altonin:

I think there’s a perception that the male gaze is necessarily sexual and that’s imo out of line w its original theoretical basis and with reality. I think the presence of gay men as cultural and aesthetic curators who decide what is artistically beautiful and worthy of praise in womanhood is an expression of misogyny that comes from basically the same place as ‘she should have big tits because that makes me hard’; the same entitlement/ almost ‘authorship’ of women’s bodies is imo reflected in the accounts women share of sexual assault by gay men, basically being treated as a mannequin or toy, a dress up doll

I think gay men exempting ourselves from the male gaze reflects misunderstanding of what the male gaze is; to my understanding, a pervading cultural norm which says that women literally are as men see them, and which asserts that women 1) do not have independent perspective & 2) should be subject to the constant observation and judgement of men

I think gay men get so defensive about this bc we have gotten really used to thinking of ourselves as exempt from anything but vestigial misogyny bc we’re not on the heterosexual chessboard or because we’re ~soft men and the fact that this has reached the point of us downplaying our own capacity for sexual assault, or else throwing ~fetishising slash fic~ (as though they are remotely equivalent issues) in the face of women who overwhelmingly approach us not as enemies but as ppl whose expressed first instinct would be to want to see us as brothers, is completely inexcusable