Objectification

What is objectification?

Objectification is treating a human being as an object instead of as a person. In BDSM that happens with consent and for an agreed time: someone becomes furniture, a doll, an ashtray, or a utensil. Outside that agreement, objectification is a risk factor in psychology instead.

What objectification looks like in practice

Objectification works by taking one thing away: that anyone is taking you into account.

Take the most common case. You get assigned a place and a function, holding a tray, say. From that moment nobody talks to you anymore, but about you. “Just set it down there.” People look straight past you while hunting for a lighter, and if you say something, the conversation carries on. Almost nothing happens, and that is exactly why it weighs after ten minutes.

It does not have to be physical. The shortest form is someone discussing you in the third person while you stand right there. What all forms share is not the posture or the rope, but the treatment.

Where the concept of objectification comes from

From philosophy, and it is worked out precisely there.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy lays out Martha Nussbaum’s 1995 breakdown: seven ways to treat someone as an object. Using them as a tool, denying autonomy, acting as if there is no agency of their own, treating them as interchangeable with other objects, treating them as if they have no boundary, as if they are property, and as if their feelings do not matter. Rae Langton added three more in 2009, among them reduction to the body and silencing.

Put that list next to a scene and you recognize it line by line. And here is the interesting part: the same encyclopedia notes that Nussbaum herself has argued that objectification can, in some contexts, take benign or even positive forms that make up a valuable and enjoyable part of life. The concept comes out of the criticism, but the one who wrote the sharpest definition left the door open.

Why people seek out objectification

Because, for as long as it lasts, nothing more is asked of you than to be there.

What appeals is that the social task drops away: no conversation to keep up, no impression to make, nothing to say back. That it is rude is the charge; that it is agreed makes it bearable. What objectification delivers differs per person:

• The one who is the object gets an hour in which nobody asks their opinion. Someone who decides all day finds a rest there that no massage comes close to.
• The one who makes the other an object notices how much power sits in offhandedness. Not making eye contact and simply talking on is a stronger signal than any command.
• For a couple, objectification exposes how much attention normally goes back and forth: you only notice it once it stops.

Rare it is not. Jennifer Rehor put a list of activities to 1,580 women from the kink community in Archives of Sexual Behavior. “Objectification: use person as an object (human furniture, human doll, human ashtray, etc.)” comes in there at 54.56 percent participation in some form: more than half.

Objectification does not repair a lopsided balance. If at home you already felt like something that just stands there, this is the wrong tool, and the risk sits not in the scene but in the day after.

How people do objectification

Almost always by choosing one function and holding it.

1. As furniture. Footstool, table, coat rack. That worked-out form is called forniphilia, and the object itself is a furniture piece.
2. As a doll. The body becomes decoration instead of a tool, with posture, clothing, and make-up as the subject. That is called dollification.
3. As a utensil. Ashtray, tray, rack for a coat. Short, often offhand, and the easiest to start with.
4. Without an object. Just the treatment: talking about someone, looking past them, not answering. Ignore play is the worked-out form of this.

Careful or sloppy does not sit in the intensity but in the reversal at the end: whoever has been treated as an object for an hour needs to be talked to again afterward.

Objectification in the scene versus objectification in the science

“Objectification is harmful by definition.” In psychology that is the main line, and with reason. Robin Wollast and colleagues describe in Psychologica Belgica how repeated objectification brings women to take on the outside perspective and see their own body as a judged object. In two studies among women in five countries, self-objectification predicted body shame every time, through the constant checking of one’s own appearance.

“So a scene is harmful too, then.” That is exactly the question Katherine Martinez studied in The Journal of Sex Research, among 121 self-described consensual sadomasochists, well over half of them women. Her conclusion goes the other way: the sadomasochistic setting partly holds off the Western beauty standard and its harm. The difference is that in a scene you are the object someone wants, while objectification in daily life comes unasked and has no end time.

“Objectification is the same as humiliation.” No, though they sit next to each other. With degradation words do the work and it is about being made lower. With objectification nothing has to be said and it is about not mattering. That can happen without a single insult.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, gigolo, active in BDSM for twenty-five years and trained as a psychotherapist. Objectification is almost never what someone starts with, and surprisingly often what the conversation ends up at.

