On Treating Things as People:

Objectification, Pornography,
and the History of the Vibrator
JENNIFER M. SAUL

This article discusses recent feminist arguments for the possible existence of an
interesting link between treating things as people (in the case ofpornography) and
treating people (especially women) as things. It argues, by way of a historical case
study, that the connection is more complicated than these arguments have supposed.
In addition, the essay suggests some possible general links between treatment of things
and treatment of people.

Objectification-often loosely described as treating people as things-has long

been a central concern of feminism (especially with respect to the treatment
of women as things). Recently, feminists have begun evincing concern for a
closely related, but initially more puzzling notion, that of treating things as
people-what I will refer to as personification. Catharine MacKinnon (1993,
109) describes the use of pornography as involving “sex between people and
things, human beings and pieces of paper, real men and unreal women.” Rae
Langton (1995), in part drawing on work by Melinda Vadas (ZOOS), has built on
this by explicitly discussing the possibility that there is a connection between
treating things as people (by using pornography) and treating people as things.’
In particular, Langton considered the possibility that personification (of por-
nography) either leads to or constitutes objectification (of women). Langton,
Vadas, and MacKinnon all take such a connection to be a reason to oppose
pornography.‘
In this essay, I argue that the connection between objectification and
personification is quite a different one. I suggest that personification cannot

Hypatia vol. 21, no. 2 (Spring 2006) 0 by Jennifer M. Saul

46 Hypatia

take place unless people are already treated as means to an end. Although
such treatment of people is not on its own sufficient for objectification, it
nonetheless bears an important relationship to objectification. Treating people
merely as a means (that is, not respecting them as makers of their own ends) is
often taken to be a key way of objectifying them (see, for example, Nussbaum
1999). If my claim is right, then, the connection between personification and
objectification is that personification presupposes a necessary condition for a
central form of objectification. There is, however, a tighter connection between
the sort of sexual personification that Vadas and Langton discuss and sexual
objectification. When it comes to this sort of behavior, it seems to me, any case
of personification will in fact also be a case of objectification-as they suggest.
However, the reason is that this sort of sexual personification of women presup-
poses sexual objectification. This means, 1 argue, that Vadas's and Langton's
concerns are misplaced: sexual personification in the use of pornography does
not give us a reason to oppose pornography.
My essay begins with an examination of Langton's and Vadas's arguments. 1
will pose some potential problems for the claim that use of pornography involves
treating things as people, and 1 will also suggest that their arguments do not
establish the sort of connections that they suggest between personification
and objectification. (This is not necessarily a criticism of Langton. Langton is
explicit that establishing such a connection is not her goal. Rather, hers is an
exploratory essay presenting several arguments that might be, or have been,
made.) My criticism is not decisive, however, as failure to establish such a con-
nection does not mean that one does not exist. In the next section, I present
a historical case study that I take to offer at least as good a candidate for per-
sonification as is pornography use. Drawing on this case study, I argue in the
final section for the connection that I take to obtain between objectification
and personification.
It is worth noting at the outset that Langton, Vadas, and MacKinnon have
focused nearly exclusively on male heterosexual use of pornography. Their
main reason for this is that they take such use to be crucial to understanding
the objectification of women. Both their focus and the reason for their focus
can be (and have been) questioned. However, I will not be doing that here.
Instead, I will take their arguments as a starting place for constructing what
1 take to be a more plausible view of the connection between personification
and objectification.

A N D PERSONIFICATION
OBJECTIFICATION
It has proved extremely difficult to arrive at a clear conception of what
objectification is, and there are a variety of views in the literat~re.~
The most
general idea is that of treating people in a way that is appropriate for objects
 Jennifer M. Saul 47

