Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T07:28:15.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On Treating Things as People: Objectification, Pornography, and the History of the Vibrator

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Jennifer M. Saul
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article discusses recent feminist arguments for the possible existence of an interesting link between treating things as people (in the case of pornography) and treating people (especially women) as things. It argues, by way of a historical case study, that the connection is more complicated than these arguments have supposed. In addition, the essay suggests some possible general links between treatment of things and treatment of people.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , Spring 2006 , pp. 45 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Haslanger, Sally. 1993. On being objective and being objectified. In A mind of one's own: Feminist essays on reason and objectivity, ed. Antony, Louise M. and Witt, Charlotte, 85–125. Boulder, Colo.: Westview.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1989. Foundations of the metaphysics of morals. Trans. Beck, Lewis White. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Langton, Rae. 1993. Speech acts and unspeakable acts. Philosophy and Public Affairs 22 (4): 293–330.Google Scholar
Langton, Rae. 1995. Sexual solipsism. Philosophical Topics 23 (2): 149–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKinnon, Catharine. 1987. Feminism unmodified. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, Catharine. 1989. Toward a feminist theory of the state. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, Catharine. 1993. Only words. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Maines, Rachel. 1998. The technology of orgasm: “Hysteria,” the vibrator, and women's sexual satisfaction. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C. 1999. Sex and social justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Saul, Jennifer M. 2003. Feminism: Issues and arguments. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vadas, Melinda. 2005. The manufacture‐for‐use of pornography and women's inequality. Journal of Political Philosophy 13 (2): 174–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar