"Objectification": Science, or Junk Science?

[foo_bar]

105. I think you're comparing oncology and ontology

I agree that this study (from what little I can read for free) appears to make a daring leap from pattern recognition neuroscience to gender studies sociology, and it isn't clear (at least from the secondary sources) how the recognizability of upside-down swimsuit models establishes a dehumanizing relationship between the subject and l'objet du desir; if anything, failing to recognize the inverted pic seems to indicate less ability to recall distinguishing human features, which is to say that upside-down males are a more fungible commodity in the viewer's imagination (although it would be interesting to break down the effect by sexual orientation instead of gender), and I suppose a researcher could use the same data to formulate any number of hypotheses, e.g., "If upside-down men fail to make an impression on the visual cortices of women, does this corroborate H. Stern's (1989) theory that all women are potential lesbians?"

With that said, I don't think "objectification" as a concept is automatically worthy of ridicule (any more than "dehumanization" or "commoditization&quot ; the way the term is wielded in some circles can seem pat or downright smug, but it's hard to assess the "scientific legitimacy" of most terminology in the social sciences ("self-actualization"? has anyone truly defined "consciousness", much less disruptions to the psychic mojo midichlorians?), and I'm open to the idea that humans might regard one another as potential property: for all we know, we could all be solipsists at heart who regard our fellow travelers as unfeeling machines, only some of them are easier to spot when they're upside-down, owing to some evolutionary prerogative (or perhaps an environmental consequence of media exposure to female anatomy) that warrants closer scrutiny of the sorts of organisms with pronounced mammalian protuberances (assuming these photos were taken of the front half; perhaps inverted dorsal photos offer a promising avenue for future research.)

(This reminds me of the Radiolab upside-down Furby experiment, which sought to demonstrate the opposite effect, namely the inclination to assign humanity to inanimate objects, at least when the object is capable of guilt trips (curiously, the participants perceived their Barbie doll as utterly unworthy of empathy, so maybe the feminist critique isn't off-base when it comes to the real world effect of unrealistic human simulacra on life imitating art imitating life.) Still, I wonder how the upside-down photo experiment would have gone if the pictures screamed "Put me down! I scared!&quot