(and inappropriate for people). One form of treatment that is often taken to be
paradigmatic for objectification is instrumentalizing treatment. A person treats
something instrumentally when they treat it merely as a means to their own
ends (without due respect to that thing’s own ends)! This is perfectly acceptable
with objects-there is nothing wrong with using a hammer without a thought
for the hammer’s own ends, as hammers don’t have ends. But it is not so accept-
able with people-people do have their own ends, and we (most would think)
do something wrong when we interact with other people as if they didn’t. For
theorists like MacKinnon, Vadas, and Langton, a key form of objectification
is the sexual objectification of women by men. One important way of under-
standing this is in terms of instrumentalizing treatment. For example, a man
might count as a sexual objectifier of women if he fails to take into account a
woman’s own needs, desires, and ends, and treats her as a mere means to his
own sexual gratification.
It is important to note a potentially misleading element of the phrase “treats
her as a mere means.” It might seem at first that for A to treat Bas a mere means,
A must think of B only as a means-that is, A must utterly fail to consider any-
thing about B but the fact that B is a means to some end. But this is not so. To
see this, suppose that A rapes B. This is as clear a case of instrumentalization
and sexual objectification as one could have. A is very clearly treating B as a
means and failing to respect B as a maker of her own ends-A forces sex on
B without any respect for Bs desire not to have sex with him. And this is so,
no matter how A treats B in other areas-even if A is in awe of Bs intellect,
or very respectful of Bs will in every other area. A treats B as a mere means
just in case (a) A treats B as a means; and (b) in so doing, A fails to respect B
as a maker of her own ends. This can happen even if A sometimes-on other
occasions-does treat B as more than a means; and even if A is very aware of
other aspects of B.
There are many sorts of treatment that might qualify as treating things as
people. As Langton notes, one might attribute human qualities-in particular,
mental states-to a thing (for example, by believing that a river is angry). But
this is not likely to be what occurs in the use of pornography. Surely, no user of
pornography actually believes that a piece of paper or a film has mental states.
One might also, however, engage in behavior with or toward things that is
normally only engaged in with or toward people. This idea is more promis-
ing for those who aim to understand use of pornography as a form of treating
things as people. The behavior Langton, MacKinnon, and Vadas focus on is
having sex with. The suggestion is that users of pornography have sex with (for
example) pieces of paper. What is meant by this is obviously not that they
engage in precisely the same actions with a piece of paper as they would with
a woman.’ Vadas does the most detailed job of cashing out what is meant by
“having sex with pieces of paper.” For Vadas, as we will see, men have sex with
48 Hypatia

pieces of paper when they use pieces of paper to fulfill the role, function, or
capacity of a woman. The more general notion of treating a thing as a person
that accompanies this is one on which “treating a thing as a person” turns out
to he roughly equivalent to “using a thing to fulfill the function of a person.”
This is the sort of behavior that I will call personification.
How plausible is the idea that male use of pornography is personifying behav-
ior, in this sense?Some take it to be highly plausible. Indeed, Vadas’s definition
of pornography-which Langton praises for its realism-states that pornography
is “any object . . . that has been manufactured to satisfy sexual desire through
its sexual use or consumption as a woman” (Vadas 2005,21-22). It is clear from
further discussion, though not from this definition itself, that Vadas requires
pornography not only to be manufactured for sexual use as a woman, but that it
also be sexually used as a woman. Vadas explains that “as a woman’’means “in
the role, function, or capacity of’ a woman (7). For Vadas, the intended use of
pornography is the production of sexual satisfaction: This seems to commit
Vadas to the claim that the “role, function, or capacity” of a woman is that of
producing sexual satisfaction. By definition, then, use of pornography is use of
a thing-a piece of paper, for example-as a woman. Assuming that women
are persons: use of pornography is, then, personification.
One might worry at this point-as many of my students did when we dis-
cussed this-that to say using pornography involves using pieces of paper to
fulfill the function of women is rather insulting to women. It suggests that one
can identify what women are for and that this purpose is generating male sexual
satisfaction. Alternatively, one might take the claim to be based instead on the
thought that men view women as having a particular purpose-that of gener-
ating sexual satisfaction (as some others of my students did). These students
found the claim insulting to men. 1 think both groups of students are right to
be troubled, and I will return to these worries later. They are in fact crucial to
what I will argue. But for now, I’d like to put this concern aside, and proceed as
though we have established that pornography can be used as a woman.

BETWEEN PERSONIF~CATION
CONNECTIONS A N D OBJECTIFICATION

Langton explores various ways that one might assert a connection between
treating things as people and treating people as things. Her focus, following
MacKinnon, is on the sexual treatment of things as people. As we have noted,
she takes this to occur in the use of pornography (specifically, the use of por-
nography depicting women by men who are sexually attracted to women). The
claim that interests Langton is that there is some connection between men’s
treating pornographic materials as women and men’s treating women as objects.
She therefore considers various claims that one might make asserting a link
between personification and objectification.
 Jennifer M. Saul 49

