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Objectification is a notion central to feminist theory. It can be roughly defined as the seeing and/or treating a person, usually a woman, as an object. In this entry, the focus is primarily on sexual objectification, objectification occurring in the sexual realm. Martha Nussbaum has identified seven features that are involved in the idea 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.
Rae Langton (2009, 228–229) has added three more features to Nussbaum’s list:
- 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.
© 2012, Andrew Conway. All rights reserved.
After President Romney’s appointments of Grover Norquist and Anne Coulter to the Supreme Court, the Court ruled 6-3 that slavery was indeed legal for convicted felons and was not cruel and unusual punishment. Indeed, the majority argued, it was far more humane than the common practice of water boarding. After congress passing the Felony Bankruptcy Act in 2014, and the federal prison system was sold to Bain Capital in 2015, it became common to see underemployed graduates who were unable to make their student loan payments sold off in the streets as household slaves. While Bain’s slave merchants found that hanging the merchandise up for display increased sale prices, the Public Morality Act of 2016 ensured that citizens were safe from any possibility of seeing female nipples.
© 2012, Andrew Conway. All rights reserved.
There was the Sign of the Bear and the Sign of the Anchor, and the Sign of the Crossed Swords, but by far the most magnificent was the gilded Sign of the Lion, hanging high over a vast carriageway and under three stories of deeply cut leaded windows. But the most startling detail of all was the body of a naked Princess swaying beneath the sign, bound with her ankles and her wrists together on a leather chain, so that she hung like ripe fruit from the shingle, her naked red sex painfully exposed.
It was exactly the way that Princes and Princesses had been tethered in the Punishment Hall at the castle, a position Beauty had never suffered and that she dreaded most of all. The Princess’s face was fixed between her legs only inches above her swollen and mercilessly revealed sex, and her eyes were almost closed. When she saw Mistress Lockley she moaned and wriggled on the chain, straining forward in supplication, just as the punished Princes and Princesses had done in the Hall of Punishments.
Ann Rice, Beauty’s Punishment
© 2012, Andrew Conway. All rights reserved.
Miss Maggie Mayhem plays the naughty schoolgirl. I think she’s going to get into all sorts of trouble…
© 2012, Andrew Conway. All rights reserved.
For example, Susan here has resonance. I call her Susan because that’s the name of the character she is playing. Susan is a pert English girl of good background who has been captured and trussed up by a tribe of savages from Sumatra. Indignities of many kinds–some nameless, some specific–are in store for her. Susan has resonance because many people respond to her. They love reading books about her or looking at pictures of her, or seeing films about her. From time to time she’s trussed up by Martians or Vikings or Gauleiters. But she’s always the same old Susan, always defenseless, always known to her admirers as a damsel in distress. And she strikes a chord. Can you hear it? (Pause.) It’s a statistical fact that some of you can. That makes Susan a resounding person. Let’s hope it comforts her in bondage–against which (GIRL B wriggles desperately) she struggles in vain.
Kenneth Tynan, Oh Calcutta
© 2012, Andrew Conway. All rights reserved.
© 2012, Andrew Conway. All rights reserved.
Aren’t they cute together?
© 2012, Andrew Conway. All rights reserved.
I like the vulnerability of a naked girl tied up in front of a crowd of fully dressed bystanders. Annie Cruz at the kink.com booth, Folsom Street Fair 2008.
© 2012, Andrew Conway. All rights reserved.
Myself I prefer the rear view, how about you?
© 2012, Andrew Conway. All rights reserved.
From a nude photography class, a long time ago.
© 2012, Andrew Conway. All rights reserved.
