The Female Gaze

[Tio_Narratore]

This is where I disagree with you. The lesson of Darwin, and of all science, is that there is no such thing as "essence." Essentialism is a categorical fallacy. Nothing is "essentially" anything.

Categorizing and labeling things is not fallacious so long as we understand exactly what we are doing. Lions can mate with tigers; but it is still useful and meaningful to talk about lions and tigers being different species. The line between male and female is not as clear as many of us would like to think, but it is still perfectly accurate and useful to describe them as being two different things. To some degree it's a construct, but it's a construct based upon real-world mean differences in populations of things that can be tested, verified, and falsified. Those aggregate mean differences do have significance in the real world. While it's true that any particular taxonomy system is a construct, it's not true that all taxonomical systems are equally valid from a scientific point of view. Reality wins over constructs. Some systems of categorization are better than others.

There is a large body of evidence that the group of people we call "male" and the group of people we call "female" are different right out of the womb. They differ in their genes, their morphology, and in their behavior. To me it seems unremarkable to say that men look at things differently from women, and it's something I believe, and it's something I think is to some degree hard-wired. I don't know to what degree it's hard-wired. It's something that requires more testing. I think wiring can be dramatically influenced by environment. But I believe the wiring plays a role.

Regarding the ad hominem attacks: I actually think this thread was doing just fine until one person wanted to make those attacks. The rest of us have had a discussion that involves some difference of opinion but without nasty personal criticisms. I thought stickygirl did a nice job trying to get this thread off to a good, constructive start.

Actually it's not useful to continue to see lions and tigers and different species: the distinction has far more to do with the perception of humans with a particular cultural background than it has to do with the biology of the animals in question. Similarly, the colors you name tells more about you than it does about the nature of waves, a portion of whose continuum we humans can see. Remember, the British rainbow has seven colors rather than six because Newton believed that his deity couldn't have made something in the devil's number, but had to make the perfect seven. And human males and females do not have different genes - we share the same genome. The Y-chromosome of the male seems to be an abbreviated version of the X, and you might note that there is a wide range of polyploidies in the sex chromosomes, with XY, XXY, XYY, XX, XXX and even up to 8 X chromosomes. The effects of the variation is far from fully known, though I can tell you we can determine the number of X chromosomes a person has from their fingerprints.

Given that the primary evolutionary adaptation in humans is that of learning to adapt, we do not find much hard-wiring in human behavior. We do seem "hard-wired" for learning, though: we all seem to end up with some form of extrinsic symbolic communication, though what language(s) we speak is the product of our environments and our individual histories and interactions with them. And that holds for the whole of culture as well.

 

[SimonDoom]

we do not find much hard-wiring in human behavior. .

I'm not a biologist, but I know enough to know that many biologists and psychologists do not agree with this statement. The relative roles of nature and nurture on human behavior are in dispute, and open to question. The science is ongoing. I personally believe, based on what I know, that wiring places a significant, if not yet fully determined role.

I don't agree with you about lions and tigers, either. It's not just a matter of perception. They are very different in appearance, body size, structure, behavior, distribution, you name it. They are not genetically the same. They face different environmental pressures and circumstances. There are all sorts of reasons why it is useful for us to analyze them as separate species, and that's sufficient reason to do so.

These are interesting issues that probably cannot be resolved within the space of a Literotica forum, and that's OK.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

I'm not a biologist, but I know enough to know that many biologists and psychologists do not agree with this statement. The relative roles of nature and nurture on human behavior are in dispute, and open to question. The science is ongoing. I personally believe, based on what I know, that wiring places a significant, if not yet fully determined role.

I don't agree with you about lions and tigers, either. It's not just a matter of perception. They are very different in appearance, body size, structure, behavior, distribution, you name it. They are not genetically the same. They face different environmental pressures and circumstances. There are all sorts of reasons why it is useful for us to analyze them as separate species, and that's sufficient reason to do so.

These are interesting issues that probably cannot be resolved within the space of a Literotica forum, and that's OK.

