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!
“but I think the sad fact is that the set of people that the author considers women is a rather small subset of the set of people who consider themselves women.”
Yeah, probably the same thing with every woman who isn’t white or Asian and over thirty, too.
These MRAs are so depressing with their inanity.
If I am blocking access to the TGI Fridays cream cheese poppers, it is because I am contemplating how many boxes to take home, and I will absolutely cut someone if they take one of mine.
hats, shawls and scarfs
Mmyeah, what man isn’t turned on by a nice hat, shawl, or scarf? Hawt!
Okay, I just have got to admit that even though I do eventually wash my hair and my boobs do ONE HECKING BAMBOOZLE (god, I love the word bamboozle), if I stop to look at a shop and notice a bunch of guys staring at me at the reflection, my most likely course of action is feeling a cold sweat down my back, entering the store, calling an uber, and only leaving when it arrives.
Hell, a few months ago a guy added me to Facebook claiming he has been watching me come and go for years, because he works in the street across mine. He saw me going to school, saw me working, going to the Supermarket, dammit, he knows my mom. Now I have no idea where exactly he works and swear by god I never saw him (not that I’d notice anyway, even trying, I’m really airy), and now every time I walk in my own neighbourhood I feel like I am being watched. It doesnt help that every now and then he comes telling me he saw me here or there. And it isnt even an ugly guy, he is quite handsome, but that shit is such a psychological terror for me that I dread him. So yeah, so much for these fucking fucks who think we enjoy this. I feel like that guy in the Truman show.
But yes, my gaze harvesting has been plentiful this year! Soon I will have enough to… to… Wait, why am I harvesting it again?!
Chiomara, once you’ve harvested sufficient male gazes via bamboozlement, I think you acquire a deadly gaze of your own, and can turn men to stone with a glance. This is known as the cockatrice carousel.
Phh, all that windows stuff is such old hat these days. If you really want to harvest the male gaze you need to get with the times.
@PI:
I figure this is them divesting themselves of all responsibility. They’re no longer the active participant in staring at women, they are the victim ‘having their gaze stolen’ (Imagine I typed that phrase with letters decreasing in size as I lost the will to say it).
It takes such a warped world view to even make this work. I wish they’d take some bloody responsibility for their own actions instead of reframing everything to make it someone else’s fault every sodding time.
Little bit cross now.
Also, regarding word repetition and becoming meaningless – semantic satiation. I looked it up the other day for no reason at all and nope, doesn’t happen to me either.
And then I noticed @Nequam already got there. Ah well.
Am I alone in thinking that the concept of harvesting the Male Gaze, then packing it into shipping crates and smuggling it to other towns to sell to shady types who don’t ask whether it’s stolen or not, sounds like something directly out of Fallen London?
Also:
Moggie wins all internets forever.
@Moggie + @EJ:
++++++ Superb repurposing of MRA rubbish.
They sound like Scooby Doo villains. “We men would be colonizing planets and inventing things, if it weren’t for your meddling scarves!”
Yeah, that’s what’s holding you back from greatness. (eyeroll)
Lately I’ve been finding it more efficient to walk around with a combine harvester. When I walk anywhere with a group of women, it’s like we’re an agribusiness.
I’ll take “self-absorbed jerks” for 100 Alex.
Seriously, dudes: Not everything a woman does is for you. Here’s a novel thought: Maybe women are… *drumroll please* PEOPLE. With their own thoughts, feelings, emotions, and inner life that does not centre on you.
Fucking hell. I’m not a woman or girl but I spent a good 28 years being mistaken for one and trying very hard to be one (being trans without knowing you’re trans is fun, like trying to force your own square peg into a round hole and then wondering why the peg is all beat to hell and keeps getting stuck trying to fit in that goddamn hole). I can completely guarantee that cisdudes typically thought I was doing everything for them often when I had no awareness that they even had any interest however fleeting in me (admittedly, I am also autistic, so I’m generally bad at picking up – read: oblivious to – any kind of interest less obvious than someone coming up to me and telling me outright, so others’ mileage may vary).
One time, a guy thought I wore a hat every day because he found girls wearing that kind of hat hot… Over here in reality-land, I was just wearing it because it was my favorite hat and it kept the sun out of my eyes.
OT:
Listening to Sgt Rock by XTC. Heard it a million times and just realised it’s like an MRA anthem.
I was actually making a very poor attempt at A Joke, but thanks for the link! I couldn’t remember what it was called anyway! 😀
Oi, you leave me out of this. [/name joke]
I had that realization recently with Girl All the Bad Guys Want by Bowling for Soup.
Ah, yes, the classic MRA “women are purposefully being hot AT me for nefarious reasons” trope, AKA “I only think of women in relation to my boner, so I assume they also only think of themselves that way.”
Hello.
> Paradoxical Intention – Resident Cheeseburger Slut
Are you meaning women have A.T. Fields ?
—–
Anyway, the pamphlet of Mr Wrigh is so true and full of truths (and redundancies) that i am going now to give him my full support ! Yes, my full support to this untolerable male gaze harvest, by a two-hands facepalm (because you need at least two hands thanks to the deepness of the text) covering my eyes, thus keeping my precious MG for myself.
And i also propose to extend the revelations provided by this dear Mr Wrigh by disclosing to you, lovely audience, the true reality of this shadow market, theorically known only to women – but that i successfully discover by sacrificing myself by gazing at a harvesting woman for hours (i admit that the fact she was a pro model and a jpeg helped a lot) and exchange the product of the gaze for information (because all women are bribable babes, am i not right ?) – , and called the MGE – Male Gaze Economy – !
