Mass objectification is a result of commodification which is.......

[socialist_n_TN]

a basic tenet of capitalism.

Objectification on a personal one-on-one basis does not have a lot of staying power or even power in general in society unless it's backed up by the profit motive.

[mzteris]

1. I don't think the roots

are in capitalism.

It existed LONG before capitalism was even a concept.

It has to do about power. Who has it and who wants to keep it and what threatens them. Co-opting religion to help out with that turned out to be a - er - godsend.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

6. I agree with you, but with capitalism, it's more prevalent because there's plenty of $$$$

to be made, and in capitalism it's only always about profit, at the expense of human beings.

[socialist_n_TN]

38. Which is the reason I said "Mass objectification".........

nm

[Sarah Ibarruri]

43. Yes. And I do agree it is turned into a horrific problem by capitalism. nt

[mzteris]

45. My point.

Capitalism - um - capitalized on an existing paradigm.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

46. Yes. nt

[redqueen]

21. Exactly. Certain people (women, slaves, etc.) were considered PROPERTY. nt

[Rex]

2. You don't need to blame capitalism for the mingling of sex and commerce.

Been around far longer than most societies.

[Scootaloo]

4. However, for it to become a mass commercial industry...

Requires the infrastructures and mentalities that come with capitalism.

Hell, you see it here on DU - people basically treating women's bodies as a product, and using "don't like it, don't buy it!" as an argument against people who draw issue with that.

[Rex]

5. True, good point.

nt.

[BainsBane]

3. Absolutely

It is creating a commodity out of representations of female body parts and even female bodies. What is astounding to me is how many people can't imagine their own sexuality apart from capitalist commodity fetishism. They insist it is inherently biological or has "always been this way," when objectification as we understand it today is fairly recent, largely a function of the second half of the 20th century (WWII onward). It has emerged as a backlash to women's increasing economic and political power.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

7. Good post, and I agree that objectification is part and parcel of unrestrained capitalism...

In unrestrained capitalism, human beings have little or no value.

[El_Johns]

8. thanks for injecting some sense into the clusterfuck.

[rrneck]

9. Objectification is not, in itself, a bad thing.

It is not to be confused with dehumanization.

Anyone who has to produce anything either as an employee or as a self employed individual can be considered a production unit with certain expectations. At no time should they be dehumanized in the discharge of their responsibilities.

Capitalism is not, in itself, a bad thing. It is one tool among many we use to manage resource wealth. Needless to say it is being poorly used at the present time.

[El_Johns]

11. Objectification means treating a human as an object.

Capitalism is a process for accumulating capital (resources).

[rrneck]

12. Yes. And we all do it for any number of reasons.

People objectify each other as readily as we anthropomorphize the objects around us. The fact that we do so is not necessarily a bad thing. It's why we do it that makes it bad.

The problem is not objectification but literalism. Ideologues and fundamentalists are legendary literalists. They want to interpret things like images to fit their ideology and force that ideology on others. That's how feminists find themselves in bed with fundamentalist Christians and conservatives.

[El_Johns]

13. Can you give an example of objectification that is good because it's done for the proper reasons?

[rrneck]

14. I dunno. I never tried.

Lets see. Let's start with some sort of a definition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectification
According to the philosopher Martha Nussbaum, a person is objectified if they are treated:[1]

as a tool for another's purposes (instrumentality);
as if lacking in agency or self-determination (denial of autonomy, inertness);
as if owned by another (ownership);
as if interchangeable (fungibility);
as if permissible to damage or destroy (violability);
as if there is no need for concern for their feelings and experiences (denial of subjectivity).

How's that? Work for you?

Offhand, I see three that are necessary to a modern society, and actually are necessary to every society since at least the advent of agriculture. Insturmentality, denial of autonomy, fungibility and subjectivity would describe almost any employee and certainly any soldier. You see, even though we are people, we have responsibilities to others that transcend how we may feel about what we have to do to make a living or survive. Although it is certainly wrong to dehumanize people, we as responsible citizens have to produce and the product of our efforts are subject to objectifying evaluation. In other words, you have to show up to work whether you like it or not and your boss, or commanding officer, has the right to evaluate your output without considering your feelings on the matter. And if you don't like the boss scenario, replace him with mother nature or physics. Sometimes you have to objectify yourself.

