and self-determination;

inertness: the treatment of a person as lacking in agency, and perhaps also in activity;

fungibility: the treatment of a person as interchangeable with other objects;

violability: the treatment of a person as lacking in boundary-integrity;

ownership: the treatment of a person as something that is owned by another (can be bought or sold);

denial of subjectivity: the treatment of a person as something whose experiences and feelings (if any) need not be taken into account.

To which Professor Rae Langton, MIT, adds the following:

reduction to body: the treatment of a person as identified with their body, or body parts;

reduction to appearance: the treatment of a person primarily in terms of how they look, or how they appear to the senses;

silencing: the treatment of a person as if they are silent, lacking the capacity to speak.

The criteria all refer to the treatment of a person. From this I understand that objectification is enacted in encounters between people, when one party behaves towards the other as if she or he is a means to an end, and not a human being who is entitled to have her or his needs and feelings taken into account.

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There’s an almost constant stream of allegations of objectification through sexualisation currently being made in Western society. These are leveled by concerned citizens against much popular culture, and based largely on images of women that culture produces. These allegations presume an objectifying gaze, that is, they insist the viewer will inevitably reduce women portrayed in certain ways to objects to be used for sexual gratification, rather than seeing them as equal human beings. Clothing, facial expressions and postures are used as signifiers of objectification, as well as language.

The signifiers chosen by concerned citizens are based on a Judeo-Christian perception of the adult female body as unruly, dangerous and indecent, and requiring concealment except in specific circumstances such as marriage and other committed monogamous relationships. Clothing that reveals too much of the body’s “private” zones is regarded as transgressing moral codes, as are postures and language that imply female sexual desire, and/or stimulate male “lust.”

Here I should note that the objectification debate is heteronormative. Apparently gays and lesbians don’t objectify each other or if they do, concerned citizens don’t include this in their ambit.

To interpret the clothing, postures and movements as indecent one must first have a particular set of moral values. Otherwise the image will be attractive, unattractive or entirely uninteresting, and it will carry no moral weight.

An image may invite the objectifying gaze. The viewer may accept. However, it’s a big leap to assume that all viewers who find an image “sexy” will inevitably progress from that opinion to objectifying a woman the next time he or she is face to face with one, and will inevitably set about finding ways to use the woman as a means to an end. This assumption imbues the image with nothing less than supernatural powers, as well as denying the viewer’s autonomy and self-determination. It also denies the viewer agency. It denies the viewer’s subjectivity and it also silences the viewer by imposing another’s values on the viewer’s gaze. According to Nussbaum, these are all acts of objectification. In other words, when concerned citizens make these assumptions, they treat the viewer as less human than themselves.

An image can invite us to objectify, but it can’t cause an objectifying consciousness to develop where it previously did not exist.

The inability to perceive others as human like oneself is a symptom of several psychological disturbances, as well as immaturity. These factors are not brought about through viewing an image, and they will not be resolved by removing an image from public view.

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The argument that women choose to display their bodies in these ways holds little credence with concerned citizens. The most frequent response is that women don’t understand they’re inviting objectification through presenting their bodies to the admiring and at times desirous male gaze.  Another argument is that society (patriarchy) has so “normalised” the objectification of women that only those policing it will notice when it’s happening.

It’s something of a leap to assert that a woman is, without any awareness or agency, issuing an invitation to men to turn her into an object when she steps in front of a camera in small clothes, or plays football in lingerie. I can think of many reasons why women choose to undertake these activities dressed in these ways, and none of them are to do with the kind of compulsive masochism implied in their critics’ interpretations of their actions.

Indeed, such an attitude towards a woman could be read in Nussbaum’s criteria as treating her as if she is lacking in autonomy and self-determination, and treating her as a person lacking in agency. It also denies her subjectivity, and attempts to silence her by imposing an interpretation other than her own on her actions. In other words, the concerned citizens are engaged in objectifying her.

