I've been thinking about this and then came across this post with those tags from Portrait of a Lady on Fire which were very timely and relevant. I think part of the struggle there (at least, from my outsider's lens instead of yours) comes from how a) the female gaze is treated as a het female gaze (just as the male gaze is treated as a het male gaze), when being female/a woman is not conditional on being straight (same goes for men), and b) how the female gaze as a straight woman's gaze is treated as empowering, which doesn't track with the presentation of the male gaze.
It almost seems to me more an issue with the idea of the female gaze and what it means than what it is to be female/a woman in that context. I get the same struggles with devolving debates like what it ~means~ to be a woman, often centered around sex with a man and child-bearing, none of which are on my life list. Becoming a man in the Western sense is usually centered around responsibilities, whereas becoming a woman is culturally associated with m/f sex and children. And since I don't want that, how do I reclaim what it means to be a woman? Can I not just live as I am without being contextualized by someone else? Hard to do in any setting.
But your comment also touches on how, when I embraced being ace, it was suddenly revealing to me in regard of how I didn't understand het-ness and thus straight women and their wants and identity are fundamentally unknowable to me. I can talk with my friends about it, but I imagine it's just as hard for them to truly understand what my identity is like. So for all that I feel comfortable identifying as a cis woman, it's hard to disentangle that from what a society Thinks A Woman Is.
no subject
It almost seems to me more an issue with the idea of the female gaze and what it means than what it is to be female/a woman in that context. I get the same struggles with devolving debates like what it ~means~ to be a woman, often centered around sex with a man and child-bearing, none of which are on my life list. Becoming a man in the Western sense is usually centered around responsibilities, whereas becoming a woman is culturally associated with m/f sex and children. And since I don't want that, how do I reclaim what it means to be a woman? Can I not just live as I am without being contextualized by someone else? Hard to do in any setting.
But your comment also touches on how, when I embraced being ace, it was suddenly revealing to me in regard of how I didn't understand het-ness and thus straight women and their wants and identity are fundamentally unknowable to me. I can talk with my friends about it, but I imagine it's just as hard for them to truly understand what my identity is like. So for all that I feel comfortable identifying as a cis woman, it's hard to disentangle that from what a society Thinks A Woman Is.