But are we really talking about objectifying people here? The current spate of gender conflict started with images of girls in bikinis. So we aren't really talking about objectifying people but images, which are objects themselves. The entire controversy is an exercise in literalism. The images are not people. They are fiction, and should be interpreted as such.

[El_Johns]

15. Not sure what you're saying. Is it that objectification is OK if it's done to workers and soldiers?

The commodified image is the objectification of the gender and of the individual.

"This fact simply means that the object that labor produces, it product, stands opposed to it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor embodied and made material in an object, it is the objectification of labor. The realization of labor is its objectification. In the sphere of political economy, this realization of labor appears as a loss of reality for the worker, objectification as loss of and bondage to the object, and appropriation as estrangement, as alienation."

[rrneck]

18. No.

It's that objectification is part of being human. In and of itself it's not bad. It, like every other intellectual tool in our toolkit, depends on what we do with it.

[El_Johns]

19. In what way is it (being a thing) part of being human?

In what way is it an "intellectual tool in our toolbelt"? (Objects don't have intellect).

[rrneck]

20. Well,

one way is the fact that your body is an object. We can transplant all sorts and kinds of body parts now. It won't be long before we can grow them from scratch. Haven't you heard of people performing athletic activities saying, "I forced my body to do...". That's the very definition of self objectification. You want to run a 5k in X amount of time but your body wasn't up to it, so you scold yourself and declare to yourself that you'll do better. That's what champions are made of.

If you can transcend yourself, you can objectify yourself.

[El_Johns]

22. Your body is your body, part of "you", who is a human. I think we're talking past each other.

You can also say "your brain is an object" or "your kneecap is an object".

That isn't equal to objectification in the sense under discussion.

[rrneck]

23. I think it's because

we are confusing objectification with dehumanization. You have to dehumanize someone to hurt them, and the term objectification is being used as a means to hurt people. We're dealing with the semantics of a catchword.

It's not necessarily wrong to treat people as objects, but to profit from their objectification unfairly. It's the difference between lovemaking and rape, division of labor and slavery, or even self respect and self flagellation.

But you're right, it's hard not to talk past each other because the word itself has been stretched beyond its utility.

[El_Johns]

24. Objectification means dehumanization: to make a human a thing. I don't know how you're using it,

but that is indeed the definition.

[rrneck]

25. Doesn't look like it.

http://thesaurus.com/browse/objectification

[The Straight Story]

27. I'm Batman

An object of entertainment. I like batman. I don't think all men are batman or have to look like him of course.

I have bought comics, action figures (ok, dolls for those offended by the sexist 'action figure' term), movies, and super sexy batman underwear with utility belt.

He is just an objectified human we project as ideal and a crime fighter.

Objects can represent ideals. They can be embodied using what we are most close to, fellow humans (or created ones in comic books).

If that is bad - every single thing ever written, movie made, play, etc is bad. Objects are our way of doing something akin to object oriented program but using something more exciting like people instead of c++ and the like.

The core ideal is that it is a form of communication and is inherently good, it's use as to what it communicates on a case by case basis can certainly be up for debate.

[El_Johns]

29. Who is the living being batman objectifies? Does batman stand in for all men?

[The Straight Story]

30. SI did a bit on batman

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/video/si-video/20130809/2013-08-09-clip07.sportsillustrated/

So he must represent all men since he was in SI.

He has also been on many magazine covers.

Women have commented on his looks, men have been pressured into being heroes since they were kids. He's Batman.

[El_Johns]

31. right.

[The Straight Story]

32. It all boils down to the individual and their abilities

I saw a lot of things growing up that tried to define me. From movies to comics to football, etc. Grew up in a time where there were a lot of expectations that the guys would be either in sports or they were geeks and would go on to college. Women loved the guys in bands and who played sports. On tv/etc that was pushed as well.

Chess players, guys who liked D&D, or who spent their summers going to the library getting books on math, science, religion, etc weren't exactly 'represented' if you will in culture.

I didn't expect myself to be someone I wasn't to please others. Others liked people and things I was not. Good for them. I got some pressure from some kids but they eventually came around and accepted me because they knew of all their friends I was the one most comfortable being who I was.

Peer pressure and objectification can well go hand in hand.

But if you truly like being yourself and realize that you have to live with yourself the rest of your life and no one else has to many of those other things can slip right on by you.

SI has images of good looking dudes all the time that have money and fame. Every magazine I see with men in it -- looks like an episode of mad men or magic mike. I don't care. If I let a bunch of folks in some building in nyc define me and what I feel I should look or act like than I am giving them control.

