The Gaze II - Scopic Violence

From The Politics of Mean

For a brief period, feminists talked about a 'scopic violence', a way in which men looking at women was harmful. I never liked this concept. Although it conveys how uncomfortable being looked at can make us feel, I didn't like how it equated Gaze with physical force. 

Nowadays I realise I also dislike this term because it equates effect with intention. When someone is physically violent, there is intention to harm as well as effect. When someone is staring at us, they may not mean to be threatening, but we feel it that way. Sometimes staring does get too much, it's rude. Sometimes, though, we are uncomfortable with it because we lack confidence. We can't believe a man is admiring us so we get anxious and fearful, not knowing why he is staring.

I didn't realise that I was uncomfortable with the way men are always looking at me until I got a black eye. Men look at me so constantly that it had become like wallpaper. I didn't realise things could be any different. 

Richie MaCaw's black eye

One day while playing rugby, I put in a poor tackle and as the opposition player slipped out of my grasp, her knee came up and hammered me on the cheekbone. A lump like an egg popped up. By the end of the match I had started a superb shiner which lasted three weeks. 

Suddenly nobody was looking at me. I had this amazing feeling of freedom, as if there was space around me wherever I went. Men would glance very quickly at me then not bother to look any more. I used to joke that they could see I must have a man already to take care of me! (My girlfriend at the time didn't think it was funny.) The only person who asked me 'where did you get that black eye' was a policeman in the queue for bagels. When I grumpily said, looking up at his six foot height from my five foot two in a cute minidress: "I picked it up playing rugby, alright?" he burst out laughing, it was too ridiculous not to be true. 

It was a huge relief to walk around without feeling like I was being constantly surveyed, checked out. The worst experience I had with, let's call it scoping cuz the Fellas are scoping you out when they do it, was when I was a young girl in Rome. I was just sixteen, fresh from a bucolic upbringing in Somerset. Looking back now, I realise I was very beautiful but at the time I thought I was just a scruffy kid. 

American Girl in Italy (1964)

Rome was a nightmare. Even in the hotel, I could not come out onto the terrace for breakfast without men standing in small groups staring at me and loudly saying: "Bella, bella," to each other. Although I had been admired in my sleepy little Somerset school, so shy and British were the boys there that I failed to realise at least four of them were longing to ask me to go out until another of the lads told me. I didn't believe it. After this rustic gentleness, the hard staring and evident lust of grown Italian men did feel like a kind of violence. Italian women, Turkish women learn early to expect this kind of attention and to treat it with scorn, but I was totally side-swiped by it, not least since my family also still thought of me as a scruffy kid and failed to protect me from it. Nobody said anything even when when we were walking along a dusty road and a man pulled up in a car and started making strange offers to me.

Let's compare this to another example. I have also been troubled sometimes by the glaring stare of butch women in nightclubs. 'What's the matter with them?' I have thought to myself, alarmed by their eyes following my muscular little skirted butt round the room. Years later - too late! I realised they too were lusting after me. They were also too shy to come and say anything. They were hoping I would interpret their anxious scoping gaze and go and flirt with them, bold laughing femme that I was. 

Nowadays I have realised that I am a Damn Fine Woman. I am a lot older, and that too gives me a bold laughing confidence. 

I know that if I want to wear certain outfits, I can expect to get scoped out. This morning when I was riding the bus into town, I got that familiar feeling - as if the hairs on the back of my neck are whiskers sensing something. I turned my head sharply and there was a pair of male eyes scoping me. I just stared back from behind my sunglasses. I know now that the ones who stare do so because they imagine I am out of their league, so they may's well get a good look in. It is a bit annoying cuz you feel like you should perform for them: toss your lovely head, walk elegantly instead of just jumping up and stomping down the bus aisle. But hey, I could wear a sack on my head, I guess. I'm sure I would stop attracting admiring looks if I did that ... 

From Craftypantscarol.