objectification – Philosophy @Newcastle

To Commodify or Not to Commodify? That is NOT the Question

An investigation into the reciprocal roles of power and language in determining a fair agreement in “commodified sexuality”.

Aims
Is ‘commodified sexuality’ an accurate description of modern day prostitution? To discuss whether the implications of ‘objectification’ are metaphysically possible when one sells their sexual services for a price To analyse the power strategies present within sex work from environment to language Determine which effect of power is the most dangerous to the sex worker.

Project Outline
Identify confusions within the terms of commodity and commodification Emphasize that sex work involves labour, not the mere ‘selling of one’s body’ Identify a separation of a sex worker’s sexuality occurs through use of Karl Marx’s alienation Stress the limits of consent using Immanuel Kant Argue that the most powerful power structure is utilised without conscious thought: language

Philosophers & Key Texts
Martha Nussbaum: Sex & Social Justice (1999)
Sexual Objectification

Karl Marx: Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1843-44, Vol. 3 (2005) & Capital (1961)
Alienated Labour

Immanuel Kant: Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (2007)
Autonomy
Categorical Imperative
Sexual Contract of Marriage

Jürgen Habermas: The Theory of Communicative Action (1981)
Ideal Speech Arrangement

Project aims:
To explore different areas of the media (such as advertising, TV and films) to assess the level of sexual objectification that people will view on a daily basis.

Explore the inequalities that women still face in modern society and assess whether the situation is improving or growing worse.

Assess rape statistics – especially in respect to how many rapes occur and how many are reported – to see if sexual objectification could have removed the female voice to the point of silencing them completely.

Finally discuss if the situation can be resolved and potentially how this could be done.

Philosophers:

Catherine MacKinnon,
“Pornography makes women into objects … Objects do not speak.”

Jean Baudrillard,
“In the ‘eroticized’ body, it is the social function of exchange which predominates.”

Simone de Beauvoir,
“The division of the sexes is a biological fact, not an event in human history.”

Immanuel Kant,
“The human being… exists as an end in itself, not merely as a means to be used by this or that will”

Thomas Hobbes,
“The Desires, and other Passions of man, are in themselves no Sin.”