The Male Gaze

The Male Gaze

Othering

            Othering means mentally classifying an individual or a group of individuals as being not part of the ordinary people. Dismissing a person as less human and less worthy of respect and dignity is often easier than always keeping that person in mind as a person capable of having emotions, priorities, reflexes, motivations, ideas, and many other subtle reflexes. In the early days of human civilization, it was significantly important for groups to come together, hence needed joining hands between friends and enemies. Thriving required people to be tightly knit together and look out for each other, as people were likely to belong to the same community, an share the same genes.

Benjamin Franklin came up with an experiment which showed that people eventually come to hate the people they treat badly. If a person feels guilty about how they treated someone else, a class or group of people, but can’t reconcile the guilt with their perspective of good people, they tend to cover it by othering the people they feel they have wronged. After making someone feel less of a human, it is easier to distance the person from empathy, to avoid feeling bad about not treating them right. Another exercise, Brown eyes, Blue eyes, further show how people can readily be consumed by a group identity which subconsciously forces them to isolate other people and only embrace those who are similar to them in a way or the other, even when the difference is meaningless, arbitrary and unnoticeable.

The Male Gaze

The Male Gaze is a book that gives the examination of a phenomenon of a concept about the male gaze which extends beyond academic readings and becomes a normal cultural conversation across boundaries regarding discipline. Male gazing has received stigmatization, as well as disparagement as a concept that reflects misogyny and an objectification instrument, which is usually justified. The book, however, presents an argument and justification that another perspective of understanding male gazing is by creating a practice and illumination that is politically progressive, as well as intellectually, and aesthetically progressive. This paper seeks to give a recount of the Author’s perspective as a male gazer which formed the foundation of her writings.

The male gaze is a term used mostly by feminists to objectify a spectator of the male gender sexually. The male gaze was an initial brainchild of Laura Mulvey when she wrote an essay titled Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. According to Mulvey, the term meant a woman who was viewed as a spectacle in cinema. Several other feminists have described multimedia, film, and print material using the word, citing that they are products of the male gaze.

Sexual objectification refers to when people perceive an individual to be an object for use, and only meant for fulfilling sexual desires. The male gaze and sexual objectification are comparable because they are both theories reflecting feminism, and affect both genders alike in the current culture. Feminists opine that sexually objectifying an individual, is a significant part of the patriarchal society where there is no equality between men and women. In her work, Mulvey does not include trans genders and homosexuals, even though her feminist views have brought to light the current patriarchal trends in society.

Mulvey’s work symbolizes women as bleeding wounds of castration. She subconsciously brings up her child in a patriarchal image, hence continuing the patriarchy. Mulvey asserts that the film industry is narcissistically portraying women as men’s objects. The sector has somewhat built upon voyeuristic fantasies and perversions of their target audiences. The male gaze satisfies spectators in both active and passive ways, the spectator being a man, while the woman is the spectacle.

According to Fredrickson and Roberts, in their writings; Objectification Theory, they affirm the consequences behind the male gaze, and how women from different ethnic backgrounds are perceived as sexual objects. Sexual objectification has led women to monitor a particular self- image constantly, causing them mental disorders and stress. Sexually objectifying women, as well as gender oppression, have similar results such as sexual violence, and employment discrimination.

Effects of Television to the Public Sphere and Citizenship

Citizen journalism refers to an aspect of public media that shows how tools of communication are used. Such communications are brought by the internet and include blogs, websites, photos, videos, and commentaries by people who witnessed certain events. Such sources are made and accessed by a large number of people across the world and is otherwise known as democratic or participatory journalism. Citizen journalism allows users who take part in journalistic practices to create, express, and document information.

In recent times, websites and social networks have emerged thus bringing out new communication areas, journalism, and information for the twenty-first century. Multimedia has been effectively democratized; hence each citizen can become a reporter. Citizens can do this by proposing information at a particular value. Citizens, however, do not seem to care about the traditional gate-keeping roles and obligations that journalism comes with. Such purposes are like vetting sources, facts verification, aggregation, and news judgment.

Some journalists do not report the original material. They instead rely on reports from outside and re-publish headlines collected from other sources, a process called aggregation. Aggregation is part of a gatekeeping function, and particular items are included while others are set aside for exclusion.

Media Insufficiency

Goode (2009), asserts that democratic journalists are people who supply media outlets with their share of news content and may be a part of specific social movements. Relying on media brings division among people. Amanda Harper in her video tries to understand how people perceive the issue of whether citizen journalism can be a replacement for professional journalism. She aims at carrying out an analysis on which of the two sources can be seen to be more reliable than the other. Some people would not trust either; some would not trust news organizations, while some would trust both, but would confirm whatever information they got from credible media.

Conclusion

            Gender and sexuality is not something that an individual is born with. They acquire these traits through interacting socially with people in their environment, and is largely influenced by patriarchy. The male gaze is equally relevant as it is dangerous as it has the same effects as gender oppression and sexual violence. It is not wrong for women to feel the need of maintaining a particular self-image of beauty and sexiness. The problem arises on how beauty is defined as a way of making men strategically gain power. The male gaze is not only a way that manipulative men use to trick women, but also viewing them in terms of sexuality and other sexual relations which in the long run demeans women.