The Male and Female Gaze

[Snake Plissken]

Split from the Sarah Everard discussion.

[MsD]

Just passing through, but came across a couple of possibly relevant stats from this month's Harper's Index:


Percentage of American men aged 18 to 24 who cite pornography as the most useful source of information on how to have sex: 39

Who cite their sexual partners: 17

Percentage of American women aged 18 to 24 who cite pornography: 14

Who cite their sexual partners: 32

Source: Emily F. Rothman, Boston University

That is significant, and depressing.

As a visual culture man, have you read much on the Female Gaze? I’m finding it encouraging to see the work of new female photographers like Maisie Cousins, but reading Kathy Myers’ essay “Towards a Feminist Erotica” from 1982, it’s also disheartening to see how slow progress has been.

Cardi B and Meg’s WAP has brought female desire front and centre stage, literally. I hope younger women are encouraged to be more assertive in their sexuality.

[Amor de Cosmos]

As a visual culture man, have you read much on the Female Gaze?

Not much. Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright cover it briefly in Practices of Looking which was one of my set course books. But a specific text, no. In general most writers on The Gaze are female and they concentrate on the male gaze, as I'm sure you know. Linda Nochlin touched on the Female Gaze back in the 70s , but mainly in the context of the lack of female artists historically. The name that comes up most often is Griselda Pollack who, again, I've never read but is highly regarded as a Marxist feminist theorist apparently. I'm not aware of any male writers who've taken on the subject. It would take a brave man these days I think.

[MsD]

Yes, it would, it's difficult even for me to pick through - I don't mean that I'm a great writer or theorist, far from it, but I'm pretty certain of my feminist attitudes towards images of women in film and photography, and my responses to them, so I know what I like to see and would like to see more of, and what I find problematic.
I've read Pollack, and Mulvey has revisited her earlier work. I think (and I'm looking at this now, so not sure) that more progressive ways of photographing women, capturing their sensuality/sexuality without objectifying them or desexing them, sort of got derailed at one point into a sort of "nu porn" that missed the point, and that new photographers and theorists have picked up the baton again. Then again I may have missed a whole load of work. Ongoing.
Funnily enough, I had Helmut Newton down as a prime example of making beautiful photos of women who seemed objectified, then I've come across some where the women look empowered, and others where the humour (which can only be collaboration between photographer and model) shines through.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Humour is so very important, though that too is subjective. Funnily (hah) enough we were discussing this yesterday evening. We'd watched several episodes of Sky Rojo on Netflix, it's the story of three prostitutes who escape from a high-end brothel in Tenerife. Made by the same people who did Money Heist, which we both really liked. It's fast-paced, funny-silly, with a fair amount of cartoon violence. The men are all, without exception, violent and/or stupid. The women include one very smart, one very cynical, and one very sweet. They are always filmed wearing the skimpiest clothing possible without it actually falling off when they move. Overall it pitches up somewhere between Tarantino and Charlie's Angels. You know from the beginning that the women are going to 'win,' because they're cleverer and more resourceful than the men. This, especially when done humorously, dilutes the fact that they're still eye-candy. But why? And should that even be a question? As La Signora said in the end the show is still driven by the Male Gaze, though I'm guessing that the intended audience is predominately female.

[MsD]

Maybe it's pitched to appeal to both, women can identify with the clever gals and be pleased when they triumph over the men, men can just gawp.

It sounds like something I might like (I hated Sex in the City, which DID feature women just talking about men).

[Amor de Cosmos]

Is just gawping the best we men should expect of ourselves when it comes to portrayals of intelligent attractive women? I do enjoy Sky-Rojo, simply because it's too cartoonish to take very seriously. However, from this male's perspective, the most satisfying current example of the female Gaze on TV is Orange Is The New Black, at least in it's early seasons. That may be because the overwhelmingly female cast is huge and enormously diverse in every conceivable way. Also because it takes place in prison everyone is wearing the same clothes, thus they carry no a visual cues. Besides limited make-up, and hair styles we're left only with body language and facial expressions. The occasional scenes of inmates lives prior to being incarcerated are revelatory, as they emphasise how much clothing hides, or reveals, their individuality.

[MsD]

Well, if it's a light sort of programme I wouldn't think badly of anyone for just gawping at it as "eye candy". I've probably watched rugby for the same reasons before.

I should watch OITNB. I only watch 2 hours of TV a night but I could make that my next one.

[MsD]

I don’t want to get off-topic, I think it’s an important point in how women are viewed (!) in our culture. Men do, women are done to.

[Amor de Cosmos]

OK, understood. I think it's important to note that "Men" and "Women" are viewed by each other differently at different times. Age is extremely important in this regard, though not the only factor. I view women now through a 72-year-old lens. Not quite the same one I used at 27. I'm sure my wife might — and I haven't asked her — say something similar about the way she sees men. However, I know she's aware of how she's viewed by men now compared to when she was in her 20s. I'm stating the obvious I realise, but it's worth underlining nonetheless. Male or female the Gaze slowly changes. We all know this but don't often articulate it or, more importantly, analyze what it might mean. Here's a question. It's often stated that the male Gaze is a dominant force in visual communication/expression, regarding our view of women. What would you say is the equivalent female sense or attribute is, assuming it's not the female Gaze?

[ursus arctos]

Would either of you be willing to start a thread on this?

