More On the Gaze: Some Thoughts Prompted By Dianna Anderson

Yesterday I wrote a post Can a Jesus Feminist Wear High Heels?: Evolutionary and Incarnational Reflections on the Male Gaze. In the comments Dianna Anderson gave some helpful and constructive pushback to the post. Dianna also followed up with a post on her blog: Cruciform Incarnation: In Which All Bodies Must Matter. I encourage you to read her thoughtful reflections.

Given the blinders I have on in light of my social location I'm always deeply appreciative about getting feedback--even strong feedback--about the ways I might be intentionally or unintentionally excluding others.

So this isn't a "response" or "rebuttal" to Dianna, just a string of thoughts I had yesterday thinking about Dianna's comments and the post she wrote in response to mine.

I want to start with the conclusion of my post. A part of the problem, as Dianna saw it (and I'm sure others as well), was that my analysis in the post focused to heterosexual relationships. A part of that was simply due to the fact that I was responding to a concrete situation in how the male gaze might play out (or not) in a heterosexual marriage. And while that case study might have been limiting (and, thus, exclusionary), I think the theological conclusion of the post generalizes to every person in any sort of romantic arrangement.

Specifically, the theological conclusion of the post doesn't depend upon anything that Dianna finds objectionable to the post. For example, and I'll discuss this in more detail in a minute, Dianna finds gender essentialism in my stating that males are, statistically speaking, more visually stimulated than females. For the sake of argument, that's a point easily conceded. It doesn't really matter which partner of whatever relationship is or is not more visually stimulated. The theological point of the post is that, if this preference exists, for whatever reason, Christians aren't going to force that preference on their partners. The visual aspects of sex are to be free of power and coercion. The visual aspects of sex should be engaged in playfully and joyously. Your partner might want you to wear a teddy or high heels or leather chaps or a clown suit. Such visually-based kinks are all part of the fun if there is mutualism and cruciform love.

So it doesn't matter all that much if there is or is not a statistical trend showing that males, on average, are more visually stimulated than females.

The point being, I think the theological vision of the post is very inclusive.

Now the controversial parts of the post are due to the fact that I do make some claims and arguments about male arousal being more visually-based. I want to talk more about about those claims and arguments. But before doing that we need to disentangle two things that I think Dianna mixes up a little bit.

In my post there are two scientific claims/arguments being made. The first is descriptive and the second is explanatory. And they need to be keep distinct from each other.

The descriptive claim is that, statistically speaking, the male arousal system is more visual than females (which is more relational/emotional).

The explanatory part is a speculative argument proposed by some evolutionary psychologists about why this difference came about.

Let's start with the descriptive claim. Are males more visual in their arousal system? The answer to this question has nothing to do with evolutionary psychology. It's a simple empirical claim that we can gather evidence for or against. And as I pointed out to Dianna, I think the evidence is clear that the difference exists. For my part, given that I'm convinced by the psychological and brain imaging data, I think it's best to, tentatively, assume this data point in theological reflections about embodiment.

But Dianna's point is well taken, we should never reduce incarnational theology to this (or any other) data point. But mentioning the data point and reflecting on it isn't the same as being reductionistic. It's not inappropriate to theologically reflect on a data point regarding human biology (if it exists). That's a place where I think Dianna misjudges a bit. To reflect on something is not to reduce. To say something is not to be taken as saying everything.

Now, three points about this descriptive issue.

First, if there is a "difference" between the genders in this regard the difference is statistical, not essentialistic. In trying to explain why men are "different" from women in this regard what we are trying to account for isn't an essential difference between Platonic types. We're trying to explain a statistical trend, why more men, statistically, are visually stimulated relative to women.

Because, to be clear, any given person can be however they are. Conforming or breaking with the trend. Which brings me back to the theological point of the post: it doesn't really matter if this trend does or does not apply to you, but if it does you need to not lord it over your partner. Same goes for any sexual preference or inclination.

Second, Dianna pointed out in her post that most (perhaps all) of the studies on vision and sexual arousal have mainly looked at heterosexual men, heterosexual women and gay men. There hasn't been a lot of work regarding visual arousal with other groups (e.g., transgender persons or lesbians). And that's a point worth making.

Still, I don't think it changes the conclusions I reach. If we, for the sake of argument, grant that any particular LGBTQ group is just as visually simulated as heterosexual and gay men then I'd simply say that, in those particular relationships, the sexual gaze should not be privileged or lorded over the partner. Again, most everything I'm saying generalizes.

And finally, let me just make a simple logical observation. We're talking about the male gaze. Which seems to presuppose that there's something going on with the male visual psychology in regards to women. If there were no differences between the genders in this regard we wouldn't be having conversation about a gaze. We'd surely be talking about something else, but not a gaze. This whole conversation seems to assume the trend being denied. If there are no visual biases at work then this conversation doesn't happen. We'd be talking about men doing something else to women rather than gazing at them.

