Re: male gaze and feminism

I am not familiar with Chris Weedon's work, but I think anyone writing about 'male gaze' in feminism is indebted to and engaging with the work of Laura Mulvey in film. Mulvey wrote a very influential piece in 1975 introducing the idea of the male gaze in regards to film and the act of watching/consuming.

See Mulvey, Laura (1975) â??Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinemaâ?? Screen 16(3): 6-18.

Also, must add that familiar old admonishment that we not try to sum up what "feminists" think or say because feminists are a vast and diverse group. Within feminism, for example, there has been long debate about sexuality, with some feminists decrying an inherent domination in heterosexual sex and other feminists taking a "sex positive" stance as an explicit contrast to what is seen as second wave feminisms rejection of sex. This contrast between second wave and third wave feminisms is interesting in re: the suggestion of innate male and female natures...second wave feminists organized around an idea of universal male and female positions in society, where third wave feminists are more informed by post-structuralism, less likely to posit a universal woman, capable of theorizing other structures of power.

Stephanie Brown



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