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It seems to me that the entire objectification movement is an attempt to impose a particular set of moral values on society. Notions of propriety, largely middle class, are disturbed for example, by the spectacle of women playing football in lingerie. This discomfort is pathologised as objectification, and extrapolated as threatening to all women and girls, who as a consequence of the LFL will be regarded as nothing more than sex objects for male gratification. While there certainly are males who act as if this is their opinion of women, the majority do not. The majority of people understand there is a difference between personal encounters, and imagery.

The charge of objectification is a serious one. It should not be trivialized to serve a moral agenda.

It seems obvious to me that the key to accepting the human right of others not to be treated as a means to an end, lies in education and not censorship. Attempting to build a society on the assumption that all its members are possessed of an objectifying consciousness and everything possible must be done to prevent them indulging that consciousness seems to me insane, and asking for trouble. Respect and value for others as equals is an acquired skill, and we depend on caregivers to instruct our young in acquisition and practice. It’s a work in progress for the human race. Concerned citizens would do better to apply themselves to encouraging and assisting this work, rather than attempting to impose a moral code that adds nothing at all to the civilizing project. An attempt that in its practice commits the very offences it claims to vehemently oppose.

         

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Cash and Joyce, slut-shaming women. It’s the LNP way.

4 Mar

 

 

In the last few days, women have been thrown under more buses than usual by members of the Turnbull government, making something of a mockery of the Prime Minister’s desire to make Parliament House a more woman-friendly workplace, and demonstrating yet again that other women can trash you as easily as can a man.

The following story should finally put paid to the risible argument that the LNP would be a better government if only there were more female MPs. Rubbish. It’s the ideology, stupid, not the biology.

Senator Michaelia Cash, former Minister for Women, now representing the new Minister, Kelly O’Dwyer, in the Senate, lost her head and threatened to expose alleged rumours about the sexual lives of young women in Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s office, when asked seemingly innocuous questions in senate estimates about the movement of staff in her own office. You can see the entire unedifying episode here, if by any chance you’ve thus far missed out.

Cash threatened to “expose” young women staffers, based on nothing more than “rumours” if she was questioned any further about her new Chief of Staff. It has since emerged that her new female CoS has been transferred from Trade Minister Steve Ciobo’s office, a demotion, as Cash is a junior minister.

The women in Shorten’s office are understandably outraged by Cash’s murky innuendoes. And it is quite startling that a Minister for Women should single out young women to use as a threat in an effort to avoid scrutiny of her own staffing arrangements.

In effect, Cash used the female staffers as political weapons. She didn’t threaten to expose Shorten, or any men rumoured to engage in office affairs. She focused right in on the young women, whom she implied were sluts.

Parliament House is not a workplace that looks out for women as a priority. For example, there is no specific procedure for addressing complaints of sexual harassment. This 2017 investigation revealed procedures in place for dealing with these complaints are woefully inadequate, even described by the investigators as “shocking” and below Human Rights Commission standards.

Yes. This is our parliament. The heart of our nation. The home of our legislators. No adequate procedures for making complaints of sexual harassment. I kid you not.

Next, we woke up this Sunday morning to the news that Barnaby Joyce has decided he may not be the father of his lover’s baby after all, but being a decent bloke, he’ll love the boy and raise him as his own regardless. And he won’t do a paternity test. Journalists, Joyce claimed, are entirely at fault for not asking him when the story broke if he is the father.

Joyce is lying. I know of at least two journalists who did ask this question, Sharri Markson of Newscorpse, and Leigh Sales on the ABC’s 7.30 Report. Joyce enthusiastically avowed his responsibility for the baby boy, and the reasons for his current disavowal remain unclear.

It’s quite something, to tell the Australian nation that your partner’s baby may not be yours. If you want to seriously damage a woman, there’s little more effective than implying she is such a slut she doesn’t know who her baby’s father might be. That’s she’s misled you into thinking the child is yours, and now you’re such a great guy, you’re going to stand by her anyway. And yet, if you are such a great guy, wouldn’t you just shut up and carry on, and not expose your partner and the baby to such awfulness?

