What is objectifying about gender affirming care?

A radical feminist perspective applied to Martha Nussbaum’s definition of objectification characteristics.

I recently did some introduction videos on “What is objectification and its effects on our mental health?” I was asked, “What is objectifying about gender affirming care?” and it warranted an answer. This work extracts from my manuscript I’m working on called The Objectification of Trans Ideology and Trans Culture set for publication in 2027.

A radical feminist critique of “gender-affirming care” argues that it can function as a form of objectification because it treats the human body as something to be modified, reconstructed, and medically managed in order to align with socially constructed ideas of gender. Drawing on the work of Martha Nussbaum (1995), objectification occurs when people are treated less as fully embodied human subjects and more as instruments, surfaces, or objects to be altered according to external expectations. Therefore, gender-affirming interventions can reinforce rigid stereotypes about masculinity and femininity while positioning the body as violable material open to pharmaceutical and surgical transformation. Rather than challenging the social conditions that produce distress around sexed embodiment, critics argue that the medical model can redirect that distress inward, encouraging individuals to alter their bodies to fit cultural norms. In this sense, gender-affirming care can be interpreted not as liberation from gender, but as the medicalization and commodification of the body in response to gendered social norms. 

In Nussbaum’s essay Objectification (1995), she identifies several features of objectification, including: instrumentality, denial of autonomy, inertness, fungibility, violability, ownership, and denial of subjectivity. I later add commodification. So let’s apply this to a radical feminist critique of “gender-affirming care.”

Instrumentality

Some gender-critical radical feminists argue that transition medicine can treat the body as something to reshape to fit gender stereotypes rather than valuing the body as it is. Sheila Jeffreys (Gender Hurts, 2014) and Janice Raymond (The Transsexual Empire, 1979) argue that distress linked to sexism, homophobia, or gender roles may be medicalized instead of socially examined. Memoirs such as Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls (2021) and Helen Joyce’s Trans (2021) describe concerns about this trend.

Violability

Raymond and Jeffreys argue that surgeries, sterilization, and lifelong hormones can frame the body as open to irreversible modification without enough regard for bodily integrity.

Fungibility

Critics including Jennifer Bilek (Transsexual, Transgender, Transhuman, 2022) and Holly Lawford-Smith (Gender-Critical Feminism, 2022) say standardized pathways — blockers, hormones, surgeries, legal changes — can reduce complex personal histories into repeatable medical protocols.

Denial of subjectivity

Some feminists, including Abigail Shrier (Irreversible Damage, 2020) and Stella O’Malley (When Kids Say They’re Trans, 2018), argue that trauma, autism, misogyny, homophobia, or dissociation may be overlooked if affirmation becomes the default response.

Denial of autonomy

Lawford-Smith and Stock argue that choices around transition can be shaped by social pressures, online communities, and cultural expectations about masculinity and femininity. They contend that decisions made within unequal social conditions are not always fully autonomous or free from external influence.

Commodification

Bilek and Kara Dansky (The Abolition of Sex, 2021) argue that pharmaceutical companies, clinics, and activist institutions may benefit financially from lifelong medicalization. Feminist critics ask who profits, what norms are reinforced, and whether people are being helped as subjects or reshaped to fit social expectations.

….

In a macro context, I view objectification as a metastasizing human condition, a cancer, that extends from centuries of exploitation, including the sexual slavery of women and children; to the medical experimentation on political prisoners; to the commodification of pornography performers, and; now to the medicalization of trans-identified people. 

Each is shaped by historical conditions; each is driven by economic incentives that profit from human bodies; each involves the psychic annihilation of the person’s humanity. The power dynamic is obscured, and particular discourses sustain and legitimize these practices. For example, slave holders said they were “divinely chosen,” and it was “mutually” beneficial. Nazis said they were “advancing science.” Trans activists say surgery is “affirmation” and necessary for well-being. Prostitutes, OnlyFans and porn performers, and trafficked children apparently “chose” their path, or it was “inevitable.”

Each form of objectification is sustained by massive interconnected economies, and each is politically useful. Just a few beneficiaries include traffickers, porn producers, media companies, policymakers, lawmakers, doctors, academics, journalists, influencers, banks, pharmaceutical companies, tech corporations, advertisers, activist organizations, and professional bodies. 

The trans gender movement was born in sexual fetish circles, medical and academic journals, and opportunistic capitalist enterprises- all objectifying arenas. It was not born out of social oppressions like sex or racial discrimination, which sought freedom from objectification. 

References

Bilek, J. (2022). Transsexual, transgender, transhuman: Dispatches from the future of feminism. Spinifex Press.

Dansky, K. (2021). The abolition of sex: How the “transgender” agenda harms women and girls. Bombardier Books.

Jeffreys, S. (2014). Gender hurts: A feminist analysis of the politics of transgenderism. Routledge.

Joyce, H. (2021). Trans: When ideology meets reality. Oneworld Publications.

Lawford-Smith, H. (2022). Gender-critical feminism. Oxford University Press.

Nussbaum, M. C. (1995). Objectification. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 24(4), 249–291. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1088-4963.1995.tb00032.x

O’Malley, S. (2018). When kids say they’re trans: A guide for thoughtful parents. Independently published.

Raymond, J. G. (1979). The transsexual empire: The making of the she-male. Beacon Press.

Shrier, A. (2020). Irreversible damage: The transgender craze seducing our daughters. Regnery Publishing.

Stock, K. (2021). Material girls: Why reality matters for feminism. Fleet.