The Threat-Seeking Gaze

Are you reading to understand or through another lens?

The word “gaze” in social justice refers to a way of looking or perceiving that is influenced by socialization, culture, and power dynamics. For example, “the male gaze” refers to the way that men depict or perceive women as sexual objects for male gratification. In The Birth of the Clinic, Michel Foucault uses the phrase “the medical gaze” to refer to the way the medical system views people as individual body parts rather than a whole person. There are many other examples of this use of the word “gaze” in critical social justice, such as the “white gaze,” “colonial gaze,” “female gaze,” etc.

These uses of the word gaze often refer to the way a particular group is socialized into perceiving another group. For example, the “male gaze” does not just refer to the male perspective, but how that perspective specifically views women and the impact being perceived that way has on women. Even if a particular man does not view women through the “male gaze,” the concept still exists as a social construct and it is legitimate to refer to this gaze by the group socialized into, the perspective this gaze assumes, and the group whose power structure the gaze reinforces.

Often, the group best suited to understand a gaze is not the person gazing, but the object of their gaze. Many women intuitively understand the male gaze because they are viewed by it and regularly interact with it, while not perceiving the world from the perspective of that gaze. For many men, “the male gaze” is just their perspective. Since it is behind their eyes, it is not visible to them.

It takes an incredible amount of awareness for a person to separate their perspective of the world from how the world actually is. Even writing about the male gaze now, I notice the inclination to write “women are attractive” rather than “I find women attractive.” The first phrase removes me as the one making that judgment and presents attractiveness as an inherent quality of women. The second recognizes that judgment is a part of my perspective, that might not be shared by those who are not attracted to women. Though anyone can find women attractive, a woman reading the statement “women are attractive” would likely guess the writer was writing from a heterosexual male perspective.

Someone who is repeatedly perceived through a “gaze” will come to recognize it. A woman repeatedly objectified will recognize “the male gaze.” An Asian person repeatedly referred to as “exotic” will recognize “the Orientalist gaze” or “colonial gaze.” Some might not have the academic language to express these concepts, but they intuitively understand the experience and power dynamics these gazes refer to and their understanding is greater than those who gaze upon them.