Sex, Power and the Male Gaze Mary Mag

The Oversexualisation of Women in Media written by Male Fantasies

Thursday, May 28, 2026 Mary Magzine
Written by Milan Meyer, Anaïs Bosbach and Lilli Huovari | Design by Ana Fernandes

EXCERPTS

Masculinity researcher Christoph May argues that “male fantasies” dominate film and television through male tropes, male-centered storytelling, and limited emotional perspectives.

Together with author Marie-Luise May, he founded Detox Masculinity in Berlin in 2016, organizing lectures and workshops about toxic masculinity and male identity.

The term “male fantasies” itself stems from masculinity researcher Klaus Theweleit, who published his influential two-volume work Male Fantasies in 1977.

May argues that a male-dominated industry simply cannot produce truly diverse emotional narratives or fully realized female and queer characters. Without diversity in writers’ rooms, stories remain trapped within the same limited perspectives. Men often write women not as complex people but as projections of what women are supposed to be according to the male gaze. […]

So why does desexualizing women in films provoke such intense backlash, especially from male audiences?

“It’s about power, it’s about control,” Christoph May argues. “It’s about men being disappointed that their usual images of women are questioned and that they are presented with something else.” […]

One of the biggest tropes in TV, according to May, is the father-son story– another trope clearly visible in Euphoria. Nate and his father perfectly fit this mold: emotional absence, violence, repression and a complete inability to process vulnerability. […]

Shows like Sex Education are often praised for doing exactly that.

Christoph May points to the series as an example of how sex can be portrayed in meaningful, educational and emotionally nuanced ways while centering female and queer perspectives.

Importantly, the show was created with a diverse writers’ room and female leadership.