As a feminist, I had always rejected porn and other forms of popular culture that suggested that my value depended on how much I appealed to men. This was my stance until I reached my 40s, when I embarked on a research project on the sex industry. That was when my previous assumptions about resisting objectification were challenged and transformed.
One might assume that the sex industry is the epitome of objectification for women. And while that may hold true in many aspects - and was indeed my initial expectation - it was not what I and my co-author, Trish Ruebottom, discovered.
Our study involved interviewing women and transgender entrepreneurs who were working in various sectors within the industry, and resulted in 86 interviews over a span of seven years. The work led to multiple journal publications that are the indicators of academic success. However, the reality I learned about objectification (which I did not get to discuss in those articles) was that resisting it is not simply a matter of rejecting its manifestations and sensationalism in the media, pop culture and sex.
While I opposed the idea of the cultural objectification of women, I realized that my very conventional life as a university professor, with two children, a husband, and a dog was rife with it.
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum identifies several different forms of objectification that can be grouped into three categories: being used for the purposes of others, being denied one’s own subjectivity, and being treated and perceived as passive and agreeable. When our research prompted me to examine my own life closely, it became evident that I was an object and, even in the times that I was not necessarily being objectified, I still was not a subject.