User:Psauer26/Male gaze

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Understand that male gaze, in terms of the black female body, is based on class and gender divisions. Recognizing this is critical to unveiling the structure of oppression the gaze is built upon. Class divisions happen historically over time as ideologies are formed and reworked to reflect the current class system of an area. Influence of gender and racial divisions create the structure that separates different identities into separate groups. For that reason, black women will always have to deal with the gendered divisions white women deal with plus the racial oppression black men face.

The use of sexual difference to justify discrimination towards women is comparable to how pseudo-science has been used in the argument black people are less than human. This establishes black women as biologically sub-human or as an object to means of reproduction and sexual desire. It is important to note that gender divisions are not backed by reproduction as they were constructed as tools of patriarchal control and used to support that ideology. It is harder to apporad racial and ethnic division in such a straightforward manner because of the lack of complete separation between groups; there is too much crossover due to influence of colonialism and migration.

The racial discrepancy continues into the feminist movement that has historically ignored and excluded black women, so much to the point, that the separation of the terms ‘feminism’ and ‘black feminism’ had to be made to address the issues of BIPOC women that were never addressed or supported by the white feminists. In white feminism, the term ‘women” does not refer to women of all races but specifically white, eurocentric women; black women are grouped with black men and not considered in this movement.

Black feminism uniquely studies the intersection of race, gender and class. Though it was started as a way to focus on the scope of the overlooked black women, it can also leave POC women who are not black unaccounted for. Neither term is perfect to account for the struggles of all ethnic groups of women; feminism cannot be looked at as black vs white as that does not encompass the vast range of ethnic identities. That said, black feminism is the first account of feminism focusing on the oppression of women who do not fit into the western beauty standard.

The beauty standards set by Western society have historically sexualized and fetishized the black female nude due to an attraction to their characteristics but at the same time punished black women and pushed their bodies outside of what is considered desirable.

In Lisa E. Farrington’s “Reinventing Herself: The Black Female Nude”, Farrington said the European female nude has mostly been depicted as passive and complacent to a masculine gaze, or in special occasions has been depicted as sexually liberated and as a femme fatale that uses their sexuality to overpower men. Black women have been portrayed as overly sexual and deserving of rape and sexual violence since they were being brought across the ocean from Africa. The power dynamic between enslaved women and their captures force women to risk death or submit to a chance of surviving till the end of the long voyage. This was used to create a narrative that black women are overtly sexual creatures and with uncontrollable desires reflective of animal behavior.

Farrington said that instead of perpetuating the “gaze”, women artists have the ability to reclaim dominance over their bodies by painting the female nude themselves. This counteracts the male artists who have traditionally painted women in the nude to assert their own sexual dominance over a women subject. A woman painting a female nude completely flips the gaze because a female audience replaces the male audience.

Western art has lacked representation in all areas and it historically fails to portray black female bodies in the same context European women have been depicted. While this is a race issue, it is also a gender issue and highlights the intersectionality that black women navigate, because when they are shown in art, they are sexualized and put in submissive positions like their white counterparts, plus any racialized bigotry towards their race. It puts black women in a position that marks them as “others” in a group they identify as. It also means black women are being considered as ugly or undesirable because they are not seen the same as other women who were shown to be the epitome of beauty in the art world.