Gender Gaze

Description

Tara Van Dijk:

"The emergence of sexology was not the birth of an innocent academic discipline but the construction of an apparatus of control. Sexology did not simply uncover previously hidden truths—it invented them. By cataloging human desire, sexology turned behaviors into diagnoses, diagnoses into identities and sexuality or gender-based identities into mechanisms of governance. Acts that once existed simply as actions or feelings were redefined as intrinsic aspects of selfhood—identities. These identities were then framed within medical and clinical contexts as diagnoses. Finally, these diagnoses became tools for regulation and control, embedding themselves into the broader apparatus of biopower.

The medical gaze, as I once explored, objectified the body. Yet with sexology, this gaze expanded into the realm of the sexuality. The transition from prohibition to subjectification—where individuals internalize norms as part of their identity—marked a profound shift.

Today, we witness the rise of the Gender Gaze. Where the medical gaze sought to control through understanding, the Gender Gaze separates sex from identity, transforming gender into a subjective truth that demands affirmation. Terms like “gender identity,” “diversity,” or “fluidity” are not merely cultural phenomena. They are part of a new regime of power.

By affirming gender identity, we participate in an apparatus that governs bodies not through prohibition, but through validation. The promise of liberation offered by gender medicine—hormones, surgeries, and pronouns—comes at a cost: the body and identity become inscribed into a biotechmedical system of regulation."

(https://morbidsymptom.substack.com/p/birth-of-gendermentality)