Gaze respectfully...if you must gaze at all

I have recently realized (I'm slow) that what I have problems with are the practices of looking...looking at bodies racially, sexually, politically, according to size etc.  Even when it comes to the naming taken on in identity politics that demands first a practice of looking.  So, in other words we name ourselves as "Fat" or "Caucasian" or "Natural" or "Femme", etc we might be undermining social practices that can create invisibility and silencing, but we are also continuing to normalize ways of looking that condone a kind of objectification   Identity politics seems to reach a kind of cul-de-sac of activism because of this.  Not that identity politics are dead, nor are they useless, but practices of looking in many ways defy, undermine and damage empathy.  Practices of looking encourage the gaze of power because the person doing the looking is involved in evaluations that are produced within a system that has powerful social norming practices.  Visual media alone, to which we are subject to daily, makes a practice of highlighting bodies that are considered normal and abnormal...and oddly it seems, we willingly turn this practice back on ourselves.  We practice, in this visually centered culture, identity politics that take up the tools that normative media outlets use in order to try and re-define, for example, what is considered "normal" and "abnormal".  So we ask others to gaze at us in particular ways because, we hope, it makes them think about us, and allows us to re-insert ourselves where we have been ousted or silenced.  The result it seems, is that we end up reifying the looking and gazing that ultimately leaves out the experience of being, especially as connected to others.

Experience of being, you ask?  I look, I see and I experience because, after all, I am a product of Western culture where seeing is a part of my experience.  Fine, but that kind of experience is one that challenges a relationality demanding to be understood, nay to be embraced.   Porn, for example, is an example of this.  I have gone back and forth on porn...hetero porn, gay porn, feminist porn...you see...even in naming the genres, they are named by the ways in which we see the people in these categories!  Porn divides up people into body parts, sizes, predilections, etc. but doesn't remember the interaction, the experience of the people except insofar as they relate to one's own pleasure...These practices of looking are found in the most mundane day-to-day interactions and end up as political fodder (Obama's looking at the Attorney General).  Strangely it is the feminists who are considered radical because they take issue with Obama's comments on A.G. Harris' looks as inappropriate, rather than Obama's comment as a radical departure from the professional norm.  Sadly, the idea that professional behavior would not condone a boss saying, "She sure is a cutie" (Obama's comment in a nutshell), is clearly still a theoretical benchmark.  What feminists bring to light and have brought home (for me) in this Harris instance is that in the moment that Obama made his comment, Harris was turned from an Attorney General into an object of pleasure for men (or women).  We went from interacting with her ideas and with her, to looking at her.  Evaluating her based on her (in her case) attractiveness.  This constant evaluation of attractiveness is a practice of looking and one women in particular undergo.  We must constantly negotiate when we are being interacted with and when we are being looked at, and this happens so seamlessly it is hard to tell the difference at times.  And if we have a problem with it, and it (oops!) leaks out in a unacceptable way (looking "out loud" in a professional setting), it is the person who is looked at who is at fault.  She is too serious.  She shouldn't have been that attractive.  This can also be seen in a culture that still defends rapists the ways in which came to light in the media coverage of the Steubenville rape case.  NBC, ABC, CNN, you name it, employed discourse that highlighted the youth of the men involved, their "normalness" and their tragedy.  This is not to say that they are not victims in a way.  They too are part of a system that teaches them to be predatory in their gazing.  They are trained from a young age to look at women and evaluate them based on various categories of attractive (i.e. "slut", "lesbian", "easy", "virgin", etc).  We can see these men as belonging to us, to our culture and so when NBC airs a program that takes an "inside look" as to how the lives of the rapists had been upended by the accusation, we can sympathize with them.  This despite that the "accusation" that had video and audio corroboration by the rapists themselves (posted on the internet) laughing at the victim for being "dead" at the time of the rapes.  She was unconscious.

Looking is often done, in a noticeable and acceptable way, by the powerful.  People who determine the scope and parameters of looking.  And even as we try to change the terms of how somebody gets represented we don't look at why looking is important to begin with.  Because the practice of looking, the art of looking, if you will, its terms and so forth, are constructed by those with power, people who are disenfranchised are especially subject to practices of looking.  This is why we can talk about poverty porn, because we understand that the gaze on poverty is much like the gaze we have in passing scantily clad people, we look for our own pleasure.  We evaluate what we are looking at based against "normative" models and we appropriate the visual before us in whatever way we like.  We "rubber neck" with fear, loathing and lust.  In the United States, women of color have especially have to endure these evaluations.  Harris is probably not unfamiliar with this and neither are many others.  This is a land where colonialism laid down its laws and boundaries, and where rape was an acceptable tool to conquer unwilling natives, slaves, wives and employees.  This is what is meant, in part, by "rape culture".  This is why the girl who was raped in the Steubenville rape case felt ashamed to come forward.  She had been looked at in a way that was acceptable.  She had made mistakes and was subject to the "natural" practices of over-wrought teenage men.  The culture condemns both, the men legally and her culturally.  She will always be viewed with suspicion and even hostility (which is why she has had to move away from Steubenville).  She engaged in the same drinking behavior as the men, but in her case she passed out.  The scale of power already normally in play shifted even further in favor of those who could now practice their looking unimpeded and act on that practice of looking.  In other words, the practice of looking was boiled down to its essential, the practice itself.

I am not saying any kind of looking, and it's kissing cousin, objectification have NO place, but that this is probably best left done between people for whom power and distance is no issue.  Or if the practice of looking is a mindful one, one where the looking itself becomes highlighted.  Objectification in this instance might even be fun.  Looking and gazing, once the current practice is substantially addressed, might even encourage empathy, rather than a pornographic overtone.  Looking or gazing will never be something that we can completely undo.  However is it possible in making ourselves aware of the practices of power we engage in when looking that we can produce a different kind of looking.  So the next time you find yourself evaluating someone else based on their looks, "positively" or "negatively" remember that you are probably engaging in a practice that inherently reflects the power of social norming behind it.  Gaze mindfully.  Gaze respectfully.  If you must gaze at all.