Male Gaze and Patriarchy Sheree Cannon

The male gaze is simply about men making women an object for their own enjoyment or to give satisfaction to other men. Although the male gaze first became recognized in the 1900’s it has carried out into a lot of today’s society, not only with painting and drawings but with more so with music, videos and social media. In John Berger’s book “Ways of Seeing” he made the central idea of the male gaze very easy to understand he expanded in ways that made me think a bit deeper into things. John Berger states things such as, “She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men (pg64).” While I was reading this my first thoughts were, that’s not true, but after thinking about it, it may not be true to myself but it may be some other women’s reality. It almost made me think do women participate in the male gaze without knowing? Berger compares the male and women presence which really is just describing the male gaze from a man’s view in contrast to what a women’s purpose is. “A man’s presence is dependent upon the promises of power which he embodies and a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself and defines what can and cannot be done to her (pg46) To me the two most important words in these quotes are power and define. In the male gaze, the objective is for the women to be some sort of object that the man controls. The man controls the pose, what the women is wearing also the ultimate goal of what the portrait or drawing is meant to display. While the man has all the power, the women is being defined by her makeup, the beautiful clothing and the feminine features. As I said in the beginning the male gaze may have been recognized many years ago it still exists in today’s society. Unfortunately, if you ask anyone what the male gaze is they would be completely lost and confused. Male gaze is actually seen everywhere, on tv, in movies, on social media etc. Now knowing what the male gaze is it seems that it stands out to me in day to day circumstances.

Giovanni Bellini

If you ask any man what the term patriarchy means I can almost guarantee they won’t know what it means. The question is how can someone not know what something means when it basically is describing them. Men have a sense of entitlement over women without doing much of anything expect being a man. It’s natural for men to take the lead or for men to get the easy road but do they question why, most likely NOT!! But the simple answer is patriarchy! Bell Hook defines patriarchy as “a political social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak” (Hooks18). We can all just conclude the weak is pointing to women indirectly. People but mainly men see women as being fragile and weak needing their protestation from just about everything. These standards are basically engraved in gender immediately, even before the child is born onto this earth. For example, because you were born onto this earth a boy you MUST wear blue or green because those are “boy” colors and if your boy child likes pink the world id OVER because pink is such a fragile color. Another way of saying a girl color. Patriarchy is everywhere around us and for some it is our foundation. I consider myself to be a very spiritual person and in church they teach about how the women must submit to the man, and God made women to help man. This just makes me think to how far back patriarchy had begun. Patriarchy to me is just giving boys a set of rules they force upon them until they reach a certain age and it is just becoming natural and they begin to understand their sense of entitlement as a man

 

Death of Patriarchy,  MaryBeth Edelson . 1976