“It’s literally impossible to be a woman.

You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don't think you're good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow, we're always doing it wrong?

You have to be thin, but not too thin, and you can never say you wanna be thin. You have to say you wanna be healthy, but also, you have to BE THIN.

You have to have money, but you can't ask for money because that's crass.

You have to be a boss, but you can't be mean.

You have to lead, but you can't squash other people's ideas.

You're supposed to love being a mother, but don't talk about your kids all the damn time.

You have to be a career woman, but also, always be looking out for other people.

You have to answer for men's bad behavior, which is INSANE, but if you point that out, you're accused of complaining!

You're supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you're supposed to be a part of the sisterhood, but ALWAYS STAND OUT and ALWAYS BE GRATEFUL. But never forget that the system is rigged, so find a way to acknowledge that but ALSO, always be grateful!

You have to never get old. Never be rude. Never show off. Never be selfish. Never fall down. Never fail. Never show fear. Never get OUT OF LINE. It's too hard! It's too contradictory, and nobody gives you a medal or says 'thank you!' And it turns out, in fact, that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also, everything is your fault.

I'm just so tired of watching myself, and every single other woman tie herself into knots, so that people will like us.

And if all of that, is also true for a doll just representing a woman, then I don't even know." -Gloria the barbie movie

this is it. this is exactly it oh my god.

Video game cutscene introducing a female non-humanoid alien who looks exactly like her male counterparts because her species isn’t dimorphic in any way that humans can perceive, but the camera angles and audio cues still do the thing. All slowly panning over her dorsal ridges before getting to her light-sensing organs and lingering on her secondary manipulator appendages just a bit too long.

Good Omens is queering TV/storytelling - part 1: GAZE

I would argue that part of why Good Omens is so refreshingly queer is because it does not cater to the male gaze (which centers around the preferences - aesthetic, romantic, sexual, visual, logical, emotional, political ... - of mainly white men in positions of power):

no oversexualization of groups or types of people: Women or characters that could be read as female presenting are not overly sexualized. In fact, some of them are shown to be grimy, slimy and not sexual at all. All of them are real characters and not just cardboard-cutout on-screen versions of male misogynistic fantasies. They portray real people with real people problems. They are human, or exempt from our categories when portraying angels or demons. There are no overly sexualized bodies in general (as has so far also often been the case with young gay men, PoC, etc.), no fetishization of power imbalances, and not exclusively youthful depiction of love and desire.

sex or sexual behavior is not shown directly (yet): All imagery and symbolism of sex and sexuality is used not to entice the audience but is very intimately played out between characters, which makes it almost uncomfortable to watch (e.g., Aziraphale being tempted to eat meat, Crowley watching Aziraphale eat, the whole gun imagery).

flaunting heteronormativity: Throughout GO but especially GO2, there is very little depiction of heterosexual/romantic couples; most couples are very diverse and no one is making a fuss about it. There is no fetishization of bodies or identities. Just people (and angels and demons) being their beautiful selves (or trying to).

age: Even though Neil Gaiman explained that Crowley and Aziraphale are middle-aged because the actors are, I think it is also queering the idea of romance, love and desire existing mainly within youthful contexts. Male gaze has taught us that young people falling and being in love is what we have to want to see, and any depiction of love that involves people being not exactly young anymore is either part of a fetishized power imbalance (often with an older dude using his power to prey on younger folx) or presents us with marital problems, loss of desire, etc. – all with undertones of decay and patronizing sympathy. Here, however, we get a beautifully crafted, slow-burn, and somehow super realistic love story that centers around beings older than time and presenting as humans in their 50s figuring out how to deal with love. It makes them both innocent and experienced, in a way that is refreshing and heartbreaking and unusual and real.

does not (exclusively) center around romantic/sexual love: I don’t know if this is a gaze point exactly but I feel like male gaze and resulting expectations of what a love story should look like are heavily responsible for our preoccupation with romantic/sexual love in fiction – the “boy gets girl” type of story. And even though, technically, GO seems to focus on a romantic love story in the end, it is also possible to read this relationship but also the whole show as centering around a kind of love that goes beyond the narrow confines of our conditioned boxed-in thinking. It seems to depict a love of humanity and the world and the universe and just the ineffability of existence as a whole.

disability as beautiful and innate to existence: Disability is represented amongst angels by the extremely cool Saraqael and by diversely disabled unnamed angels in the Job minisode. Representation of disability is obviously super important in its own right, but is also queers what we perceive as aesthetically and ontologically "normal". Male gaze teaches us that youth and (physical and mental) health are the desirable standard and everything else is to be seen as a deviance, a mistake. By including disability among the angels, beings that have existed before time and space, the show clearly states that disability is a beautiful and innate part of existence.

gender is optional/obsolete: Characters like Crowley, Muriel and others really undermine the (visual and aesthetic) boundaries of gender and the black-and-white thinking about gender that informs male gaze. Characters cannot be identfied simply as (binary) men or women anymore just by looking at them or by interpreting their personalities or behaviors. Most characters in GO, and especially the more genderqueer ones, display a balance of feminine and masculine traits as well as indiosyncracies that dissolve the gender binary.