Causal connections. One might maintain that, as a matter of psychological

fact, using things as people tends to lead one to use people as things. Or, more
specifically, one might maintain that using things as people sexually tends to
lead one to use people as things. One could be even more specific, and claim
that this effect is restricted to men’s sexual use of pornography as a woman,
or of a certain kind of pornography. (For a more extended discussion of these
possibilities, see Langton 1995.)
If the claim is too specific, though, we don’t have very strong grounds for
asserting an interesting connection between personification and pornography.
If the claim is simply that male use of pornography is causally linked to objecti-
fication, then we don’t have any particular basis for singling out personification
as the culprit.8 Many things are involved in the use of pornography-the use of
eyes, for example, or sexual gratification quite generally-and the proponent of
a causal claim needs to have reason for taking personification to be the causally
relevant aspect of pornography use. One such reason would be the discovery
that personification is involved in other instances of objectification. The pro-
ponent of a causal claim, then, should be interested in looking at instances of
personification other than male use of pornography, and seeing whether they
are linked to objectification. If they are, this will help the proponent’s case for
singling out pornography.
Constitutive connections. Another way to link personification and objectifica-
tion is to claim that instances of personification simply are instances of objec-
tification. Drawing on Vadas’s work, Langton considers a claim of this form as
well: “when pornographic artifacts are treated as women, ips0 facto women are
treated as objects” (1995, 179). She describes this claim as asserting a constitutive
connection between personification and objectification.
This argument draws on the idea that function identifies objects are to be
identified by their functions: if we are wondering whether something that looks
for all the world like a gun is really a gun, the way to find out is to determine
whether it can be used as a gun. If it can be, it is a gun. This principle has some
plausibility as a general claim-when I use my sofa for sleeping, perhaps it is a
bed, and when 1 use a dish as an ashtray it is an ashtray.
For Vadas, as we have seen, pornography is ‘<anyobject . . . that has been
manufactured to satisfy sexual desire through its sexual consumption or other
sexual use as a woman” (2005, 21-22). Moreover, Vadas makes it clear that
she takes the manufacturers’ intention to be fulfilled-pornography is used
as a woman. Vadas takes this to show that pornography is a woman. Pieces of
pornography, then, are women (at least when they are used for their intended
purpose).
For Vadas, this is much more than a surprising ontological claim about
pornography. Vadas claims that disastrous consequences follow from the fact
that the category of women includes not only flesh-and-blood women but also
50 Hypatia

such things as pieces of paper. Since some women are paper, she claims, women
are not necessarily persons. The consequences for men’s sexual behavior with
women, according to Vadas, is that “women’sconsent is conceptually outside
the practice of the sexual” (2005,26).What she means by this seems to be that
sex is conceptually possible without women’s consent. Vadas writes, “some men
might prefer to have sex with women who consent just as some men might
prefer to drive cars that are red, but neither the consent of the woman nor the
redness of the car has anything to do with the subsequent sex as sex, or the
subsequent driving as driving” (27). As a result, Vadas claims, “women’s sexual
identity is limited to their being rapable, for rapability is all that is left of the
sexuality of those whose consent is conceptually irrelevant to the occurrence
of the sex act” (27). The use of pornography, then, defines women’s sexuality
as limited to rapability.
We can understand Vadas as asserting a constitutive connection between
the personification of pornography and the objectification of women. On this
story, the use of pornography as women reduces women from persons to not-
necessarily-persons, as women are placed in the same ontological category as
objects-pieces of paper. This, as Langton reads it, is a form of objectification.
All women are treated as objects when pornography is used-because all women
are placed in an ontological category that includes pieces of paper.
There are many ways that one might object to this argument. 1’11 note just
a few of them here:
1.One may question the claim that pornography is used as a woman. It seems
to me far from obvious that this is the case, especially when we carefully
consider the crucial idea of the “role, function, or capacity of a woman”
(as we will do in more detail shortly).
2.0ne may question the claim that whatever is used as an F is an F. As I’ve
noted, this claim has some plausibility when it comes to artifacts. But what
if I desperately want to have a Basenji for a pet dog but can’t get one? I
might decide to use a Dalmatian for the function that I had assigned to
the Basenji-fetching my slippers, and sitting beside me on the sofa. This
behaviour might be considered to be using the Dalmatian as a Basenji.
But this would not mean that the Dalmatian is a Basenji.
3.There are many difficulties with Vadas’s argument that the use of pornog-
raphy limits women’s sexuality to their rapability. Here 1 will just mention
two.
(a) Vadas seems to take it that if nonconsensual sex with women
is conceptually possible, then women’s sexuality must be
limited to their rapability. But one can easily understand
nonconsensual sex with women as conceptually possible
without taking women’s sexuality to be limited to their
rapability. One does this by acknowledging the conceptual
 Jennifer M. Saul 51

and actual possibility of nonconsensual sex while insisting

on its moral impermissibility. Indeed, anyone who thinks
that rape is sex and also wrong-including MacKinnon (for
example, see 1989, 173-74)-does this. There is perhaps
nothing wrong with opting for an understanding on which
rape is simply not sex (an understanding Vadas would clearly
prefer), but adopting a different understanding by no means
limits women’s sexuality to rapability.
(b) Vadas seems to assume that once flesh-and-blood women
and pornography are placed in the single ontological cat-
egory ‘women,’ there is no distinguishing them. This is
clearly false-we make distinctions between live and dead
humans, distinctions that affect the moral obligations that
we take ourselves to have (for example, many feel that there
is a moral obligation to provide food to live humans; few
take there to be such an obligation toward dead humans).
Surely, we can do the same with flesh-and-blood women and
pornography.
We have yet to see a convincing case for a connection between objectifica-
tion and personification. Nonetheless, I am going to argue that there is such
a connection. To draw out such a connection, I turn now to a case that 1 take
to offer a clearer instance of personification-of using things to fulfill the
function of people. After describing this case and its history, I consider what
makes it a clearer case, and return to the general issue of connections between
objectification and personification, especially in the sexual realm.

