[GUEST POST] The objectification kink - what it is, why it matters, and why it might all be OK

This blog post was written by Susan Lucas to accompany our podcast discussion on the same topic. It's a deeper dive than my own posts - I'd expect no less from a philosopher(!) - and definitely one for my fellow pleasure geeks and sapiosexuals!

Introduction

Experience suggests that many people, and particularly many women - including many who would generally align themselves with feminist ideals and principles - derive pleasure and satisfaction from the experience of being sexually objectified, to the point where it seems appropriate to say they have an “objectification kink”. As with other related kink phenomena (e.g. sexual submission and masochism - with which an objectification kink may well be combined, in practice), this presents us with a puzzle: Why would someone enjoy treatment that they would ordinarily be expected to vigorously resist?

One possible response is to gesture vaguely to the idea of self-conscious transgression: it’s a widely- acknowledged fact that being naughty can sometimes be nice - and the naughtiness can be intrinsic to the niceness. This response doesn’t get us very far though. Many different behaviours qualify as naughty (or worse), and just about every kink can plausibly be labeled “naughty”. So, while the transgressive aspect might (partly) explain what makes it kinky, it doesn’t explain why people enjoy this particular kink, in preference to others.

A different type of response simply says that, within certain parameters, an objectification kink is OK. If it works for you - go for it. End of. But again, this is not very helpful. It seems to tacitly assume a list of “approved” kinks, and that the objectification kink belongs on that list. In respect of these approved kinks, the response seems to say, we’re free to choose as our fancy dictates. But:

1. This doesn’t help someone who wants to understand their kinks (or, particularly, someone who is wondering if indulging their kinks is really good for them).

2. It doesn’t explain why this particular kink appears on the approved list, while others don’t.

It’s an inconvenient truth that the classically Liberal principle of, “do what you want, provided you’re not harming anyone [and everyone involved is a consenting adult]” leaves many important issues unexamined. [1] Can we really be confident about our gut-level estimations of what is harmful and what is not? And if an element of transgression is essential to kink - indeed is part of the fun - how do we distinguish the “acceptably” transgressive from the “unacceptably” transgressive? Some people are more comfortable playing safe, even when they’re “transgressing”. Other more gung-ho types like to push the boundaries. We might regard the latter as heroes when they’re pushing the boundaries without overstepping them. But admiration can soon turn to justified revulsion if they do overstep them. Being dangerous is dangerous. That may sound over-dramatic when discussing an apparently “mild” case like objectification. But to someone brought up on the idea that sexual objectification is a significant social/political problem, serious worries can and do arise.

So, to feel more comfortable about indulging (or not) our objectification kink, we need to dig a bit deeper into what objectification is, why it matters, and why it might all be OK.

What objectification is:

Sexual objectification is usually defined as the reduction of a person (usually female) to the status of a mere object, for sexual purposes. [2]

Examples range from the exploitative portrayal of women as “eye candy” in commercial contexts (in advertising etc), to dramatic portrayals of women as generally sexually available to men, in everything from pornography to serious film and TV drama, to the role of women as, effectively, a workforce or resource in sex tourism and sex-trafficking. The common factor that links these cases, and many other possible examples, is that in these contexts women are allotted a social role that recognises them simply as sexual objects. Their agency, their right to be treated as fully-rounded people, and not mere objects, is denied.

If that is what sexual objectification is, then an objectification kink is the unorthodox sexual preference for being objectified, along something like the above lines. It may take the form of enjoying being photographed or filmed in soft- or hard-core pornographic settings. It may take the form of being admired and/or manipulated as a sex object or a living sex doll. In more elaborate forms it may involve role-playing prostitution or sex-slavery scenarios; where, combined with sexual submission, or mild or extreme masochism, it blurs into conventional or unconventional BDSM behaviours.

Thus described, the objectification kink may suddenly appear very familiar, and not notably kinky - at least in its milder forms. A great many relatively “normal” sexual behaviours seem to toy with objectifying elements, without raising any eyebrows. Indeed, that is exactly what concerns feminist theorists: much of what our culture regards as normal sexual behaviour tends to revolve around an implicit reduction of women to sex objects, with an associated denial of their sexual agency.

