5 ms·

These puritan activists larping as tech savvy victorian moralists should be ignored. While the “male gaze” jibe sounds enlightened and à la mode, it implicitly

• jauer 5y ago
  Yet somehow lesbians aren't the ones eyefucking my breasts when I'm at the grocery store.
  • djoldman 5y ago
    I think this is an interesting comment and I immediately thought to ask: What percentage of the people offending you by looking at you like that have you confirmed are male and what percentage have you confirmed are not gay? I'm asking without snark, I'm genuinely curious if you've asked people.
    • jauer 5y ago
      Didn't say I was offended, but let me elaborate on that part, because I think some guys get confused on what's offensive. Look, I like guys. I like it when guys appreciate my appearance. They have to look at me to do so. I'm not even offended when they mutter an "mmm hmm" or whatever. The offensive part comes when someone, no matter gender or sexuality, express their appreciation (or attempt to demonstrate power over me) in an manner that hijacks my attention or disrupts my activities. They do this by: 1. stopping at the end of an aisle, looking you up and down, and staring at $BODY_PART for several seconds. 2. Initiating small-talk from a non-interpersonal distance and being persistent about it if you don't respond (there's a difference in expression and tone vs. being neighborly or whatever). There's a difference between "hi!" or "excuse me" as you move past and "dang girl, how you doing?" 3. Making comments and then following you around (sometimes continuing to comment unless you stop and say _something_ to sooth their ego). re: How many gay: I have yet to have a gay guy hit on me, or check me out. Some do judge my outfits. I have a reply elsewhere on the difference between normal perception, judging clothing, and "male gaze" (which TBH should be called "aggressive sexualized gaze" for precision and to avoid discussions like this, even though the shorter form is precise enough. re: How many male: I dunno, the masc-presenting trans people I know are too self-conscious about appearing creepy to engage in these behaviors. So are most of the techies I run into :) The straight trans-masc guys I know are also tend to fit in the "def dudes that appreciate but aren't creepy about it" category.
      • qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
        Fair points, but I'm not sure how this ties in with twitter's image cropping algorithm. Not saying chest crops are ideal, but IMO twitter has other issues which are at least 100x more important that they should be focused on. If you really can't handle the way the image is highlighting your chest you can always crop your chest out of the image before uploading.
      • IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
        I'll say something that i hope can be read objectively (2) thats a feature, not a bug. What you are really complaining is that you dont get a curated list of males that have (a) mastered finesse or (b) have natural beauty. However when you change the context (change supermarket with award gala for doctors) women do change their reaction to male encounters, because they evaluate every male as an potential partner instead of a waste of time. That's why men with no finesse or good looks, but in the right context, will get far with women. Im not saying that's you. And i abstain from judging either party. My point is that context matters. Which gets me to my next point. In life, there is always an element of volatility. Some days you are playing a sport in which you are very talented but you are still losing. Its just a bad day. In those days, you dont complain that the opposing player is playing better than you. You try your best and then move on. Males without finesse or good looks are such bad days. They are a fact of life. We want to wish them away, but that's utopia. Nature is full of guys that just don't have it. We cant magically wave away stupid, or clueless. The gene pool is diverse for a reason. Instead focus on the positive. You have good looks. You are in the competition. Make the best out of it. I've personally been hit on by gay guys. Some have come on rather strongly, and i have gotten some of the looks you describe. I am hopelessly straight, and sometimes even uncomfortable, but I smile, say thank you/no sorry, and move on with my day.
  • SlowRobotAhead 5y ago
    Is that a thing that happens to you? That sucks. Aside: Was the entry on your blog about being hugged by a significant other while in line at a hard store a fan fiction? Seems like you have to be on guard all the time as a woman in 2021, again, that sucks.
    • jauer 5y ago
      Oh, didn't realize I'd posted that. It was a dream that I remembered long enough to write it down.
  • jsjsbdkj 5y ago
    Yeah, somehow I never get catcalled or followed around by lesbians, it's almost like being a creep and being attracted to women aren't inextricably linked?
    • filleduchaos 5y ago
      I'm attracted to women and it honestly baffles me to see unfortunately many straight men be so wildly inappropriate any and everywhere. It's...not even that hard to not do that? Then again I (and most other wlw I know) have had a lifetime's practice of being conscientious about who, when and how we express that attraction, which makes the "but what about lesbians" retort to the question of the male gaze both sad and rather annoying.
  • nomdep 5y ago
    That you IMAGINE are eyefucking your breasts. Not the same
  • jb775 5y ago
    If you didn't get eyefucked you'd probably find something to complain about that.
    • jauer 5y ago
      Except my comment was not complaining about it. It was noting a disparity in observed behavior.
