Confronting The Internal Male Voyeur
“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”
I remember the first time I read Margaret Atwood’s quote regarding the eternal, unconscious presence of the male voyeur in every woman’s head. I felt haunted by the idea that I was perpetually under the male gaze, observing myself through the eyes of a man, even in the perceived safety of my own mind. Initially this left me with a deep and intense feeling of despair and rage. How can I, as a woman, expect to construct and navigate a life entirely of my own, for myself, now that I’ve been hit with this kind of realization?! Would I ever be free and escape from the expectations and desires of men or will I, and in some ways all women, forever suffer the confusion between what is for oneself and what is for them? Why must they somehow pervade every aspect of our lives; and if it is true that they are there and inescapable, how can I ever make peace with the unknown man present in my head?
“No, this can’t apply to me,” I thought trying to reassure myself, “I have spent years cultivating who I am, what I want, and decentralizing men from my life. I have never felt more myself, precisely because I have focused on being me and investing more into my female friendships; that I have chosen to see myself as not only me, but as a reflection of the women around me and that I admire. I haven’t allowed any man to define me, my life, or my position in this world, regardless if they see me or not.”
But the more I tried to look away from the keyhole he was peering into, the more aware I was that it was actually directly to him I was speaking, and that my thoughts were in constant dialog with his silent stare. It did not matter if I wanted to be seen by him, he would be there anyway. It felt like I had been violated, that an unwanted sexual, paternalistic gaze had invaded the most scared and secretive places of my psyche and ego, and he was there for so long without my noticing! Was anything I thought about femininity, beauty, love, and sexuality I had really my own, or was it all tainted by the influence of this faceless man that lived in the shadows of my thoughts, needs, and desires; do I even belong to myself at all, or am I just a product of male fantasy?
I spent many months trying to unravel these feelings, my mind was a split between the version of myself I saw through my own female gaze, living for myself, and the one I saw trying to conform and satisfy his male gaze. This confusion and tension led me to delve deeper into my psyche and I was surprised by the curiosity I had for the man behind the keyhole, he was, after all, the man that my own psyche had created to attempt to see myself through the masculine eye. Was he not a product of my understanding of men and how they see me; and could it possible that I wasn’t a woman with an unknown male gazing at me in my mind, but rather a woman with her projection of a man attempting to understand herself and her needs in a male dominated society?
Once I had this realization that this man was a product of myself and my experiences, I was no longer trying to avoid or play into his glare, I could confront it. I was now looking into his eyes, and they were the same as my own. The man in the keyhole was not defining my desires, I was defining his. I was not a reflection of his wants and needs but rather, he was the reflection of my ‘female fantasy’ of what a man thinks of and wants from women. He was the way in which I could view myself and womanhood from the point of view of ‘the other.’
Since coming to this conclusion, I no longer see myself in double vision, and he no longer haunts the intimate places of my mind. He now appears to me as a curious spectator. At times, I do feel the glare of the voyeuristic male gaze and the heaviness that comes with being seen in that light, I understand now that he is as much informed by me as I am by him, and he is just another piece of my own psychology trying to make sense of my overall place in this world, not uniquely as a woman or as a product of male fantasy.
