I had an interesting conversation with two of my female friends the other day that triggered some new thinking and writing for me in regards to the problem of the "male gaze" in feminism.

I was specifically thinking about how feminism's attempt to extricate women from the "male gaze" has inadvertantly ended up cutting women off from some really fundamental aspects of their own experience. That is, in feminism's decision to reject the "male gaze" as an imposition and oppression of men onto women, they also renounced all responsibility for the many ways that women have co-created the "male gaze" throughout history.

There is a reason that women experience the "male gaze" so strongly; it is because it is a part of our own basic experience, part of something we have played a role in creating. When we repress that responsibility we end up projecting the "male gaze" onto men. That is, we experience the "male gaze" as something men are doing to us.

A repression of any aspect of a woman's experience inherently means she cannot recognize it as her own and thus transcend her unconscious embeddedness within it. The "male gaze" remains part of the female shadow, experienced as everywhere "out there" and no where "in here". This disowning of experience has severe consequences for the healthy development of the female psyche, something I would like to explore in depth in my book.

I have a feeling I am going to piss off a lot of feminists, I hope not... but so much postmodern feminism rests on women's vicitmization to the "male gaze" of objectification, when in fact the "male gaze" should be redefined as a male-female co-creation at the earlier levels of our historical development.

By owning it, women take back responisibility and also their power to dis-embed from previous passivity when it came to their own objectification. If we chose to blame instead of owning our part, women's power and freedom will always remain in someone elses hands (namely, men) rather than in our own. The "male gaze" is ours to reclaim, to be integrated back into the female self so as to be included in our experience and also transcended so we can develop into new horizons in how we veiw ourselves and our bodies beyond the "male gaze".

So I'm officially in the greatest slog of my academic career, my last year.

I'm in my senior year and I seem to have contracted what one of my profs calls "senioritis": the student in their last year who was once so eager to do all the readings and show up for every class, is suddenly skimming through the very bare bones of the reading text and planning out how much she can skip each week and still do well. 

But I attribute my struggle this year to more than merely "senioritis". I ended up landing in 5 coarses with little interest in any of them, which is a new experience for me. The worst part is that the classes I was most excited about: The philosophy of art and the philosophy of mind, ended up being the most disappointing.

I love philosophy, as most of you can probably tell(-: But academic philosophy is soooo far out from the kind of philosophy that interests me that I feel a rush of anger and disgust nearly every class ( a great place to practice my meditation and acceptance and loving kindness(-:). I think my experience can be easily summed up in the one comment my professor made today that simply solidified my entire struggle with academia in a capsize quote.

Someone in my philosophy of art class ( largely a study in logic applied to art theory) asked the teacher what the philosophy we were learning about actually had to do with people's lives , and how it actually effected their perceptions when viewing art. This was my teachers response:

"Oh, absolutely nothing. Philosophy isn't about practical application. This stuff doesn't effect anyone when they actually view art, it is just a theoretical exercise. Philosophy isn't meant to actually mean anything, that is the beauty of it. If I actually thought my research and writing in philosophy had meaning and implications for people's lives I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. Don't ask for practical applications, that is not the purpose of philosophy."

Wow... I couldn't believe he actually said it so bluntly.... what a waste in so many ways. To even think we can detach ourselves as philosophers from the everyday lives of people is to truly disservice the planet. No wonder people in other disciplines think we are all a bunch of pompous intellectual assholes.