In trying to salvage the idea that we can meaningfully discuss a distinctive objectification kink, then, it seems necessary to distinguish “kinky” objectifying behaviours from the mainstream objectifying behaviours decried by feminists. One straightforward way to do this is to say that objectification is made kinky when the implicit is made explicit. Objectification becomes a kink when it is practiced consciously rather than unconsciously - in a way that highlights the objectifying aspects, rather than treating them as natural and predictable features of “normal” sexual behaviour. This is presumably how we should interpret the otherwise rather startling examples of women in the kink community who celebrate “misogyny” and enjoy playing the role of “gender traitors”. [3]

All that may help in clarifying when objectification becomes a kink, rather than simply business as usual. But it is hard to imagine that it would calm the anxieties of women who are both sympathetic to the goals of feminism and aware that they have an objectification kink. How can they reconcile their social and political principles with their kinky appetites, particularly in light of the over-arching goal of reclaiming their own sexual agency?

Having clarified what objectification is then, and what an objectification kink (accordingly) might look like, let us turn to look in more detail at why objectification matters, and why an objectification kink may after all be OK.

Why objectification matters

At the level of campaigning, the feminist analysis of objectification outlined above has a lot to recommend it. In any case that involves clear abuse, it gives us a way to capture and call out the specific nature of that abuse.

That said, this interpretation of sexual objectification has significant problems. Most pertinently: The relevant abuses rarely, if ever, take the form of actually reducing women to mere objects. Male sex tourists do not, in fact, want access to women who are nothing more than objects. A man who wanted a mere object could make do with a literal sex doll. Sex tourists no more want “mere” objects than a sadist wants to torture a rock. What they want is to treat someone who they know very well is not an object as if they were an object. The distinctive thrill for the objectifier, it seems, is to reduce someone to the status of an object in their own eyes.

In previous published work I have focused on negative forms of sexual objectification. In particular, on the effects of harmful cultural forces, relayed through film, advertising and the media generally, that serve to “script” our sexual behaviour, to ideological ends. [4] If, as I believe (following Andrea Dworkin), the real engine of objectification is the self-understanding of the “victim”, it reaches its most complete form when they are led to understand themselves as mere sexual resources. They are indoctrinated to see themselves as nothing more than cogs in the machine of the pornography industry, or sex tourism industry, etc. Their identities become colonised. Politically speaking, they become accessories in their own exploitation. [5] This is not because they have been reduced to mere objects, but because their own self-conception has been recruited as an “enemy within”. The whole syndrome can only be perpetuated because they are not actually mere objects at all, but self-conscious, choice-making individuals, performing to an oppressive script.

A more illuminating interpretation of sexual objectification, then, would regard it as the treatment of someone who clearly is not a mere object, and is acknowledged on all sides, including by themselves, not to be a mere object, as if they were essentially a sex object. [6] Adopting this more complex model of objectification need by no means commit us to a general rejection of the feminist conclusion that, on the face of it, such treatment is morally and politically unacceptable when the motivations of those involved are commercial and/or the circumstances brutally exploitative. At the same time though, it creates space for an explanation of why, nevertheless, many people enjoy scenarios that put them in the position of the objectified party.

In his fascinating discussion of sadomasochism, Jean-Paul Sartre observes that the aim of the masochist is to “taste his objectivity”. [7] Although Sartre regards both masochism and sadism as, ultimately, incoherent enterprises, his resonant formulation captures, in my view, the distinctive attractions of both BDSM activities and the objectification kink.

To the extent that tasting one’s own objectivity is an achievable goal, it cannot, in principle, depend on the reduction of the victim to a mere object. No mere object can taste itself, even figuratively speaking. But we can. Though quite how this paradoxical-seeming feat is possible, we frankly do not know (more on this below). Paradoxical or not, being brought to taste one’s own objectivity seems to be quite a popular leisure activity.

