Reading Notes: Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification

Rae Langton

"'What particularly signalizes the position of woman', said Simone de Beauvoir, 'is that she - a free and autonomous being like all human creatures - nevertheless finds herself in a world where men ... propose to stabilize her as an object.' This bears on the situation of woman, and of man. In the company of a creature 'stabilized as an object', she said, 'man remains alone'."

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"If objectivity is about how the mind conforms to the world, objectification is about the opposite: objectification is, roughly, about some of the ways in which the world conforms to the mind. Objectification is a process in which the social world comes to be shaped by perception, desire, and belief: a process in which woman, for example, are made objects because of men's perceptions and desires and beliefs."

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"If one is to avoid the solipsistic worlds, some of of the beings with whom one interacts must be people (not things); and one must treat them as people (not as things)."

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"'...Luddite? No, I don't want to smash the machines but neither do I want the machines to smash me'"