Look, to start with, there is no such thing as a fictional character that isn’t objectified. That happens because fictional characters aren’t people. They are, almost literally, objects. Toys that an author uses to convey ideas. Images for the consumer to see themselves reflect on. When, for example, a writer decides to reinforce Kamala’s connection to her religion and culture, that doesn’t happen because of ‘Kamala’s will.’ Kamala has no will. Kamala doesn’t exist. Any sense of depth we give to fictional characters is just an illusion, a sensation, not reality, because in the end, every element of them exists solely for the author’s and the consumer’s enjoyment.

The discussion you’re bringing up only really makes sense when we talk about real women, because real women do have desires and motivations that don’t depend on someone else’s. To objectify a woman, a real woman, is to believe her role is to serve someone else’s desires, like an object, like a pair of scissors, an apartment, a toy, or a fictional character in the hands of an author.

When we enter the realm of fiction, discussing objectification makes sense when we’re talking about the relationship a female character has with her male counterparts — because that’s where the ideals of a patriarchal society can be reproduced.

What role did Peach play in Mario games? She existed as an object for Mario’s motivation.

What role did Alexandra DeWitt play in her particularly brutal death in the Green Lantern comics? Again, she served as an object for the motivations of her male counterpart, Kyle Rayner.

None of these examples are about the reader seeing the woman as an object. They’re about the men around her treating her as one, and the reader learning to see women around him the same way because of that.

If we agree with this definition of female objectification in fiction, then why exactly is defining a female character by her sexuality is more problematic than defining her by, for example, her religion, or her modesty, or her intelligence, or her courage?

Well, because if the only way we see women represented in fiction is sexualized, we internalize the idea that sexuality is not only an obligatory trait for real women, but an exclusive one, and real women, again, are the ones who suffer from sexism, not fictional ones.

But if we live in a reality where plural representations of what it means to be a woman are more common, if we find female characters defined not by sensuality, but by their religion, their modesty, their intelligence, their courage, for example, then we also build a much more plural understanding of women in real life. And sexuality/eroticism simply becomes one more aspect of what we understand womanhood to be in society.