Sexual Objectification and Two Notions of Denial †

Following Martha Nussbaum’s influential work, it is widely assumed that objectification, mainly sexual objectification, often includes what she calls “denial of autonomy” and “denial of subjectivity.” The purpose of my paper is to offer a critical examination of this assumption. I start with a distinction between two notions of denial, epistemic and performative. I then argue that when applied to the sexual gaze – the paradigmatic case of objectification – neither of these notions can make sense of the claim that objectification means, entails or leads to a denial of women’s autonomy or subjectivity.