Can the Male Still Gaze?
Love, sex, intimacy are enigmatic concepts because their understanding stems from understanding of one's own self. In a world where therapy is still derided and not given as much societal importance as physiological health does, that's bound to be the case.
This gets further complicated, when we live a world where patriarchy and heteronormativity reigns supreme. Male gaze cast further shadow over the enigma of desire and perverts it into something eldritch for those that are not male or heterosexual. For males, yes it leads to reduced spectrum of the ways they could express desire, but for all the others like women and queers they have to face the violent fallout of that stunted expression of desire.
Yes, it may be possible to be objectified and not reduced, but when you live in a system, where the default assumption is the exceptionalism, superiority and the dominance of men, whether you like it or not, whether you intend it or not, you are gazing downwards as a male.
Male gaze under patriarchy is an all engulfing house fire, since it's the first act before the more heinous actions against women and queer follows. When the house is burning, we don't wait to sing praises about how much warmth and cozy feeling a candle fire or a hearth provides, we try to douse the house fire and that means shunning the candlelight and the hearth for the time being while fire is being put out.
The definition of love is what should have been and could have been, if there was no patriarchy, but patriarchy is the reality of billions of women and I would rather work towards changing that horrid reality, than support reinforcing it or romanticizing it, while ignoring the lived reality. The consequences men face for being patriarchs like limited emotional expression and perversion of their desires as a means to control and assert dominance over those patriarchy deem second class citizens, is for them to deal with. It's an internal conflict. The emptiness they feel is for them to fill with understanding. The hollowness they feel is for them fill with empathy. The void they feel is for them to enlighten by understanding why they still suck up to a faulty social system.
Desire in the world is besieged by the dominance of male expression and gaze since civilisation started and has only started to dent recently. I personally don't entertain heterosexual male gaze, because I come from a home that have seen the excess of patriarchy at work and how male gaze played a hand in it. For me any portrayal of it, that's not condemning, is condoning it.
That's a position of rigidity, I acknowledged that, but me and my sibling have faced the consequences and hence I maintain my stubbornness.
No males cannot gaze at others especially women and queers unless they break away from patriarchy in their personal lives and actively fight against it publicly.