Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's lamentable is that objectification is seen universally negative, when it isn't always necessarily. Is there real harm in appreciating the beauty of the people around you (if that's indeed all you are doing)? The term has become so loaded that it's hard to discuss without caveats and justifications, because a good many will argue based on the assumption that objectification is bad, rather than any actual harm.
> Is there real harm in appreciating the beauty of the people around you (if that's indeed all you are doing)? This is probably not harmful, but isn't really what people talk about when they say "objectification" (though I suppose you can describe it as "internalized objectification" if it involves your internal perspective of the targets being reduced primarily to what they provide you.) Most of what people talk abo…
Except we have here in this thread a case of people calling someone out on internalized objectification.
> You seem to believe that utilitarianism is the correct, objective, and universally accepted basis for moral discussions
Not necessarily. I'm somewhat peeved peeved by people's assumption that if a term is usually applied to negative behavior, that they can assume when they see that term used the behavior is negative without actually looking at the situation. It's lazy thinking, cargo culting of moral behavior based on terms and not thoughts or actions. But even that's understandable, the real problem is the rabid defense of this behavior and thinking when examined. It's rational discourse vs "it's bad because it's obvious it's bad, and you not just accepting that makes your behavior bad as well".
> (And you seem to describe it as harmful a priori, without pointing to a harm to anyone deriving from it, which seems problematic under its own standards.)
I assume you mean I describe the assumption as bad, not the behavior of objectification, since I don't think I did that. As for that, I think I supplied my reasoning above. In short, I think it leads to lazy thinking, and irrational behavior.
This obviously isn't limited to "objectification" and that's not even the most common place I see it used. I just noticed it in this discussion so decided to mention it.
Edit: To be clear, I'm not implying you are doing anything like this. Your comments have been clear on the objectification in this case possibly having no ill effect. Your comment just seemed a logical place to talk about this meta-topic. I'm also happy to discuss the basis for my own assumptions, as you were right to focus on when presented with a comment like mine.