I have recently been reading about the concept of
the male gaze, and more and more I am finding it to be a
feminist-
theory analogue to the religious conception of
original sin. The notion of the male gaze is that men view women as sex objects, and so that the various edifices of society reflect this view, and even are designed to facilitate this view -- the term originates in the analysis of
motion picture cinematography, but has since been claimed to apply to
pornography (naturally) and to the greater part of
art and
literature, popular
fashion, and
television commercials.
And indeed, insofar as women sometimes level a sexually objectifying eye at men, certain proponents of the male gaze notion simply class these women as being "temporarily male." Nobody seems to have considered the possibility that this objectification may actually originate from the female imperative--the
peacock for example is the
male of the
peafowl, and yet the one who must strut his plumage out there for the peahen to assert her arousal over--so who knows, perhaps what is at play is really an anciently incarnated
female gaze, and society is simply in a phase wherein the males are for a temporary few millennia female for purposes of sexual aggressiveness, and females are temporarily male for the same purpose.
But that aside, recall as well that you wouldn't exist, but for the naked fact that
every single ancestor of yours for five hundred million years has successfully mated, and so it seems to have served your existence well that at least somebody in each such exchange was libido-driven. And up until just a few million years back in that stretch, you and I (and every other human) had common ancestors, going all the way back to splitting cells in primordial seas. And since the invention of
sexual dimorphism, some living thing had to have gazed upon another of the opposite sex and been compelled by what they saw, drawn to it, desired sexual congress with it. So important is this process that it is built into our very existence at a fundamental level.
And this is why the classing of the natural outcome of this genetic tendency to desire as a
wrong to be righted is comparable to classing the same as a
sin to be repented. It brings to mind the lyric from the song,
Take Me to Church: "by Hozier: "I was born sick, but I love it. Command me to be well," which itself invokes
Fulke Greville's 1554 poem
Chorus Sacerdotum, which recites of man's plight:
O wearisome condition of humanity! /
Born under one law, to another bound; /
Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity; /
Created sick, commanded to be sound.
A man (or woman) who is born
heterosexual is no more to be faulted for the desires built into them at birth than is a
homosexual man or woman. There is neither sin nor wrong in being born as one is born, and (for the most part) acting within that nature, so long as such action does not yield to
violence or
deceit. And so when I find myself in discussion with somebody who frets about the imposition of "the male gaze" I offer that they ought to attempt to simply "pray away the gaze."