  Women’s object-like status is not a natural fact, but rather a consequence of gender inequality. In structuring our world in such a way as to accommodate this allegedly natural fact about women, we sustain the existing situation of gender inequality. As MacKinnon vividly puts it: “if [we] look neutrally on the reality of gender so produced, the harm that has been done will not be perceptible as harm. It becomes just the way things are” (MacKinnon 1987, 59). Haslanger adds: “Once we have cast women as submissive and deferential ‘by nature’, then efforts to change this role appear unmotivated, even pointless. … These reflections suggest that what appeared to be a ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ ideal, namely, the procedure of drawing on observed regularities to set constraints on practical decision making—is one which will, under conditions of gender hierarchy reinforce the social arrangements on which such hierarchy depends” (Haslanger 1993, 106).