THEHISTORICAL
CASESTUDY
This case study is drawn from Rachel Maines’s 1998 book The Technology
of Orgasm. Maines, a historian of technology, was studying the history of
needlework by reading needlework magazines, when she came across several
advertisements for what looked for all the world like electric vibrators, from as
early as 1906-very early for an electrical appliance. As it turned out, the items
advertised were indeed electric vibrators. The advertisements were widespread,
and made it clear that vibrators were viewed as a standard home appliance and
health aid, to be advertised along with other such useful and unembarrassing
items. (One vibrator from 1918, presented with the slogan, “aids that every
woman appreciates,”was just one of many attachments that could be purchased
for a home motor, along with egg beaters and fans.) As Maines researched the
history of the vibrator, she uncovered a fascinating story.
From the time of Plato until midway through the twentieth century, women
were thought to be prone to a disease known as hysteria. According to Maines
52 Hypatia

(1998, 8), classic symptoms included “anxiety, sleeplessness, irritability, ner-

vousness, erotic fantasy, sensations of heaviness in the abdomen, lower pelvic
edema, and vaginal lubrication.” As Maines notes, many of these symptoms
“are those of chronic arousal.”
The treatment prescribed by Galen in the second century held sway, in one
form or another, until the early twentieth century. Pieter van Foreest, author
of a 1653 medical compendium, wrote:
When these symptoms indicate, we think it necessary to ask
a midwife to assist, so that she can massage the genitals with
one finger inside. . . . And in this way the afflicted woman can
be aroused to the paroxysm. This kind of stimulation with the
finger is recommended by Galen and Avicenna, among others,
most especially for widows, those who live chaste lives, and
female religious. . . . It is less often recommended for. . . married
women, for whom it is a better remedy to engage in intercourse
with their spouses. (quoted in Maines 1998, 1)
Doctors and sometimes midwives administered this manual genital massage for
unmarried women. Women who were married were advised to engage in vigor-
ous intercourse with their husbands as a treatment. Doctors advised others to
go horseback riding, use a rocking chair, or, later, take train trips.
The goal of these treatments was to induce a “hysterical paroxysm,” which
involved flushing of the skin, shortness of breath, lack of reaction to external
stimuli, and a brief loss of control, after which patients felt much better. The
paroxysm was thought to fit well with Plato’s understanding of hysteria as result-
ing from an inflamed uterus traveling the body. The paroxysm was the result of
the uterus returning to its natural position, with shortness of breath along the
way resulting from the uterus suffocating or choking the patient. The expul-
sion of fluids during and in the lead-up to the paroxysm reduced the uterus to
its normal, uninflamed size.
Maines is no doubt correct to argue that a hysterical paroxysm was an
orgasm. If she is also right (as seems likely) that most cases of hysteria resulted
from unfulfilled sexual needs, it is not surprising that treatments designed
to induce hysterical paroxysm were extremely effective in providing at least
temporary relief.
Doctors found administering these treatments to be extremely lucrative-
unlike so many other treatments, the patients positively enjoyed what the
doctors did, they were never cured, and they had to keep coming in for more
treatments. But there was a down side: doctors found the treatments to be very
difficult to administer-inducing a hysterical paroxysm took a lot of skill and
a long time, and the procedure was often quite exhausting for the physician. So
 Jennifer M. Saul 53

they sought labor-saving devices. One of the most successful of these devices
involved carefully directed jets of water. In the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, such water-cure techniques, designed specifically for women, made a
large contribution to the success of spas:
The first impression produced by the jet of water is painful, but
soon the effect of the pressure, the reaction of the organism to
the cold, which causes the skin to flush, and the reestablish-
ment of equilibrium all create for many persons so agreeable a
sensation that it is necessary to take precaution that they [elles]
do not stay beyond the prescribed time, which is usually four
or five minutes. After the douche the patient dries herself off,
refastens her corset, and returns with a brisk step to her room.
(Henri Scoutetten, a French physician writing in 1843, quoted
in Maines 1998, 13)
This sort of water cure represented an effective treatment for hysteria, and one
that was very popular with patients. However, creating suitably equipped facili-
ties was extremely expensive (spas were not trivial undertakings), thus limiting
the number of patients who could make use of the treatment and the number
of doctors who could provide them.
There was, then, a demand for a less expensive form of laborsaving technol-
ogy, and this is what gave rise to mechanical vibrators for physicians’ offices.
These included enormous (several feet tall) foot- and steam-powered devices,
and physicians sometimes set up special “vibratory operating theatres” for
administering the treatment. This solution was very satisfying to both physi-
cians and patients, albeit in different ways. Physicians could efficiently and easily
provide treatment for hysteria to large numbers of women, who continued to
return regularly for further treatments.
At the start of the twentieth century, however, home vibrators began to
be marketed directly to women in various women’s magazines, making use
of slogans like “All the pleasures of youth . . . will throb within you” (Maines
1998,19).The vibrator was considered a perfectly respectable household device
to have for the administration of home medical treatments that would restore
one’s youth and cheerfulness. More and more women of this time gave up on
seeing their doctors for treatments because they could now treat their hysteria
at home. The vibrator remained in this respectable function until it started
appearing in pornographic films in the 1920s. At that point, it ceased its life
as a medical instrument.
54 Hypatia

