So I just read this article about how people end up fucking up whatever task they’re doing when they feel like they’re being watched. Scientists have discovered that the sense of being observed actually SHUTS OFF a part of the brain, the inferior parietal cortex.
Given the fact that women are constantly watched in our society, and we are constantly REMINDED that we are being watched by people making fun of fat, “ugly”, or gender-nonconforming women, it makes me wonder how many women have messed up important tasks or projects or just day-to-day activities because A PART OF OUR BRAIN is permanently being deactivated?
Like talk about a fucking handicap.
Women are constantly held under the microscope- whether we are attractive or unattractive, the gaze of patriarchy never ends.
Just last week I was walking my dog and bent over to literally pick up poop. Suddenly I heard whistling and looked up cause I knew I was the only person around. Sure enough, about 300 feet away, some construction worker was perched on top of a building, grinning at me and calling out stuff I luckily couldn’t hear because he was so goddamn far away.
I wonder what it does to women to have this constant source of stress hanging over us, each and every day, knowing we are being scrutinized and examined no matter what we’re doing. I wonder how many more accomplishments, life-changing discoveries, inventions, etc would have been achieved by women if we didn’t have this constant brain-handicap imposed on us by men.
This feeling of being watched extends even when we’re alone and affects our abilities- here’s a study where women took a math test while in a bathing suit and performed significantly worse than women fully dressed, even though all the women were alone when taking the test. The men in bathing suits and the men fully-dressed had no significant difference in performance. It is a major fucking handicap.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247434408_That_swimsuit_becomes_you_Sex_differences_in_self-objectification_restrained_eating_and_math_performance_Correction_to_Fredrickson_et_al_1998
(I don’t remember how to make a cleaner link on my phone, sorry)
This is AMAZING. It never occurred to me that “Observing a thing changes that thing” includes the eye of the male gaze.