If I think women only want that in a man than I am judging what a woman wants without knowing her (and I would be right in some cases but wrong in many others, some do, some don't - same with men).

I make the simple choice. I read things like chess life, wired, etc and focus on the text and stories (which always reminds me of my friend and his boyfriend - they kept playboy mags laying around just to mess with people. They really did buy it to read the articles they would say.)

Teach kids some values/morals as it relates to them - be yourself, love yourself, and if other people try to define you it's their dime and their time they are wasting.

[El_Johns]

33. "the individual and their abilities". Ja, richtig.

[joshcryer]

41. The OP is about commodity fetishism and the theory of alienation.

Which when argued simply does appear to be coherent and acceptable.

However, Marx's approach to the theory of alienation falls on its face as soon as one realizes that social relations are not limited to one mode of production. Marx, at the end, actually began to realize this, and it's one reason his entire critique becomes flimsy, because it is based on this demonization of commodities and industrial production.

Note, I'm agreeing with you, I'm just saying where the content of the OP originates.

We'll advance socialism once we get over this anti-consumerist moral panic.

[rrneck]

44. You're way ahead of me.

I guess I should read Marx.

I have to admit I'm one of the anti-consmerist moral "panicers". I wonder if we are more alenianted by owning things than making them. And it's not just stuff. One of our biggest products is ideology. People not only buy what they use, they buy what they think.

[joshcryer]

47. It's all true, of course, but applied wrong. Think of "sonder."

Sonder n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

How can we possibly think that an interconnected world such as ours with all of its glorious industrial magic, stuff so beyond each one of us but applied through the efforts of many, is anything but a truly connected and truly integrated society?

The whole alienation thing only applies to someone from a pre-industrial society watching as industry comes up around them and trying to make sense of it all. The reality is that we as a species are probably more social, more connected, less alienated than any other species on the planet.

Also, to get back to what you were saying, that (buying what we use, buying what we thinkg) is actually one of the critiques of Marx's theory of alienation and commodity fetishism. What if Marxism itself becomes a commodity fetish to the point of alienating others. Think about that one for a bit (yeah, once a philosophy becomes a caricature of its critique it sort of invalidates itself).

[Zorra]

10. +1 and "Social progress may be measured precisely by the social position of women." Karl Marx

Do I get a star, camarada s_n_TN?

[socialist_n_TN]

35. You ALWAYS get a star Comrada Fox.........

A red one!

[Warren DeMontague]

16. Would you say it's a Mass Effect?

[TBF]

17. Capitalism and patriarchy

Capitalism and patriarchy

Why has gender equality hit a wall in the U.S.? “Structural impediments” — meaning government inaction — don’t begin to answer the question. To put the explanation in two words: capitalism and patriarchy. Gender inequality exists in the place where rapacious, insatiable, war-­mongering, dead-end global ­capitalism and the 1%-driven, women-hating bastion of ­entrenched patriarchy converge.

Capitalism is based on class society, as is patriarchy. Both rely on inequality to yield super profits, prestige and (white) male privilege. Capitalism is based on the exploitation of the working class, including the special oppression of women, lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer workers and workers of color, by the masters of industry and all the productive forces that they own as their private property.

Fredrick Engels, in his classic book, “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State” (1884), showed how class society and patriarchy are totally intertwined through private property. He traces the oppression of women from the time before recorded history when people lived communally, shared equitably the food women raised and the men hunted, and only traced ancestry through their mothers ...

Much more here: http://www.workers.org/articles/2013/03/21/why-u-s-capitalism-perpetuates-gender-inequality/

[socialist_n_TN]

36. +1. Workers' Power had a women's pamphlet......

that explored Engel's concepts in pretty good depth. We studied it relatively recently.

[TBF]

48. I have Engel's book -

he and Lenin are a little easier to read than Marx - at least for me

[socialist_n_TN]

53. Agreed. And Engels is actually a LITTLE easier than even Lenin.........

And one reason I became a Trot is because Trotsky is also easier to read and follow than Lenin or Marx. Well, that and the fact that Trotsky IS classic Marxism in a (relatively) easy to understand mode.

[joshcryer]

26. Consumerism is not capitalist.

[Starry Messenger]

28. Agreed, though I want to emphasize that DU is also a business.

When there are complaints about the T&A here, it's not just a personal opinion, it's complaints that a business is being used to allow objectification of women in a place where we pay money to read and comment.

