Objectification

The quick and dirty:

When I read, "I don't get why women objectify themselves by wearing sexy cosplay* and then complain when men objectify them," the first thing that comes to mind is that while the writer keeps using that word, I do not think it means what he thinks it means.

The long form:

"Objectify" is one of those words that a lot of people use, but because it's effectively grown up organically, it's one based more in connotation than denotation. I think that one of the primary drivers behind men whining (and I do regard it was whining, even though that may be an inaccurate assessment) about it is that many of them have a much broader understanding of what "Objectify" means, in large part because of the "I know it when I see it" way we tend to treat it. To me, "I don't get why women objectify themselves by wearing sexy cosplay and then complain when men objectify them," says that this person's definition of "Objectify" is: "to portray or think of a person as being sexually desirable and/or available."

I don't get why women portray themselves as being sexually desirable and/or available by wearing sexy cosplay and then complain when men think of them as being sexually desirable and/or available.

This is an argument that I hear a lot. And typically in the way it's used, one can take the (incorrect) definition of "objectify" and, if you want to be more vulgar about it, and boil it down to "slutty."

I don't get why women dress all slutty by wearing sexy cosplay and then complain when men think of them as slutty.

Sluttiness comes into the picture, because there is a certain self-serving attitude about women that's something of a holdover from the days when women were placed on pedestals. To wit, any woman who steps off the pedestal is fair game. Once a woman fails to uphold a certain (and often very arbitrary) standard of purity and propriety, she in effect loses any justification to maintain her own standards by exercising her right of refusal to sexual advances or even sexual activity. The binary line of taboo strikes again.

On the other hand, a more formal definition of "objectify" (as found in a dictionary) goes something like this: ": to treat (someone) as an object rather than as a person."

I don't get why women treat themselves as objects rather than as people by wearing sexy cosplay and then complain when men treat them as objects rather than as people.

While you can still make a viable English sentence with a dictionary definition of "objectify," it seems a little off. Because what does it mean for a person to treat themselves as an object rather than as a person by wearing certain clothes? How, for that matter, does one even treat themselves as an object rather than a person at all, given that we understand certain fundamental and irreconcilable differences between persons and objects? A Real Doll, for instance, is an object. It has no legally recognized rights or responsibilities. A person in possession of one can treat it any way they wish to. Nor does it have any biological functions to maintain. Accordingly it lacks sentience and nearly all things we regard as objects lack any awareness of themselves as individuals or their surroundings in the way that we understand them.

So given that none of this is true of an actual person (more or less regardless of what that actual person may want), how does one treat themselves as if it were?

To be sure, I'm delving into a somewhat pedantically philosophical understanding of what it means to be an "object." But we often view people as complicit in the way that we treat them, because that supposed complicity becomes at once our own justification and alibi. And we often use language to facilitate that, in a way that wouldn't be possible if we were more careful with our words.

h/t: Annah Madriñan

* For the uninitiated, "Cosplay" is a portmanteau of Costume Play, which is essentially wearing a costume of a particular character. The differences between "cosplaying" as a character as simply dressing up like one (for, say, Halloween) are fairly esoteric and context based. As the term is, oddly enough, a loanword from Japanese, it's typically used when the costumes in question are those of animé characters.