Under the Male Gaze

Pearl bullets glued on string, caught in mesh, and stuffed into oil-sheen cardboard. I pull it out of the box and inspect it against my naked body in the bathroom mirror. Scarce fabric, ready to fray, fall apart, designed for fleeting alleyway encounters. How would that part map to that part of my body, I wondered. It was an anatomical puzzle, and one that would inevitably leave me exposed. Ink spilt against milk and bone. The kind of fabric that drags wherever it touches, and can only be improved by being ripped off.

Who would buy one of these items in the pursuit of sex?

The word "negligee" -- caressed by a soft French accent -- impresses elegance, allure. Nighttime attempts at glamour: forget mundane wants such as warmth and decency. This is material that craves self-destruction.

"I like to see how far I can ramp up desire within one image until it becomes grotesquely comic." British artist Linder Sterling (b.1954) identifies, explores, and unravels these dynamics in her photomontages. Desire for Linder is made grotesque by the visual constructs of public society. Advertising images of fashion and consumer products, or flesh for sale in pornography. Glossy magazines contain these absurd conglomerations. Women with bulbous tits that bounce off-the-page, too plastic and explicit to be soggied as tomorrow's fish-and-chip wrappers.

In one untitled photomontage of 1976, a woman stands in a white lace negligee, so tight that the material sticks to her torso like wet toilet-paper. Her arm is a hoover raised eye-height in a pin-up pose, a camera poised to flash arse-angle. Humanity replaced by flesh to consume. In other images, the protagonist is sex, nothing else. Sometimes, a collaged flower opens her out: verdant body, object to fuck.

Comedy certainly lies in such images -- the oversized teeth and eyes, hoover nozzle for hand, outlandish symbolism -- but what Linder fails to capture is the pleasure-infused potential of degradation. Linder described the untitled photomontage (1976) as "prophetic" insofar that "it prefigures the contemporary business of live-streaming content made from the privacy of a bedroom for a paying online audience". Only an artist would make such a claim.

Truthfully, these human desires are timeless and universal. The craving to be watched, desired, then ruined. Service fulfilled.

The male gaze insufficiently captures this experience. Women have long been represented as the subject of the male gaze in Western museums. Odalisques and nudes are the stereotypes of seduction. At the same time, women are sacred in curatorial spaces -- you can look, but not touch.

I invite force with this black mesh token on my body. My direction of desire through the act of offering service, an open invitation cast with intention. In contrast, this is what makes the iconoclasm of Velazquez's Rokeby Venus (1647-51) perhaps the most (un)feminist act in all of art history. The Suffragette Mary Richardson (1882/3-1961) slashed the canvas five times with a meat chopper. Blade against female flesh. Violence, under the hand of a woman, on an unassuming body caught in a private moment. Active upon passive, this isn't pleasure.

The National Gallery became a crime scene in this act of vandalism. Now, I hold up this black negligee -- my dynamite -- that is worlds away from advertising culture constructed on canvas. No crime scene here, but a trail of intrigue. Clues across the city.

He slipped it into my bag on the tube. I eagerly accepted, eyes bright next to a patch of cum-plastered hair on my temple. Say thank you, slut.

Thank you, Sir.

Sweet dishevelment underground. Now on the tube, three hours ago in a cellar under a Georgian townhouse.

I face a full-length mirror, avoiding my own gaze, hands behind back. Preparation had been careful, from the naked body to the white shirt, pencil skirt, and stilettos. In Euripides' Elektra, one line reads: "A woman who cares only after her beauty, as soon as her husband leaves, is not an honourable woman." Beautified, ready to fulfil instructions: how I look right now can only invite disgrace.

Anticipation. Suspender belt taught on my waist; one strap twisted, another undone. Little blunders, red-pen mistakes.

I hear him walk over from the kitchen.

My back to him, vulnerable, I am anti-thesis Lady Macbeth. Do not thicken my blood, but make me weaken. I recently saw a production at the Lyric, Hammersmith. The sexual chemistry between Macbeth and his wife was mesmerizing. She was the maestro of the plot, and him her willing servant. The true tragedy being that this couple is the strongest from all of Shakespeare's plays. Power hungry and lustful, dynamics that drill desire.

