Fellas! Has this ever happened to you?
You’re at the grocery store, stocking up on Hot Pockets and Mountain Dew, when all of a sudden you discover a human female in the middle of the Frozen Food aisle with her shopping cart. You point out that she is blocking your access to the T.G.I.Friday’s Cream Cheese Poppers; she apologizes and moves out of your way.
Seems innocent enough, right? NOT SO FAST. This lady may have just HARVESTED YOUR MALE GAZE for her own nefarious purposes, using her ability to get your attention to “wield …power over you for narcissistic or material gain.”
According to Gynocentrism.com publisher Peter Wright, writing for Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men, this lady may have been using a SEEKRIT FEMALE TRICK known as THE BLOCKADE.
This happens when you are the target of a woman who wants to slow you down and make you absorb her presence. She will stand in the doorway, middle of the footpath, or in the shopping center aisle sometimes aided by a shopping trolley which she leaves strategically placed across the aisle.
Sneaky sneaky!
If done well, this forces an interaction: “Excuse me, I’ll just move your trolley so I can get past,” to which she replies “Oh, I’m so sorry,” while flashing her most attractive features at you – her favorite dress, beautifully shampoo’d hair, or that smile she was famed for in high school.
Damn these wily females and their habit of REGULARLY WASHING THEIR HAIR.
And this is but one of many sneaky male-gaze-harvesting techniques practiced by the modern female.
Men’s Rights Activists have long argued that women secretly control men using the hypnotic power of their sexy,sexy bodies. Warren Farrell, the intellectual godfather of the Men’s Rights movement, famously suggested in his 1993 book The Myth of Male Power that women in the workplace use “miniskirt power” and “cleavage power” to get the better of their male bosses.
When it came time a couple of years ago to pick a new picture for the latest edition of this book, Farrell couldn’t quite decide which sexy female body part he wanted to highlight, ultimately settling on an arty picture of a woman’s butt, apparently the fundamental source of female power over hapless lady-butt-loving men.
But as Wright makes clear, women have much more than butts in their, er, arsenal. Sneaky women can “harvest” the male gaze by:
Wearing brightly colored “hats, shawls and scarfs … with the wearers settling for nothing less than complete molestation from every set of eyes in the immediate vicinity.”
Using eye-catching accessories to draw male attention — from handbags to dogs and children. Yes, that’s right. You may have assumed that the woman you saw walking down the street this morning with a small child in tow was simply, you know, being a parent, but in reality she may have been trying to SWIPE YOUR MALE GAZE.
[C]hildren can be fawned over, or chastised, just as a target male walks by, where mother will say “Don’t let that nice man see you eating candy” or “Don’t get in the way of the nice man or you might get hurt.”
I’ll take “sentences never actually uttered by any human female for $400, Alex.”
Walking down the street without even so much as glancing in your direction. Yep, it may look like she doesn’t give two shits about you, but smart men know better! Especially if the woman in question HAS ARMS and is wearing CLOTHING and SHOES.
Strutting gorgeously, exuding self-sufficiency with an I-don’t-need-a-man look, the strutter has mastered the art of appearing disinterested in attention, while making a distracting physical display of swinging arms, loudly clopping heels, eye catching attire, and a chin-in-the-air look that begs a second glance from the target males.
But wait, you ask, if these strutting women aren’t looking at the men whose attention they want, how can she tell if she’s HARVESTED THEIR GAZES? It’s all done with mirrors. Or at least with shop windows. Wright claims that women tend to use the
Look At Me Strut … in central business district [sic] where she assiduously scans shopfront windows to capture all those reflected male gazes that her empowered strutting dreams of capturing. Her skill at using shopfront windows to look at both herself and the reflected faces of those gazing at her rises up to an artform that allows her to look sideways and yet not trip over when having little focus on the road ahead.
HOW DEVIOUS ARE THESE SNEAKY SIRENS OF CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT?
Other male-gaze-harvesting tricks include: Talking loudly (with friends) talking loudly (to no one in particular), gesturing, and of course “bamboozaling with boobs.” Strangely, Wright omits the old “drop the handkerchief” ploy, which is totally a real thing that doesn’t just happen in old black and white comedies.
Stay safe out there, boys!
Did they mention the sneaky technique of wearing earbuds and staring out the window? Or reading a book and not watching the people around?
How am I stealing male gaze when I’m doing those things? Is it more reflections? The reflections in my glasses?
I NEED TO KNOW.
So the first thing that jumped out at me is that this reads approximately like an old treatise on witchcraft might (and thereby gives me a mental image of harvesting male gazes for use in, like, potions or something)
The second thing was that basically all possible behaviour is covered by at least one of these concepts, which suggests that women are attention-seeking merely by EXISTING
Which is probably rather the point >_>
Steal a person’s gaze, isn’t that a superpower? And on harvesting a male’s gaze, is there a time period? How long do you have to wait between seasons before the crops are ripe?
And having harvested this precious male gaze, what exactly is it used for? Raising baby male gazes?
@ Some Guy
I was thinking the same thing. They’re so eager to misinterpret any “female action” through their own self-centered lens. The idea of women existing for themselves doesn’t seem to have crossed their scared little minds.
