536
The Male Gaze 👁️
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
Male gaze: 
Male gays: 
No one may meet the King's gaze
I think it would have been funnier (but maybe less accessible) if the thrower had turned into an absurd comic book character exaggeration of masculinity. That’s also the male gaze and would make more sense in the context, but I do get that most people think of the male gaze as something applied to women.
Even though the term has been somewhat bastardized into "sexual objectification" in general, "the male gaze" originally specificallt describes the trope of straight male cinematographers/directors literally framing camera shots differently for women.
The whole point is that the director (traditionally always a man in mainstream movies) views the character/actress as an object of sexual desire, and the camera - and by extension the audience - sees the woman through that lens. Literally forcing the audience to gaze from a straight male POV. This is an inherently sexist and heteronormative, usually subconscious process.
Now I do enjoy seeing Henry Cavill shirtless in a bathtub, but that's not the (fe)male gaze because the director wasn't imposing their personal bias, they were making a conscious statement. It's objectifying fan-service but not sexist nor heteronormative.
I suppose you could argue that the female gaze does exist in media where the authors are overwhelmingly female, such as the boylove genre. But that doesn't apply here because Shen's character here is literally a presumed straight man.
I think you might have meant to reply to the person who replied to me, but my first thought for what would appeal to the female gaze is binging with babish: the forearms, the cooking, and the way he talks seem like things that would work for a broad stroke of heterosexual women (though it’s not actually an example, as it’s not shot by a woman).
Things like Henry Caville in a bath are fan service, not the male gaze nor the female gaze, but things like rob liefeld comics draw men through the male gaze (the origin might have been only for the depiction of women, but just as the original description of the male gaze expanded on Sartres concept of the gaze, idea of the male gaze has been more fully developed and applied to the perception of men). Things like muscles so big there’s no chance they can reach any part of their own back fall into this.
As for the female gaze itself, yeah, I’ve read fanfiction wherein male body parts are basically directly mapped to female ones (presumably because the author is not familiar with men’s bodies). I think it would be a lot harder for me to recognize a subtler variant of it though, as I’m a woman. I wish there were a large enough body of work for the female gaze to be explored in more depth.
I get what you're saying but what I'm trying to get across is that "sexy" and "objectifying" are distinct from "gaze". It's about the translation of the author's desire into the framing of the scene. I doubt that Babish is attracted to himself in that way, he just framed it in a way that makes sense with the constraint of not wanting to show his face.
It's semantics, if you want to use objectification and "male/female gaze" interchangeably that's fine (though I'd prefer not to use a gendered term if we're talking about a phenomenon that's not inherently gendered).
But Shen used "female gaze" correctly in the original sense of the phrase here so I don't see why people are getting mad that he didn't objectify the guy as well, it's obviously not a comic that's meant to be read as "female objectification is cool".
Straight men view other men through a lens of heterosexuality, and that is part of what is currently understood as the male gaze. I don't see where shen used “female gaze,” but alright.
Or even just an overexaggerated part of the female body, to signify where the stereotypical man focuses his attention.
The way it is now just sorta says "the male gaze is 'guys seeing women'"? Which...okay?
My interpretation is he saw a guy because he had the visor on, but when it came off it's revealed it was a hot woman all along, and the visor was "protecting" him from that view. As in, he doesn't have to deal with his misogyny if he doesn't see women.
Ooooor it just doesn't make sense.
No, no, you're cooking. I can see that interpretation.
I don’t see it when the lady saying “bro” after he loses the visor. “Bro” is not something ladies really say.
I (afab) call my husband, sisters, and female friends bros, dudes, dawgs, and guys.
Whether I’m a lady is debatable, because I’m a little rough around the edges, but I’m definitely female and wear skirts.
Bro, what.
My daughter has entered the chat bro.
Speak for yourself, bruh. We may not all say it, or say it as frequently as men do, but some of us absolutely have "bro" and its varieties within our regular vocabulary.
Honestly, I grew up using "dude" the same way (it was unavoidable when you grew up surrounded by brothers and male cousins in the 90s.) "Bro" was adopted later on. It has the same gender-coded tinge to it, but since "dude" already made sense to me, "bro" never felt strange to say.
Really?
Maybe it's linguistic continuity to show they are the same person from before the visor was removed. Or...
Maybe women can just say "bro".
Edit: I'm not calling you a sexist or anything, but it's a weird deduction to make based on very subjective/anecdotal "evidence". I've interacted with a lot of women online they use "bro" pretty freely.
They can, but that’s really more a dude thing.
But women can be dudes too
The way it is now is an exaggeration of the female body and few women actually look like that. The irony is that you missed that because you're so used to the male gaze. (This is not meant to be an insult, it's literally just the way we were all socialized).
She's built like an Instagram fitness influencer, which of course few people look like. But she also dressed for exercise, so the physique doesn't reasonably transfer to the assumption "all women look like this."
I didn't miss that she's made to look hot, I just thought it could be made more explicit through further exaggeration since most cartoon stylings are already flattering.
Well, it was coined by feminists as something impacting women, so by definition it's only sexism.
Your point, that men - especially men in a certain age range - tend to have a laser focus of viewing the world in terms of how to use anything in it to get their rocks off, regardless of orientation.
It makes me wonder what the equivalent of the female gaze would be. It's not like þere isn't a healthy industry in selling products using sex marketing to women. Calvin Klein ads, anyone?
It’d be extra punchy, if the frisbee also turned into a 🐚, and the cap into 🍈.
Was this the comic artist who was a little bit "to the right", politically? Trying to interpret this comic and what the artist wants to tell me.
the artist is shen, the one u mentioned is stonetoss and he is a nazi.
That was indeed the one I actually thought of, mixed them up. Thanks.
Nah, Shen is known for their furry art
Lol, I think shen is most known for getting their bike stolen :P
Holy hell that's some glass-quarter-full shit
Not sure I like that more
Men feel the need to stare lustily at women.
Like the X-Men Cyclops they wear glasses to protect others while they're doing it.
It's meant to be tongue in cheek. Men should be able to control themselves enough not to stair at breasts.
It's not that we necessarily mean to do it, we're wired for it, evolution is telling us to mate. That said, we do successfully manage to tap down a lot of our baser instincts. In the interest of humanity and society that should be another one.
Not once have I seen a man step on a tit.
I either missed the joke or missed that I typo'd something
"Stair at breasts" 😉
Ah, fair play. Google dictation is absolute shit but here I am.
this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2025
536 points (100.0% liked)
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