Tangent: The Male Gaze

My teenage interests in slash fic was a fantasy about being desired by a man without being socially degraded by his desire or having my identity as an individual subsumed by the ways society sees a woman or afab person who is a man's sexual partner as his property.

Seiya

I am not a woman. I am NB femme but I used to indentify as a woman and I was socialized as one so I still relate heavily to the experiences of women. I'm also bisexual and will tell anyone who will listen that as a bi person I feel much more secure in my attraction to men than most hetero women seem to be. Unlike most het women, I have interrogated my sexual desires and faced the fact that, yes, mens bodies really do "do it" for me. They aren't the only bodies that do it for me. But I would never imply that mens bodies or sex with men is unpleasant and something to be endured by women in exchange for emotional closeness with men the way I hear a lot of straight woman AND men implying. I love chest hair. I love the soft rippling musculature of a man who is physically capable and strong but also soft and pliable and warm. I like dicks and beards and the masculine "musk". And all of that does it for me visually and physically. However, I find that even if all those elements of attraction are there for me with a particular man, I will not be able to maintain attraction to that man unless I also respect him and find him emotionally attractive. In a way my attraction to men's bodies as objects is Contingent on my attraction to them as subjects that I to identify with. Even a man I have previously enjoyed the physical act of sex with and found myself very physically attracted to in the past, if subsequently I find that that he is self centered; inconsiderate of others; lacks integrity; is emotionally immature: then I will no longer be able to maintain my physical attraction to him. Or not to the same degree. Even if my body still responds with some attraction to that man, it will no longer be as intense and my enjoyment of the physical act of sex with him will be much diminished. Like it goes from great sex with chemistry that keeps me in the moment to mediocre less than fully satisfying mechanics. It's as though the fullness of my erotic enjoyment of someone requires and element of seeing them, identifying with them and feeling seen and identified with by them. And I don't know how common my particular experience is in other femme or afab people. I feel like when I speak to women who sleep with men, they share some element of this experience. And when I speak with men who sleep with men, I find they don't tend to report similar stipulations for their sexual partners. I feel like I hear from gay men about experiences of grinder as anonymous mechanical sexual encounters and hear that referred to as satisfactory for them in a way I don't think it could ever be for me. Perhaps this is because gay mens perception of the danger men might pose to them is very different from an afab persons perception of the danger men might pose to them? Maybe I need to respect and identify with my male sexual partners in order to fully embody my attraction to them because as an afab person I have been told and seen the statistics my entire life that the person I am most likely to be murdered by is a male intimate partner. And maybe that creates psychological environment in which I can only enjoy a mans body if I feel safe with him, and I can only feel safe with him of I feel like he sees me as a person. (Not to say that gay men cannot also be victims of intimate partner violence and assault, only that the threat of sexual violence has maybe not permeated every single conversation about how they're supposed to interact with the world and with other men the same way it does for afab people, so maybe it isn't such a defining feature of their mental conceptions of the world and their safety in it.)

Seiya

Ooh, the part about men feeling like their desire for women is inherently predatory and that's why they objectify (which leads them to be actually predatory!) was extremely eye opening! Also, thank you so much for pointing out that women are into guys with a feminine streak, I'm aromantic and asexual (which makes hearing stuff like this utterly fascinating and honestly kind of hilarious, like damn you live like this? wild) so I wouldn't know, but I see a lot of stuff online which makes it pretty clear to me that women love cute femboys and men do not understand that at all. The world would be a better place if more men did, I think. Oh and I forgot to mention, the part about eye contact hits different for me as an autistic person who finds making eye contact to be an act that doesn't come naturally and something that requires conscious and discomforting effort.

Asocksual

I wonder if the Netflix show "Young Royals" is an example of the "female gaze." Women were central to its production, the romance is (yes) soft, tender, built around desire and yearning more than gratuitous sex, and as a result I (a woman) find it way more erotically compelling than anything like Magic Mike.

Rose Dombegh

Watching this video was a fun exercise in realising how much a male-gazey dominated society has wrecked my sexuality beyond repair. It's a particularly disturbing reminder of how much of my self-image and self-worth comes from a sense of self-voyeurism, as though in order to self-actualize (self self self self) I must be able to view myself favourably from another person's (read: a man's) point of view. You know, I only really got into m/m after experiencing sexual assault and years of sexual coercion. I always assumed that some part of that interest must come from an unconscious desire to distance myself from sexual acts in order to find pleasure in them and to distance myself from a het dynamic that seems inextricably tied to gender-based violence and thus feels unsafe -even in fantasy. So I felt very seen listening to you talk about m/m in the context of women's sexuality.

