On the one hand, Nussbaum’s instrumentalization account of objectification sometimes refers to instrumentalizing social meanings as well as to instrumental use. It may be objected that my rough distinction between the instrumentalization and imposition accounts of sexual objectification is overdrawn. The challenge for this account is to specify what exactly the imposition of a social meaning is, and why it is wrong.
This is a moralized account of objectification it is always wrong.
3 According to the imposition account, inspired by Catharine MacKinnon and to be developed here, “to be sexually objectified means having a social meaning imposed on your being that defines you as to be sexually used.” 4 Here the defining feature of sexual objectification is the imposition of a social meaning on women, which marks them out as proper objects of instrumentalizing attitudes and treatment that undermine their autonomy and equal social standing. Nussbaum’s work on objectification has been very influential, and her article is the starting point for most discussions of sexual objectification in moral and political philosophy today. It is an open question whether a given case of instrumentalization and, therefore, objectification is morally wrong, and the challenge for this account is to specify what exactly makes it wrong when it is wrong. 2 This is a nonmoralized account of objectification. According to the instrumentalization account, recently defended by Martha Nussbaum, objectification is essentially a form of instrumentalization or use. Roughly speaking, one can distinguish two competing accounts of sexual objectification. 1 Given this range of uses, it is perhaps not surprising that this concept does not seem to have a settled meaning. In nonacademic discourse, a range of writers and activists criticize as sexual objectification a wide variety of practices and institutions which participate in the construction of women as sex objects. Academic discourse about sexual objectification can be traced back to Kant, though it has received most attention in the work of Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin and, more recently, Martha Nussbaum. The concept of sexual objectification is central to feminist approaches to social and political philosophy and to nonacademic feminist social criticism.
0 kommentar(er)
