Since the publication of John Berger’s seminal 1972 Ways of Seeing, the specter of the “male gaze” has been at the forefront of much feminist art and film criticism. “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at,” he wrote. “This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.”
But what is a scopophilic woman (this critic included) supposed to do with that? It is one thing to resist a life of lonely objectification; it is another to see one’s own power to look as inevitably, and irrevocably, mediated by patriarchy. {read}