Objectification Case

Objectification is the action of implying that a person, unfortunately many times a women, is anything less than a human, making them out to be a mere object whether this was done consciously or not. The fine line of what should be considered objectification is very hard to define and must be looked at within context of the situation. This is a central theme in many philosophers work, one of them being philosopher Martha Nussbaum. She has taken this concept and developed what she believes to be seven features of objectification, but her views challenge previous philosophers because instead of objectification being just a negative action, she shows how it can benefit relationships. After showing a positive connection towards objectification, we can see how it is unavoidable within out day to day lives, as long as it is done with respect.

Regardless of the many positive situations, there still are many situations which show the negative effects of objectification, and the blatant wrongs that coexist when we allowed people to fall victim to these mentalities. For example, if you throw a pen away when the ink runs out, like the same object, who is to say you cannot simply stop talking to your sex partner when they refuse to just have casual sex with you? This is also too easy to then make the next connection that instead of charming the next "special" someone into bed with you again, you should simply go purchase a prostitute to sleep with. Then, you will never have to deal with the after math of feelings and relationships that could have been developed during this sexual intercourse. This brief summary of a situation describes three of the seven features that Nussbaum has in her work on objectification; fungibility, ownership, and denial of subjectivity. These are very unhealthy traits and cannot exist in the environment of a healthy relationship, however, unfortunately these have become a very apparent part of the sexuality in our culture, with the astonishing number of adults thats partake in rape, child pornography, violence, human trafficking and in general, the sex trade.

Nussbaum defines fungibility as "the treatment of a person as interchangeable with other objects", or in other words replaceable. This to me should be an obvious feature of why it doesn't work within a healthy relationship, who your loved one is should be the most important factor, not having a "loved" one there.

The next step in our situation of objectification was ownership, which Nussbaum defined at "the treatment of a person as something that is owned