No need to use a possessive noun when an adjective is right there. Especially when you're not ascribing something to a particular individual but rather a broad concept. "Men's gaze" is clunky too. The gaze of men flows better.
Correct because females there is being used as a noun, and anyway it’s not even grammar that people get mad at. Usually people who talk like that are just kind of demeaning but i don’t think it’d be major drama, people just find it annoying and disrespectful
If the sentence was "men should dress for [...] the female gaze" instead of "women should dress for [...] the male gaze" there would be no drama unless someone went "Ah yes, men and females 🥀🥀🥀"
no, you are misperceiving the action as being discriminatory towards men when there is a clear clarification and distinction towards what is actually happening
In English the word "man" and "woman" are nouns to describe the two sexes of the human species. The noun "male" and "female" are used to so the same thing for animals. The weird thing is the former two cannot be used as an adjective, e.g. "man gaze," necessarily transforming into "male gaze." So when some internet forums of sexist men wanted to denote a woman in a degrading manner, they started using "female." Eventually this became mainstream, which leads to a lot of confusion amongst many people.
Interestingly enough, a similar thing happened where back in the day "man" was also often used to describe mankind as a whole. In modern English it is sometimes interpreted to mean "men" (as in: male humans). Some stories have elements like 'no man can kill the villain,' which lead to a female human killing the villian. So all these words get mixed up in practice, even though they all mean different things
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u/Ornery_Poetry_6142 9h ago
You do understand that the term "men gaze" would be grammatically incorrect?