OF CASES
COMPARISON
This history offers us a plausible instance of using a thing to fulfill the func-
tion of a person. We see a process in which the task of inducing a hysterical
paroxysm, once performed by people-that is, midwives or doctors-is gradu-
ally handed over more and more fully to things-that is, mechanical vibrators.
First, women used to hire doctors to induce paroxysms directly. Then they
began hiring doctors to induce paroxysms with the aid of technology. Finally,
women found that technology could replace doctors’ function could be entirely
fulfilled by the technology, and so vibrators came to perform exactly the same
function the doctors had before. Women’s use of vibrators instead of doctors,
then, seems to me at least as clear a case of using things as people as men’s use
of pornography. It looks, then, like a case of personification.
It is important to note that I do not take all uses of vibrators by women to
be cases of treating things as people. Obviously, women today are not using
vibrators in place of doctors. My claim for personification in the use of vibrators
is strictly restricted to those women who replaced their doctors with vibrators
for the treatment of hysteria.
Our case study has given us a second possible example of personification.
Now it is time to compare the case of women using vibrators to fulfill the
function of doctors with that of men using pornography to fulfill the func-
tion of women. I’ll begin with a closer look at the case of pornography, and
in particular, at the feelings of unease that it generated among my students,
mentioned earlier.
The claim “men use pornography to fulfill the function of women” seems to
carry some sort of presupposition about the function of women. At first glance,
it carries a straightforward referential presupposition: that there is a single
function of women. This presupposition is probably one part of the reason for
my students’ unease: they didn’t want to assert or accept any claim that com-
mitted them to such a limiting view of women. Add to the presupposition the
idea that the function of women is to produce sexual satisfaction in men, and
my students become even more offended: they certainly don’t want to accept
this claim. They find both claims insulting to women, insisting that nobody
who takes women and women’s sexuality seriously should accept them. And
this seems right: the claim that women have the function of producing sexual
satisfaction in men seems to require quite an instrumentalizing view of women.
O n this view, women’s function is to serve as means to the end of male sexual
gratification-whatever the women themselves want. Women’s own ends, then,
are ignored. My students think such a view is both morally wrong and false.
There is, however, an alternative reading available. O n this reading, it is men
(not the asserters or endorsers of the claim) who are presupposing that there is a
single function of women. The asserter or endorser of the claim is not committed
 Jennifer M. Saul 55

to the idea that women have some single function. However, men are; and,
in the debate under discussion, they are said to be committed to the idea that
this function is to produce sexual satisfaction in men. These claims about
men’s views of women bother my students as well. They find them insulting to
men. Moreover, they insist that these claims are inaccurate-men do not view
women as having a single function, that of producing sexual satisfaction in men.
They insist, in other words, that men do not hold such an instrumentalizing
view of women.
But it doesn’t seem so insulting to talk about women using vibrators to fulfill
the function of doctors. It seems to me that the reason is that we have no prob-
lem with being committed to, or taking others to be committed to, the view that
the doctor’s function in the treatment of hysteria is precisely the function that
gets fulfilled by the vibrator. The reason this seems unproblematic is perhaps
that “doctor” is a job title. It doesn’t seem wrong (either ethically or in terms
of accuracy) to talk about a doctor’s function, but it does seem problematic
(in both ways) to consider “woman” a job title, and therefore to talk about a
woman’s function?
It seems more plausible to suppose that a vibrator really is fulfilling the
function of a doctor than that pornography really is fulfilling the function of
a woman.’@ The reason for this, it seems to me, is not unrelated to the point
above: the doctor’sfunction in the treatment of hysteria is clearly defined. What
women wanted when they went to their doctors was that some procedure should
be administered that would end in hysterical paroxysm, and it probably didn’t
much matter to them what this procedure was, who was performing it, or what
their relationship was with that person. To suppose that what men want from
women can be defined in such a narrow way seems less likely. So while it’s easy
to see that a mechanical device could fulfill the function that doctors fulfilled
for women, it’s not so easy to see that a piece of pornography could fulfill the
function that women do for men (if there even is such a function, which we’ve
already seen reason to be dubious about). So not only do we find the claim
that vibrators fulfill the function of doctors less insulting than the claim that
pornography is fulfilling the function of women, we also tend to think it more
likely to be true.