Mighty Yam

i can't believe you got Werner Herzog to narrate on this video

Hiroshi McBride

i love your work so much natalie, especially from the perspective of an artist whose main interest is the perception and depiction of women! i literally took notes on this video for academic use and for my upcoming independent studio practice for university!

jeen

Really could relate to part 6. One of the most priceless gifts I ever received is the full-length mirror and jewelry cabinet at my Dad gave me for Christmas 3 years ago. Aside from it being a true symbol of his support and affirmation, I spend an hour or so altogether per day standing in front of it, making sure my broach is correctly positioned, my hair is just right. Broach, necklace, earrings matches or compliments dress colors, how much clearance there is between my skirt and the floor and how much shoe is showing, etc. And when everything is perfect, I will then just stand there in front of the mirror for a good 15 minutes or so. I have to build this "vanity time" into my preparations to go out socially. And when I'm out it's the idea that I look good to myself that cancels any thought of what others think. But the compliments do come and that's just a bonus.

Anna Drew

It's the old "being a sapphic teenager in the locker room at school but you don't know you're sapphic yet but you do know you feel deep burning shame at seeing everyone changing around you so out of respect to everyone else you pick a tile on the floor and Stare at it" conundrum

Ariel Rodriguez

People are upset about objectification...like we don't live in a world that treats objects better than people! We worship objects all the time! We go into debt for having the "right" car, the "right" shoes, the "right" phone. We throw all human right principles out the door to get the ressources to make those objects. A particular class of objects, addictive substances, seem to have a lot more agency than the humans who buy them! Now, think about how many love songs that describe men's romantic feelings as an addiction. Are we sure that a little girl who grows up in a society like this would NOT prefer to be an object with the power of peeling people away from their money rather than the crying, vulnerable, heartbroken subject?

Cynthia Sonier

"I heard someone posit once that fetishes form out of a misfired phobia of some sort." I can confirm it's true for my case that that plays a role, however i also remember it was present since i was a wee baby (i remember very early due to asd), so i think theres also some kind of inherent inborn neurological variability that leads to it even without any post-birth environmental factors. To clarify none of the things you named are my kink, but it applies regardless I think both of these contribute I also think theres different kinds of kinks, like leather, hand or foot fetishes are not analogous and that these different kinds behavioural kinks or fetishes that center around dangerous/vulnerable parts

Sappho's Friend

I told a friend once, “yes, I like boobs and have def fantasized about women, but I never interpreted that as being bi bc I assumed I’ve been programmed to be turned on by that thru the male gaze.” And my friend said, “maybe it’s not that complicated. Maybe you can just like boobs? Is it possible to just like boobs for any reason, and just accept that liking boobs = bisexual?” I have since admitted I am bisexual but have only gone on a handful of dates w women and find them so disorienting!

L

I heard someone posit once that fetishes form out of a misfired phobia of some sort. I think this was just forum philosophy without any real academic backing but if I'm remembering their argument right they were essentially making the case that a lot of fetish content centered around things that people without that fetish would find viscerally upsetting. Death, dismemberment, the more horrific kinds of monster fucking, transformation into inanimate objects, mind break, having something lay eggs in you, etc. Their theory was that they had at one point been so terrified of that concept that the brain coated it in a protective layer of sexual arousal to try and cope. A sexual stack overflow error. Certainly one of the more compelling hot takes I've ever heard on the subject but it still wouldn't account for the masculine propensity towards foot fetishes unless they meant to imply that men are uniquely likely to be terrified of feet.

Martel

I've also had very similar experiences re: reading vs seeing for sexual stimulation and the insistence of sexual urges on T. Another thing I wasn't prepared for (and I have no idea if it's a common reaction) was that my eyes started feeling like magnets drawn to chests. I never before had to try to look at someone's face instead of their boobs while having a conversation. Young, old, big tits, little tits, it doesn't even matter if I find them attractive. At least a few times a week, I have to consciously fight my gaze from drifting down. It's frankly mortifying and I can't imagine how I'd view women if that had been present since puberty.

