  MacKinnon introduces the idea that there are important connections between objectivity and objectification. MacKinnon writes: “The stance of the ‘knower’ … is … the neutral posture, which I will be calling objectivity—that is the nonsituated distanced standpoint… [This] is the male standpoint socially … [The] relationship between objectivity as the stance from which the world is known and the world that is apprehended in this way is the relationship of objectification. Objectivity is the epistemological stance of which objectification is the social process, of which male dominance is the politics, the acted out social practice. That is, to look at the world objectively is to objectify it” (MacKinnon 1987, 50). Her claim has become the focus of recent feminist investigation. Drawing on MacKinnon’s work, Rae Langton and Sally Haslanger have explored the idea that objectification is often hidden, and ‘masked’ as objectivity.