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The 'male gaze' as a female fantasy - by Anuradha Pandey

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When the male gaze is mentioned in feminist discourse, it’s usually acting upon women as a disembodied force, divorced from the man training it on you. A man need not be staring at you to feel it. It may not even be from a specific man but ephemeral, an unnameable agent of patriarchal control via sexualization of the female body. It may be through the phone, a man gazing at the picture of a woman, in which case she isn’t aware of it other than the gaze she has pre-applied to herself while taking the photo. It may be a man actually evaluating you, and it’s always an act of power in the feminist parlance. Here, I’m distinguishing between a man simply looking and the feminist reinterpretation of looking as domination. Like any woman, I’ve experienced unwanted male attention. I can’t stop a man from evaluating, but I don’t have to react or acknowledge. And the indifference takes Herculean effort to cultivate. The gaze acted on me because I allowed it, and it destabilized my life in my twen

The 'male gaze' as a female fantasy Part 1: Men evaluate physically, women judge totally Anuradha Pandey Dec 07, 2025 263 107 41 Share When the male gaze is mentioned in feminist discourse, it’s usually acting upon women as a disembodied force, divorced from the man training it on you. A man need not be staring at you to feel it. It may not even be from a specific man but ephemeral, an unnameable agent of patriarchal control via sexualization of the female body. It may be through the phone, a man gazing at the picture of a woman, in which case she isn’t aware of it other than the gaze she has

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