Evan Deo

I am sure I'm not the only one who, as a heterosexual male, find himself in your descriptions of the lesbian gaze at women a lot. I've been having many of those same ambivalent feelings about my attraction to women, and there's a good reason I usually write stories from a female perspective, also getting a kind of enjoyment and emotional identification out of f/f stories (like yuri) that I don't really find elsewhere. I feel myself much closer to many of the stereotypes of female sexuality presented in the first half of the tangent than most perceptions of male sexuality.

DJ Jaylex

I've gone on and off testosterone several times due to ADHD and access barriers, so I've gone around the hormonal merry-go-round a few times, and each time noticed a shift in my sexuality. When on estrogen, I tend to prefer reading and imagining, like I have to be taken by "the story" of the moment. Sexual urges are dormant until "activated" by an external force, but can be pushed aside to be brought up later. It builds, but I can just put it away. When on testosterone, it's more like a constant and slowly increasing feeling of need, and visual stimulation works a lot better. LOOKING turns me on a lot more. Then there's the uncanny valley of hell, which lays somewhere between. When I stop taking T, there's a week or so of dead sexuality and I can't climax even if I try really hard. I crave affection and attention, but can't work up the appetite to actually engage. I think these differences cause a lot of tension in heterosexual couples... especially cis heterosexuals, since they can't relate at all.

Jasper Rose

Wait! Is contrapoints using an AI that immitates the voice of Werner Herzog? Haha, that's so fun!

ijbar

Im a fem cis lesbian, and in practice, when ovulating, feelings wise im often the googly eyed lust cartoon, while when not ovulating, the hand grazing neovictorian stuff kicks in lol. the intensity of romantic attraction doesnt really vary much with the menstrual cycle for me, but the more explicitly sexual side of things (horniness) does strongly. Hypomanic episodes will also ramp up the sexual side of things, even more so than ovulation.

Sappho's Friend

I just subscribed, and I am struck by the quality of your tangent videos! I would be happy with just you talking at the camera about whatever for an hour, this is such a treat!

cai willis

Natalie, I've been a fan for a while now but just joined your Patreon and am blown away by the fact that even your tangents are head and shoulders above many (very respectable!) creators' main content. Also, I think between this and the Twilight video, you are my sex therapist now? That is a joke, of course, but in seriousness, I currently identify as asexual because that seems to make the most sense with my personal experiences, but it still leaves me with a lot of questions. You've given me a lot of new perspectives to think about over the past couple weeks, and I'm grateful. Anyway, off to read a whole bunch of M/M erotic fan fiction before bed and think about what that means. Thank you for being amazing!

Leigh Hile

The Twilight video and now this one that I just gained access to are so helpful to me in unraveling poorly understood conceptualizations of feminist ideas that have made me feel very scared of men and like my sexuality is very wrong, i.e. that I have been brainwashed by the patriarchy to enjoy feeling small and I have to sacrifice my gender expression and sexuality to be a good feminist or even to be safe. So thank you for that! This content is extremely interesting and extremely healing!

Lauren Kawulicz

Lot of late bloomer lesbians say they experienced comp-het because they mistook desiring men with the ego boost that comes with being desired

Annelies

Fellow bisexual and I completely agree

As a bisexual everything is x10 more confusing tbh. And about the last part, I don’t think we have any (or enough) beautifully made or attractive lesbian or bisexual representation in the media, that’s one of the reasons we’re all drawn to the gays. There are so many gay couples that you could obsess over but there are just two shows about lesbians and they are not even that good.

You just explained my own sex life to me.

This was incredible. So many points hit home

Bryce Phillips

(0-6:30 min.): could the act of gazing upon a superior be interpreted as a privelege that the powerless do not have rather than something to do with the guilt of being gazed at? After all, in many instances, such as slavery and rape, the perpetrators do not believe their actions are morally wrong.

Thank you so much for this! Is there enough of a talking point for a tangent on the narcissism portion of the male gaze, and how the “type” of male character in movies has changed? Over the last decade, I’ve been weirded out by certain male friends of mine who claim to relate to and obsessively idolise characters like the Joker, Dexter, the serial killer in Saw. But when I ask them why, they get really paranoid or offended. When this was highlighted in the video, I instantly wondered why/how/what does this end up doing more widely to the real world these guys interact with?

i actually enjoy this style of video. i feel like sometimes i’m unable to share your more theatrical videos with people who are a bit more close-minded and dismissive. they get distracted by the fluff, and stop listening, i’ve noticed. even though i love and appreciate all the effort, aesthetic and all. i’m excited for your next video!<3

Thanks this gives me more structure to the thoughts I had after watching Saltburn. The female gaze/sexuality enacted by a male avatar. It was really interesting to see visually enacted in a film.