I am sure you know, fellow manists, that youtube has invented nothing with its view system. It is those cunning harvesting women, especially the one who has thrown the bases of this economy, Bathsheba Levy (because it is well know that all economic principles come from Them. That, and the fact that i do not want to be seen fighting only the mysandrism, right, bros ?). The number of MG they attract determine their position in this coverted market, as well as their power, because the more MG they have, the more hidden powers and abilities they unlock, such as “Slut shamed level 3”, “Catcalled level 8”, “Unwanted dickpick level 69” (lol bro, but true fact ! Because i say so !) and the like.
What shall be known too is that every woman get an invisible scooter (and not scouter, because no one write houters or boubs) which allow her to know exactly how much any fellow sister is worth in MG. I have heard that some are over 9000 ! By knowing the MG value of other women, a woman can then decide to highjack her enemy owned MG by using more powerful attention whore technics, or to collaborate with her in order to gather even more MG in some kind of synergy (but that may be a wrong theory because we know that women can not work together for better results, it is a men-only feat), for example by simulating lezstunts (remember it is only stunts to titillate us, evopsy remembers us that in fact they are only interested in my d… in reproducing with alpha males).
Now, you are going to ask me “in what it is an economy” ? Ah, poor beta-boy, it is in fact quite simple. As you have to agree, MG is not a physical thing, it is more like bitcoins. That allow them to be exchanged in a stealthy way : in exchange of any service or physical goods, a woman can downsize her glamour to the profit of a requesting “friend” (they are, in reality, never, and in fact deeply hate each other), which in turn get more MG. Hmm ? Like a PUA wingman, you ask ? Come on ! It is well known that never at the biggest a fellow PUA will request anything in exchange for his act as wingman ! We are not petty ladies ! Anyway, this exchange of the MG currency is the base of this economy.
And, in order to fight this new world economy, we have to stand up, fellow men ! Let us retain our eyesight for ourselves ! #MyGaze ! And you are lucky, because it just happens that i have in my possession a lot of black sunglasses which are guaranted womanattractionproof thanks to the plastic dong which hangs at the nose place, and because we are all friends, i sell them to you not for 10, not for 20, but for only 99.99 Bitcoins ! Ok, there is no refund and you have to sign a discharge because the black glass blocks entirely your eyesight and some have miss a stair or kiss a truck (which is sad because a dead customer is a lost customer), but all in all, we guarantee you that with those funny glasses, no sane woman will ever try to tempt you for your male gaze (and for anything else too, you lucky guy !) ! Suscribe quickly !
—–
For French readers, the blockade stuff reminds me of a Groland humoristic video called “La conspiration des vieux”, the blockade being one of the maneuvers used by old people to piss of young ones.
Have a nice day.
Great, funny article. These are the kinds of articles I used to come here for; I can get the Trump resistance stuff elsewhere. I miss this!
I wonder how much of this is projection – men assuming women do various things to attract them because THEY do various things to attract women.
This sounds like a ‘tactic’ that might be employed by Ana of 50 Shades fame. Real life examples? No, really can’t think of any.
“Footpaths”? “Shampoo’d hair”? “Shawls”??? Since when has a shawl been an eye-catching accessory for anyone other than Grandma? I can forgive this guy’s rank misogyny once I realized he was a hapless stranded time traveler from the late Victorian era. Our modern mobile phones and bare arms and ankles and educated females must frighten and confuse him.
Doesn’t everyone have a A.T Field or did you mean A.T fields as powerful as the ones used by EVAs and Angels?
OT(me whining again, feel free to disregard)
*sigh* lucky you
At this point if I could safely shove it all back in the box (so to speak) I’m fairly sure I would. I mean, it sucked being depressed and all that without knowing why or how to fix it. But, I don’t remember ever feeling this bad. What makes it even worse, aside from the hateful bullshit I see people spout online (and occasionally hear in person) is that unless I win the lottery I can’t even try to fix this deformed lump of shit I have to call a body. From the day I finally clued in that I’m trans I’ve felt like an invisible clock has been ticking down, and I hate it!
P.S If anyone knows of a good therapist (with experience in trans issues) in my province (NS) feel free to let me know.
Anyway, sorry for the rant, my emotional battery is running down again.
No kidding. Also true of the guys who say that women don’t work, and that women are irrelevant to their lives. The only way that could begin to make sense is if “women” are defined as females between pubescent and 25 years, who fit their porn-created concept of hotness. And even then it isn’t true.
Hugs to Jesalin
Applause to Moggie
@sarah: Maybe he was thinking of keffiyehs?
Kat nailed it:
As I read that, my cat came over. I asked: “fluffy, are you hungry” and she stole my gaze. (I believe that means she is.)
Male gaze is something I’ve always been pretty much oblivious to until recently, except when being catcalled (extremely rarely). Now that I’m middle-aged and fat, I’m invisible to these guys (for sure) and also many others. It’s kind of like a superpower unless I need to get someone’s attention, which is not often. All in all, it’s a nice, peaceful life.
I sometimes get semantic satiation, usually if I’m spelling something for someone because I have to write it down. Spelling in English has always been trivially easy for me but spelling bees were right out because I can’t do it that way; the letters won’t behave in my mind’s eye at all.
More hugs for Jesalin.
Catbeast update: CBD oil is a small miracle, y’all; Catbeast is eating well and feeling better. Last weekend, I thought he’d be gone by now. He doesn’t even seem to mind the taste anymore.