People ask for the image and mean the silence. They describe furniture or a doll, while they are after an hour in which nobody wants anything from them. That makes a difference in the build-up, because far less equipment has to come into it than they had pictured.

The second pattern sits at the end. Whoever has gone an hour without being addressed does not need a compliment afterward but an ordinary conversation about something else.

What you can do yourself

• Choose one function and hold it, instead of trying three things in an hour. Objectification works through repetition, not through variety.
• Work out beforehand how you make something clear without talking, two taps for example; in this scene, talking is precisely not part of it.
• Set an end time and say out loud when it is. Without an end time, objectification turns from play into waiting.
• Agree on how the reversal goes. Who says something to you first again and about what is the agreement most often forgotten, and the most important.

More reading on objectification

Within this glossary, forniphilia works out the furniture form with the time limits, dollification covers the doll form, and ignore play describes the form without an object. The scene from the inside is on the blog, in being seen as an object of lust.

Beyond this site, Feminist Perspectives on Objectification shows how sharply the concept is worked out philosophically, including the debate over whether objectification can also be positive. Anyone who wants numbers finds in Katherine Martinez the only study that measures consensual objectification directly.

Where this fits on this site

Curious what it is like to be nothing but a function for an hour? The build-up toward it does more than the equipment. What gets arranged beforehand for that is on the BDSM date.

Sources

• Feminist Perspectives on Objectification. Evangelia (Lina) Papadaki, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, first published 10 March 2010, substantively revised 13 January 2024. Gives the description of objectification as seeing and treating a person as an object, the seven features Martha Nussbaum distinguished in 1995 (instrumentality, denial of autonomy, inertness, fungibility, violability, ownership, and denial of subjectivity), the three features Rae Langton added in 2009 (reduction to body, reduction to appearance, and silencing), and the point that Nussbaum herself has argued objectification can take benign or positive forms in some contexts.
• Somebody’s Fetish: Self-Objectification and Body Satisfaction Among Consensual Sadomasochists. Katherine Martinez, The Journal of Sex Research 53(1), 35–44, 2016 (DOI 10.1080/00224499.2014.978494). Questionnaire study among 121 self-described consensual sadomasochists, including 67 who also identified as women, on self-objectification, self-surveillance, body shame, and body satisfaction. Gives that experiences varied strongly by gender, sexual orientation, and sadomasochistic identity, plus the conclusion that consensual sadomasochism produces a setting that partly holds off the harm of the Western beauty standard.
• Self-Objectification, Body Surveillance, and Body Shame Across Countries. Robin Wollast, Liesje Coertjens, Philippe Bernard, Anat Talmon, James J. Gross & Olivier Klein, Psychologica Belgica 66(1), 32–46, 2026 (open access). Gives the core of Fredrickson and Roberts’ objectification theory from 1997, that repeated objectification brings women to internalize that perspective and see their body as a judged object, and the study’s own finding that self-objectification predicts body shame through the constant checking of one’s own appearance, in study 1 among Belgian, British, and American women and in study 2 among Belgian, Israeli, and Thai women.
• Sensual, Erotic, and Sexual Behaviors of Women from the “Kink” Community. Jennifer Eve Rehor, Archives of Sexual Behavior 44(4), 825–836, 2015 (open access). Questionnaire study among 1,580 women from the kink community. Gives that “Objectification: use person as an object (human furniture, human doll, human ashtray, etc.)” comes to 54.56 percent participation in some form in table 10.

Related terms

• Forniphilia. The branch where objectification turns into furniture, with the time limits and the nerve risks.
• Furniture. What that object is, with the question of which piece of furniture you become exactly.
• Human furniture. The English word, which also covers the sculpture and the film scene.
• Dollification. The branch where the body becomes decoration instead of a tool.
• Ignore play. Objectification without an object: just the treatment.
• Degradation. The neighboring practice where words do the work and it is about being made lower.
• Humiliation. The broader field that objectification falls under in the literature.
• Service-oriented submission. Being useful without becoming an object, and so the gentlest neighbor.
• Petplay. The adjacent form where someone becomes an animal instead of an object, with a handler.
• Roleplay. The umbrella that objectification as a role falls under.
• Shaving. One of the acts that make a body smoother and less its own.
• Spitting. The gesture that most often accompanies objectification.