Attached Paper Annual Meeting 2024

The Gazeless Male Gaze: Maintaining Misogyny in Evangelical Anti-Pornographic Media

Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

The proposed essay will utilize textual analysis of several of the more successful examples of Evangelical anti-pornographic media, as well as a brief exploration of the fundamentals of porn studies and feminist film theory.  Through the combination of these fields the essay will use the proliferation of Evangelical anti-pornographic media to define and analyze the ‘Gazeless Male Gaze’, emphasizing on the importance of women’s agency and the dangers of symbolic annihilation.

In 1975, Laura Mulvey defined the Male Gaze as the voyeuristic objectification of women within cinema for a perceived all male audience by male filmmakers. (Mulvey, 58-69)  The Gazeless Male Gaze maintains the same patriarchy and the same objectification within cinema as Mulvey’s Male Gaze with the voyeurism removed.  Evangelical Anti-Pornographic films may not be literally gazing upon women, yet by patronizingly removing their voices from the subject of porn studies these films continue in women’s objectification.