press purpose of sexual arousal.
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Sarah Wynter's definition of prostitution, alluded to earlier, equally condemns the sexual commodification of women, who are degraded from their status as persons by "exploitation and abuse." However, given the positive testimonials of prostitutes described in this chapter's overview as well as Judith Hill's previously cited claims about the nature of degradation, Wynter cannot assume that all prostitution, much less all sex work, is necessarily exploitative and abusive of its workers or that such exploitation constitutes their degradation.
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Furthermore, neither Wynter's definition nor the Dworkin/MacKinnon ordinance answers the question of
why
treating a woman as a sexual object, thing, or commodity is degrading. While many feminists often equate a woman's objectification with her degradation, treating a person as an object is not in and of itself objectionable; people who own treasured mementos and prized pets sometimes treat them better than they treat other people. Paula Webster suggests, in a positive vein, that all porn actors are objectified by being represented as paradigms, fantasies, or cultural icons of a sexuality challenging traditional notions of sexual conservatism. Many sex workers describe their work and themselves in terms of bodily barter without any sense that they are being treated, or are treating themselves, inappropriately. As one prostitute puts it, "I think women and men and feminists have to realize that all work involves selling some part of your body. You might sell your brain, your might sell your back, you might sell your fingers for typewriting. Whatever it is that you do you are selling one part of your body. I choose to sell my body the way I want to and I choose to sell my vagina."
74
Feminist film critics have viewed pornography as the extreme instance of the voyeuristic, fetishizing male gaze that dominates film direction, production, and viewing. Yet this criticism implies that all film actresses are collaborators in men's sexual perversions; and such complaints interpret men's viewing of film, especially pornographic film, as perverse, reinforcing the moral conservative's attacks on sexual deviance.
75
Diana Russell locates the objection to pornography in the fact that women are not portrayed as "multi-faceted human beings deserving equal rights with men." A similar line is taken by John Stoltenberg whose sexual ideal is "when the integrity within everyone's body and the whole personhood of each person is celebrated whenever two people touch."
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But how would even the most tame of erotic photographs portray me as a lover
as well as
a committed vegetarian and a philosophy professor? Do I fail to treat the cashier at the supermarket as a person when I simply treat her as a cashier? Philosophy may be a deep part of my personhood, but I may not want to discuss Cartesian dualism in bed; I may simply want to
have sex
.
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Locating the degradation in the "sexual" of the expression "sexual object" is also problematic. Defining the sexual as degrading defeats any feminist attempts to promote the erotic, instead of the pornographic, in heterosexual sex. Furthermore, it invites the sexual puritan charge that obscenity, not subordination, is the issue. Merely describing some sex acts as degrading invites the contextual criticisms noted earlier:
how
and
for whom
is
which
sex degrading? Ann Garry and Robert Baker suggest that being a
harmed
object is what is degrading about being a
sex
object. Their point is that there is a conceptual connection in the way we think about sex, between being a (female) sex partner and being harmed. According to Garry and Baker, this conceptual connection is reflected in such language as "Screw you!" and "Up yours!"
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