The Objectification of the Male Gaze

Can we finally stop being ridiculous?

Ever since I published my recent stack, “Eros & Mysticism” two weeks ago I have been mulling over a quote from Sasha Stone I used there. Here’s what she said:

She’s right, of course. The weird thing is that, until relatively recently, to admit as much could subject one to banishment to the margins of polite society due to being harangued and canceled by the Puritanism (most, but not all, of it secular) so rife in the West. We have actually reached the point in society where we shame boys for thinking a girl is pretty.

Actually, I sometimes wonder if the increase in homosexuality over the past generation, besides the successful propaganda program on its behalf, is that boys are ashamed to look at girls and so internalize their shame and turn to a more socially acceptable (and easier to hide) forum: other boys. This is, actually, the same psychological mechanism that produced a subculture of homosexuality in all-male seminaries, especially during the proliferation of minor seminaries (high schools). I remember reading an article in The New York Times (maybe twenty years ago?) that asked if the priesthood is really a gay profession (I can’t locate it at the moment). And while most of the priests I know are not gay, I have known many who were—including my former pastor when I was an altar boy in the 1970s in Detroit, Fr. Gerald Shirilla, one of the most notorious abusers in American Catholic history, And, no, he didn’t try to get me—but he did try to get one of my best friends, probably more.

The problem is that telling kids normal and healthy responses to the world are bad results in that energy being turned in on itself and becoming a poison. It’s like in the great Peter O’Toole film, The Ruling Class. O’Toole’s character, a potty British aristocrat named Jack, thinks he is Jesus. Here he explains what convinced him he was God (one of my favorite lines in all of cinema):

Once he is convinced that he is not Jesus and is “cured” he falls into a much more sinister delusion: he thinks he’s Jack the Ripper. But he doesn’t tell anyone. You can guess what happens. He also becomes a “respectable member of the ruling class.”

As the father of six boys and three girls (ages 14 to 35), I feel great sadness that my children have had to grow up in a culture so afflicted with what Wilhelm Reich called “emotional plague.” Certainly, my own youth was not without its problems, but, despite (or, rather, because of) the sexual revolution this emotional plague has become endemic. And the only vaccine is to be reoriented to reality.

When I was in my late teens, my mates in the band I was touring with had an inside joke when it came to a pretty girl in the vicinity. It was in imitation of a Monkees episode with Julie Newmar, whose character works at a laundromat. When each Monkee in turn goes to buy some soap at the desk, he comes back mesmerized repeating “Soap..soap..soap…” since Julie Newmar was at the desk. Likewise, when my mates and I would be sitting at a table at a bar or something, somebody would come back to the table saying, “Soap..soap…soap…” It was like code.

I remember watching Newmar as Catwoman on the old Batman television show when I was a wee lad, long before puberty. It may have been the first time I was stunned by a beautiful woman (“Mom…I feel funny.”).

Of course, this can get out of hand at times—and I’m not excusing those who let it get out of hand—but I think it’s high time we acknowledged reality.

And this is why chivalry is so important. Chivalry civilizes the natural instincts that might prove aggressive, dangerous, or violent and turns them into virtues, such as honor, courage, and devotion. So does monasticism, some might argue—and they’re not wrong. But monasticism tames these instincts, at least those related to eros, by removing exposure to temptation and sublimating what are natural energies. And let’s face it: chivalry was also in the business of protecting monasticism.

Here are some more of my thoughts on this and related topics: