Talk:Male Gaze

I'll be honest, the fact it's a trope it's undeniable, but the description and the name always ticked me off the wrong way. I see nothing wrong in a camera focusing on breasts and butt of women for fanservice, but the name combined with the description reeks of radical feminism and of media critics that think any kind of fanservice directed at hetero-sexual men is inherently bad and hurts real women and should be excised.

My suggestion is "Female Sexy Camera" and Female Gaze be renamed "Male Sexy Camera". I'm very open to better names/argument.

I see no reason to use separate Tropes. Maybe the current one can have a section titled Male Examples.

If so, maybe the trope could be "Sexy Fanservice Shot" or something.

"radical feminism" seems pretty unnecessarily hyperbolic as a descriptor for something that's been cited as existing in the 70s, and we're already dealing with a loaded topic as it is.

Also, "Fanservice Shot" may or may not be succinct enough if they were combined imho - but whether or not we combine them is probably its own discussion (and unfortunately one not likely to be resolved in a timely manner), considering there's probably culturally-rooted difference to account for.

As much as I'd love to stick it to the puritans who flip out when people dare use fanservice in their works, the trope name, unfortunately, has ingrained itself in the public consciousness. Plus, the suggested renames don't roll off the tongue anywhere near as good (though Sexy Fanservice Shot would work if it were shortened to just Fanservice Shot).

@Utini501 , I'm aware there's a crowd of people out there using this term, but the term itself is poisonous and sexist in my view. We shouldn't embrace a poison because it is popular. It also ignores the existence of lesbians, like somehow only men would be sexually interested in female erogenous body parts.

I'm also in favor of "Fanservice Shot", specially because the trope is used in static media like comic books and visual novels. Ms. Fanservice and Mr. Fanservice also exist as different tropes despite the fact they're functionally identical and only separated by sex.

While I'm not opposed to a sensible rename to something more comprehensive, lets avoid letting social and political debates leak into this. We can all agree that a potential rename is a good idea, let's focus on that and keep the social and political stuff off wiki, if only to avoid possible ill words and drama.

On the topic of the rename, I suggest "Sexy Male/Female Focus" as the renames. Since the trope refers to the focus of the camera view, and such is done to accentuate the sexuality of the male or female in question, this should cover the definition in a manner that concise and gets the point across.

Have to agree with Geth on the first point (and to that end recommend a visit to Righting Great Wrongs). On the second... eh, I don't hate it, but still feeling Fanservice Shot myself.

Then let's compromise: Male/Female Fanservice Shot.

If we're going to combine the two tropes, "Fanservice Shot" sounds good to me.

Are we combining the two? I would be in favour of making the trope gender-neutral.

If we do so, I recommend we have sections for each type, but otherwise would not object.

Ok, I like it. Follows the Ms. Fanservice/Mr. Fanservice name pattern. That is the best outcome in my opinion.

The only active female troper of this site disappears from the wiki for some days because of work, and this is what she finds when she comes back. Honestly.

Given that the name of the trope and its description does come from feminist theory (at least according to wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_gaze), I get why some members of the wiki want to make the trope and its examples (as well as the ones of its sibling trope Female Gaze) less semantically charged and more neutral, in the spirit of make this wiki less prone to unnecessary controversy. And since it seems that the majority has decided on the change of name, and after reading the reasons for doing so and agreeing with them, I can only join the approval bandwagon.

The only thing I ask for is that the original name of the tropes, instead of becoming redirections to the new trope names, become Useful Notes on the rationale besides certain visual choices when filming fanservice depending on the genre of its potential public.

I mean I figure the discussion's still open if you want it to be, I'd be interested in your input.

Fair enough @Lequinni, that logic makes good sense to me.

I'm gonna be frank and say that, while I don't necessarily hate the direction we managed to turn this discussion in, I'm concerned that it's rooted a microcosm of a larger issue where we're struggling to escape a fandom lens of analysis in favor of acknowledging multiple perspectives of a trope(s), let alone ones more critical of them - I perceive this as an issue, not with this wiki specifically, but with fandom and by extension troping on a conceptual level. Something of a Troper Original Sin, if that makes sense.

I know the purpose of this wiki is ostensibly to get away from that, and I'm not saying we haven't made some level of progress in doing so; I'm not gonna launch said discussion on this immediately, nor am I gonna hijack this thread to do so, but for now I legitimately want to know if I'm the only one who feels this way.

Good points, and they gave me a reason to re-read the trope as it's written.

Twice.

We can't make it gender-neutral, as much as I prefer gender-neutral tropes - the trope is about how there's a double standard, there's been a double standard for as long as there's been films, the double-standard was identified a half-century ago, and it persists today.

Also, "Male Gaze" is a Real Life term. Renaming the trope would be like renaming Exactly What It Says on the Tin: possible, but ultimately counterproductive if we're making All The Tropes a reference site for everybody instead of just tropers.

So I'm going to have to revise my position here and say I'd rather we don't rename this trope.

Ultimately, I'm willing to agree on a fair compromise that the majority will find acceptable. If you guys find one, let me know and consider my vote for it.

I'm going to have to agree with Robkelk after some consideration - while the original post that started off this discussion is right to highlight the double-standard of how certain types of fanservice are treated and the assumptions made as to who it's for (albeit more than a bit heavy-handedly), we'd be missing the forest for the trees if we focused on that only with the goal of renaming it and then stopping there.

Obviously there'd be more people interested in a nicely-shaped butt than just cishet men, and by that token there's no need to assume that it stops at women's butts, either. We, as viewers contemplating what we consume, are aware of that. But a lot of fanservice is, seemingly, made with expectations like those in mind - why is that? If we aspire to be a reference site and a hub for advancing both the criticism of works and the creation of works (not like TVTropes anymore, per se, but akin to it), then we have to be willing to dig past initial discomforts and really get into the thick of it. By that token, we can then seek to understand where attempted "corrections" of this phenomenon seem to go wrong (e.g., thinking that the problem is fanservice itself rather than the approach taken to it - blaming the tool for the incompetence of the craftsman, to put it biblically).