Exploring The Male Gaze

Backward Glances: Cruising the Queer Streets of New York and London by Mark W. Turner (Reaktion Books, 191 pp.)

Mark Turner's Backward Glances is not a memoir but a scholar's exploration and analysis of something all gay men do without a second thought.

Cruising is an age-old activity, not necessarily the exclusive domain of gay men. However, the particular ways and locales in which gay men do it are unique. And because gay men for centuries have been perceived as sexual outlaws, these rituals of cruising have developed as a way to protect oneself from persecution, imprisonment, entrapment, and scandal.

Turner, an American who is a faculty member in the Department of English at Kings College, University of London, looks at cruising through photography, letters, poetry, journalism, pornography, fiction, etc. as a way to show the reader that these media "all are part of the interrelated cultural production of the city and provide possibilities for understanding how cruising was imagined and how it gets reimagined over time."

He points out that it is not always easy to distinguish who is cruising and who is not, when individuals are sharing the same space that has multiple uses. Is the man standing in front of the department store window there to window shop or is he there in search of another man? This ambiguity is captured so well in the cover photo. A young man on the street is looking back at two other men with their arms around each other. They are unaware that he is observing them. If the photo was taken out of context, how would we read it?  Is he a gay man attracted to one or both men? Or is he a straight man astounded by such open display of affection? This photo underscores Turner's question, "[H]ow do we know our cruisers when we see them?" I think the answer has to be that we don't, not always.

It must be pointed out that cruising, like voyeurism and exhibitionism, are about the visual. However, the motivation differs. Cruising is a more reciprocal activity. Whereas voyeurism is more one-sided and surreptitious and exhibitionism is more self-centered, more transgressive, more confrontational (in other words, blatant). Although cruising might be considered transgressive as well because it involves something forbidden by society--male-male attraction--but it is much more of a sharing or mutual appreciation experience.

Turner makes it clear from the outset that his study is a limited one, focusing mostly on those who are white, male, and middle class. He understands that "cruising as a street practice needs to be far more fully considered in relation not only to issues of gender but also to race and ethnicity."

Even though Turner's view is mostly Eurocentric (he does devote two pages to the black science fiction writer Samuel Delany's Times Square porn theatre experiences), it is still important to listen to what he has to say because his observations have some relevance to gay men in general. For example, he states that "The cruiser positively longs to be seen, but not by everyone, and not in all streets." I think that description can apply to all gay men of whatever race, ethnicity, or social background.

I did find one passage that was particularly noteworthy. In Turner's view, bathhouses are places that "have the potential to level out social determinants such as class." To some extent this is true, but then there are other considerations that may come into play such as race, age, looks, physique, mannerisms, etc. Elsewhere in the book, he quotes another writer who says cruising is "a type of brotherhood far removed from the male bonding of rank, hierarchy, and competition that characterizes much of the outside world." To say that rank, hierarchy, and competition are absent from cruising is a misstatement. Anyone who has spent any time in a cruising area knows that there is a pecking order. The ones who are young, good looking, and have a muscular build are the most favored. If a person doesn't meet the criteria, rejection is usually the result.

All in all, Backward Glances is worthy of our attention, if only to give us some insight into what lies behind the male gaze and how that gaze has transformed the urban landscape.

This is an excerpt of a book review that was originally published in the Gay and Lesbian Review (July/August 2004).