 Theories of the male gaze come in several varieties: Psychoanalytic theories dominate film interpretation, (Mulvey 1989, 2019; Doane 1991; Chanter 2008); but their presumptions and methodology are contested by philosophers more attuned to cognitive science and analytic philosophy (Freeland 1998a; Carroll 1995; Cunliffe 2019). Versions of the male gaze can be found in the existentialist feminism of Simone de Beauvoir (Beauvoir 1949/2011); and there are empirically-minded observations that confirm the dominance of male points of view in cultural artifacts without adopting any particular philosophical scaffolding. These theories differ in their diagnosis of what generates the “maleness” of the ideal observer for art. For psychoanalytic theorists, one must understand the operation of the unconscious over visual imagination to account for the presence of desire in objects of visual art. For others, historical and cultural conditioning is sufficient to direct appreciation of art in ways that privilege masculine points of view. Despite many significant theoretical differences, analyses of the gaze converge in their conclusion that much of the art produced in the Euro-American traditions situates the ideal appreciator in a masculine subject-position. There is debate over the dominance of the male position in all art, for appreciative subjects cannot be understood simply as “masculine” but require further attention to sexuality, race, and nationality (Silverman 1992; hooks 1992, 1995; Yancy 2016). Sometimes a facile reading of the gaze tempts one to exaggerate the sharpness of gender distinctions into the male viewer and the female object of the gaze, though most feminists avoid such over-simplification. Despite their differences, theories of the gaze reject the idea that perception is ever merely passive reception. All of these approaches assume that vision possesses power: power to objectify—to subject the object of vision to scrutiny and possession. (For example, seeing oneself as the exotic Other in orientalist paintings heightens the political aura of art produced in dominant western cultures (Al-Saji 2019).) Since social norms frame and amplify the operation of perception, there may be inflections of gender in the very act of seeing (Tullman 2017). Examinations of aesthetic perception have provided theoretical tools of inestimable value in calling attention to the fact that looking is rarely a neutral operation of the visual sense. As Naomi Scheman states: