Sexual objectification

Sexual objectification is treating a person primarily as an object for sexual use, display, or evaluation rather than as an autonomous person.

Objectification: Treating a person as a thing or instrument while disregarding aspects of their agency or subjectivity. Sexual objectification is one domain-specific form of this broader process.
Immanuel Kant: An eighteenth-century German philosopher whose ethics centers on rational agency and human dignity. His prohibition on treating humanity merely as a means informs later critiques of objectification.
Objectification theory: A social-psychological theory explaining how sexual objectification can shape women's self-perception and well-being. It models pathways from objectifying environments to self-surveillance and related outcomes.
Sexual attraction: A desire for sexual contact or interest directed toward another person. Attraction alone does not require reducing someone to sexual use or evaluation.
Sexualization: The process of assigning sexual meaning or emphasis to a person, object, or situation. It can make sexual attributes dominate how a person is presented or perceived.
Simone de Beauvoir: A French philosopher and writer whose work analyzes women's social position and existential freedom. Her account of woman as the socially constructed Other helps frame objectifying gender relations.
Body surveillance: Habitual monitoring of one's appearance from an imagined observer's perspective. It is a measured outcome associated with self-objectification.
Sexual agency: A person's capacity to make and express choices about their sexuality. Agency distinguishes consensual sexual self-expression from being treated as an object by others.
Male gaze: A concept describing visual representation structured around a heterosexual masculine point of view. It helps explain how images can frame women as objects of sexual looking.
Martha Nussbaum: An American philosopher whose work includes an influential analysis of objectification's features. Her taxonomy distinguishes sexual objectification's varied forms rather than treating it as one simple act.

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