"Appearance, size, body structure, "etc. are a matter of perception. Human perception of things relevant to humans. You know, the most important color to a female butterfly is ultraviolet, and you can't even see it. By the way, if lions and tigers weren't "the same" genetically, they couldn't produce fertile offspring. The criteria you use for identifying species are based on human perceptions and human values, and give an inherently academic classification. Reproduction of fertile offspring results in a natural classification, independent of the observer. Once again, your classifications would tell me more about you than about the things classified.

Human populations, by the way, show even greater variation in appearance, genetics, and the environmental pressures and circumstances they face than do lions and tigers. I assure you that despite their variations, they can get together and produce fertile offspring. And you're not likely to find a serious biologist who doesn't consider the current human population as a single species.

 

[AlinaX]

There is a large body of evidence that the group of people we call "male" and the group of people we call "female" are different right out of the womb. They differ in their genes, their morphology, and in their behavior.

There are huge problems with this analysis, not least that those collecting the data will often discard individuals that cannot be clearly defined as male or female. Thus you have 'a large body of evidence' that - ignoring trans and intersex people - men generally have such-and-such properties and women have such-and-such properties. Even then, the means may be distinct, but the standard deviations are so huge the distributions overlap significantly. You get tall women, empathic men, women who can't multitask, men who wear dresses - and some of these things are hard-wired but some are culturally influenced or nurture vs nature.

And it's self-reinforcing. A culture that strongly believes in the male-female divide will justify hiding away (or worse) the individuals that can't conform.

I remember the huge fanfare over Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. It's a seductive concept because it reinforces our prejudices. Yes, it tells us, the world is binary and the sexes are different. Except this is a reflection of a culture, not a biological inevitability.

 

[ElectricBlue]

"Appearance, size, body structure, "etc. are a matter of perception. Human perception of things relevant to humans. You know, the most important color to a female butterfly is ultraviolet, and you can't even see it. By the way, if lions and tigers weren't "the same" genetically, they couldn't produce fertile offspring.

Biologically speaking, according to Wiki:

The liger is a hybrid offspring of a male lion (Panthera leo) and a female tiger (Panthera tigris). The liger has parents in the same genus but of different species. The liger is distinct from the similar hybrid called the tigon, and is the largest of all known extant felines.

So: same genus, different species.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Biologically speaking, according to Wiki:

The liger is a hybrid offspring of a male lion (Panthera leo) and a female tiger (Panthera tigris). The liger has parents in the same genus but of different species. The liger is distinct from the similar hybrid called the tigon, and is the largest of all known extant felines.

So: same genus, different species.

Different species is defined by the humans, not the felines. And the classification of species changes constantly particularly in palaeontology. Organisms that can reproduce fertile offspring constitute a natural species; people add to that the caveat "normally reproduce" to allow them to keep their academic classifications intact.

Wiki, by the way, is only reporting what people say; they didn't ask the cats.And yes, I am a biologist. You'd be very surprised by the places some of our research is taking us.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

There are huge problems with this analysis, not least that those collecting the data will often discard individuals that cannot be clearly defined as male or female. Thus you have 'a large body of evidence' that - ignoring trans and intersex people - men generally have such-and-such properties and women have such-and-such properties. Even then, the means may be distinct, but the standard deviations are so huge the distributions overlap significantly. You get tall women, empathic men, women who can't multitask, men who wear dresses - and some of these things are hard-wired but some are culturally influenced or nurture vs nature.

And it's self-reinforcing. A culture that strongly believes in the male-female divide will justify hiding away (or worse) the individuals that can't conform.

I remember the huge fanfare over Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. It's a seductive concept because it reinforces our prejudices. Yes, it tells us, the world is binary and the sexes are different. Except this is a reflection of a culture, not a biological inevitability.

Well-stated, Alina.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Different species is defined by the humans, not the felines. And the classification of species changes constantly particularly in palaeontology. Organisms that can reproduce fertile offspring constitute a natural species; people add to that the caveat "normally reproduce" to allow them to keep their academic classifications intact.