JOB TITLES
A N D FUNCTIONS

The fact that “doctor” is a job title is very important to understanding why it is
not ethically troubling to speak of a doctor’s function, or of a device fulfilling a
doctor’s function. Cases where people have particular jobs to perform are ones
that help us to see that treating a person as a means to an end need not be a
bad thing: if I need a task done and there is someone whose job it is to perform
that task, it is permissible for me to use that person as a means to my end. For
56 Hypatia

example, suppose I need to buy some wine. I may treat the person selling the
wine as a means to my end of obtaining wine, by interacting with them solely
for the purpose of purchasing wine. Just treating them in this way is not suf-
ficient for my action to be morally problematic. The problem arises if I treat
them only as a means and fail to respect the fact that they have their own ends.
Suppose, for example, that when I enter the shop I see that the cashier is bleed-
ing profusely and in need of medical attention. However, 1 calculate that even
without the medical attention she will live long enough to sell me the wine-so
rather than phoning an ambulance, 1 insist that she ring up my purchase. This
treatment would be one that failed to respect the fact that the cashier has ends
of her own (ends that bleeding to death presumably would not serve).
Most of the women, at least, who used their doctors as means to the end of
relief from hysteria would almost certainly have been respectful of the fact that
the doctors had their own ends to pursue. They would not, for example, insist
on treatment for hysteria when their doctors were bleeding to death. Instead,
they innocuously used their doctors as means to their ends because doctors were
in the business of helping them to achieve those ends.
This shows us that there need not be anything ethically troubling about com-
mitting ourselves to the view that a person may have a particular function; nor
need there he anything troubling about the thought that others are committed
to such a view. A term like ‘doctor’ is a job description, and there is nothing
either imp1;iusible or morally troubling about the thought that holders of par-
ticular jobs have functions to fulfill. A term like ‘woman,’on the other hand,
is not a job description, and it is both implausible that women have particular
functions to fulfill, and morally suspect to claim that they do.
It is possible, however, to have some qualms of a different sort about the idea
of a vibrator fulfilling a doctor’s function. The women under discussion didn’t
start turning to their vibrators for advice about difficulty breathing, or strange
lumps, or rashes. Vibrators, one might argue, were not and could not be fulfilling
the whole of a doctor’s function. And this seems right.
This suggests, it seems to me, that the claim “women used vibrators to fulfill
the function of doctors” needs to be recast as “women used vibrators to fulfill
a function of doctors.”ll The second claim, unlike the first, is compatible with
the thought that doctors have many functions, and that only one of these gets
fulfilled by vibrators. One might think that this is a point where the analogy
breaks down: surely, Vadas is making claims about the sole function of women.
I am not, however, so sure about this. One way to see this is to consider a kind
of best case for her sort of claim: the most retrograde, prefeminist man we can
imagine, who sees women’s sole sexual function as that of sexually satisfying
men. Would this be the only function he would take women to have? Probably
not. After 311, such a retrograde character would almost certainly see women
as also having the functions of cleaning up after men, cooking for men, and
 Jennifer M. Saul 57

raising children. So Vadas’s claim about women’s function, like mine about
doctors’function, must be seen as one about a function-one among (quite pos-
sibly) many. Our question now will be what effect these alterations have on the
arguments made so far. Perhaps surprisingly, the answer will be, not much.

VIBRATORS A N D DOCTORS,
PORNOGRAPHY AND WOMEN

The claim that “women used vibrators to fulfill a function of doctors” certainly
seems plausible: inducing hysterical paroxysms was one function of doctors,
and women used vibrators for this purpose. Nor, as we have seen, does it seem
morally problematic to attribute functions to doctors: ‘doctor’ is a job title, and
job titles carry with them functions. There need be nothing instrumentalizing
about attributing such a function to a person who fills a job.
Our new claim about pornography and women is “men use pornography
to fulfill a function of women.” For this claim to be true, some presupposition
would need to be met-either that women actually do have a function that gets
fulfilled by pornography-for Vadas, providing sexual satisfaction to men-or
that men take women to have such a function. Previously, I argued that it was
deeply instrumentalizing to suppose that women have the sole function of
providing sexual satisfaction to men. Now, however, the claim is not one of sole
function-instead, it is simply that women do have as one function (perhaps
among many) that of providing sexual satisfaction to men. This claim leaves
open the possibility that women may have many other functions-so it clearly
does not reduce women to providers of male sexual satisfaction.
Our new claim, however, remains both false and instrumentalizing: False
because women simply do not have the function of producing sexual gratifica-
tion in men. Instrumentalizing because such a claim attributes this function to
all women, regardless of their own needs, desires, or wills. It treats women as
mere means to male sexual satisfaction, failing to respect women as makers of
their own ends. Some women are not interested in providing any sexual satis-
faction at all to men, and most (if not all) other women are only interested in
providing such satisfaction to men of their choosing, at times of their choosing.
To take all women to have the function of providing sexual satisfaction to men
is to view them as mere means. The fact that this is just one function among a
possible many does nothing to mitigate the problem: attributing any function
to women as a group is instrumentalizing, since it fails to attend to the wills of
individual women.
But our second possible presupposition-“men take women to have the func-
tion (perhaps among others) of providing them with sexual satisfaction”-is not
concerned with whether or not women actually have this function. This claim
is instead concerned with whether men take them to do so. How plausible is
this claim? This is obviously an empirical matter. Some feminists might well
58 Hypatia

