To appreciate the aside you have to be a creepy guy.
Publicly expressing gratitude to a clothing manufacturer for the pleasure you receive watching on the street, OTOH, is clearly objectification.
This is probably not harmful, but isn't really what people talk about when they say "objectification" (though I suppose you can describe it as "internalized objectification" if it involves your internal perspective of the targets being reduced primarily to what they provide you.)
Most of what people talk about is externalized objectification, which is outward actions which treat people as primarily to objects of your urges. And largely on the basis that this does cause harm to others, either directly (when specifically targeted) or less directly by a number of mechanisms (including normalizing devaluing attitudes toward the targeted class of persons) when less individually targeted but targeting a class.
> The term has become so loaded that it's hard to discuss without caveats and justifications, because a good many will argue based on the assumption that objectification is bad, rather than any actual harm.
You seem to believe that utilitarianism is the correct, objective, and universally accepted basis for moral discussions, such that discussing something as problematic for any reason other than harm it does is itself a problem.
(And you seem to describe it as harmful a priori, without pointing to a harm to anyone deriving from it, which seems problematic under its own standards.)
Except we have here in this thread a case of people calling someone out on internalized objectification.
> You seem to believe that utilitarianism is the correct, objective, and universally accepted basis for moral discussions
Not necessarily. I'm somewhat peeved peeved by people's assumption that if a term is usually applied to negative behavior, that they can assume when they see that term used the behavior is negative without actually looking at the situation. It's lazy thinking, cargo culting of moral behavior based on terms and not thoughts or actions. But even that's understandable, the real problem is the rabid defense of this behavior and thinking when examined. It's rational discourse vs "it's bad because it's obvious it's bad, and you not just accepting that makes your behavior bad as well".
> (And you seem to describe it as harmful a priori, without pointing to a harm to anyone deriving from it, which seems problematic under its own standards.)
I assume you mean I describe the assumption as bad, not the behavior of objectification, since I don't think I did that. As for that, I think I supplied my reasoning above. In short, I think it leads to lazy thinking, and irrational behavior.
This obviously isn't limited to "objectification" and that's not even the most common place I see it used. I just noticed it in this discussion so decided to mention it.
Edit: To be clear, I'm not implying you are doing anything like this. Your comments have been clear on the objectification in this case possibly having no ill effect. Your comment just seemed a logical place to talk about this meta-topic. I'm also happy to discuss the basis for my own assumptions, as you were right to focus on when presented with a comment like mine.
If it wasn't externalized in this thread, no one would have been able to call anyone out on it. "Published in an open forum" is not "internalized".