It’s the enduring patriarchal myth: that women will lie about our babies’ fathers. The primary purpose of heterosexual marriage is to ensure a man knows the children are his. There is likely no greater transgression than a woman being uncertain of her child’s father. Joyce has dumped Ms Campion right in it. All that remains is for him to pin a red “S” on her shirt.

Yet again, we’ve seen played out in our politics this week the damaging myths of female sexuality, myths that position us primarily as sexual objects. No matter that a staffer in Shorten’s office may have three degrees and a fine brain, be first class at her job and work like a dog. She’s useful to Michaelia Cash only as a sexual object. In other words, she’s a slut.

In the LNP government, women’s bodies remain battlegrounds, for other women as well as men.

And spare a thought for women working in parliament house without even the protection of proper process, when they are sexually harassed.

 

 

 

 

 

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Flesh eating coffins and women in masks

28 Dec

by Rochus Wolff, flickr

Seeking respite from the Assange material last week, I opened an article in ABC’s The Drum irresistibly titled “Who says female corpses aren’t sexy?” written by Melinda Tankard Reist.

The article turned out to be the author’s objections to a 30 second video clip teaser of rapper Kanye West’s latest song. The author describes the video clip as “gendered violence”, and claims it is fetishizing “female pain, female passivity, female suffering and female silence.”

Tankard-Reist continues:

Expect to hear boys singing along to it soon. This is the message they are imbibing:

Women are slaves and bitches who can service a man’s sexual needs, even in death. Men are brutal and dominant, and have no empathy for women. Men enjoy dead women as sex and entertainment. The female body is to be devoured, reduced to the same status as meat. Female bodies should be displayed before men as a great feast for their consumption.

That was quite a lot to glean from a 30 second video clip, I thought admiringly.

But then it turned peculiar. I read: Then there’s these lines: “I put the p-ssy in the sarcophagus” (which, in case you’re wondering, is a flesh eating coffin) …”

What? I shouted, though I was alone except for the dog.  A flesh-eating coffin? How can that be?

And anyway, what about all those pharaohs buried in sarcophagi who when disinterred still had their flesh?

Dried, maybe, but certainly not eaten.

I then made my next mistake. I got onto the Comments. I used a pen name I’m not stupid enough to let these people know who I am. Quite quickly I became an embattled defender fighting off a full frontal feminist attack. (They said they were feminists but they aren’t like any feminists I know and love).

You’re pro male, they told me. Why aren’t you pro woman?

I’m actually pro human I replied. And there’s no such thing as flesh eating coffins, I added. You aren’t doing your credibility any good adding in rubbish stuff like that for effect, I told them.

You need to read Susan Faludi, they said.

I’d rather have needles in my eyes than RE-read Susan Faludi, I replied.

She writes about people like you, they said, she says you pro male collaborators in the gender wars are Uncle Toms.

Really, I replied. A few years back radical feminists used to say a “pro male” woman had a pr**k in her head. That was far more picturesque, I said. Dali-esque, in fact.

But the moderator didn’t publish that. They seem to have inconsistent moderating rules at The Drum. I can’t work them out. They let someone make nasty remarks about my “corrupted” children, and a few people got told they were sleazy pornographers who should crawl under stones and all that was published.

You people aren’t a feminist’s bootlace, I finally told the pro Melindas. Where are your manners?

(I refer to them as the pro Melindas because their posts included:

Melinda could be said to be awakening others to the suffering of women, and many have pilloried Melinda for her point of view, and Go Melinda! Many of us love and applaud you!)

Then someone posted the following:

What you need to know about this author:

1. She believes in god

2. She believes in flesh eating coffins

3. She’s up close with the Australian Christian Lobby.

 

Well. It was on then. Not a stone was left unturned. Derrida, Barthes, Picasso, Christians, lions, ethics, necrophilia, disclosure of religious affiliations, domestic violence, grandmothers, sex of all kinds, censorship, children, science, and the un dead; Madonna, archaic patriarchal religion, PhDs, Finns dancing, Finns singing, accusations of racism about Finns doing stuff; 70’s music, Tropic Thunder, Russian politics before the end of the cold war, corpses and raw meat. Oh, there was no stopping us. For four days and four nights we kept at it, we barely ate or slept. The ABC should award us with something.