take it to be true as a claim about men in general. 1 think it is obviously false

as a statement about all men, and almost certainly false as a statement about
most men-but I could, of course, be proven wrong. Regrettably, however, it is
probably true of some men. This is not, I suspect, enough to sustain the truth
of the general claim.
Would it ever be accurate to speak of pornography as fulfilling women’s func-
tion for a particular man who uses it? As we have seen, such a claim would be
accurate only if the man using the pornography thinks of women as having at
least one clearly defined function, the provision of sexual satisfaction to men.
If the pornography user thought of women in this way, it might seem true that
he was treating pornography as a woman, as he would be using it to perform
a function that he took to be a function of women. (It is important to bear in
mind, however, that not all pornography users will be of this sort.)
Now let’s reflect on what we would think of such a man-one who takes
women to have the function of producing sexual satisfaction for men. As we
have seen, anyone who takes women to have a function of this sort is not some-
one who takes seriously the ends that individual women form for themselves.
Instead, they view women (whatever their individual desires) as providers of
male sexual satisfaction. Such a person holds an instrumentalizing view of
women’s sexuality-one that views women sexually as mere means, rather
than makers of ends. Although there is no clear consensus in the literature on
what, precisely, objectification is, one of the fixed points must be that this sort
of view of women is a sexually objectifying one. A man who uses pornography
as a woman, then, is one who sexually objectifies women. Importantly, how-
ever, this is because such objectification seems to be a precondition for using
pornography as a woman.

THEREALCONNECTION
What, then, is the real connection between personification and objectification?
Close study of the examples discussed above has revealed that personifica-
tion-using an object to fulfill the function of a person-does not make sense
unless that person is seen (either by us or by the user of the object) as having a
function. One who views a person as having a function views them as a means
to an end. But this, on its own, need not be objectifying (as reflection on job
descriptions has illustrated). Objectification, however, does take place if the
person is treated instrumentally-that is, as a mere means. Since treatment as
a means is a necessary condition for treatment as a mere means, it looks like
personification requires the fulfillment of a necessary condition for a central
form of objectification. One can’t personify an object unless one already views
a person as having a function, and this means that there is at least a possibility
of objectifying the person.
 Jennifer M. Saul 59

We can say something stronger than this, however, about treating pornog-
raphy as a woman. As we have seen, a man who uses pornography as a woman
will be one who objectifies women. The objectification of women is a necessary
condition for being a (heterosexual, male) personifier of pornography. The real
connection between personification of pornography and the objectification of
women isn’t that the personification can lead to objectification, but rather that
we will take someone to be treating pornography as a woman only if we would
also take him to treat women as mere means to his own ends. If we think a
particular man takes women to have the function of providing him with sexual
satisfaction, we may think it is true that he uses pornography to fulfill (what
he takes to be) a woman’s function, or that he uses pornography as a woman.
But such a man already sees women as mere means to male sexual satisfaction.
This means that objectification is already present. We can’t understand what
it would be for a man to use pornography to fulfill a function of women when
we’re talking about a man who doesn’t assign any functions to women.
How much of a connection, then, is there, between male use of pornography
as a woman and the objectification of women?The answer is complex. We will
not always think it’s right to describe male pornography use as a man using
pornography as a woman. Indeed, often many of us will think this description
is wrong. But when we do think it is right, this will be because we think that
the man in question is already objectifying women. So when we think it’s true
that a man is using pornography as a woman, we’ll also think it’s true that he
objectifies women. Will there be a causal connection? It seems not. There will
be a constitutive connection, since using pornography as a woman requires
objectifying women. But this won’t be present in all cases (indeed may not be
present in any cases) of male use of pornography.”
I’ve concluded, then, that there is a connection between personification
and objectification, and that this connection is not limited to, and indeed
may not be exemplified by, male use of pornography. Rather the connection
is that-in general-we cannot understand someone as personifying things
unless we already understand them as holding an attitude that is a key ele-
ment of objectification. We needn’t worry, then, that personification of things
will lead to objectification of people. If anything, we should be worried about
the objectification of people leading to the personification of things, but since
we’re not (in general) morally troubled by the personification of things, this is
unlikely to keep us awake at night.
60 Hypatia