BDSM enthusiasts might be tempted, at this point, to shrug and observe that paradoxicality is evidently no impediment to fun, and resume the flogging. But since our present aim is to shed light on why sexual objectification, specifically, matters, I want to consider in more detail why tasting one’s own objectivity might be so peculiarly appealing.

Sartre holds that human existence involves an inescapable struggle to reconcile two antithetical aspects of the self. [8] We are, of course, material girls in a material world. But our existence also has a mental dimension; and, to put it bluntly, we simply do not understand the relationship between these two dimensions of ourselves. Nothing is closer and more transparent to us than our own consciousness. But adequately explaining how our consciousness is attached to and interacts with a particular physical body, that we also know as our body, has thus far proved impossible. [9]

Sartre does not for a moment doubt that the physical self (the body) exists. Rather, he understands the human being as a subject-object. We are thinking beings, blessed with both subjectivity (agency, thought, will, perception, self-consciousness and self-knowledge), and objectivity (length, breadth, height, weight, movement or stasis etc - all the usual attributes of physical objects). Our distinctive predicament stems from this combination. We do not, and to all appearances cannot, adequately grasp the relationship between these two aspects of ourselves. Yet we still face the ongoing challenge of comprehending ourselves as complete human beings, in a world in which, as T.S. Eliot puts it, “the impossible union of spheres of existence is actual”. [10]

In respect of our subjecthood, our self-knowledge is relatively secure. Even if we doubt that some or all of our thoughts are true, we cannot in practice doubt their contents. [11] (I can coherently doubt that I am currently typing - I might be dreaming, for example - but I cannot coherently doubt that I think I am currently typing). Our own minds are, to that extent, transparent to us.

In respect of our objecthood, however, the situation is very different. While we are essentially self-sufficient when it comes to knowledge of our own minds, for knowledge of ourselves as objects we are crucially dependent on others. I can only really know myself as an object by adopting an “external” perspective on myself; and for the very possibility of adopting such a perspective, I need to be convinced, firstly, that other people exist; and, secondly, that those people can, at least in principle, provide me with “objective” knowledge of my physical (object) self.

This leaves me with a potentially alarming dependency on others. It is other people who hold the secret of who I am, at least in my physical aspect. [12] In order to achieve any semblance of balance and integration of the “subject” and “object”portions of myself, then, I need the help of other people. The great “gift” that we long for from others, is - as Robert Burns puts it - “To see ourselves as others see us”. [13]

While Burns’ formulation vividly highlights our dependency on others for the secret of who we are, it can, in the context of a discussion of sexual objectification, seem dangerously naive. It is precisely through adopting the conception that others have of them that the victims of sexual objectification are oppressed.

In the face of this realisation, it might be tempting to block our ears to all external voices, and try to spin our preferred self-conception from our own innards. But this is just what, according to Sartre, we cannot do. Like it or not, it is others, and not we ourselves, who hold the secret of who we are - at least in our physical aspect. If we abandon the external perspective that others provide, we simultaneously abandon all possibility of achieving an objective grasp of who we (physically) are - and with it any possibility of establishing, even provisionally, a balanced and integrated self. [14]

At this point, the attractions of experiences of tasting our own objectivity begin to come more clearly into view. Is it any wonder that we crave intense and visceral experiences of our own sexual objecthood, when we are surrounded, on the one hand, by unreliable and seductive ideological voices, urging us to interpret ourselves as nothing more than cogs in a pornographic machine; and, on the other hand, by the temptation to block out those siren voices altogether - which temptation, if we were to succumb to it, would only plunge us helplessly into the abyss of our own “unjustifiable subjectivity”? [15]

Somehow we have to steer our way between these twin dangers. However risky it may be, we have to try to uncover the secret of who we are, using resources that are actually made available to us by actual others. We need undeniable and objective experience of our own objecthood.

There really is no livable alternative to the painstaking task of building a reliable and objective self-conception, selecting as carefully as we can from the materials that our community and our wider culture makes available to us. If this is challenging as a general task, it seems particularly challenging in the heady arena of sexual conduct. We cannot, of course, build a secure and nourishing sense of our sexual selves by parroting pornographic cliches. But, more challengingly, we can only build such a sense of self through submitting ourselves to the appraisals of others.