Yep. Reality is complex. Humans simplify it for convenience, and unfortunately where the simplified model fails to model reality, we have a bad tendency of trying to shoehorn reality into the model rather than acknowledge it as a failing of the model.

For anybody who wants an example of where the "can reproduce" definition becomes hard to sustain, look up "ring species" - group A can breed with B, B can breed with C, but C can't breed with A. In mathematical terminology, "species" is a would-be equivalence class constructed on something that isn't actually a transitive relation.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

Yep. Reality is complex. Humans simplify it for convenience, and unfortunately where the simplified model fails to model reality, we have a bad tendency of trying to shoehorn reality into the model rather than acknowledge it as a failing of the model.

For anybody who wants an example of where the "can reproduce" definition becomes hard to sustain, look up "ring species" - group A can breed with B, B can breed with C, but C can't breed with A. In mathematical terminology, "species" is a would-be equivalence class constructed on something that isn't actually a transitive relation.

I Wikipedia'd it. I was surprised to see house mouse and fruit flies as examples. I would never have expected to see members of those species that couldn't interbreed. Especially fruit flies. Maybe I'm just haunted by my high school science project on fruit fly genetics. It sounded like a great project, until I was having to anesthetize and sex the damned things every day. So many eye colors, so much time... Ugh.

 

[Ginlover]

I dont know about lions and tigers but horses and donkeys can breed. The result is a mule or ass depending on the dam and sires type. Both mules and asses are infertile.

Back to male/female gaze and Bramblethorn referencing a female artist producing images primarily aimed at men, that is great example. The one I've been been thinking about is music.
I'll put forward Ed Sheeran and Bruno Mars

When I was your man I see that as a man trying to say he wish he had used a female gaze https://youtu.be/8WgP_NzXdd8

Thinking out loud I think is a perfect blend of male and female gaze https://youtu.be/hTbeVXuWyaU

I'm using male and female gaze as terms as I understand them in a social science overview not as sexist. If it was called grey and black gaze I'd use those terms, or practical and visual verses emotional and empathetic, but it's not. As far as I'm aware the terms female and male gaze were coined well before thus discussion.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Well, now that the performance art seems to be over, maybe we can get back to a productive conversation.

I'm skipping over the conversation about ligers and fruit flies, because while it is interesting, it's way off the point, in my opinion.

About a hundred and twenty years ago, people started making movies. Most, nearly all, of the people who figured out how to convey emotion, tell stories and generally establish the aesthetics of cinema, were men. We are so used to what they decided that we don't even think about it. The conventions of screenwriting, cinematography, editing, etc. are so well established that they have become invisible to the audience, so it is easy to forget that they are constructs created and, over the decades, perpetuated by a relatively small and very homogeneous group of creators. Of course, those conventions reflect the perspectives of that small group. It also is natural that they are ingrained in the audience as well.

All you need to do to understand that that established perspective is a cultural construct is to watch a few films from outside the Hollywood (used broadly) tradition. Bollywood movies don't even look much like American films.

There is nothing wrong with that established perspective. It has obviously been successful for more than a century, and for a good reason. Most of it is universally shared.

Women, people of color, the disabled and others have been marginalized in the movie industry for generations, but now they are becoming more prominent. They have grown up in that same cinema culture, but there are areas in which they are presenting different perspectives.

Well, so did Orson Wells. So did Jean Luc Godard. So did Stanley Kubrick. Creative people being creative, what a wild notion.

Art is never static, it grows and it changes. Sadly, that that change is currently being driven in large part by people outside the mainstream tradition has upset some people and created a backlash. But the innovations and new perspectives will inform the broader film world and create a new mainstream and the largest part of the audience will accept and enjoy it.

Or, there is a woke sjw conspiracy to oppress white men. Whatever.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

I'm going to stay out of the argument about what constitutes the male gaze and the female gaze, as neither is a biological reality. To me they are cultural constructs, and in this case, consideration of the 'female gaze' seems to have been engendered by a desire to see a contrasting construct of the one first identified.

