While we are living things, sentient things, we are objects. Living objects. We can't objectify something that already is an object. That's like solidifying a solid, freezing something already frozen, melting something already melted. Our state is that of an object. Why are we an object? Because we're a thing.

We're a sexually reproducing living thing. We have a biological imperative crucial to our very existence and sense of well being to sexually reproduce or at least emulate it. We do so with the living objects we're attracted to.

So therefore, sexual objectification is the natural state and yes, according to Laotzu, a wiser sage than all of us, that's our highest state. Natural is better, even better than moral.

"When the Dao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is morality, When morality is lost, there is ritual. Ritual is the husk of true faith, the beginning of chaos." - Lao Tzu (Dao De Jing Ch. 38)

The Dao is essentially nature.

Okay (good) philosophy aside, a great philosophy that helped form many a great civilization, let's just use reason and debunk horrible, manipulative, demonizing feminist philosophy.

The subject-object dichotomy suggests that a man (into women) gazes at women as a sex pest basically and doesn't want to know her intimately so therefore he baaaad. Bad, evil male.

But really, if you want something from someone and just interact with them for that in literally any other context it's fine. Make it make sense.

I want to get my oil changed so I auto mechanically objectify the oil change shop mechanic. Okay that makes sense right? Totally makes you evil right? Nobody says that.

If I go to a person taking a college course with me and only want to interact with them to study with them, I'm academically objectifying them and am therefore evil?

See, westerners in general have such hangups about sex and protecting women from unwanted sexual encounters no matter how harmless they might be... you'd be hard pressed to meet someone in an English speaking nation that didn't think it was a horrible sin for a man to look at sexually and approach a woman entirely for sex.

That's the problem with this reasoning and I don't know what it's going to take to change the world because this kind of ridiculousness shouldn't stand.

But people, like lemmings, they just believe it. They just talk like objectification is true, like it's a thing and it's not because you can't objectify an object. Also you objectify all the time, even if not sexually and nobody is calling you da devil for it.