The Birds, the Bees, the Basic Truth–and Partnership
I.
So a guy in my neck of the world (Utah) looks into a woman’s eyes, and she changes the way she looks at him—because she’s mad or just for the fun of it or just to see what happens—and she changes the way she looks at him to a look of scorn or harsh judgment. I wish I had something comparable to offer women on the way men look and are interpreted as looking at women here in the places I’ve spent my time in Utah. It may be something well worth paying attention to.
So the guy looks down in shame, or maybe he’s insecure or maybe he’s wondering what it is he’s done to earn that look. Behaviorally, we’re shamed like that by our mothers, so the research suggests, and we automatically come to react to the cue, somewhat like Pavlov’s dogs. So the guy falls into himself, so to speak, paying attention whether wanted or not to his internal experience, his thoughts and feelings.
When he awakens from this drama, he notices his gaze has fallen to the place where her top breaks and gives way to her skin; lifts his gaze from the curves of her partially exposed breasts, from her cleavage—because he isn’t interested in projecting onto her his sexuality. At least, not without her permission, her interest, her desire. And he certainly isn’t interested in fantasizing about her, especially if he wants her as a friend, and wants to support her as a worthy, valuable human being beyond the sexual politics of our day.
So he looks up, past the necklace with its curious, unique, attention-riveting object of fascination hanging there, past the shoulders with the spaghetti straps, up past the continuity of her neckline that appears as beautiful as any landscape for its uniqueness, its aliveness, its presence. Perhaps he’s long ago let go of thoughts driven by dominator, objectivizing scripts that once noticed these features purely for their sexual potential, purely for their strict adherence to some constructed and enforced ideal of beauty. And lo and behold he looks up to see her looking at him with even greater furor! Now what was she thinking?
II.
A woman, a friend, who a guy hasn’t seen in a week or so gathers in a crowd where a guy is standing. In the intervening days, the temperature has gone from chilly to overcast to warm and sunny, and she arrives dressed in a way that makes her comfortable, as well as making her feel good. She steps into the circle and he turns his gaze to her, perhaps to acknowledge her as she walks into the circle, and finds when he turns his gaze to her, who happens to be shorter than he is, he’s inevitably looking down her top.
So he looks away. Riddle me this: was he looking for her top, down her top, fantasizing about her, indulging in a sexual fantasy, projecting his sexuality onto her? Or, did she step into his gaze, like a car or any animate being in nature, and when he recognized where he was looking, did he just…turn away?
Did he turn away in shame, or did he turn away out of the potential that his gaze may be misread? Is his turning away read as an act of respect, an admission of guilt, disinterest? How is it read?
It’s the first day of Spring. Guys have been shooting sidelong glances all day long at the girl, it’s late in the afternoon, and it’s warm. The other women in the group maybe see his glances, and may be primed by similar glances all day long—perhaps now read with the doubtless certainty of leering and predatory viewing. If you ever spent time with the males of the various generations in Utah I’ve known, that reading is more often accurate than not, but not all males I’ve known in Utah are prioritizing predatory viewing of females, either.
The women may or may not—after a long day of looks and self consciousness—harbor resentment, I cannot say. Resentment over the inability to control the male gaze, the instinctual gaze, and/or the thoughts? Is he indulging? Is he ashamed? Is he ashamed because that is the behavioral programming that has been socialized into him, and is triggered rather than by guilt, by judgment? Is he defensive? Is he acting out dominance?
Is he reacting to shame over an actual act of sexual colonizing, sexual appropriation? Is he reacting out of resentment for having been shamed and framed for an act that cannot escape the mutually agreed upon fact of the gaze? Because the gaze is incontrovertible, whatever it’s meaning or use.
Still, far different consequences are possible if the shame is based on indulgence, on reducing a friend, a woman, to a colonized and appropriated sex object, versus an instinctual reaction that, when noticed, is adjusted for and let go of.
What if the guy is used to dropping his thoughts, for the benefit of supporting the women in his community, conferring respect and an evolved practice? What if instinctual, reactive behavior, whether out of stress or biological desire—rather than projected desire—occurs and is adjusted for, but the women in the community have had enough of guys projecting their sexuality on them, treating them as objects of their dirty little fantasies, dehumanizing all in the course of making them their sex objects?
And vehemently inhabiting the self-fulfilling prophesy seems to have been the way that many of the guys I’ve known react to the socially manufactured shame and dominance enforced against a natural biological response. It seems we sometimes may rebel against the shame and dominance, by indulging in it.