I appreciate your observation that the "real world consists of a lot of complicated stuff" and that we reduce it to categories to make it manageable. However, it is not a matter of categories with "fuzziness at the edges." The fuzziness is the reality; our categories are all constructs. Colors, for example, are things we create: color is a continuum. The really revolutionary proposal from Darwin wasn't evolution, it was the proposition that diversity, not similarity, was the essence of life. Unfortunately that part of his model didn't really gain traction.

In teaching human variation, I always showed my students that if you look for the difference between two a priori categories, you'll always find them. You need to look at the data as a whole; if there are differences, it will be apparent, as will its level of significance.

It's not surprising, seeing as the object of discussion here is a culturally-created construction, that the discourse has become a maelstrom of ad hominem attacks.

Have fun.

I think the focus on similarities versus differences is a bit blinding. "Like" and "unlike" are just too places on the same scale. They're different quantities of the same quality. If we believe the two points on the measuring stick are close enough together, we say they're the similar, and if we think they're far enough apart, we call it different. They're just relative terms for the same data points.

In order to declare something alike, you have to first consider the points of comparison. Points of comparison implies comparison for the sake of contrast. Our minds make patterns of everything and categorize things as soon as we observe them. That's comparison and contrast happening simultaneously because they are part of the same tool.

Chiding people on focusing on differences rather than similarities ignores the fact that they are measurements of the same quality, and it suggests a defect in logic that I dont' think is there. It feels more like a social impulse.

On the subject of social impulses, I don't think the fact that a construct is culturally created has any bearing on its relevance. Culturally created constructs are exactly what we're trying to address here. You recognize that they are real things. Perhaps you think they should not be, but the fact remains that they are. Since it's not possible to simply remove the layers of cultural acclimatization and indoctrination, we must form new ones. There is no going back to a blank slate, so we are left trying to curb the mores that we find negative and develop those that we find preferable. So, I think that to dismiss a construct because it is culturally constructed is a mistake.

This is different when you're referring to the liger example. I feel like that's a bit of a red herring. I don't mean a deliberate one, but one one of those thought trails that looks promising at first but leads you further and further in the wrong direction. Because we are talking about cultural constructs, they probably need to be restricted to human culture.

If we want to consider lion or tiger culture, we can do that, and I think the result would be far different than what you suggest. Lions and tigers only breed when they are kept in unnatural conditions - unnatural even apart from habitat - and human intervention is necessary, either through habituation or through managing access only during fertile periods or both. The offspring usually have to be delivered by cesarean section, they're prone to gigantism, neurological defects, sterility, and a collection of symptoms that suggest autoimmune issues (arthritis, organ failure, cancer.) That's for a male lion and a female tiger. If it's done the other way around, the offspring very rarely survive for very long. Those that do, suffer an array of health defects. They're not the same species, and they don't naturally regard each other as potential mates. They give into mating instincts under stressed conditions.

It is useful to see lions and tigers as different species because understanding that they are different should help us know better than to force them into breeding or being housed together under naturalistic conditions. Taxonomy is useful. It would be incredibly difficult to study life without it. Like all organizational tools, it allows more abstract thinking. Like all organizational tools, it has limitations and deficits. That's no reason to decide that it's worthless.

But this is what I mean by a red herring. Looking at those facts gives us information about lion and tiger speciation, but it does nothing to inform us about human culture. Linking the example of lions and tigers to the concept of all humans being the same species is incongruous. Humans are the same species, and lions and tigers demonstrably are not. All human populations can breed with other human populations, and the offspring are healthy and fertile. Humans share culture, even among populations so long separated that the cultures have become incredibly distinct. The genetic variation is partially a result of the number of base pairs in the human genome, but also the magnitude of differences being coded. We have more genes than most animals, but still less than a water flea, and even less than rice. Yet, are genes are able to produce astonishing variation.

That variation does not mean that there aren't statistical predispositions within certain groups sharing a specific set of coding, such as for sex (or presumably for gender). To say there are no differences between men's anatomy and women's anatomy simply because there is overlap would be silly. I think it's the same for the differences of minds. I'm less sure about differences of brains than I am of minds - another fuzzy concept that digresses and leads somewhere interesting, but not where we're trying to go.