NOTES

I have benefited from discussions of this essay with audiences at several universities:
Durham, Edinburgh, London Birkbeck, Lancaster, Sheffield, and Valencia. I have also
profited greatly from the many people who have read drafts of the paper and discussed
them with me outside these talks: Albert Atkin, Josep Corbi, Ray Drainville, Dimitris
Galanakis, Jules Holroyd, Chris Hookway, Rosanna Keefe, Rae Langton, Rachel Maines,
Fabienne Malbois, Mari Mikkola, Marta Moreno, Lina Papadaki, Komarine Romdenh-
Romluc, Frank Saul, Julie Saul, Kathryn Wilkinson, and anonymous referees. Listing all
the other people with whom 1 have had useful and enjoyable discussions of this material
would simply not be possible at this point-but I am grateful to all of them.
1. The publication dates here are accurate, but misleading about chronology.
Langton (1995) drew on a manuscript copy of Vadas’s paper, which was not published
until 2005.
2. One of the interesting features of these discussions is that they focus not on the
representational content of pornography, but on its use.
3. For some indication of the range of views o n this topic, see Haslanger 1993;
Langton 1995; and Nussbaum 1999.
4. This notion obviously owes much to Kant’s second formulation of the Categorical
Imperative: “Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of
another, always as an end and never as a means only” (1989: 47).
5. “Think of the paper cuts!” as my partner remarked.
6. It seems to me more likely that the function of pornography is to produce sexual
arousal rather than sexual satisfaction. But I will not pursue this here.
7. This is a substantive assumption in the present context. As we will see in the
next section, Vadas argues that the very existence of pornography places women in the
not-necessarily-persons category.
8. Psychological studies do seem to show some effects that could well be described
as objectifying. But worries also have been raised about these studies. For a n overview
of some of this material, see Saul 2003, 83, 87, 99-100. None of this material focuses
specifically on the personifying use of pornography. And since laboratory studies presum-
ably do not involve completed sexual acts, these studies arguably do not involve the sort
of use of pornography that is said to be personifying.
9. This is not to say that it is impossible to have concerns about doctors’ roles. We
are not terrihly inclined to have such concerns-perhaps for the reason given above,
perhaps because we are for good historical reasons less likely to worry about women
objectifying men than about men objectifying women. But the doctors were arguably
being paid to perform sex acts. If being paid to perform a sex act (or paying for a sex act)
is in and of itself morally problematic, the doctor’s role is arguably morally problematic.
(Indeed, comparing this case with that of standard prostitution would be an interesting
project for another paper-since so many of the surrounding social circumstances are
very different from those of standard prostitution.) On e might, however, raise concerns
about whether the acts in question were sexual. Although we would take similar acts to
be sexual, it seems likely that the participants did not think of them this way. Depending
on one’s definition of sex, participants’ attitudes might make a difference to whether
sex took place.
 Jennifer M. Saul 61

10. There is what might seem to be an important disanalogy between the women/
doctor/vihrator case and the men/women/pornography case. When a heterosexual man
uses pornography, this generally involves fantasizing about women. When a “hysteri-
cal” woman of the early twentieth century used a vibrator, this probably didn’t involve
fantasizing about doctors. One might try to use this disanalogy to argue that the women
were not using the vibrators as doctors. However, I’m not sure how such an argument
would go. It seems to me it would have to depend on something like the thought that
you can’t use an A as a B unless you have thoughts about Bs while doing so. But this
doesn’t seem to hold generally: 1 can absentmindedly use a pen as toothpick without
having any thoughts about toothpicks-indeed without thinking about what I’m doing
at all. (Otherwise, I’d realize that I’m writing on my teeth.)
11. The first version (with the) can actually be read as referring to one function
among many, but this possibility is made more obvious by the second formulation
(with a).
12. There may well be other good reasons for objecting to pornography. The
arguments here concern only objections based in concerns about personification.

REFERENCES

Haslanger, Sally. 1993. On being objective and being objectified. In A mind of one’s own:
Feminist essays on reason and objectivity, ed. Louise M. Antony and Charlotte Witt,
85-125. Boulder, Colo.: Westview.
Kant, Immanuel. 1989. Foundations of the metaphysics of morals. Trans. Lewis White
Beck. New York: Macmillan.
Langton, Rae. 1993. Speech acts and unspeakable acts. Philosophy and Public Affairs
22 (4): 293-330.
. 1995. Sexual solipsism. Philosophical Topics 23 (2): 149-87.
MacKinnon, Catharine. 1987. Feminism unmodified. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press.
. 1989. Toward afeminist theory ofthe state. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press.
. 1993. Only words. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Maines, Rachel. 1998. The technology of orgasm: “Hysteria,” the vibrator, and women’s
sexual satisfaction. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Nussbaum, Martha C. 1999. Sex and social justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Saul, Jennifer M. 2003. Feminism: Issues and arguments. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Vadas, Melinda. 2005. The manufacture-for-use of pornography and women’s inequality.
Journal of Political Philosophy 13 (2): 174-93.