And this brings us to the more controversial part of the post, the explanatory account based on an argument from evolutionary psychology.

First, to be clear, this explanatory account can be wholly wrong and the descriptive differences between the genders (the statistical trends) still be true. Again, there is a distinction here between description and explanation.

Regarding Dianna's concerns, in her post she says that I'm using the evolutionary account to "baptize" the male gaze. I'd like to disagree with that. I'm not trying to baptize the male gaze. I am trying to naturalize it and, thus, root it in an incarnational theological account. And by naturalize I mean, as I said clearly in the post, to render the gaze morally neutral, akin, like I said, to why sugar tastes sweet. Naturalizing is a far cry from baptizing, as I also clearly say that these natural responses can be used for good or ill. Like eating sugar can be good or bad.

As I mentioned in a comment to Dianna, we have to remember Hume's Dictum: You can't get an ought from an is. Just because something is natural doesn't make it good.

So my attempt to naturalize the male gaze wasn't an attempt baptize it. For example, in the post I describe a relational context where the gaze is good. Like there are times when eating sugar is okay. But I also described where the gaze is evil. Like when eating too much sugar isn't a good idea. In short, the gaze in neutral, dependent upon context. And like I said above, that can be a LGBTQ context or a hetero context.

In a related criticism, Dianna felt that the appeal to an adaptive history was "foreclosing on a framework for how power and historical sexism even enter the picture." As I mentioned in my comment to her, I actually felt that I was doing the exact opposite. Again, in pointing to the adaptive aspects of the male gaze I'm not justifying it on ethical grounds (again, Hume's dictum). This leaves the field wide open to explore how this particular adaptive quirk has became a locus of oppression. Consider a parallel example: skin color. There is an adaptive history behind skin pigmentation. But noting that adaptive history doesn't justify oppressing people based upon skin color. The same reasoning holds for the male gaze. Just because males have a visual bias doesn't mean women must submit or be subjected to it. So the framework Dianna is asking for to explore how men have exploited the gaze to oppress women is as wide open as it is for those wanting to explore how whites have exploited skin color to oppress people of color. The adaptive backstory doesn't foreclose on any investigation that Dianna might want to do in analyzing how the male gaze is oppressive to women.

All I'm suggesting, and I could be totally wrong about this, is that a when a male looks at a female and feels sexual arousal this isn't intrinsically a symptom of patriarchy. Some of the time it might just be biology. But that arousal, no matter its source, doesn't justify any actions toward a woman that are oppressive, dehumanizing or exploitative. And that will most likely mean that a man must restrict, redirect or resist his gaze. And personally, I think that's an interesting area for theological reflection. When does fleeting and spontaneous sexual arousal become objectification? Is that even a legitimate or helpful distinction? I think it is, but when and how to make that distinction is an open question.

That said, the evolutionary account I gave is very speculative. But happily, it's the most expendable and severable part of the post. You can take it or leave it. As I've noted, it doesn't affect the descriptive issues noted above or the theological implications, for all persons, hetero and LGBTQ.

One issue to kick around, however, is how any appeal to evolution is inherently biased toward heterosexuality given the central role of biological reproduction in both natural and sexual selection. To be honest, I'm not sure how that should be handled. I'm assuming, of course, that anyone working in queer theology believes in evolution. So we admit that evolution happened, and generally agree that it works as Darwin said it works, through differential reproductive success. We grant all that but agree to never use it as theological data? Is that the way we are to proceed? Or are there times when an incarnational approach can legitimately invoke evolutionary history, despite its bias toward reproductive success?

My point is that evolution looks biased, given its mechanisms. So it's hard to talk about what happened during evolution, which we all agree happened, without looking biased. But it's also strange to talk about embodiment and never candidly talk about the forces that shaped our bodies over millions of years. And again, to return to Dianna's point, theological reflections regarding embodiment shouldn't be reduced to evolutionary accounts. That's a given. What I'm asking about if evolution can ever provide theological data.

And finally, what I found very helpful in Dianna's post is how I may have been misusing labels and, thus, causing confusion. As Dianna defines it, "the male gaze" is intrinsically oppressive. Thus it makes sense to resist any attempt of mine to extract oppression from that label. If that's the case then I was misusing the label "male gaze" in equating it almost synonymously with "visual bias in male sexual arousal." That was a mistake on my part, a sloppy use of terms. The purpose of my post was to extract a psychological feature from an analysis of power, to make a distinction between sexual psychologies and how those sexual psychologies become loci of oppression.

If that distinction is coherent--visual bias in sexual arousal is distinct from power--then I think the incarnational theology I sketched in the last post holds, for everyone. We might debate the descriptive issue about if men show this bias, statistically speaking, more often than women. We might debate how this bias is distributed across the LGBTQ spectrum. And we can keep or discard the adaptive framework. But overall, the theological thrust of the post holds for everyone in every relationship.