Vince, R. (2024) After objectification: locating harm. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 41 (3). pp. 442-462. ISSN 0264-3758
Abstract
In this article I offer an analysis of harms associated with sexual objectification. Objectification can be benign, but harm tends to occur in three circumstances: (i) when objectification is non-consensual, (ii) when a phenomenon that I term ‘context-creeping’ occurs, and (iii) when the objectification is also enacting or reinforcing some kind of oppression. I defend the view that objectification is not always harmful, and I explain the popular intuition to the contrary by demonstrating that these three harm-generating circumstances are especially prevalent. The phenomenon of ‘context-creeping’ objectification is introduced to capture what is intuitively wrong with much objectification in media and advertising. This phenomenon describes when instances of sexual objectification (which may be, in themselves, benign) regularly occur outside sexual contexts, in a way that reinforces particular rape myths and thereby contributes to harms. This means that the ubiquity of discussion of pornography in the objectification literature is misleading, and a shift in focus to other media is warranted. I end with a warning, though: we should be very careful in how we respond to these problems, as attempts to mitigate any harms associated with objectifying media can badly misfire.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Authors. Journal of Applied Philosophy published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society for Applied Philosophy. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of Philosophy (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 06 Nov 2023 11:12 |
Last Modified: | 29 Oct 2024 15:35 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/japp.12698 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:204946 |
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