Hello ladies (current and former) of Lemmy (current) - I’m curious how your experience of the male gaze has changed as you moved in and out of young-woman-hood.
How did the age and subjective dating quality of men change as you did, either through age, gender, or other physical changes? Do you get MORE attention now?
How has your opinion of being seen changed through this process?
A coworker broke down near my house on a weekend. He called me for help since he knew I was nearby. I had been doing house projects, so was in athletic shorts, hair bundled out of the way, sunscreen, everything for function and comfort over fashion. He had the audacity to comment. MFer. I dropped him at a gas station to wait for his girlfriend or whatever. Hopefully she made him wait a really long time while she got dressed up to meet his unnecessary standards. Never know when one might need a little black dress and updo to change a tire.
What has changed over the years is my awareness of shitty men being shitty and my shortening patience with their shittiness. The dude described above was just a shithead, I am not spending my energy pondering his behavior through the lens of Male Gaze.
Male Gaze is separate from quality of dating pool. I generally think of Male Gaze as broader cultural trends in how women are portrayed, not how an individual man looks at me. Male Gaze is different than “how that one male over there is gazing at me”. I don’t get what you’re driving at with that section of the question.
What a dick. I love your descriptive reply - it’s so, so true.
He does sound like a tool.
I’m not sure what I meant either, I’ll just remove it. I’m sure I had a brilliant thought behind it at the time!
If you recapture your thoughts and rephrase the question, curious what you were thinking.
“Male Gaze” is like “critical race theory” in my opinion. It has a defined meaning within feminist theory, but that’s not necessarily how it is used by normal people in daily conversation and certainly not how bad faith actors misuse it.
A classic, approachable example of Male Gaze is the YouTube video comparing how female characters are filmed in Suicide Squad versus Birds of Prey. Does it come to the conclusion that a particular camera man on SS was a sexist horndog? No. It’s more how filmmaking has tended towards showing women in a certain way and here is one way it could be different as we get more women directing and producing. I think of it as challenging the idea that the default perspective is that of a man’s; that’s not really true, society just pushes women out of decision making roles so we are disproportionally inundated by male perspectives.
I have heard of Male Gaze with capital letters, but I was asking more about y’alls experience noticing eyeballs on you rather than how THEY perceive you. Using words that have a more specific defined meaning is probably more evidence for “Pidgin needs to think before writing”.
I presume this is the video you meant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MTtYyZ1zd8
I never saw Birds of Prey because Suicide Squad was so bad! Maybe it deserves a watch. I do notice the usually unnecessary sexiness in movies.
I wanted to learn more about women’s perspective on this. Sometimes my “don’t be a dick” plan needs more detail, and being more aware of what kind of behaviour is problematic might steer me better. I’ve heard the phrase male gaze but I don’t think I fully understand what is meant by it, and I feel your question may point to and illuminate a kind of discrimination that I want to avoid.
If it’s helpful, I’m glad! I was just curious and it’s fun to hear real people’s perspectives.
As a man, here is my understanding, so take it with a grain of salt.
While men staring at women is a problem, it is not what is meant by “male gaze”. That term is usually used to describe the way societal norms regarding women were strongly formed by men and what they like. The way conservatives generally expect women to present themselves and behave is heavily influenced by the male gaze. To my understanding, the exact standards differ by culture, but usually its along the lines of being submissive and fitting some beauty standard.
If a person who is read as female (aka “looks like a woman”) does not adhere to those standards, they will face ramifications, because our society mostly has men calling the shots. On the flip side, people who are read as female, and try to please the male gaze while also genetically being lucky enough to fit the beauty standards, can benefit from it (see: beauty privilege).
Regarding your plan to not be a dick, I think if you just treat people as people, regardless of their appearance, you are (passively) working against the perpetuation of the male gaze. I think that would also mean you’re not discriminating anyone.
Apologies if I misunderstood your comment and you were not asking/looking for an explanation.
That was helpful, thanks. I’m very much looking for insight, explanation and experiences.
If I’ve grasped what you’re saying (and please re-steer me if not), the male gaze is a kind of societal expectation that women would present themselves in certain ways to walk the tightrope of some sort of impossible-to-attain universal male approval, and where women are harassed on the one hand for for not pleasing male eyes and on the other hand, harassed for pleasing male eyes - an obviously lose-lose situation. As such then, this male gaze would exist in the way some men behave towards women and in the head space this takes up in the minds of women who have been repeatedly hit with these expectations.
Yep, that is pretty much how I understand it as well
Thank you for being on the Internet.
Thank you too. It is very refreshing to have such a pleasant interaction on the internet.
If I broke down and you came to help me I wouldn’t care if you were wearing a full fursuit.
I’d be thanking you to no end.