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.comEnglish
    0·
    20 days 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.worksOPEnglish
      0·
      20 days 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.