A bit thought about Female - Male Gaze
A bit of thinking on my issue with people who have the "male gaze is bad, female gaze is good" stance: These are the same types who will roast and mock women’s trashy romance/BDSM erotica. It’s like they only care about the "female gaze" if it caters to their comfortability. If you think the female gaze is good, do you also apply that to a lot of female-aimed literature that features rape, paraphilia, and taboo romance fetishes? Most people who claim to support the female gaze only do so because the female character designs aren’t sexualized—which is valid, but at the same time, they’ll attack a lot of female-aimed media with transgressive or taboo elements. The female gaze is more than just whether a female character is sexualized or not, and I wish people understood that.
Like, No, I think people need to realize that reducing the "female gaze" to just "the female characters aren’t sexualized" is shallow and reductive. This is why you’ll see people calling certain gacha franchises "female gaze" just because the female characters have modest, elegant designs—even when the writing is blatant waifu-pandering. Nobody talks about how female-gaze media has a different philosophy in characterization and storytelling compared to male-gaze media.
I’m also not a fan of the idea that if a female character isn’t sexualized, it automatically means it’s female gaze. Plenty of male-gazed or male-targeted media feature women in modest clothing. One of the biggest male-targeted franchises has many female characters who aren’t sexualized at all.
Anyway, the female and male gaze shouldn’t be a strict dichotomy of "good" and "bad." I hate how it’s turned into bio-essentialist nonsense. Especially in recent years, with so much media pandering to everyone/omnipandering, the lines have blurred. It’s a useful term for discussing which audience a work appeals to—not some moral binary where "This Gaze is Ontologically Evil and panders to evil audiences, while the other one is Ontologically Good."
Like, No, I think people need to realize that reducing the "female gaze" to just "the female characters aren’t sexualized" is shallow and reductive. This is why you’ll see people calling certain gacha franchises "female gaze" just because the female characters have modest, elegant designs—even when the writing is blatant waifu-pandering. Nobody talks about how female-gaze media has a different philosophy in characterization and storytelling compared to male-gaze media.
I’m also not a fan of the idea that if a female character isn’t sexualized, it automatically means it’s female gaze. Plenty of male-gazed or male-targeted media feature women in modest clothing. One of the biggest male-targeted franchises has many female characters who aren’t sexualized at all.
Anyway, the female and male gaze shouldn’t be a strict dichotomy of "good" and "bad." I hate how it’s turned into bio-essentialist nonsense. Especially in recent years, with so much media pandering to everyone/omnipandering, the lines have blurred. It’s a useful term for discussing which audience a work appeals to—not some moral binary where "This Gaze is Ontologically Evil and panders to evil audiences, while the other one is Ontologically Good."
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like obviously there is a lot of history and sociology around the prevalence male-oriented media which assumes attraction to women and includes misogynistically-written, sexually suggestive female characters, and that's a huge issue which warrants criticism! but crystallizing this trend into these two Ontological Categories with no room for nuance just reifies gender essentialism, as you say. (and ignores common areas where the dichotomy immediately breaks down, like Things Which Include Sexually Suggestive Female Characters But Are Not Misogynistic, or Things That Are Ragingly Misogynistic And Also Made To Appeal To Women, which is, like, so many things...)
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Not to mention, there are plenty of female creators making works that appeal to men, and male creators making works for female audiences. So this term just makes it feel like if a creator makes something that appeals to male audiences, it’s considered bad, and if it appeals to female audiences, it’s considered good. It only reinforces more stigma and doesn’t help at all.
Like, I get what people are going for, but surely there’s a better way than trying to evangelize the female gaze as some "unsinful" gaze that did nothing wrong — especially when a lot of this mindset ends up demonizing art that has sexual or transgressive elements as “bad” and “problematic.”
It’s always like that, and it ends up infantilizing women too.
Like, what does this say about female-authored media that includes such elements (misogynistic themes, sexual content, taboo genres, etc.) if they keep hammering that those elements are bad just because they often show up in male-gaze media?
>Things Which Include Sexually Suggestive Female Characters But Are Not Misogynistic, or Things That Are Ragingly Misogynistic And Also Made To Appeal To Women
Exactly, lol. Like, I’ve read and watched a lot of female-authored works that have incredibly misogynistic elements and are very sexual, and I’ve also seen male-authored works that aren’t sexual at all and treat their female characters with respect.
What really bothers me is how people who tend to label things as “male gaze” focus only on the sexualization of female characters. They always recommend or uplift works that don’t sexualize women — but then, when you actually look at the writing, it's incredibly misogynistic, or the creator themselves (mostly men) holds misogynistic views.
I legit find plenty of ecchi or fanservicey series that's treat their female characters with respect than some shounen series with modest & strong female characters.