Mere and Partial Means: The Full Range of the Objedification of Women

References

• 1988 . The Foundations of the Metaphysic of Morals 56 – 58 . Buffalo , NY : Prometheus Books . The language of “mere” and “only” appears in trans. T. K. Abbott especially
   Google Scholar
• 2002 . It is the subject of a paper by Todd Calder, entitled “Kant and Degrees of Wrongness,” presented at the Eastern Division conference of the American Philosophical Association in
   Google Scholar
• 1990 . Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression New York : Routledge . See “On Psychological Oppression,” in 27.
   Google Scholar
• Nussbaum , Martha . 1995 . “Objectification,” . Philosophy and Public Affairs , 24 : 249 – 91 .
   Web of Science ®Google Scholar
• 1997 . In Harm's Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings Cambridge , MA : Harvard University Press . They were not original in doing so. Someone testified at hearings in Minneapolis about harm posed by pornography about “working men plaster[ing] women's crotches on the walls of workplaces.” See by Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon 6.
   Google Scholar
• Bartky . See “On Psychological Oppression,” 26, 27.
   Google Scholar
• The term “consummate expression” is Jeremy Bendik-Keymer's (personal communication). I owe this point to him.
   Google Scholar
• Nussbaum . “Objectification,” 257.
   Google Scholar
• 1987 . Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law 119 Cambridge , MA : Harvard University Press . her emphasis.
   Google Scholar
• Dworkin , Andrea . 1987 . Intercourse 142 New York : The Free Press .
   Google Scholar
• Haslanger , Sally . 2002 . “On Being Objective and Being Objectified,” in ” . In A Mind of One's Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity, , 2d ed. Edited by: Antony , Louise and Witt , Charlotte . 225 Boulder , CO : Westview Press . her emphasis.
   Google Scholar
• I thank Christine Overall and Sue Sherwin for bringing this point to my attention.
   Google Scholar
• John Hardwig first gave me the idea that acts of objectification can be successful or unsuccessful.
   Google Scholar
• Dworkin , Andrea . 1981 . Pornography: Men Possessing Women 128 New York : Perigee Books .
   Google Scholar
• Haslanger . “On Being Objective,” 225, her emphasis.
   Google Scholar
• Objectification is sexist, or oppressive in general, if it targets one's membership in an oppressed group (e.g., women) and if it is systemic. See Sandra Lee Bartky, “On Psychological Oppression.”
   Google Scholar
• “On Psychological Oppression,” 26.
   Google Scholar
• 1983 . Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality Cambridge , , UK : Cambridge University Press . On adaptive preferences, see Jon Elster, Amartya Sen, Inequality Reexamined (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), and Martha Nussbaum, Sex and Social Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Nussbaum leaves out this phenomenon despite discussing it in Sex and Social Justice, where “Objectification” also appears.
   Google Scholar
• 1989 . Toward a Feminist Theory of the State 139 Cambridge , MA : Harvard University Press . my emphasis; quoted in Nussbaum, “Objectification,” 269, fn. 37.
   Google Scholar
• MacKinnon . Toward a Feminist Theory of the State 119
   Google Scholar
• Dworkin . Pornography , 22 my emphasis.
   Google Scholar
• Ibid., 128.
   Google Scholar
• MacKinnon . Feminism Unmodified 12
   Google Scholar
• Ibid., 100.
   Google Scholar
• Dworkin . Intercourse 123
   Google Scholar
• In Harm's Way The quotation is from a section by Dworkin in 34.
   Google Scholar
• “On Psychological Oppression,” 27.
   Google Scholar
• She summarizes what is going on in them and suggests that each is about seeing the other as nothing but an object. See “Objectification,” 254, 255.
   Google Scholar
• 1990 . Justice and the Politics of Difference Princeton , NJ : Princeton University Press . Most of the examples here from feminist work involve the objectification of beautiful female bodies. However, people sometimes objectify women for their ugliness rather than their beauty (as Rebecca Kukla stressed to me at the conference at which we presented our work for this volume). This point comes out clearly in Iris Marion Young's, “The Scaling of Bodies,”. She describes how oppression can be “aversive,” where dominant groups feel repulsed by those whom they dominate. Some women's bodies are defined as objects to be averted. Young is somewhat of an exception among feminists who have written on objectification in that she implicitly acknowledges the degreed nature of women's objectification. She refers to the “aesthetic scaling of bodies” in Western culture. Beautiful, youthful bodies form the apex of the scale and “degenerate” bodies, the nadir (128). Oppressed people have degenerate bodies, which are objectified in her view (as are beautiful bodies, but Young does not acknowledge that). The idea that bodies are “scaled” suggests that degrees of degeneracy exist. And if all degenerate bodies are objectified, then degrees of objectification must also exist.
   Google Scholar
• Overall , Christine , ed. 1989 . Woman Toronto : The Women's Press . Kathryn Pauly Morgan, “Of Born? How Old-fashioned!— New Reproductive Technologies and Women's Oppression,” in The Future of Human Reproduction 73.
   Google Scholar
• Raymond , Janice . 1993 . Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and The Battle over Women's Freedom San Francisco : HarperSanFrancisco .
   Google Scholar
• Corea , Gena . 1985 . The Mother Machine: Reproductive Technologies from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Wombs New York : Harper & Row .
   Google Scholar
• Raymond . Women as Wombs viii, xix.
   Google Scholar
• Corea . The Mother Machine 4
   Google Scholar
• Donchin , Anne . 1996 . “Feminist Critiques of New Fertility Techno Implications for Social Policy,” . Journal of Medicine and Philosophy , 21 See: and Jan Sawicki, “Disciplining Mothers: Feminism and the New Reproductive Technologies,” in Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power, and the Body (New Routledge, 1991).
   Google Scholar
• Donchin makes that point in “Feminist Critiques.“
   Google Scholar
• The statement comes from an unpublished narrative that this patient wrote about her treatment and which she kindly shared with me.
   Google Scholar
• “Objectification,” 257, her emphasis.
   Google Scholar
• The definition excludes the objectification of animals, which is problematic, for animals are not objects, although they can be treated as such. However, in filling out her account, Nussbaum makes room for their objectification, as we shall see.
   Google Scholar
• Kantian Review I endorse the idea that objectification comes in these different forms, but one might think that is inconsistent with my title, which emphasizes only one form: namely instrumentality. Treating people as mere means involves treating them as instruments for our use. But is that necessarily true of Kantian means? One could read Kant as saying that treating people as means involves placing them in the class of objects that, among other things, can be mere instruments (see Dennis Klimchuk's “Three Accounts of Respect for Persons,” (forthcoming). Instrumentality does not have to be their defining property. Support for such a view comes from examples of disrespect in Kant that do not involve someone getting something out of being disrespectful. (So the person disrespected does not have to be a means to the other person's ends.)
   Google Scholar
• Nussbaum . “Objectification,” 265.
   Google Scholar
• Given how this advantage supports her thesis (that objectification can be benign), it is surprising that Nussbaum does not make the point more forcefully than she does.
   Google Scholar
• I owe this example to Betsy Postow.
   Google Scholar
• 1985 . Toward a Feminist Theory of the State MacKinnon herself does that in 120, 121, and so does Evelyn Fox Keller in Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,.
   Google Scholar
• 2002 . Earlier versions of this paper were presented to audiences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, at the conference of the North American Society for Social Philosophy, and at the conference organized for this volume. I wish to thank them all for their helpful comments. Special thanks go to Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, who was very generous with his time, Samantha Brennan, John Hardwig, Dennis Klimchuk, Jim Okapal, Christine Overall, and Susan Sherwin.
   Google Scholar