Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!ucivax!gateway
From: fester@wolf.cs.washington.EDU (Lea Fester)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Who gets to look
Message-ID: <13781@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 19 Nov 90 15:42:20 GMT
References: <8654@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <658245246@lear.cs.duke.edu> <1990Nov11.171709.25842@arris.com> <1990Nov16.161821.17287@iti.org> <1990Nov17.155213.23767@arris.com>
Reply-To: Lea Fester <fester@wolf.cs.washington.EDU>
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
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In article <1990Nov17.155213.23767@arris.com> uunet!arris!rshapiro@ncar.ucar.EDU (Richard Shapiro) writes:
>What's the relevance of this? The point is: the position of being a
>spectator is, like most social positions, gendered. This is not to say
>that only men can be spectators; it is to say the spectator position
>has long been a "masculine" position. Even a cursory look at classic

Right.  In daily life, this is abundantly obvious any time I walk
around with men - most of them compulsively and blatantly check out
every attractive woman we pass by.  (I say 'compulsively' because I
think, they do it so much, it must be unconscious behavior.  But I
could be wrong.) I think of this as the "I LOOK, THEREFORE I AM
(male)" mindset.

>There's an undeniable social fact, at least in this country: women are
>FAR more conscious of their appearance than men are of theirs. The
>gendered nature of spectacle helps to explain why this should be so,
>and also suggests that this is important ground for feminism. Ending
>women's status as objects rather than subjects, the object seen rather
>than the seeing subject, must involve consideration of women's own
>self-identity, insofar as that identity is formed according to
>gendered positions of spectator and spectacle.

Another option is to render men objects as much as they are subjects.
(I differentiate this from simply making women subjects, that is, not
seen.)  This gives women the option of being an objectifier rather
than an object.  Or rather, since one cannot choose to not be an
object, treating men like objects as well at least brings parity into
the world.

I don't like the second alternative, but it IS within our power,
unlike the first.  (I.e. we can treat men like objects, although we
cannot make them not treat us as such.)  I tend to do it only in
retaliation, i.e. to people who deserve it.  When I see some man
looking up the length of my body, I wait until he is looking at my
face so that he sees me looking at him, then I stare at his crotch.
The results generally prove that although men protest that looking at
women is harmless and uninsulting, they feel differently when they are
being objectified.

LeaF