Put bluntly: if we refuse to let ourselves be (sexually) seen, we cannot possibly come to enjoy our sexual selves as we objectively are.

What I see as lying at the core of the objectification kink, then, is the sigh of the oppressed creature, valiantly electing to offer themselves for objective critical appraisal, in the hope that they can piece together, from a host of (hopefully) humane interactions, a dependable sense of their own sexual nature - not as mere sexual objects, but (inevitably) as sexual objects for others.

Why objectification might be OK

It seems a reasonable hypothesis that an objectification kink, thus understood, reflects a felt need to reclaim a reliable and trustworthy sense of sexual objecthood, on the part of those whose life circumstances have led them to excessively privilege their subjecthood.

The cultural environment in which we have all grown up tends to stress the objecthood of women, and the subjecthood of men. Women are encouraged to be “in their bodies” - paying elaborate attention to their appearance and presentation, and being at least ostensibly sexually available to men. Men are encouraged to be “in their heads”, to be “movers and shakers” in their communities and the world of work: powerful, decisive, single-minded in obtaining, or shaping, the world in which they aspire to live. But while this general picture of males, under these specific cultural conditions, as excessively privileging their subjecthood (and, accordingly, being object-focused in their relationships), and females as excessively privileging their objecthood (hence subject-focused in their relationships) may be accurate as a generalisation, I suspect we all know that the real world is more complicated than that. Many women play something of the “subject” role, professionally and domestically; and many men play a primarily “object” role (in manual labour, for example). So, if the ultimate goal is, as Sartre suggests, to achieve some provisional balance and integration of these two aspects of ourselves, many of us, both male and female, may have work to do in reclaiming our sexual objecthood.

Feminist commentators have stressed the importance, for women, of reclaiming their sexual agency, and resisting the cultural forces that pressure them to regard themselves as mere objects. It is not necessary to dissent from this view to hold that, when what is actually in question is behaviour that, consensually and humanely, enables us to “taste our objectivity”, the concern with being reduced to a mere object is largely beside the point. If indulging our objectification kink gives us a way to achieve a more healthy balance of the subject and object components of our being, it is surely not essentially problematic. With all due respect for the work that feminist theorists have done in analysing and calling out the social and cultural forces that tend to distort women’s lives, by leading them to over-identify with their objecthood, it may still be the case for particular individuals that there is an important felt need to reclaim their own bodies - not simply in the negative sense of escaping from “objectifying” stereotypes, but also in the positive sense of establishing a reliable grasp of their own sexual objecthood, on the basis of which they can confidently begin to feel sexually desirable in their own right. This may reasonably involve (consensual) submission to a trusted sexual “agent” as the driving force of the interaction - even to the point of masochistic enjoyment of the (controlled) violence of their desire.

Having had the privilege of seeing the issue from both sides, to some extent, I think there is also a widely-overlooked need, on the part of many men, to reclaim their own sexual objecthood - to put down the role of competitor/predator and instead become the prize/prey. [16] For me, personally, there is something peculiarly dispiriting about conventional maleness. To always be the pursuer and never the pursued is, for me at least, a horribly empty way to live. “Don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it” describes a very unhealthy state of mind. I’d much rather be pretty - indeed, on appropriate occasions, “pretty vacant”.[17]

We inevitably rely on feedback from others to “discover” ourselves as sexual objects. (Hence, presumably, the widespread fascination with the various psychological tests and questionnaires that purport to tell us what sort of partner, lover etc. we are.) If the only “external” voices that are available to me present a distorted picture of “people like me”, as mere resources for the sexual gratification of men, then these will tend to lead me to develop a distorted self-conception. But the alternative of blocking out all “objectifying” voices is not viable. I cannot achieve a balanced and integrated self-conception if I silence all external voices. I need - indeed it might reasonably be said that I desperately need - to hear voices that confirm my objecthood in a manner that is humane, objective and reliable (rather than exploitative, distorting and oppressive). Practised self-consciously and consensually, an objectification kink can provide me with a mirror through which I can reconcile my fragile objecthood with my inescapable subjecthood. It can enable me to come to terms with my physical being in a manner that, ultimately, strengthens rather than undermines my sexual agency.

