jonathanbogart:

It didn’t come off that way. Coining “dudegaze” and then saying you don’t identify with dudes is something of a red flag, to put it mildly.

I meant “just wrote” in response to Isabel. But no, I don’t identify with dudes, and I do think dudes is a valid social category. And I’m also implicated in dude-ishness, and forms of misogyny and sexism that are male but not “dudey.” (I just think there need to be more gazes, not that we need to eliminate the concept of “gaze” or “male gaze,” which I wrote explicitly.)

Why do those things — not identifying with dudes and also being a dude whether I like it or not — have to be mutually exclusive, especially when in the rest of the post my whole point is that what I identify with consciously isn’t always the only thing happening in the room?