Feel free to add your own thoughts on this in the comments or tags!

This is SO REAL like first of all, the matriarchy they initially had was still this hyper-feminine mess where all the barbies still had to look perfect and attractive and have their hair and makeup done etc wereas the Kens simply, did not. Not to mention Alan even. And then still the only pressing harm of the Barbie-run society was that Barbie didn't give Ken much of her time in the way that he wanted her to, and as a result he subjugated every woman in the world?? He made all the Barbies ramp up the performance of the male gaze, spoke down to them, stole their literal houses and hard work, and enslaved them, and then the message was still like "uwu Barbie should've given more time to Ken so he didn't react this way" like no FUCK OFF are you kidding? The Barbies should've just systematically eliminated the Kens because at best they're useless and at worst they're clamoring to cause actual material harm. I WISH the movie lived up to "deeply bizarre and anti-man". It's actually really telling where we are in society that so many see this as an actually radical perspective filled with man-hate when it was literally so coddling to men. Don't get me wrong either, I did enjoy it for what it was like I know it wasn't going to go into an actual deep leftist analysis or anything but this reaction to it as though it had is making me nuts

“However vast her narcissism, the Young-Girl doesn't love herself, what she loves is "her" image, that is, something that is not only foreign and exterior to her, but that possesses her, in the full sense of the word. The Young-Girl lives under the tyranny of this ungrateful master.” (Theory of the Young-Girl, Tiqqun)

“Men act, women appear. Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at”

-John Berger, ways of seeing

Male gaze: Female gaze:

The queer gaze is so real because if you told the avarge straight man that there was a male character in Re-animator that has people obssesed and down bad for him they would assume it's Dan, the traditionally attractive and masculine "normal" man and never in a million years even consider that it might be Hervert.

It's just funny to me how detached from the male gaze our taste in men actually is.

the male gaze distorts reality

started watching movies again (just don't like movies really) and one thing that surprised me was how the male gaze isn't just about staring at hot naked ladies, but how it distorts reality. the male gaze creates 'people' and 'situations' that simply don't exist.

the biggest example to me is the femme fatale. the devious woman using her sexuality as a weapon. whether the trope is a blonde bimbo bubblingly bouncing her boobs, or a sophisticated older brunette casually letting the strap fall off her shoulder and threatening to reveal her bust, they are different incarnations of the same concept. the women are knowingly using the sexual desire of men against them.

i watched a particularly egregious example where a group of women were sent to seduce a group of men, hanging off their shoulders, caressing their chests, with the promise of further sex if they came to another room. the true purpose was to humiliate them by getting them to disrobe in front of other people.

when i was a kid watching these scenes, i was convinced that this was a real thing women did - there were women out there who knowingly used their sexual appeal to get men to do things they otherwise wouldn't. it had to be such a recurrent trope for a reason, right? it even shows up in movies for children - remember the hot pink pegasus seducing hercules's pegasus?

but as an adult, i find myself confused watching these scenes. i've never seen anything like this happen. i've never met someone who says they do things like this. it's one thing to be flirty and dress in a sexually attractive way to get free drinks, but it's quite another to be so sexually forward to 'deceive' and 'trap' men. not to mention, it's... dangerous. if the man even believes he's being deceived, he can turn violent. it's a foolish move.

maybe the only real life example I can think of is honeypots. but honeypots are actual spies, trained by governments, and spies are selected to have less empathy than the average human being. do we really think that among untrained women there are so many seductresses with the skill of trained spies?

"what about sex workers/prostitutes?" while the honeypot spy is employed by a government agency, prostitutes are paid by the very people they are "seducing." prostitutes have to put on an act - they need to pretend to be the sexually active and perpetually horny woman men both want and fear. but most prostitutes are not like this; they are in it because they need money fast, not because they think fucking strange men for pay is a sexy and desirable career path (fun fact - read the diary of madam pompadour, the most famous courtesan and the embodiment of aristocratic seductress, and you will find she actually did not like having sex with the king and dreaded it. not even our real life courtesans can live up to our fantasies.)

the entire idea of a woman using her sexuality against men is simply a male fantasy - and the flipside is that it's a male anxiety, too.

men wish that women would approach them and find them desirable and initiate sexual intercourse with them, without the men having to do any of the work. there's nothing inherently wrong with fantasizing that a hot person finds you so special and hot that they want to have sex with you right away. men and women of all sexual orientations entertain these secret fantasies.

but then, there's the fear - "what if these hot women are actually only pretending to be interested in me, to get something from me? and i'm too horny to think straight and i actually give it to them?!" and that is the male anxiety, that for a moment, they actually end up losing the upper hand. despite the fact that such a situation is actually pretty rare in real life (I asked several male friends if they had personally or second-hand encountered such a situation in real life, and none could say they had), it is a common trope in fiction. it is especially lascivious in film, where the seduction before the fall can be portrayed in softcore porny ways.

