Man Down, Level Up: Sex, socialising, and the male gaze

The first night I lived in university housing is burned into my mind. Hurricane Ida was hitting New York City with heavy winds and intense rainfall, and we freshers were pissed. Unable to get from Harlem to the bars downtown, we had a plan: get pizza, make that one friend go to the liquor store to get vodka, and make our own party in the dorm. I was one of a handful of girls hitting on this scrawny yet attractive dude, who thankfully ended up becoming my pal two years later. I don’t remember being too bummed that nothing happened between me and the guy; instead I was giddy to have become friends with a bunch of people that I thought were really cool. 

A lesson I could have learned 'all those' (four) years ago is: I would always have fun on a night out with pals, and flirting with strangers on the dancefloor should only be a fun little plus to a night out. Unfortunately this is not a lesson I had the privilege of learning until after graduating from university. Instead, when I connected the dots of platonic joy fulfilling me more than a person of any gender coming onto me in a dark room ever could, it was thanks to an artist complaining about just what I thought I wanted. 

Wet Leg have made me have a long think or two about why my sex life – especially interactions I have with men – has been such a priority in my social life. Especially since I’m bisexual and that’s not even the only romance I’m interested in; I knew that something had to give. On Catch These Fists, off Wet Leg's second album Moisturizer, frontperson Rhian Teasdale sings: 'He don't get puss, he get the boot… / This always happens late at night / Some guy comes up, says I'm his type.' What Teasdale says next are the lyrics that hit me like a truck: 'Yeah, don't approach me / I just wanna dance with my friends.'

The song has helped me realise that beyond a general amount of horniness, that feels extreme at times due to the taboo nature of the subject, I also might be trapped inside the male gaze. Beyond the phrase’s roots in feminist film analysis conceptualising how women are portrayed as objects of desire in media, the male gaze also suffocates women by way of socialisation. Why else have male interactions taken up so much of my brain space? 

Gen Z are a very obsessive generation; I’m sure it has to do with the internet hot-wiring our brains through overstimulation and consumption. So when I rethink how to engage with my social life, I find the broader cultural obsession with Gen Z’s collective sex life to be a hilarious misunderstanding. Since the end of the COVID-19 lockdowns, an endless stream of mainstream media articles, by writers at least a decade older than any of us, have attempted to coin us as the 'under-sexed generation'.

In June, The Guardian ran an article titled A generation of ‘virgins’ is leading America’s next sexual revolution. The article is an extract from Carter Sherman’s new book, The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over Its Future. Sherman conducted hundreds of interviews with a diverse group of Gen Zers, creating a succinct argument that young adults are not only still horny, we’ve revolutionised our sex lives in an increasingly conservative climate. To quote Sherman: “Many Gen Zers have been spurred to extraordinary activism in support of sexual progressivism.”

Sherman goes beyond the basics of Gen Z simply having more sex than you might have heard, and brings to light the politicisation Gen Z has created around their sex lives. Personally, the way this politicalisation has affected me is recognising the male gaze’s self-imposed self-objectification, and the loss of reproductive justice rights in the United States and trans folks' right to gender-affirming healthcare in the UK and USA. 

I’ve been in Edinburgh for two months and trying to approach my social life from this new enlightened perspective. My mission since arriving was to beat the trap of the male gaze. How could I get over this feeling and instead make going out a time where I just want to dance with my friends? Since I’m new in town and can’t exactly go out and dance with my NYC friends, instead I’ve been making very purposeful decisions on a night out to dance with a group of girls, paying no mind to the romantic fancies reeling around in my head. 

Habits are famously hard to break. Don’t get me wrong: my mental space and social life since reprioritising my focus on a night out are still irrationally occupied by romance. However, when I was single in my last year at uni I spent so much time obsessing over the possibility of meeting a stranger, when I should have focused on having the time of my life with my best pals. Now when I go on a night out, I feel so much less obsessive about how I am being perceived in a club or at a gig and it’s fucking liberating.