Whether it's a result of nature or nurture, the fact remains that there are statistically demonstrable differences in the way men and women perceive things. We're only beginning to come to grips with how we talk about perceptions that don't fall neatly into one of those categories. I think it's fair to say, though, that the spectrum of perceptions is not being represented.

There's no question that there's overlap and that some people aren't properly recognized, or that its self-reinforcing. There's no question that this is all a cultural construct. There's no question that this is an artificial way of viewing something abstract by using labels that have inherent limitations. What I don't see, however, is why there is a question that something besides the gaze being currently utilized - whether you call it male or something else altogether - is not anything close to a universal gaze, nor is it trying to be.

I think the discussion has gotten quite bogged down by what to label the issue. Earlier on, we were focused more on the symptoms of the issue and the causes of the issue, which is what I think the concept of "male gaze" versus "female gaze" is intended to address. I don't think the concept was ever intended to do more than that.

I'm not opposed to changing labels or redefining things, but that doesn't change what is before our eyes.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I think the discussion has gotten quite bogged down by what to label the issue. Earlier on, we were focused more on the symptoms of the issue and the causes of the issue, which is what I think the concept of "male gaze" versus "female gaze" is intended to address. I don't think the concept was ever intended to do more than that.

I'm not opposed to changing labels or redefining things, but that doesn't change what is before our eyes.

I agree, that's why I didn't use the terms in the post i wrote this morning. What we are calling the male gaze is, in fact, the mainstream perspective in the arts. The female gaze is one of the variants from that perspective.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

I agree, that's why I didn't use the terms in the post i wrote this morning. What we are calling the male gaze is, in fact, the mainstream perspective in the arts. The female gaze is one of the variants from that perspective.

The label always ends up being the problem. Even "mainstream gaze," while it has the benefits of side-stepping some of the binary gendered landmines and other issues, suggests that the gaze currently in use, which statistically speaking is a male gaze, is the mainstream one, when in fact, it isn't even the majority gaze. I'm not sure how to get around the problem with nomenclature. I think Alina called it a patriarchal gaze at one point, and that has merit, but it also implies judgment. Then again, the fact that it implies judgment doesn't make it wrong.

Outside of art, I tend to think of it as "the establishment," but that's also a label I'm slapping on something when what I mean is primarily a group of privileged people, and that those privileged people tend to be white, male and cisgendered. If we want to include more people, don't we have to know who needs to be added to the mix? I think one of your most important points was that what we're calling the female gaze is one variant on the perspective that we're seeing now, and not the only variant. We need to get to the place where what's now "standard" is a variant instead of the standard. In other words, it shouldn't be male gaze and alternatives to male gaze. It should be lots of different gazes.

I realize it's not like anyone's going to put us on a committee to figure out who gets to make movies, but to even find the right approach to thinking about it requires (I think) an approach that can result in a solution if the approach were applied by someone in a position to do so.

 

[stickygirl]

Well, now that the performance art seems to be over, maybe we can get back to a productive conversation.

I'm skipping over the conversation about ligers and fruit flies, because while it is interesting, it's way off the point, in my opinion.

Thanks Melissa, I was going to suggest if we were off down the genes path I could pack some sandwiches

I'll take a look through these later posts, which I'm sure will be just as interesting as XXYs.

I've been thinking about stand up comedy as an area worth some thought, but I'll report back

 

[MelissaBaby]

The label always ends up being the problem. Even "mainstream gaze," while it has the benefits of side-stepping some of the binary gendered landmines and other issues, suggests that the gaze currently in use, which statistically speaking is a male gaze, is the mainstream one, when in fact, it isn't even the majority gaze. I'm not sure how to get around the problem with nomenclature. I think Alina called it a patriarchal gaze at one point, and that has merit, but it also implies judgment. Then again, the fact that it implies judgment doesn't make it wrong.

