Sexual Objectification As The Wonderful Part Of Sexual Life By Nussbaum Summary

Sexual Objectification as the Wonderful Part of Sexual Life Sexual objectification is oftentimes – and mistakenly - used to portray women as being dehumanized sexually, often reduced to objects, things and commodities. Nussbaum argues that careful evaluation demonstrates some objectification can be compatible with consent and equality, and even be a wonderful part of sexual life. Sexual objectification, I argue, does have positive implications for women, since it can sometimes be humanizing, enhance mutual respect and social equality, as well as promote and respect autonomy.
Sexual objectification, a complex concept and often ambiguously defined, has been argued by feminists to describe the treatment women as mere things to be controlled

Nussbaum argues that the details of context are of considerable interest and very important: “in many if not all cases, the difference between an objectionable and a benign use of objectification will be made by the overall context of the human relationship in question” (271). Nussbaum further contends that all types of objectification are not equally objectionable and in some form and is also connected with fungibility, ownership and commodification (290). Nussbaum also puts forth that the definition of objectification is not just the idea of treating as an object; defining objectification is more difficult because you have to factor in what is involved in the idea treating as an object (257). Nussbaum puts forth seven notions involved in this idea: instrumentality, denial of autonomy, inertness, fungibility, violability, ownership, denial (257). Each of these is a feature of our treatment of things, though we do not treat all things as objects in all of these ways (257). Thus, objectification entails making into a thing, treating as a thing, something that is really not a thing

If he could come really within the blazing kernel of darkness, if really, he could be destroyed, burnt away till he lit with her in one consummation, that were supreme, supreme” (252).
The sort of objectification portrayed in this passage is a man surrendering his own personhood; mutual denial of autonomy and subjectivity is surrendered and is understood as passivity and receptivity (). At the same time, autonomy is achieved when individualities are surrendered in order to feel connected or whole; since the man no longer feels individuated from her, he feels the longing to be “destroyed" as an individual, “burnt away”