ah, great, it seems we have cleared things up. so part of the discussion was really about having a different definition of the term 'objectification'. I should be more careful in defining such terms before using them...

now, about the 'non-problematic' use cases for the term... literally, the term is not necessarily negative at all of course, but maybe we should try to reserve it for negative cases. most of the cases (including most of the once in this discussion) are relatively benign, and i think people should not be too sensitive. And as I said before, things like prejudice and sweeping generalizations can be countered with mere rationalism and pointing to biases, without accusations of 'objectification' at all.