Older women, women with weight changes or visible disabilities, or transfolk of Lemmy - how has the male gaze changed for you?
Older women, women with weight changes or visible disabilities, or transfolk of Lemmy - how has the male gaze changed for you?
Hello ladies (current and former) of Lemmy (current) - I'm curious how your experience of the male gaze has changed as you moved in and out of young-woman-hood.
How has your opinion of being seen changed through this process?
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It fluctuates because there are a few factors at play, two of them being my stigma and the condition itself. They might gaze at me for the visual appeal while looking down on me in every other sense of the word, they might treat me with kindness but not care about what they see because my condition turns them off, or anything in between. Typically, though, they aren't attracted to me. Some level of stigma has always been with me since birth though, it's not like my state of being which came later.
Thank you for responding, Leni. That's interesting.
You're welcome. How about you, do you have any experiences like you ask about?
Not really, I'm a cishet middle aged dude and I don't get out much.
I was thinking about how men's interactions with women are colored by their attractiveness, and I assume you can tell at least sometimes. I smiled at an old lady at the grocery store today and was thinking that she might sense that it was "only" a friendly smile, but she's presumably gotten smiles and glances that had at least a little bit of sexual interest beneath them. Dunno, just made me curious!
It's one of those things where I can sort of get an idea but never know for sure, because to try to place their reaction in my mind would be to assume it without having actually read their mind, even though the differences between how it looks when you're gazing for one reason versus another is usually consistent. For example, the other day someone was staring at me, and I thought it was the gaze of the hots until they revealed they were just daydreaming about the fact we were matching clothes, so one never really knows.
That's funny! I suppose you're right; unless he's drooling and doing AWOOGA eyes it could be something else.