Objectification is one of those words used so frequently today that its meaning begins to seem self-evident. It is generally treated as something unequivocally bad: a form of humiliation, oppression, or deprivation of a person’s agency. The word comes up especially often in discussions of women and sexuality.
But the way the question itself is framed here seems mistaken.
We are accustomed to reasoning as though subject and object were opposites: being a subject means freedom, will, and a fully human life, while being an object means being turned into a thing. This framework naturally leads to a conclusion: the less a person is perceived as an object, the more agency they have.
Yet agency and objecthood do not lie on the same scale at all.
Agency describes a person from the standpoint of their own existence: their consciousness, will, and ability to make decisions, set goals, and act. Objecthood concerns an entirely different aspect of human existence—how that person is present in other people’s worlds. How they are seen, perceived, and judged; what is expected of them; and what place they occupy in someone else’s picture of the world.
In this sense, every person inevitably exists as both a subject and an object at the same time. They act in their own right while also being someone toward whom other people’s attention, judgments, and actions are directed.
Moreover, it is impossible to relinquish objecthood entirely. If a person has no presence in other people’s perceptions, they virtually disappear from the social sphere. Someone may have an extraordinarily rich inner world, a will of their own, and deeply held convictions, but to influence society, they need to be represented in other people’s minds.
This is precisely why the relationship between objecthood and agency is far more complex than is usually assumed. In a certain sense, increasing the ways in which a person is represented to others may expand the opportunities to exercise their agency rather than diminish it. A subject acts in the social world through the kind of object they are to those around them. If no one notices them, their ability to influence others is sharply limited.
The real problem does not arise when a person becomes an object of perception. That happens to all of us constantly. The problem arises when they are reduced to just one way of existing in other people’s eyes—to nothing but a body, a profession, a social role, a background, a function, or sexuality. And especially when the person has almost no influence over how they are represented to others.
This is where the discussion of the objectification of women becomes much more interesting.
The statement “the objectification of women is bad” describes what is happening far too crudely. Women have always been objects of other people’s perceptions, just as men have. The question is not whether objecthood exists, but what forms it takes, how diverse they are, and who has the power to shape them.
A good example is societies in which women’s bodies are concealed from public view as completely as possible.
At first glance, a woman in a burqa may seem to be free from sexual objectification. But in reality, she does not cease to be an object of social representations at all. On the contrary, society defines with extreme rigidity what kind of object she must be.
Her visibility is restricted. The ways in which she can present herself to others are reduced. Her freedom to choose her own outward appearance is diminished. What is happening, then, is less the elimination of objecthood than the deprivation of a person’s control over a substantial part of how they are represented in the world.
And as the ways she can be seen diminish, so do the ways she can influence those around her.
This is particularly clear in the case of sexual objectification, which is now discussed almost exclusively in negative terms.
Perceiving someone sexually can indeed become a way of reducing them. If others notice only the body and completely ignore the person’s individuality, intellect, professional abilities, and will, that is an obvious limitation.
But it does not follow that sexual perception itself necessarily destroys agency.
Sexual attractiveness, attention, and interest from other people exist regardless of whether we like this aspect of human society. These are real social resources. A person can use them—consciously or unconsciously—to build relationships, attract attention, shape their image, and influence others.
Sexual objecthood itself can therefore be one of the channels through which agency is exercised.
This may explain the persistence with which patriarchal religious and social systems have sought to control women’s sexuality throughout history. Restrictions on clothing, behavior, interactions with men, choice of partner, and the public display of attractiveness are not simply a struggle against sexuality as such.
They are a means of controlling one form of social influence.
The fewer ways a person has to present themselves to others, the narrower the space in which they can act. Prohibiting sexual objecthood does not necessarily liberate a woman. It may simply deprive her of one of the ways available to her of existing in the social world.
Another common argument arises here. It is often claimed that if a woman is perceived as a sexual object, others will find it harder to take her seriously as a scientist, politician, leader, or specialist.
This does happen. But the reason is not an inevitable incompatibility between sexuality and intellectual or professional competence. There is no fundamental contradiction between them.
A person can be attractive, intelligent, professional, funny, influential, caring, strong, vulnerable, and dozens of other things at the same time. Our perception generally works in such a way that the same person exists for us in many different capacities at once.
The problem begins when one quality displaces all the others.
If a woman is perceived exclusively as a sexual body, that is a reduction. But trying to solve the problem by prohibiting or devaluing the sexual dimension altogether creates a new reduction. Now the person is instructed to be visible only in certain “proper” ways.
That is why fighting objectification as such is unlikely to be productive. It makes far more sense to challenge the monopoly of a single form of objecthood.
The goal should be to increase, rather than decrease, the number of ways in which a person exists for others.
A person can be sexually attractive and intellectually engaging at the same time. They can be a professional and an object of admiration. They can attract attention through their appearance and hold it through their ideas. They can occupy different social roles and decide for themselves which to show in different situations.
The broader this spectrum, the less likely a person is to be reduced to a single function.
And this brings us to the fundamental question of control.
Perhaps the problem with objectification is not that other people perceive us as objects. There is no escaping that, and it would hardly be worth trying. The problem begins when society decides on a person’s behalf exactly what kind of object they must be, forbidding some ways of presenting themselves and imposing others.
The right question, then, is a different one.
Do we really want people to stop perceiving us as objects?
Or do we want to be able to influence how others see us ourselves?
These are far from the same thing.
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