The increasingly hostile exchanges between a pro Melinda poster and someone called Amazonia ended thus:

Pro Melinda Person: Those in favour of the video under discussion are getting fanatic. Now I’ll turn my thoughts to the homeless in our society and their extra plight with extreme temperatures about to begin.

Amazonia: I hope somebody warns them you’re coming.

The day before I succumbed to all that madness I had to go to the dentist. Uneasy in the waiting room, I picked up the October Cosmopolitan magazine as a distraction from what might be going to happen to me. I found that Cosmo are conducting a competition for the year’s most influential woman. The contestants were displayed in a three-page photo shoot. They were all young. Almost all of them wore killer stilettos, some with slave girl ankle bands. Most skirts were high on the thighs. The women wore masks, as if they were going to a masquerade ball or something much darker, and I think some of them were armed.

I studied these pages for a long time. It seemed to me that in order to be considered as eligible for this competition you first had to satisfy another set of criteria that has no obvious link to your ability to be influential and mentor young women.

I continued to think this through as the dentist apparently drilled into my brain. God moves in mysterious ways, and blessed distraction comes from the most unexpected places.

Now, I have nothing against killer heels, except when you watch someone trying to walk in them they inevitably lack grace, tilted as they are at an unmanageable degree from the earth. From behind, it’s not a good look. Wear them, darling, by all means. Just don’t try to walk in them. Maybe one of those nice men will carry you.

And I really am the last person on earth to tell anybody what she should or shouldn’t wear for any reason other than the aesthetic, and mostly not even then unless I know them very well.

But I do deeply object to the demand that before she can be considered to be influential, a woman must fit a certain physical profile.

This is the message sent to women who read Cosmopolitan. You can be as influential as you like. You can be an outstanding mentor to younger women. But if you don’t have the look, forget it. Whatever skills you’re offering, we aren’t buying.

I thought this was a pretty good example of mainstream objectification and denigration of women.

So, because I can be thick sometimes and not see what’s coming at me, I brought it up in the comments about the flesh eating coffin and the video clip.

Who are you to tell a woman what she can or can’t wear? The hostile forces howled back at me.

I suppose you want everybody to go round in a burka? They spat.

Stunned at how quickly I had become cast in the role of the clothes police, ousting the pro Melindas to whom it seemed quite naturally to belong, I didn’t reply for a few hours. I ate dinner, took the dog out, watched TV and thought that I really didn’t have to bother with these people any more. This last was encouraged by my household, which by now was heartily sick of me lurching obsessively from Assange to Melinda, and just wanted me to focus on buying their Christmas presents.

At bedtime, I couldn’t hold out any longer. I sat down and I wrote:

Well, I wasn’t saying what women should wear. I was just pointing out an example of sexism in a very popular women’s magazine. I thought it would be of interest to you as your goal is to eradicate sexism and the objectification of women. (Eradicate was their word, not mine. I objected to it on the grounds that it sounds like pest control).

You really need to stop lecturing people, replied one of the pro Melindas, and who wants to be in Cosmopolitan anyway?

What? I yelled at the dog, seeing as nobody else would talk to me about it.

Aren’t they supposed to be campaigning against sexism in the media?

Then I wrote: Well, if you’re going to be like that, who wants to be in a cruddy rap video, anyway either? Huh? And BTW does being pro male just mean you don’t want to kill them?

It’s been quite a year. Many of us are very tired.

P.S. It’s not over yet! Now a male poster has hit back: Just look at all the magazines in the supermarket talking about orgasms, he typed. Whose orgasms? Well, come on, whose orgasms? Women’s, he crowed triumphantly. Not men’s, oh no not men’s! All women’s!

Oooo-eeer!

This article first appeared in On Line Opinion, December 23 2010

 

 

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