Within the established boundaries of safe kink practice then, an objectification kink can be a joyous and nourishing thing.

Notes:

[1] The classic statement of this principle can be found in John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty”: “[T]he only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” (J.S. Mill, “On Liberty” (1859), Ch. 1.

[2] See e.g. Lucas, Ethics and Self-Knowledge (Springer, 2011), Ch. 1.

[3] Search e.g. “gender traitors” on e.g. Tumblr. Or maybe don’t…?

[4] Lucas (2018) “This is why the objectification of men on TV isn’t just a bit of fun”. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/bodyguard-poldark-male-objectification-love-island-tv-feminism-a8543096.html

[5] Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse (Arrow Books, 1998), pp. 167-169.

[6] See Lucas, Ethics and Self-Knowledge (Springer, 2011), Ch. 5). Compare Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Sarah Richmond (Routledge, 2018), p. 531: “[S]adism does not seek to eliminate the freedom of the tortured person, but to force that freedom to freely identify itself with the tortured flesh.”

[7] Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Sarah Richmond (Routledge, 2018), p. 501.

[8] For Sartre these two aspects are “transcendence” (alternatively “consciousness”), and “facticity” (roughly, our contingent physical existence and circumstances). See Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Sarah Richmond (Routledge, 2018), p. 99: “The underlying concept generated in this way makes use of the twofold property of human beings, of being a facticity and a transcendence. These two aspects of human-reality are, in truth - and ought to be - capable of being validly coordinated.” See also Sartre (2018) pp. 133-134.

[9] To give one indication of the depth of the puzzle here: The AI robot Sophia has had to be programmed to switch off the microphones that are her “ears” when she “speaks”. This is because she has no reliable way to distinguish her own speech from that of others. It is, I think, impossible to imagine encountering Sophia’s difficulty ourselves. We may occasionally fail to recognise a recording of our own voice. But we simply cannot imagine what it would be like to fail to realise, when we are speaking or thinking, that we are the ones who are speaking or thinking. Nevertheless, this elusive sense of self is something that, apparently, AI cannot achieve.

[10] T.S.Eliot, “The Dry Salvages”, section V. In T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets (Faber and Faber, 1944). The fuller quote runs: “The hint half-guessed, the gift half-understood, is Incarnation. Here the impossible union of spheres of existence is actual.”

[11] Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Sarah Richmond (Routledge, 2018), p. 10.

[12] Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Sarah Richmond (Routledge, 2018), p. 481: “[T]he Other looks at me and, in so doing, he holds the secret of my being; he knows what I am.”

[13] Robert Burns, ode “To a Louse”.

[14] Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Sarah Richmond (Routledge, 2018), p. 483: “The Other holds a secret: the secret of what I am…. the Other is for me at the same time someone who has stolen my being, and someone who brings it about that ‘there is’ a being that is my being.”

[15] Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Sarah Richmond (Routledge, 2018), P. 499.

[16] Not being part of the gay community, I am not in a position to comment on whether or how far this is achieved in gay male environments and relationships.

[17] I have not said much here about the pleasures of being the objectifier. The short and boring explanation is that I don’t really experience them. Perhaps that is what first set me off on this odd philosophical quest five decades ago: I was aware that I was supposed to get off on portrayals of women as sexually available objects. But in truth I just didn’t feel it. I consumed as much soft pornography as most boys growing up in the late 1970s, but what excited me was the thought of being the girl. It would be consistent with what I have said above if there were hordes of women out there eager to reclaim their sexual agency and subjecthood by stepping (consensually, and with full self-awareness!) into the role of objectifier, to the profound satisfaction of the hordes of men who are desperate to taste their own objectivity, but too timid to say so. Maybe there are. But that seems a bit like hoping without evidence that there are exactly as many sexual sadists in the world as there are masochists (or, perhaps more palatably, as many doms as there are subs); and the evidence for that seems notably incomplete. So, I’m content to leave this aspect to those more qualified to comment.

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