The instrument of violence that most people associate with Macbeth is contained within the famous soliloquy: "Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee." It quickly transpires that the dagger is of the mind, a false creation. In the Hammersmith production the dagger is visible on giant television screens that sit either side of the stage. Dualistic fantasy and materiality.

This paradox is one that I would like to focus on in describing what happened before the negligee exchange, the actions that warranted the cum. Here I was, stood in front of the full-length mirror. Watching myself, slightly nervous. Trepidation came not from the threat of pain but rather the anticipation of fantasy, akin to the feeling of when the fourth wall breaks. Sink or swim.

Pain would make me forget. The stitch that pulls the thread, pushing down into thick material, the mini release when it penetrates the back, and the joy of pulling through.

Instruments that could cause pain surrounded me. Although many were unfamiliar, each contained the promise of a familiar sensation: pain-infused-pleasure, or was it pleasure-induced pain? Infused or induced, who knew.

In the spirit of keeping my written report on track, I'll outline three main elements; the same strategy used to review exhibitions. When I visit a gallery, I arrive armed with paper and pen, ready to grasp the parts that capture my imagination and make me think. Failure to select at least three elements is a sign that the artist was insincere.

Spanking captured my imagination, both for reasons pertaining to sensual impact. Firstly, the sensation of being manacled to the ceiling, feet locked apart in spreaders. The force from being spanked caused my whole body to push forward. Rattle sound of chains with each blow. At the same time, I swung forward -- under impact that would usually throw me to the floor if unprepared and stretched out in such a position. Certain degrees of freedom accompanied the circumstance of being manacled, where I could completely give myself to the force under the knowledge that I would be caught. Restraint, but also free; body exposed and spread out to you but safety from the chains. There aren't many instances in daily life where something physical is there to catch your fall.

The second instance of spanking that impressed upon my mind was when you wore latex gloves. Whereas the manacles and spreader bars captured my imagination because of the twofold trust and force, the latex gloves appealed due to their ritualistic performativity. There was something sacred in the act of putting on an item of clothing for the sexual act as an end in itself. Ceremonial, honoring a transient moment, akin to performance art. The tactile quality of the latex -- something made especially apparent to me when you inserted your fingers into my mouth -- further objectified me, because it made me feel like an exhibit or object shielded from direct human touch.

Latex as a barrier was further explored when I was masked. Bent over a bench, head facing the mirror. I was unrecognizable. Eyes peeping through snug holes. Spanked in this angle, the sense of disassociation -- objectification, the desire to be used, to be of service -- was intensified. Afterwards, your recollection of the story about a fictional woman who was made to watch herself pleasure herself despite her initial discomfort, and the gradual transformation so that it was something that she craved, stuck in my mind. There is a psychological element to wearing the mask which manifests the idea of being turned into a slut. Brain-washing so that one craves cum.

Finally, the wearing of a gag contributed to this psychological transformation in that it restricted another part of the body. Manipulation through a metal instrument so that I had no option but to accept that my mouth was a hole for you to fuck, and that being strapped in this position was a manipulation that I should take, accept as my own. The context of readiness -- the imbuing that I was there to take cock, mouth open, ready and eager.

The combination of these parts contributed to the pleasure experienced whilst restrained with a vibrator. The climax I had on my back, with your cock in my mouth. Being told that I had to swallow every drop that fell on my lips. My fulfillment of this task.

And that brings me to why I had cum on my temple, in my hair. Deserving -- having exposed my body -- of the outfit that a slut would wear to be ruined, for next time. Reading this story back, I understand why Linder stuck in my mind. I am looking back at myself in words, forcing the gaze to see myself as an object of sex. My body -- adorned by these garments -- the ones you chose for me -- and restrained, manipulated by equipment, makes me a photomontage. Different to Linder's criticism of society, however, this is not a societal construct but one contained in illicit meetings. Constructed as an end in itself, rather than to drive capital consumption in a magazine. Yes, I am consumed, but this isn't a structure that serves another -- the end is itself, human desire, lust. Virility translates into creative force, and I absorb this energy and then project it on the page.