(this is directed at anyone reading and not the OP!)

[joshcryer]

39. When you run a business there's a cost benefit anaylsis.

The cost of running a more strict moderation system fell to the wayside of a self-moderating community. As long as people keep using said community the loss of those who want a more moderated community appears, so far anyway, to have been acceptable.

[whistler162]

34. Big words doesn't make you educated or sensible!

[socialist_n_TN]

37. And neither do small words......

nm

[scarletwoman]

40. Exactly! Thank you! Well said!

[flvegan]

42. Capitalism. Interesting. This in regards (further) on the objectification of women (the SI issue)

per chance?

So capitalism, and profit.

Those women on the cover get paid? Paid well per chance? Just curious.

If I'm barking up the wrong tree, my apologies in advance. I don't live here, I just visit.

[TBF]

49. If you pay someone you

can treat them however you want? What exactly are you allowed to do to them? Moreover, can you be more exploitive the more you pay them? I'm curious as to your interpretation of how this works.

You know you just backed up the point of the OP with those comments? I doubt you meant to do so but you've hit the nail on the head as to why capitalism is inherently inhumane, unjust and immoral.

[stevenleser]

50. Not correct.

Lack of profit motive will not all of a sudden cause people to regard others with any or more empathy in their interactions.

Even in a situation of From each according to his ability, to each according to his need, people will have expectations from each other that have nothing to do with empathy.

[Adrahil]

51. A reasonable analysis from a Marxist position....

But as someone who thinks you must account for historicized culture, I'd argue that the evidence doesn't really support that position. I'm an expert in Marxism, but it seems to me that it always fails by attempting to reduce everything to economics. I think this has to do a LOT with power politics, not just economics.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

52. Marxists did a pretty good job of objectifying 6 million Ukranians to death

To Stalin and his crew they were just things to be left to starve because the food was better used elsewhere. So too Mao's objectifying "Cultural Revolution" and its "useless eaters;" people who could no longer produce goods and services and therefore weren't entitled to food and medicine.

[socialist_n_TN]

54. Stalinists (which include Maoists, as Mao took the party organization model from Stalin)......

were NOT Marxists. And Mao was even further away from it than Stalin was because of his populist, peasant based revolution rather than working class based movement.

One positive benefit from the collapse of the USSR and the Stalinist model, is that we can finally push the "reset" button on Marxism and get back to the basics and NOT the degenerations of Stalinism.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

55. Marxists are funny.

They point to corporatism and scream, "Look at capitalism hath wrought!" even though corporatism and capitalism are not the same thing. The latter relies on competition within a free market, the former using government power to circumvent competition and a free market.

But if anyone says the centralized government monopoly on production and political power inevitably results in abuse of power the Marxists will be the first to scream that such is not Marxism. But it is. You believe all production and all political power falls to the Party. The Marxist's biggest fear is that I be allowed to take my money and my vote somewhere else. And once you start down that path you can't help but put tighter and tighter controls on my life.

You'll tell me I'm allowed to have freedom of conscience, but then you'll decide which buildings receive a permit to become houses of religious worship. Answer: none. You'll tell me I'm allowed to have freedom of intellect but then you'll tell me I'm not allowed to print any "lies" that defame The People's Glorious Revolution. You'll demand the schools be certified to ensure they aren't teaching "the wrong things." And when the people -- for whom all this is meant to benefit -- decide they're sick of it you'll crack down on the "capitalist saboteurs."

(Question -- If Marxism is so awesome and capitalism leads to privation why are Marxists always complaining that the rich, powerful capitalists are ruining everything for everybody else? can't you guys compete? Oh, wait. No you can't; almost by definition.)

And then when it comes crashing down because of the weight of all the dead bodies heaped upon its head, we'll restart this whole sad, sick ballet once again to refrains of, "Well, that wasn't real Marxism. Real Marxism has never been tried." Which I suppose is a testament to how stupid Marxists really are because all those despots sure thought they were Marxists and got all those people who were reading Marx to follow along (enough to kill 90 million of their fellow serfs).

But by all means, feel free to prove l'il ol' me to be wrong. Tell me by what mechanism you'll guarantee I don't have to play along with your storybook fantasy. Yeah, Wal-Mart sucks but I can always go get a job/shop at Target instead and Target has a profit motive to not be Wal-Mart. Under the centralized control of Marxism I don't even get that much.