"this is a foolish idea, everyone knows fiction and reality are separate." well, we know they are separate, but do you know which parts? if you don't already know the facts of the situation beforehand, how can you tell when fiction is lying to you and when it's drawing from reality? do you think the young, sexually inexperienced kids watching disney's hercules know that 'seductresses' aren't a common threat when we watch this scene? or will they learn and think "ok, a thing that happens in grownup life is that hot ladies seduce men, and you gotta watch out for them!" what basis does a child or even a teenager have to know this is false? especially when this is a common trope?

"women are sexually available and active - and deceitful" is a harmful trope. when you read about the ancient greeks stereotyping that women are lustful, they don't mean it in an "aww shucks, these girls just love having sex!" kinda way, they mean it in a "women are unfaithful and will use any means to get dick, including taking advantage of their hotness" way (this is why 'whore' is the ultimate insult for women). because if this trope were real, then it would be dangerous, wouldn't it? honeypot spies are dangerous for this reason. luckily for us, it is not real, but the male anxiety surrounding it continues. the male desire/anxiety around it informs porn tropes about 'punished sluts'. it informs incel tropes about the 'cock carousel'.

and this is what i mean when i say the male gaze distorts reality. it fabricates, out of whole cloth, a person that does not exist in any meaningful way - a woman who seduces men while demanding no emotional involvement, who is eager and willing at all times, who can turn the very desire for her existence against those men to get what she wants. she is not repulsed by or afraid of the men she pretends to be attracted to. before, we had to content ourselves with art and novels glorifying this false woman, but film allows her to exist in flesh and blood. cast a real woman, have her speak words and move her body in ways dictated by a man, and suddenly she appears much more real. grow up with enough of these, and even women writers can start to think these "seductresses" are real people. she can try to reclaim her and turn her into a badass boss babe, or she can condemn her as immoral and pathetic, but the deception is complete - the argument is no longer about whether this woman exists (she does not), but about whether she is justified in her ways. the female writer does not realize she was nursed on the male gaze for years, and it will take serious seeing with her own eyes to realize what is the real world and what is male fantasies and fears.

“Although they are housed on her person, from the moment they begin to show, a female discovers that her breasts are claimed by others. Parents and relatives mark their appearance as a landmark event, schoolmates take notice, girlfriends compare, boys zero in; later a husband, a lover, a baby expect a proprietary share. No other part of the human anatomy has such semipublic, intensely private status, and no other part of the body has such vaguely defined custodial rights. One learns to be selectively generous with breasts—this is the girl child's lesson—and through the breast iconography she sees all around her, she comes to understand that breasts belong to everybody, but especially to men. It is they who invent and refine the myths, who discuss breasts publicly, who criticize their failings as they extoll their wonders, and who claim to have more need and intimate knowledge of them than a woman herself.”

-Susan Brownmiller, Femininity

the "female gaze" is a myth we have invented to make ourselves feel more powerful. the male gaze is reinforced with the resources that men have due to their male privilege. it is then used to objectify women at large and often perpetuates as well as justifies misogynistic violence such as rape and sexual harassment. under the male gaze, women are then expected to perform femininity and we are treated as if we OWE the world beauty. if we fail at femininity, then we are punished for it. there is no female gaze because women have never had the power to do the same to men. what women find attractive is not the "female gaze" and to equate the male gaze to simply "things men find attractive" downplays the reality of misogyny.

Male attention means nothing. Women have been conditioned to treat male attention as a prize or a measurement of their attractiveness. But chasing after it will only leave women feeling empty and used. 

“your man was in my dms” is not a flex. if he’s not in yours he’ll be in another girl’s dms. Male attention says more about a man’s character than a woman’s attractiveness. Men in relationships who lust after women online see instagram models and pornstars as archetypes. The onlyfans models and pornstars he follows represent an idea of his ideal woman. A woman crafted by the male gaze that will fulfil any sexual desire he has like a dancing monkey. 

I know an extremely pretty girl I used to go to school with who’s bf of three years follows and drools over ig models and pornstars. This post was actually inspired by her, because she is probably the most gorgeous and smartest woman I’ve ever met in my life and yet her bf is not satisfied. You can be the most conventionally attractive woman in the world and a man will still lust after a girl who fulfills his porn inspired fantasies better. 

And remember ladies, on the subject of mortuaries: Necrophilia is a particularly male thing. In this study, 95 percent of necrophiles were found to be men. In addition, 100 percent of the cases of necrophilic homicide were perpetrated by men. (source)

E L A I N A R C H E R O N | Through Azriel's Eyes

For @bird-on-the-wire33

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James Bond is what men think a Tumblr sexyman is.

Benoit Blanc is what a Tumblr sexyman actually is.