Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2014-06-16 07:28 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2014-06-16 07:28 pm
[ SECRET POST #2722 ]
⌈ Secret Post #2722 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 067 secrets from Secret Submission Post #389.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - spam comment ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Re: Confession thread
(Anonymous) 2014-06-17 04:10 am (UTC)(link)Re: Confession thread
(Anonymous) 2014-06-17 06:01 am (UTC)(link)This conversation is making me think there's something subtly lesbian-phobic about the popular distinction between the male and female gaze. There's a place for men to admire men and women, and a place for women to admire men, but women admiring women is like...okay, even though we acknowledge that there's a difference between, say, what guys tend to like in men and what women tend to like in men, what about what women tend to like in women? Does anybody talk much about that?
Re: Confession thread
(Anonymous) 2014-06-17 08:23 pm (UTC)(link)1) I don't think there's anything wrong with finding those centerfolds or that art hot as fuck, because it is hot as fuck. The problem is that it's something hot as fuck that's produced in an exploitative structure but that doesn't change the fact that it is hot as fuck or make that reaction somehow wrong. More broadly, I don't think there's a problem with the male gaze as such - human being is embodied being, human beings are semblances and appearances and appear to the gaze of others. It's something that's inseparable from existing as a human being and it's one of the ways that we interact with other human beings.
The problems (and this is such a common thing that it's rote to say and I feel like a dummy but that doesn't mean it's not true) comes from preponderance and exclusivity and exaggeration - the fact that the camera is always an implied male viewpoint, the fact that a sexualized male gaze is so widespread, that there's so much less female gaze in media, and the existence of a hyper form of male gaze that reduces and caricatures and turns people into nothing more than an object, and so on and so forth.
2) I think there are differences between the way that female gaze and male gaze operates. Obviously we're in the realm of massive generalizations here but I think those differences do exist in identifiable ways, more and more. I mean, there's really not anyplace in fandom (this part of fandom anyway) where you can just talk about boobs, but not only that - fandom just has fundamentally different conversations about male and female characters. I mean, it doesn't just extend to physical characteristics. The kind of appreciation that gets expressed about male characters, those conversations don't seem to happen the same way about female characters. For instance you can say that a female character is badass, you can say that they're pretty, you can say that they're hot, you can say that they're adorable, but it seems very rare that you get a conversation where all those qualities are combined, whereas for male characters it's not at all rare. That's only part of it of course. Some of it is also just in what is and is not attractive, and there are some times when it really isn't different, which is also OK.
You can kind of see this trend in porn, too. It seems to me that slash fic and het fic (let alone het porn) actually mostly operate differently. They seem to do different things. The way that slash fic writes about bodies and interactions between people, and the way that het fic and a lot of femslash writes about those things, are different. I'm not saying that het fic is malegaze and that slash fic is femalegaze - it's probably more complicated than that. But I do think that the way that the way that male characters get written about in fandom is qualitatively different from the way that women characters get written about in fandom, and from the way that women get portrayed in the culture more broadly. It's tough to put your finger on what the difference is and trying to do so would make this a million times more complicated. But I think the difference is there, and I think it's a difference in the way that it's talked about and thought about. I mean a lot of the same stuff is going to be hot either way, you know?
And I don't think there's any reason that a space like that couldn't exist in fandom. I think there's room for being attracted to female characters the way you're talking about in fandom. It would probably not be a space entirely for being gay (as shown by EG I am a basically hetero dude) but there's no reason it can't exist.
Okay that's a lot of words, hopefully not all of them are incoherent, but basically I agree with you that it's okay and should exist
Re: Confession thread
(Anonymous) 2014-06-17 05:07 am (UTC)(link)Re: Confession thread
(Anonymous) 2014-06-17 05:07 am (UTC)(link)