Outside of art, I tend to think of it as "the establishment," but that's also a label I'm slapping on something when what I mean is primarily a group of privileged people, and that those privileged people tend to be white, male and cisgendered. If we want to include more people, don't we have to know who needs to be added to the mix? I think one of your most important points was that what we're calling the female gaze is one variant on the perspective that we're seeing now, and not the only variant. We need to get to the place where what's now "standard" is a variant instead of the standard. In other words, it shouldn't be male gaze and alternatives to male gaze. It should be lots of different gazes.

I realize it's not like anyone's going to put us on a committee to figure out who gets to make movies, but to even find the right approach to thinking about it requires (I think) an approach that can result in a solution if the approach were applied by someone in a position to do so.

I agree with everything you said in this post. My use of the term “mainstream” was in reference to the product, not the perspective of the audience.

I have been doing a personal “gaze inventory”.

I am a recovering drug addict. I have addict gaze.
I grew up poor. I have poverty gaze.
Raised in a small town. Rural gaze.
Female gaze.
White gaze.
American gaze.
I am 5’9” and weigh 115 pounds. I have tall gaze and thin gaze, in a society where body image issues are rampant.
I have been a sex worker and I am a convicted felon. I am a white woman married to
a Black man. These things impart their own gaze.

In the end, all I can say is that I have Melissa gaze. It would be great to get to a place where that is good enough.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I've been thinking about stand up comedy as an area worth some thought, but I'll report back

Doubling down on my suggestion that you watch All About Nina

 

[stickygirl]

Doubling down on my suggestion that you watch All About Nina

I know, I know I think I can see it through Amazon somehow!!

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

I agree with everything you said in this post. My use of the term “mainstream” was in reference to the product, not the perspective of the audience.

I have been doing a personal “gaze inventory”.

I am a recovering drug addict. I have addict gaze.
I grew up poor. I have poverty gaze.
Raised in a small town. Rural gaze.
Female gaze.
White gaze.
American gaze.
I am 5’9” and weigh 115 pounds. I have tall gaze and thin gaze, in a society where body image issues are rampant.
I have been a sex worker and I am a convicted felon. I am a white woman married to
a Black man. These things impart their own gaze.

In the end, all I can say is that I have Melissa gaze. It would be great to get to a place where that is good enough.

Yeah, I wasn't trying to criticize your terminology so much as I was trying to figure out how to get a firm grip on the problem. I'm often frustrated by how terminology, or the lack of the right word in English, shapes what ideas get expressed or even thought.

I think your point that we all have multiple types of gazes is a good one, too. Even if it weren't for the fact that there's a disparity that needs to be addressed, knowing what gazes we have is an important step to combating implicit bias. That's something that deserves a lot more thought than it gets.

 

[stickygirl]

Okey dokey... I hope this will make sense... stop prevaricating - get on with it Sticks

I find myself frequently having to reset a line of internal discussion and in thinking afresh about the gaze and what has been discussed, I’ll restate where we are, but as ever I’d welcome amendments, discussion.

• The social status of women has come a long way from being chattel’s or people that couldn’t inherit or vote, to where we are now.
• It’s a travesty to ignore the differences between men and women and how they think ( the underlying nature/nurture reasons are for another discussion ). Despite the fluffy edges and variations from ethnicity and culture, we are where we are. To wring our hands over whether or not to use the terms male or female gaze is a distraction too: if people bring preconceptions and prejudices, they’re only likely to cloud the discussion.

The creative people who make movies or write books or paint, do not live in a bubble and their work needs to seen in the context of their time: our time - today and the whole point of creative work is to challenge, question and propose fresh ideas. Being entertained is a given.

I’m sorry to keep referring to PortraitOLOF, but it was where my question started. The script was clever because it took difficult topics ( arranged marriage, abortion ) but presented them in the context of 18th century France, where such ideas were met with indifference - they were simply accepted. We are prompted to compare them to modern practices, such as the glass ceilings of business, the imbalance of male to female film directors or to the difficulties of the lives of LGBT people: you decide which is relevant to you.