      • jb775 5y ago
        #1 Sounds like you are complaining. #2 You missed the point. Twitter is trying to tweak their algorithm not to fix the actual problem, but to reduce the Twitter-perceived downside of not aligning with in-vogue leftist politics (i.e. in this instance: "despise anything to do with white-males but scream racism/sexism as it suits them"). The parent comment is essentially saying this whole bounty exists because Twitter is afraid of the social-politics associated with being considered a "male-gaze" facilitator (while mentioning they're already aware that the known technical cause has nothing to do with that, but it's essentially too hard to explain to the general public). So mentioning you get eyefucked in the bread aisle by more men than lesbians not only misses the point, it shows how quick you are to position yourself as a victim (whether you intended to or not) as it suits you...only to admit you enjoy the eyefucks. Making ppl like you happy is the actual goal of this.
  • oh_sigh 5y ago
    Well, men do outnumber lesbians by something like 30:1. Also not sure if you have les-dar or how you know if a woman checking you out is a lesbian or is just critiquing your outfit in her mind.
    • jauer 5y ago
      I live in an area with a unusually high number of wlw :) Women seem to have different facial cues when critiquing outfits. Straight women seem to be less guarded with those cues. It's a totally different facial expression from checking someone out. Gay women seem more discrete with their checking out unless in an explicitly gay environment (am bi, have been in those environments, the game night I go to is largely wlw). This makes a lot of sense when you consider growing up in locker rooms etc with people you might find attractive. If you check any of the reddits for women that came out later in life (commonly defined as 30+ yrs old), you'll find quite a few posts from people struggling with expressing attraction without feeling creepy.
  • Jiro 5y ago
    Since there are many times more straight men than lesbians, I would expect that most people who do it would be straight men, even if lesbians were just as likely to do it as straight men on a per-capita basis.
  • qPM9l3XJrF 5y ago
    That's easily explained by internalized homophobia ;-)
• _jal 5y ago
  > it implicitly denies that women Nonsense on stilts. You might as well claim that anti-smoking activists are wrong because nonsmokers sometimes get lung cancer. I'd highly suggest some reading on the topic if you want to address it; this isn't even a basic misunderstanding.
• shreyshnaccount 5y ago
  are you living in society??? I'm tired of the HN crowd which wants to find BS counterarguments to EVERYTHING as if it's all a huge engineering problem that can be addressed by thinking from first principles. they need to understand that life as a human isn't all black and white, there's a lot of grey! and no, I'm not saying that questioning things is bad. being obnoxious and ignorant of society is.
  • truthwhisperer 5y ago
    Hi yes are right but we are winning :-)
• oh_sigh 5y ago
  Doesn't "the male gaze" imply there are other gazes? Otherwise, wouldn't it just be "the gaze"(as Sartre originally theorized) Also, feminism is a big enough field that you can certainly find a feminist who supports your viewpoints, whatever they may be. Pointing to two people who support your viewpoint doesn't mean that the matter is settled - I could point to probably a hundred feminist authors who firmly believe in the male gaze. Personally, "the male gaze" seems more of western female problem than a western male problem. Studies have shown that even anticipating that someone may look at you can increase feelings of objectification and negative mental states. I don't really know what can be done from a male's perspective if a woman may make herself feel bad by merely knowing that a man may possibly eventually look at her.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• dragonwriter 5y ago
  > While the “male gaze” jibe sounds enlightened and à la mode, it implicitly denies that women (especially the lesbian ones) have a gaze of their own, No, the modifier implicitly acknowledges that there are other kinds of gaze.
  • FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
    It implicitly restricts the "badness" of "gaze" to "maleness", and we all know it. There is a simple solution to the Problem of the Male Gaze, however: Surgically remove little boys' eyes.
  • FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
    I sometimes also think of the "third world gaze" that confronts me whenever I visit the less-developed parts of the earth. It's as though I walk around with dollar signs on me. I shouldn't have to fear for my safety like that. Their behavior has to change.
  • jb775 5y ago
    Are you considering the modifier here to be the word "male"? If so, your statement is simply absurd. That's like saying the term "female cheaters" equally insinuates men and women as the cheating-gender being discussed.
    • dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Are you considering the modifier here to be the word "male"? Yes. > If so, your statement is simply absurd. That’s like saying the term "female cheaters" equally insinuates men and women as the cheating-gender being discussed. No, it is not. It is like saying that the using the phrase “female cheaters” to specify which cheaters are being discussed implies that female cheaters aren't the only kind, and that there are also male cheaters which are not currently being discussed.
      • jb775 5y ago
        No, you are delusional. This is called sexism, but you can't admit what's right in front of your face.