I have been thinking a lot about the idea of the queer gaze lately. Not in a film-theory, academic, “please pass the projector” kind of way, but in the very real sense of how we actually look at each other. How desire feels from the inside. How it lands in the body long before the mind writes a thesis about it. If my brain had footnotes every time I saw an attractive woman, I would have a full dissertation by now.
The male gaze
We all know the male gaze. It is everywhere. It turns women into objects, poses, angles, headlights, plot devices, and occasionally lamps. It wants performance. It wants perfection. It wants a woman to be aware of being watched at all times, even when she is brushing her teeth or trying to eat a sandwich in peace. Honestly, some of these films would have us believe women go to sleep with perfect eyeliner.
But the queer gaze… that is something else entirely.
Therese and Carol
For me that BOOK was The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, later made into the movie Carol. How? Therese sees Carol not as an object, not as a fantasy, not as a woman framed for visual pleasure, but as someone whose presence stops her.
Her attraction unfolds through Carol’s aura, not her body. Tiny details in Carol’s expression. The emotional atmosphere around her. The quiet sense of recognition Therese cannot explain.
Instead of describing Carol through sexual features, angles, or visual fragments (the male-gaze way), the scene is written through Therese’s internal experience. Her confusion, her sudden awareness, her fascination with the way Carol occupies space rather than how she looks for someone else’s consumption.
What grabs Therese is not Carol’s beauty in a conventional, objectifying sense. It is the FEELING Carol evokes.
That is the queer gaze.
Recognition, not performance
The queer gaze is about recognition. It sees the person, not the performance. When women look at women with desire, the focus shifts from spectacle to essence. It notices the moment her shoulders drop because she finally feels safe. The way her mouth curves before she laughs. The tiny spark in her eyes when she realises she is being truly seen. And yes, sometimes it notices her forearms, or her shoulders, the way she smells, the way her tongue moistens her lips, the swell of her breasts. We are still human. Evolution did not prepare us for that level of temptation.
Sapphic attraction often feels like studying details with a level of attention that would make a biologist proud. There is no “pose for me.” It is more “tell me who you are without saying a word.” It is desire braided with empathy, curiosity, and the quiet hum of recognition. Truly, no one scrutinises micro expressions the way a queer woman does when she likes someone. FBI agents wish they had our observational skills.
And then there is the beautiful contradiction of tenderness and power coexisting. When a woman looks at another woman with longing, she is not trying to diminish her. She is admiring strength, depth, complexity, softness, edges, resilience. Sometimes all at once. It is desire without conquest. Intensity without taking anything away. It is basically a full emotional spa treatment delivered through eye contact.
This is why writing sapphic romance feels like its own universe. You get to write characters who see each other in ways the world rarely gives them permission to be seen. You get to write intimacy that comes from understanding, not control. And yes, occasionally you get to write someone melting because of a single raised eyebrow. That is also valid research. I take my research very seriously. Purely academic, of course.
The first time I knew it for what it was
For me, the first time I consciously felt the female gaze, and knew it for what it was, I was young, and she was older. Much older.
Up until then, women’s attention had felt academic. Polite. Curious in a way that stayed safely above the surface. Observational, almost instructional. I could tell myself it was admiration, or mentorship, or coincidence.
This wasn’t that.
This was the moment her interest in me stopped feeling neutral and started feeling intentional. Not loud. Not performative. Just… focused. As if something in her had shifted from noticing to considering, and she wasn’t pretending otherwise.
She didn’t look at me the way men did. There was no inventory. No scanning. No sense of me being reduced to parts. Instead, her gaze lingered in places that had nothing to do with my body and everything to do with my presence. It felt like being slowly undressed of excuses rather than clothes. As if she was reading me, and lingering over passages she planned to return to.
And that was the unnerving part.
Because suddenly I wasn’t wondering whether she found me attractive. I knew she did. Not in a hypothetical way. In a grounded, experienced, already-knows-what-she-likes way. The kind of knowing that doesn’t rush because it doesn’t have to.
The power dynamic didn’t disappear, it sharpened. She had lived more. She knew more. And yet the gaze didn’t dominate. It waited. It held its ground. It left the door open and trusted I’d notice.
That’s what made it unmistakable.
The female gaze doesn’t take. It allows.
And in allowing, it invites you to step forward, not as an object, but as a participant who understands exactly what’s being offered.
I remember realizing, with a mix of heat and absolute clarity, that her attention wasn’t something happening to me. It was something I could choose to meet… or refuse. And either choice would be respected, which somehow made the wanting sharper.
That was the moment desire stopped feeling theoretical.
Not because of what she did. But because of what she let me feel: held, measured, and unmistakably wanted, without ever being diminished.
Whatever restraint might have been possible in theory proved far less convincing in practice…
So I discovered that some invitations don’t require a reply, only a response.
So tell me. When did you first notice the difference between the male gaze and the queer gaze? Was it a book, a film, or the first time someone looked at you with an expression that said, “I see you,” instead of “perform for me”?
Or, even better, when did you realise your own gaze had shifted?
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