Why not ask which behaviors and attitudes inflict harm, and then seek a definition of objectification which makes it easier to talk about in that way? I’ve found this a useful mindset to apply to problems where the status quo reaction is to apply emotional words to emotional problems. It sounds like this is the kind of problem unwrapping you’re looking for here, because like me, you worry about the real harm of real people, but are confused about the way that others are talking about it.
A helpful impart of the rationality community to me has been to give myself consent to think about problems in my usual mode, which is reducing them to the non-semantic realities that I actually experience. If a distribution of possible actions has a distribution of necessary outcomes, we have described the system, and then terminology is a useful tool, rather than a bludgeon to beat your social opponents with.
My suspicion is that “objectification” in the minds of social pioneers roughly maps to types of behavior that encourage false beliefs in the (perhaps unwitting) perpetrator. The false belief would be an archetype about a category (like a sex or a gender or our species) that makes it difficult to distinguish between the reality of the presented sexuality and other false, learned tropes that were previously taught (outside of real experience) about that category.
It becomes tricky when archetypes become stereotypes which then become social norms. This can make beliefs about a category actually true. The sentence “men like X” if expanded to “many men that I come into contact with prefer X and it is beneficial to our relationship to act as if this were so” can be a true belief, even if liking X is not a universal trait of men (i.e. it’s a social norm ingrained into men by high-minded city-slickers, or insert-your-favorite-group-meme-here). What’s important, then, is the real future relationships you might have with actual members of that category, not the idealized version of the category itself. And thusly important is the effect that an experience has on your actions toward those members.
What to you is appreciation of the nude form? Gazing with scientific interest at the biology of human anatomy when it happens to not be wearing cotton? Appreciation of your own sexuality when your eyes see a sexual image? Pornography use? Marble statues in museums?
What are the real outcomes of choosing these behaviors versus their alternatives? If chosen, what are the real outcomes of some mindsets and their alternatives?
Why not ask which behaviors and attitudes inflict harm, and then seek a definition of objectification which makes it easier to talk about in that way? I’ve found this a useful mindset to apply to problems where the status quo reaction is to apply emotional words to emotional problems. It sounds like this is the kind of problem unwrapping you’re looking for here, because like me, you worry about the real harm of real people, but are confused about the way that others are talking about it.
A helpful impart of the rationality community to me has been to give myself consent to think about problems in my usual mode, which is reducing them to the non-semantic realities that I actually experience. If a distribution of possible actions has a distribution of necessary outcomes, we have described the system, and then terminology is a useful tool, rather than a bludgeon to beat your social opponents with.
My suspicion is that “objectification” in the minds of social pioneers roughly maps to types of behavior that encourage false beliefs in the (perhaps unwitting) perpetrator. The false belief would be an archetype about a category (like a sex or a gender or our species) that makes it difficult to distinguish between the reality of the presented sexuality and other false, learned tropes that were previously taught (outside of real experience) about that category.
It becomes tricky when archetypes become stereotypes which then become social norms. This can make beliefs about a category actually true. The sentence “men like X” if expanded to “many men that I come into contact with prefer X and it is beneficial to our relationship to act as if this were so” can be a true belief, even if liking X is not a universal trait of men (i.e. it’s a social norm ingrained into men by high-minded city-slickers, or insert-your-favorite-group-meme-here). What’s important, then, is the real future relationships you might have with actual members of that category, not the idealized version of the category itself. And thusly important is the effect that an experience has on your actions toward those members.
What to you is appreciation of the nude form? Gazing with scientific interest at the biology of human anatomy when it happens to not be wearing cotton? Appreciation of your own sexuality when your eyes see a sexual image? Pornography use? Marble statues in museums?
What are the real outcomes of choosing these behaviors versus their alternatives? If chosen, what are the real outcomes of some mindsets and their alternatives?