I find it extremely interesting and fear that it will get lost here.

[MsD]

I don’t think the FG is the equivalent, or that we should be looking to invert the MG; maybe to subvert it. To reframe femininity along the lines that you describe in OITNB. More diverse, more true to life. Importantly, with agency. Different notions of beauty. When some people have tried to attempt this it’s come out either worthy but dull (and unsexy) or patronising, like those ads that show older women throwing back their heads and laughing or grinning as though their life depended on it, but I think younger photographers are getting there.

Really, I think there will be progress when a good picture is a good picture and we can assume the subject in it, apart from war photography and reportage, has agency and a story.

[MsD]

Would either of you be willing to start a thread on this?

I find it extremely interesting and fear that it will get lost here.

Yes although my thoughts on this are in flux. Maybe that would make it more interesting.

@SnakePlissken are you able to split off the last few posts? Can’t @ him. Soz.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Yes, my thoughts too. if the thread from MsD's first message this morning was the beginning of a new one it would be a good idea.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Really, I think there will be progress when a good picture is a good picture and we can assume the subject in it, apart from war photography and reportage, has agency and a story.

That's interesting. Maybe it's a sidebar, and it's entirely personal, but one of reasons I don't like making photos of people is because they do have agency. I've always felt the tension between me and the model/subject, and it frequently makes for a unsatisfactory result.

To continue my last message (La Signora needed to be picked up from the hairdresser!) I've wondered, and I don't know if you can answer this, is why it's always The Gaze. In gender studies we normally talk of masculinities, plural. On the basis that masculinity and femininity are enormously varied states of being, not monolithic. So, going back to my earlier post, a seven year old boy's view of his Mother or Sister, is very different from him gazing at the cute girl in his Grade 12 class. I suppose I'm asking whether the terminology of the Gaze is sufficiently adequate for the subject?

[MsD]

I would have thought it was only post-puberty; not that boys don’t have any sexual yearnings mixed up in there but I’m looking at it from a sociological not a psychological perspective (and need to read more Lacan and Foucault).
A pre-pubescent boy may have yearnings but the gaze includes the potential to dominate and possess. So an adolescent boy would just be learning those things.

[MsD]

Also, it’s not just about making those images in film and photo, it’s about the consumption of those images?

[ursus arctos]

I'm afraid that such things are often "taught" well before adolescence

[Amor de Cosmos]

I would have thought it was only post-puberty; not that boys don’t have any sexual yearnings mixed up in there but I’m looking at it from a sociological not a psychological perspective (and need to read more Lacan and Foucault).

If you've not already come across it I'd recommend The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing, by James Elkins. It's very much grounded in Lacan's ideas, but with lots of real world examples and... um... slightly easier to read.

A pre-pubescent boy may have yearnings but the gaze includes the potential to dominate and possess. So an adolescent boy would just be learning those things.

I'm pretty sure fear is a big part of those early yearnings, and for many men it never totally disappears, though it's an admission few ever articulate.

[Satchmo Distel]

John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" (1972, probably available online) had an episode on how our culture teaches women that their role is to be the recipient of being seen, and you can trace this in European art to the Renaissance. Before that time women in art were depicted often as unselfconscious but from that time, the painted woman was and is always aware of the voyeur. You can also see this of course in adverts where the woman is far more likely to be aware of the viewer (and breaking the 4th wall).

The age this starts may have got younger after the pin-up was invented and started training boys to be voyeurs. At what age do you transition from wanting to be the footballer in the poster to wanting to dominate the pop star in the poster? At what point do our schoolboy crushes become about power rather than a reasonably equal romance?

Anthropologists note that matrilineal cultures have far less spousal abuse than patrilineal ones. If a woman is the property of her husband, boys will incorporate that into their worldview. But after a certain point in history, women became the property not just of husbands but of men as a gender and of patriarchy as a social structure, just as serfs and slaves were the property of all the ruling class not just their masters. Many boys learn that women are the property of the boys' eyes and they have the right to mentally undress them.

[MsD]

Berger’s is an established source and a brilliant book. Laura Mulvey’s work on The Male Gaze dealt with this in more detail and from a feminist perspective. See Section III, woman as image, man as bearer of the look:

http://www.composingdigitalmedia.org...ads/mulvey.pdf

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Ah, spinoff thread. I see.

[MsD]

Snake Plissken Thank you!

[Sits]

I would have thought it was only post-puberty; not that boys don’t have any sexual yearnings mixed up in there but I’m looking at it from a sociological not a psychological perspective (and need to read more Lacan and Foucault).
A pre-pubescent boy may have yearnings but the gaze includes the potential to dominate and possess. So an adolescent boy would just be learning those things.

I’m posting to this thread with trepidation as I’m well out of my comfort zone - and treating it as a learning experience more than anything. But trying to cast my mind back to my prepubescent and early adolescent self, I don’t recall feeling a desire to dominate or possess. Just an intangible desire. The girls I gazed at all seemed too impossible, dazzling and distant. I was a late developer, a bit of a geek and very much in the “I’ll never have a girlfriend” camp. Sorry, I may well have missed your point completely. Clearly there was a sexual element in the yearning, and maybe that’s enough in itself.

[MsD]

It’s a learning experience for all. There’s no definitive gaze*.
*DYSWIDT.