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 has your opinion of being seen changed through this process?

  • Vanth@reddthat.com
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    5 months ago

    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.

    • Clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      5 months ago

      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.