This is why I use Apple’s new “Holographic Head”, which only gives the APPEARANCE that my gaze swivels to these brazen hussies’ attempts to beguile me!
meanwhile, my real head is tucked ever so safely up my ass!
WINNING!
My first thought was, “Oh, ew, no thank you, I’d rather not attract the male gaze at all.”
Of course, I associate “the male gaze” with creeps and gross guys, not all guys. So of course I don’t want to attract that, let alone harvest it.
Jesus christ what kind of monster is this man?
I’ve been run into by little kids with their parents looking bashful rather more than once. Never were they worried about their squishy little kid getting hurt — they were embarrassed about being a bother.
I always smile, both because it does make me happy to see little kids being silly and because I want to assure the parent that I’m happy to be part of the village. They usually smile back, usually while rolling their eyes.
Wait… is that eye-rolling actually them storing my soul? Oh shit!
Oh, don’t pretend! They KNOW we know you know!
Unwarranted self-importance much?
When I blockade innocent men in the supermarket with my trolley and Massive Hypnotic Boobs of Evil, it’s so I can suck their life-force and bodily fluids, then hide the shrivelled husk in the freezer under the oven chips.
Oh, damn, I’ve said too much.
Also, I now have this song running through my head. It’s been years since I even thought about it:
Women existing in public, sometimes with their children? How nefarious! Walking while not filthy? Purchasing food? Terror! Clearly this is somehow about insecure men. It isn’t like women are people who just go places and do things.
This sounds like something a serial killer would write.
Meanwhile, I thought the problem with women was how we don’t make ourselves pleasing enough to the male gaze and how we don’t give them the time of day because we are wicked, fat, glasses wearing, short haired, feminists in yoga pants who fuck everyone but them?
Ye gads, that’s so… guh. This is why I needed to come back to this site more regularly–the sheer inanity of the stuff David digs up acts as a sort of mental purgative.
A dog harvests male gazes? Is that doubled if the dog is female? I need to know these things because it’s going to get up into the 60s on Sunday and I was planning on walking Bailey, who is female down by the creek. I’d just like to have a guesstimate on how many male gazes I can expect to collect. I’d also like to know if a bag of dog poop counts as a flashy male gaze harvesting accessory. Last time I took Bailey to the creek she somehow managed to poop three times. I’m thinking I could really do some quality misandry. Especially if I wear my bright blue shoes. I figure I’ll use the energy from the gazes to strengthen my boob bamboozling power. After all, warmer weather is on the way and I’ll have many opportunities to visibly have boobs in public. I might as well make it really count!
Seriously, though. This shit creeps me right out. Manospherians take it to a ridiculous extreme, but it’s pretty common for men to believe women do things at them. It’s really the kind of dehumanization that makes it easy more them to decide that it’s okay to catcall us because we wouldn’t have worn a cute outfit if we didn’t want attention from every single man we pass by. Or that it’s okay to rape a woman if she’s drunk or wearing a short skirt because she’s asking for it. Every little mundane action is a form of passive consent.
Uck. It gives me the willies.
I’ve actually seen the “blockade” maneuver used numerous times in real life, though always by douchebros targeting women for sexual harassment.
I thought of witchcraft too! Women harvesting the male gaze for their own evil purposes may be the most INANE thing I’ve ever heard of.
For a second I felt pity for the absurd author of this nonsense. I can’t imagine being so lacking in reason. AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD!!! lol
And, yeah, when I read “male gaze” I first thing I think of is the “ewwww, stop looking!” response.
The sane thing happened to me in the supermarket last week. Someone blocked me from selecting some soup while they fiendishly pretended to be having trouble selecting a can. Only it was an obese man in a scooter.
Man, I can’t believe that I fell for his insidious plan. I actually imagined that he wouldn’t have wanted to be gawked at, when actually he was stealing my precious life energy the whole time I waited.
not at all. that tip about using the freezer and hiding the desiccated corpses under the chips is a good one.
I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
You don’t need my newsletter, you can hear me bitching from the other side of the living room.
Regardless of whether these tactics are successful at harvesting the male gaze, what is certain is that none of them work on male gays.
EverythingIsRidiculous: Okee, now don’t be giving away our secrets.
I find this fascinating because this is not the reaction WoC get at all, and black women, with or without children, only seem to elicit rage or are completely ignored. I’m also pretty sure women with disabilities, the elderly, or Latinas, gay, or Asian women standing with their husbands get different treatment. Can those women harvest anything useful?
I’m a black woman, so can I harvest their rage to pay my light bills or something? If I’m in the company of my four yr. old niece, do I get extra, and can she collect some too, or is she too young for that sort of thing?
Also Rage is of no use to me if it’s not worth money.)
Mandatory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY
I’m pretty sure this is how this whole “harvesting” thing is really supposed to work.
Yeah, I mean…why is it bad that you notice someone every once in awhile? People assault their senses by not being nondescript enough? It makes no sense.
– “STOP TRYING TO GIVE ME A BONER YOU CRAFTY HARPY”