Sadism/masochism *the sadistic male gaze* ;_;

 1 😭😭😭😭😭

I recently had a conversation with my friend Angela about the sadistic male gaze, and why I think it's hot. I will link it as soon as my YouTube allows me to click on my own channel page omg. We discussed the difference between sadism and masochism, and I think we came to the conclusion that sadism was when you found pleasure in inflicting pain upon an object, aka someone else, and masochism was when you enjoyed inflicting pain upon yourself. In this way, I feel like I am masochistic when I post things on Instagram and get like 5 likes, and my Instagram audience is sadistic by seeing my posts and not liking them. Jk (sort of). 

(Note: This is just indicative of how obsessed I am with Instagram and my engagement thereof tho. Every time I try to meditate or take a nap my mind just automatically goes to why am I not getting any likes on Instagram and how many people are viewing my story. Still fun to connect it with sadism/masochism tho.)

But in a way, I feel like the sadism/masochism trope, though kind of linked to the sexual practice of BDSM, is not exclusively or inextricably just about the act of sex itself. I think the gaze and looking at things is also kind of sexual in itself, or sadistic in a way. Like looking at things and casting your gaze on things, typically something associated with the *male gaze*, is a form of sadism in a way, because you are inflicting your perception and the way you are perceiving things on an object of sorts.  

Conversely, being looked at or perceived is kind of masochistic in a way. This is definitely not a new idea. Like, someone who dresses really slutty and is trying to get attention or views is inflicting a pain of sorts on themselves, the pain of being viewed, and hence judged and perceived. Allowing other people to become your audience and to perceive you in a way is masochistic because you are opening yourself up to judgement and you are being vulnerable to other people's projections onto you or their opinions of you and things like that. 

Idk. I saw two tweets. "The sluttiest thing a man can do is never ever talk about sex", which I think means that a man not mentioning sex at all is paradoxically "slutty" because it makes the counterpart to that man curious about what is going on underneath his sexy facade. Or at least maybe the fact that the man isn't suggesting the sexual act makes their sexuality highlighted. 

And also the tweet that quoted that tweet--"This is literally the key to arousing the feminine sexuality. Make her dance with your stillness". I think these two tweets really resonated with me because I think it's true. A man not mentioning sex, or a man not mentioning anything at all (a quiet man who doesn't talk much) implies a masculine calmness that masks (pun alert) his true deep, dark, horny desires. This is kind of just a reiteration of the prior paragraph. Which in essence is what a quote tweet does--it reiterates.  

(Note: As I'm writing this, it has been a couple months since I first started this blogpost (lol), and I am kind of against finding ideas on x now, because I find it's kind of an orgasmically validating platform that stimulates the part of your brain that gives you dopamine in a way that makes you think that your deepest darkest thoughts are valid. But then again, I do read a lot of things on x that make me go, huh, I've never thought of it in that way. But the same sort of thing I think occurs where, thoughts that were always in your subconscious kind of surface and make it dangerously conscious in a way that is probably not always the healthiest. I still identify with these two tweets though.)

2 Blocked

Maybe I’m just trying to find the silver lining, by saying the sadistic male gaze is hot. Again, I am amending and completing this blogpost several months after writing the initial idea, so I am paraphrasing here...but I think that basically I had been sending emails to my ex-boyfriend who wasn't really an ex, and I was trying to find a way to justify doing that. Namely, that it was hot to imagine him reading those emails and not responding. Though it was actually more psychotic on my part. I am GLAD that part of my life is now OVER. We are not going back to that again. 

But the more concerning thing is, I think this applies to many of us. Many of us who are engaged on either side of the spectrum--the one who leans more toward sadism or masochism--may experience texting someone who doesn't necessarily text us back. And what do we do then? Do we enjoy it? What happens, for example, when we are #blocked by someone who we really want to be in contact with? 

Certainly, it is not an enjoyable experience, by any count. But is there a way to subvert the optics of being blocked to a sado-masochistic sort of relationship? My previous sado-masochistic self would have given a resounding yes. They would have said that being blocked by someone was the highest form of sadism that they could inflict, and the highest masochism you could experience yourself, and it was something to be enjoyed. That a man who ignores your texts is somehow playing a game with you and that you should find some weird twisted pleasure in it. But could I have actually grown to say that maybe this is not the case? 

A strange and sick, twisted part of me still wants to find joy in the sadistic male gaze. Not just the male gaze, but the sadistic male gaze. The feminist in me wants to scream and yell in the other direction. But I think it's a feature of modernity to be conflicted and contradictory beings. Maybe that's why I scroll through x in such a mentally ill way. I feel like mentally ill Asian Carrie Bradshaw. But was she mentally ill in canon? 

I wonder what Carrie would have done if she were blocked by Big. I feel like she was essentially blocked by him for much of the show, but the technologies and complications of modern smartphones and social media were not so advanced. That would have been quite the shitshow. 

3 #Unapologetic

An album I listened to a lot this last year was Unapologetic by Rihanna. And I want to backtrack a bit on what I've said and be a little more #unapologetic. Maybe there really is something to the sadism that is present in the male gaze. I think being blocked is but an extreme form of the optics and dynamics that is always present in the relationship between seen and seeing. To be seen is always to be undergoing a sort of extractive process, a process of baring your soul to the seeing. In this way, I think to say the male gaze is hot is perfectly valid and validating. Validative? The red line under that word tells me that is not a word. Though it should be. Validative. The property of being validating. 

But it's really not that deep. I feel like in any relationship between a #divinemasculine and a #divinefeminine, the masculine is always the sadistic one in a way, and the feminine one is the masochistic one. I am splitting things up into masculine and feminine binary because that is the way I understand sexuality DON'T COME FOR ME. I understand that there is always one who is maybe more dominant and one who is maybe more submissive. I know we're supposed to be thinking past power hierarchies, and hierarchical thinking is likely a colonial construct, BUT THIS FRAMEWORK of sadism/masochism doesn't work without some sort of domination/submission. It does feel really colonial though. 

But yeah. Writing is hard, because it's a constant struggle within myself between the two opposing ideas that I have. Dialectical phenomenological vibes. Writing toward some kind of synthesis of my opposing ideas. No, I have not read Hegel. 

But in conclusion lol, I still think that the male gaze is kind of hot in a way. Someone who sees you. I think ultimately maybe this has to do with my obsession with being seen. I like being seen, and perceived. And it might be masochistic, but this masochistic instinct might just be an innate part of who I am. So who am I to go against my nature? I feel like, I'm just going with the flow.