I just got here and haven't watched the Tangent yet but I'd just like to say that a main channel video on "Identity" would probably be my favorite thing ever and this is only a slight exaggeration. The concept of identity (and, yeah, the oft-maligned idea of 'identity politics') is one of my main academic concerns right now (yeah, I know, boooo) and you're a big inspiration to what I'm trying to do in My Political Science Journey (boooo again, but we're all nerds here, I reckon? So I think it's at least a little bit fine lmao)

This was such a fascinating watch! Really enjoyed this tangent.

Rewatching this I want to give my perspective on the "fujoshi" part of the video, I'm very intrigued by the statistic that says it's mostly straight women consuming M/M content, because in my experience for the past maybe 15 years in fandom, most of the M/M consumers I know are either gay/bi trans men, and lesbian/bi women. Trans men can easily "justify" it because they discovered themselves through identifying with fictional men, but there's a looot of discourse about women fetishizing gay men. I think you're right that it's a way for wlw to escape the shame and guilt of sexualizing women (and I think as you mentioned women can more easily identify with male characters), but I agree that it's tragic that a lot of women think that way. As a bi woman I say I consume less F/F because I simply haven't found a ship that gets me going, it's less prevalent and the ones I see are simply too cute and wholesome for my personal taste, but I know there's toxic yuri out there and I just have to look for it. I have a cis straight male friend who draws big titty anime girl porn and is a normal decent guy who treats women like humans, and very interestingly, most of the people who bought his art in person we lesbians (men would point and laugh at it). I find the feminist "stop sexualizing women" discourse very tiring because it's not that we shouldn't sexualize women, it's that we should also treat them like human beings. I've had a hard time explaining this to twitter leftists who are kind of falling into puritanical talking points lol.

Chazie

After watching this, I saw the tangent on Parasocial Relationships. This may be the reason why 1950s housewives loved so much the attractive, talented, gentle, and friendly Liberace... their daytime husband.

After I first watched video I had no thought. The idea that portrayals of sex say something about the social world we're making for ourselves isn't something that seems to come up often. I wonder if sex ed can have a role in correcting this (how do brainstorm ways to guide a discussion that would be helpful, not just another way for students to harass each other? this is difficult.), instead of leaving it as a liminal space for Andrew Tate types to fill by convincing anxious kids that "sex IS inherently about domination, and that's good actually". Hearing people my age say adjacent shit, a few years back, was wild. Maybe porn -shniff- is ideology -shniff-. When you mentioned that guys identifying with women will be helpful, I wondered, is the difficulty identifying with themselves a barrier to this? Like "the first violence a man is taught to do is against himself" sorta thing? At long last, I both had time to swing by, and remembered thoughts.

Aderyn Albarelli

Winter is a mean. 😞 I hope ya got some peeps to play chess and be spooky with, and if you feel you can afford to work less, I think your audience is the kind that would appreciate you taking care of yourself.

Aderyn Albarelli

Natalie, I agree with a previous comment, please give yourself permission to take breaks & to take the time you need! Especially in the final weeks before a new video, please try your best to take care of yourself -I know that’s easier said than done but you deserve to be treated well & looking after your wellbeing isn’t an indulgence it’s a NEED. Sometimes we set unrealistic or unsustainable expectations for ourselves because everybody’s a bit imperfect, but you’re not any less worthy or capable if that happens! Even though everybody can change, & we as an audience want to encourage your progress in being healthier & kinder to yourself, we don’t know you orthosocially & nobody should expect you to change or completely “fix” stuff, also progress isn’t always linear or visible to us! We’re so incredibly proud of you & you’re amazing exactly as you are. Girl, you’ve got this! & if you take more breaks - girl, you’ve still got this! & on that note please allow yourself paid vacation time! We believe in you (not like in a projecting expectations type of way) but like as said in Cinderella: Have courage & be kind (including to yourself, especially to yourself!) 🦋✨

highclass_lady

Where's the main channel video mother

Keegan Deathman

Can you make a tangent playlist?

Quickpawmaud