21. Objectification with Dr Susan Lucas

Join me as I indulge my sapiosexual side with a fascinating deep dive into the topic of Objectification.

Dr Susan Lucas helps us to look at Objectification through a philosophical lens and, in doing so, reveals some very interesting insights into why this can be so powerful to play with.

It's a rare delight that I meet someone who has thought so deeply about the way in which our kinks inform our sense of self, and it feels almost radical - yet incredibly important - to do so in today's attention economy.

Dr Susan Lucas was, until recently, Principal Lecturer and Subject Lead for Philosophy at the University of Lancashire. Her 30-year career as an academic philosopher focused particularly on the phenomenon of self-knowledge: what it is, how it is possible, and what the implications of our capacity for self-knowledge are for our relationships with others.

This work found expression in her book (as Peter Lucas), Ethics and Self-Knowledge: Respect for Self-Interpreting Agents (Springer, 2011), as well as in numerous academic articles. Much of her work on the ethics of self-knowledge centred around the phenomenon of sexual objectification, and a 2018 article on the sexual objectification of men, which was picked up by the national press, led to interviews on Radio 4 Women’s Hour and BBC TV.

Susan’s interpretation of objectification is informed by the work of radical feminist theorist Andrea Dworkin and the philosophical writings of J.W.F. Hegel, Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault. Nevertheless, she is experienced in presenting her ideas in a non-technical way to non-academic audiences.

In previous published work she stressed the negative aspects of sexual objectification, as a conduit for the embedding of ideological stereotypes, with harmful consequences for individual autonomy. However, she has recently become interested in the potential for positive engagement with objectifying experiences, drawing on her own experience as a transfemale in Queer kink settings.

You can check out the rest of my kink-related work at www.pleasurerebels.com and https://linktr.ee/pleasurerebels.