Personally, I don't have a problem with an individual naturally objectifiying a person in private.  I think it's natural.  You see someone you don't know and are physically attracted to them and thoughts wander.  It happens in dreams too.

I think it does become an issue when it starts to affect how you treat others, and when society starts to objectify people.  I would prefer it if it was just kept as private and maybe the occassional good honest talk with a friend.

I'm not sure about the gender question I asked.  Many people say that men are more visual.  I think much of that comes from society.

It is human to 'objectify'...

Here is a video that illustrates the concept

again, it has both good and bad and neutral effects

Now, can you think up some other essentialisms that occur in everyday life? Like "person"? Perhaps "human being"? "Woman"? "Bastard"? "Canadian"?

EDIT:  "Liberal"?  "Homosexual"? "Transgendered"?  "Stephen Harper is evil"?  "Socialism is the best"?

Then you can try to think of which essentialisms are shared amongst a group?  What happens when someone else doesn't believe in someone else's essentialism?  Are some essentialisms somehow more 'innate' or strongly held than others?  Can one unlearn an essentialism?

Not necessarily meant to be answered by any of you these questions, but to think aboot...

Objectification... in my opinion,in a private context between two lovers, for example, who may be in the heat of the moment and "objectify" visually, or with the senses (that is natural human behaviour), but also bring their whole love and appreciation for the person they're with into the act is different from broad one dimensional objectification on a large and very public scale that diminishes the worth of a group of persons in society by the dominant culture (and we were speaking in the other thread about the dominant male culture) and reduces them to one dimensional beings (or attempts to).

I think most men probably are more visual when it comes to sexual attraction...women are visual too, but are sensitive to other senses more...generally speaking (there are some women who are very visual when it comes to attraction, others less so....there's no exact measure, but I think generally men are more visual than women).  Attraction is natural for everyone. When it becomes objectification is when the attraction becomes more important thatn the substance  of the relationship with another person maybe? I don't know how else to put it at the moment.

 Some might say that men being aggressive and persuant by whatever means possible, on the whole, is natural too. It's the "hunter gatherer" survival instinct maybe. And women's nurturing instincts, the need for security in a mate to protect her children, on the whole (of course not every man or every woman fits a mould perfectly, but in general) are natural too, so still we rely on different senses and sensibilities for attraction in many cases.  But in our current society it is an oxymoron to say that women have equal rights, but men still dominate and dictate the standards...so much of what we unwittingly work for is to have equal rights under standards set by men...and so much of the problem is going on under the radar that society on the whole just accepts it. I don't know what the solution is.

I think objectification, when it happens, happens before people get to know each other, then generally stops. Or it should anyway.

People often objectify the famous, because they are so far out of reach, it's easy to do, and there are rarely consequenses for it. Both men and women fall victim to this.

I think traditionally, it's been more culturally accepted for men to objectify women, but I'm not sure about now. Times have changed. It might be a sign of an emancipated woman for her to objectify men. I see a lot of forcefull, dominant women in film these days; most recently: Red Riding Hood and Snow White!

Objectification happens on a spectrum.  I believe that objectification that negates the rights/humanity of another person is what most of us reject.  When a man claims that the clothing worn by a woman was responsible for his action of raping or assaulting a woman, his is declaring that he did not see her as a human but as something he wanted to use.  The same applies to fraud artists, abusive employers, and many other instances.