I don’t believe writers like Sciamma or Gerwig licked their pencils and thought ‘Today I’ll write a feminist film’ but neither could they avoid being women or being influenced by their personal experience as they wrote. ‘Et volia!’ you have the female gaze. No shouting, no waving placards or chaining themselves to railings and more importantly: no intention ( of writing a feminist work ).
When we see a movie or read a book, it is already history and our review of it is retrospective. When Sciamma was asked in interview if she intended her film to be feminist, she replied ‘No, it is a love story, but it is what it is. How you view it makes it your film.’
By answering in that way, she exemplifies female gaze for me. Such stories allow us to find what we want to find: a love story on one level or a social commentary on another. Some people might find the lesbian theme or abortion shocking, or maybe they might miss the significance of arranged marriage with the same nonchalance of the storyline, but at least we are given those choices and we are encouraged to think.

But yes yes, yes - there are loads of terrific films made by men, that don’t have tits in your face, or women being abused or blowey-up-car-chases, but men and women are different, so it only follows their styles will be different.

ETA which the point Melissa just made ^^

 

[stickygirl]

I agree with everything you said in this post. My use of the term “mainstream” was in reference to the product, not the perspective of the audience.

I have been doing a personal “gaze inventory”.

I am a recovering drug addict. I have addict gaze.
I grew up poor. I have poverty gaze.
Raised in a small town. Rural gaze.
Female gaze.
White gaze.
American gaze.
I am 5’9” and weigh 115 pounds. I have tall gaze and thin gaze, in a society where body image issues are rampant.
I have been a sex worker and I am a convicted felon. I am a white woman married to
a Black man. These things impart their own gaze.

In the end, all I can say is that I have Melissa gaze. It would be great to get to a place where that is good enough.

You missed one
A knack of 'getting to the point' gaze
amongst many others I'm sure

 

[ElectricBlue]

Bugger. I just lost a long response because of the damn log-in bump-out forum clock. I just wanted to say Melissa's point about multiple gaze has been, for me, the most on-point of all. The original reply was far longer, but brevity, for once, will do.

This thread (other than the clown art which for me broke a new record: fastest new poster put on Ig) has been one of the most valuable I've read for a very long time. Thanks all .

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

Bugger. I just lost a long response because of the damn log-in bump-out forum clock. I just wanted to say Melissa's point about multiple gaze has been, for me, the most on-point of all. The original reply was far longer, but brevity, for once, will do.

This thread (other than the clown art which for me broke a new record: fastest new poster put on Ig) has been one of the most valuable I've read for a very long time. Thanks all .

That's been happening to me, too. If you keep hitting back on your browser after you log in, you'll get it back.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Bugger. I just lost a long response because of the damn log-in bump-out forum clock. I just wanted to say Melissa's point about multiple gaze has been, for me, the most on-point of all. The original reply was far longer, but brevity, for once, will do.

This thread (other than the clown art which for me broke a new record: fastest new poster put on Ig) has been one of the most valuable I've read for a very long time. Thanks all .

I've been kicked out of a lot of places, but not here.

I'm sorry we missed your post, I always value your thoughts.

 

[stickygirl]

I hope this is on topic -- I was thinking about this a few weeks ago when Lost In Translation came on TV. I'd actually never seen it before, somehow, so I sat down and watched it. I would have sworn, up and down, that the movie was directed by a man. When the credits rolled, I was surprised to see that Sofia Coppola directed it.

The shots of Scarlett Johansson throughout the film just seemed like the way a man would shoot her. (The karoake scene comes to mind.) The entire idea of a romance between her and Bill Murray, of all people, seemed like some old dude's fantasy. I also think I assumed a man directed it because that's still the default assumption in Hollywood -- less so now than it was in 2003, but still the default.

I've watched Lost in Translation a few times and I can see what you mean about older guy/younger woman being a cliche, but neither characters were objectified. It has a very different feel to normal Hollywood output: alienation; an absence of sex / nudity; an ageing guy on the decline and her sensible knickers. I relate to aspects of the story: being stuck anywhere alien; a flirtation with an older guy… and the knickers.

Lost in Kyoto was a perfect choice as backing music for the Japanese wedding