Male Gaze and Patriarchy assignment 2

Salmah Aldaghady

Assignment 2

Professor Caçoilo

The male gaze is the “act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and in literature, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer.” In other words, this term, male gaze represents the idea that when women are being portrayed in an art form it is shown that they are being used for the satisfaction  of the male watcher. It as well shows the joy for men that are gazing at the work of art in a visual representation.

This quota began around the Renaissance period and unfortunately as of today, the twenty-first century it is still occurring. The term originally was created by Laura Mulvey, a feminist around the time period of 1975. The Male Gaze is very powerful in craftsmanship as well as pop culture. These two tools provide explanation to why women act a certain way and are visualized by the manner they portray and that is how they were actually painted in that certain way. 

In John Berger’s reading “Ways of Seeing”, he says, “A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself” (16).  This shows that women are constantly looked at without realizing and she is always thinking of how she may seem to the “male gaze” who is looking at her. Below shows a picture  from the Daily Art Magazine that was published by Alina Nevskaya. This picture shows a great representation of how a woman is continually watching herself.

In the reading of Bell Hooks “Understanding Patriarchy” he says, "Patriarchy is a political system that insists that males are inherently domineering, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence" (Hooks 18). Hooks is trying to send us a message by explaining that patriarchy is the most reasonable reason to why the male gaze is still occurring in society till today.

An example of the male gaze is Sexsim, today, the world has this objective that males must be the one with the upper-hand to show their dominance. They have to show that they are stronger at all times. When men are put in an act of sexism, they tend to feel more dominant. In a movie called  “Fifty Shades of Grey”  the main character, Christian Grey is a great example of patriarchy. He portrays this sexual abusive relationship with the woman that came for an interview at his company, Anastasia. Christian shows his dominance in a paper that he gives to Anastasia that shows all the sexual things he is capable of doing to her whenever he desires. He takes her to his house where he has a private room just for the both of them but she is not allowed to enter it without him. This room carries equipment that he will use on her for his pleasure and puts a  blindfold on her just so she does not see what is being done to her. He shows his dominance in this movie and Anastasia is the submissive character where she gives her all to him and he does whatever he desires to make him satisfied and pleasured. The picture below shows how Anastasia is wearing the blindfold so she has no clue of what is being done to her and Christian showing that he is the one is control and is the dominant character and gets to do whatever he wants to her.

A personal example I have as a have grown up in an Egyptian household, my parents are very strict about me and my sister. When going out we have a very strict rule that it can’t be by ourselves and our older brother or cousin had to be there with us as all times. For men, he can go out anytime he wants and can come back home at any time as well, there was no curfew at all for him. This is very common with most Arab parents. Boys and Men are more dominant and have more power than girls. As I am married now my husband has many rights on me, I can not leave without his permission, I must be home at a certain time, I cannot do things without permission even if it's as simple as going to school. They have power that no one can compare to, and as a wife I must respect him and do whatever he wishes for. They on the other hand can go out whenever they want and return when they want. Another example is that when my family and I go back home to Egypt, if girls leave the house together with no man with them, they will start to cat call and whisper dirty things at you and this happened to me numerous times. I was once walking across the street from my house just to grab bread and breakfast things for my family as a man approached me on his motorcycle and called me a “working tool” which is a line that Egyptian men use when they see a woman with an attractive body for sex.

After understanding the terms the male gaze and patriarchy, I started to relate it to my own self and to back home in Egypt and how its very similar to what we are learning in class and how often this occurs. Today men still look at women for their body and how its shaped and not look beyond that. They tend to not see the other aspects a woman can have, a woman can be intelligent, creative, and much more but thats is not how men perceive women these days, they are only looked at if they have a good body then they can have it and enjoy it for their pleasure but if she does not have a good body she is looked down upon.  It is very disgusting to see that this is the only concern men have for women. Which is not right because having an attractive body is not what it should be about, women are not toys and are not created just for the pleasure of men. And it is very sad to see that the world is not changing and when I have kids of my own they will eventually see the inhumanity of this society and how women are looked at and treated.