Objectification

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Objectification is the treatment of people or animals by people as an object or thing or thing ( dehumanization ), whereby the dignity as a person or animal can be impaired, damaged or destroyed. It occurs in many areas with asymmetrical power relations . Examples of this are slavery , school , medicine , animal testing , economics , gender relations or sexuality .

criteria

Objectification can exist if one or more of the following criteria are met:

  • Instrumentalization, d. H. treat as an instrument for someone else's purpose
  • Denial of autonomy , d. H. a lack of autonomy and self-determination or sovereignty insinuate
  • Assume indolence or a lack of autonomy or activity
  • Assume vulnerability or a lack of integrity and boundaries, which is why violation or destruction is considered permissible
  • Deny self-determination or self-ownership by making appropriation, buying or selling legitimate
  • Subjectivity is denied by not viewing experiences, needs, and feelings as relevant
  • Reduction to the body or parts of the body
  • Reduction in appearance

The existence of one or more of these criteria can be degrading, but it does not necessarily have to be, as Martha Nussbaum shows in her analysis of objectification.

Objectification always works in both directions within a relationship between people, since in a certain relationship constellation or a social field , socially grown power asymmetries and habitus are always given at the same time . These enable one person to objectify another person and at the same time create a self-objectification in the other, ie the other loses the self-awareness of being a subject . Norbert Elias describes this as the momentum of an established-outsider relationship .

Areas (examples)

slavery

In becoming a slave , a person loses his status of a subject, is treated as an object, and at the same time loses the self-confidence of being a subject.

medicine

In medical ethics , it is an important requirement not to treat patients as an object. With increasing specialization and differentiation in the medical system, the demands on communication and language in medicine as a means of communication , diagnostic and therapeutic instrument are increasing . The new catchphrase of speaking medicine also stands for this .

Animals

In agriculture , meat processing and animal experiments , animals can become objectified.

Gender ratio

Pierre Bourdieu shows that in the given gender order “the woman is constituted as a symbolic object”, “whose being (esse) is a being perceived (percipi)”, ie an object of perception by men and other women . In accordance with the power asymmetries of the sexes, there is more often an objectification of women and sexism towards women, for example as an object of the needs of a man , an infant or a child or, on a social level, as an object of the reproductive requirements in demographic change , the requirements of motherhood or the demands Housework and family work . The objectification of homosexual men or gays often takes place in that they are perceived or represented as women and in this respect as objects. At the same time, objectification can in principle refer to both genders.

Sexuality (sexual objectification)

In the area of sexuality , women, men or children can be objectified as symbolic objects of sexuality. According to their personal or social habitus, they are no longer seen as a subject with dignity and their own sexuality to be respected, but as a sexual object. This can extend to sexual abuse .

The sexual objectification of women is so commonplace that it is mostly hardly noticed - for example in everyday language , in films or in advertising . It is about the "constant, arranged representation of the female body (or its parts), which takes place routinely and with the fading out of other human characteristics in order to please others as a sex object". In contrast, where there is no objectification, the focus is not on the subjective perspective of men, but that of women. H. that as a sexual subject "having sexual sensations, feeling sexy, having fun with sex and experimenting with it".

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Nussbaum, Martha (1995): Objectification . Philosophy & Public Affairs. 24 (4): pp. 249-291
  2. ^ Langton, Rae (2009). Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification **. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  3. ^ Philip J. Kain: Hegel and the Other: A Study of the Phenomenology of Spirit. New York 2012.
  4. ↑ Rachel M. Calogero, Stacey Tantleff-Dunn, J. Kevin Thompson: Self-objectification in women: Causes, consequences, and counteractions. Washington DC 2011.
  5. ↑ Norbert Elias, John L. Scotson: Established and Outsiders. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 2002.
  6. ^ Philip J. Kain: Hegel and the Other: A Study of the Phenomenology of Spirit. New York 2012. pp. 50ff.
  7. ^ Roberta Stewart: Plautus and Roman Slavery. Oxford 2012.
  8. ↑ Gottschlich, Maximilian (1998): Speechless suffering: ways to a communicative medicine. The healing power of the word. Vienna. P. 52ff.
  9. ↑ Busch, Albert (Ed.) (2015): Handbook Language in Medicine. Berlin.
  10. ↑ Ahne, Winfried (2007): Animal experiments in the field of tension between practice and bioethics. Stuttgart. P. 75ff.
  11. ↑ Bourdieu, Pierre (1992): A gentle force. Pierre Bourdieu in conversation with Irene Dölling and Margareta Steinrücke. Dolling, Irene; Steinrücke, Margareta: An everyday game. Gender construction in social practice. Frankfurt / MS 229.
  12. ↑ Ruth Becker, Beate Kortendiek (Ed.) (2010): Handbook Women and Gender Studies: Theory, Methods, Empiricism. Wiesbaden.
  13. ↑ Bauer, Yvonne (2003): Sexuality - Body - Gender: Liberation courses and new technologies. Opladen.
  14. ↑ Rachel M. Calogero, Stacey Tantleff-Dunn, J. Kevin Thompson: Self-objectification in women: Causes, consequences, and counteractions. Washington DC 2011.
  15. ^ Tracey Morse: The Sexual Objectification Scale: Continued Development and Psychometric Evaluation. Ann Arbor 2007.
  16. ↑ Linda Papadopoulos: It's MY life !: How young women free themselves from the pressure of expectation and perfectionism. Munich 2016.