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The Gaze: looking and being looked at is not the same as being seen

  
 
Ticker
19:07 / 13.10.06
This is a big topic worthy of many years of dialogue. I'm going to start it off by presenting an array of links and quotes to get folks thinking. There are many important areas of enquiry and I'm excited to learn from other posters about their interactions with the gaze.

The training of the dominant gaze as a lens of perception very intensely informs my sexuality. I believe this training was acquired through film/porn/advertizing starting when I was a child. The majority of it was through the male gaze seeing women as vulnerable passive creatures - not really people but receptive objects - and this perception greatly influenced my rejection of femaleness. I was lucky enough to take art and film courses examining this shaping of the gaze and learned that embedded in my training of how to see was an entire range of prejudiced assumptions.

Film and other visual art is helpful to examine the gaze as we share the perspective of the creator looking at what they want us to see and how to see it. However the Gaze operates in our everyday lives, not just on the screen or the canvas. Advertising is particularly heavy handed about this sort of thing and I hope this thread will be used to post examples.

The Gaze can be invasive, reductionist, sexist, racist, classiest, homophobic, and ableist. It can also be celebratory and appreciative if invited. Looking isn't the problem (IMO) but applying meaning to the person you are viewing or defining them by a non negotiated standard of visual interpretation is.

I don't agree with everything in the links below but in hopes of getting this topic up and running I feel they offer a good starting point.

about the Gaze:

the Gaze

Laura Mulvey the originator of the phrase "male gaze"

Male Gaze

about the Gaze in Film/Ads:

A Web Essay on the Male Gaze, Fashion Advertising, and the Pose

The Feminine Gaze in Notorious and The Paradine Case

Avoiding the Masculine “Gaze”: Frustrated Homosexual Desire and the
Eroticized Role of the Camera In Hitchcock’s Rear Window and
Antonioni’s Blow Up

Rear Window and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: Blonde’s on Display

Race and the Dominant Gaze: Narratives of
Law and Inequality in Popular Film


About the Veil and escaping forms of the Gaze:

chador

Veil Hijab

Among Muslim women, the debate about hijab takes many forms. Many believe that the veil is a way to secure personal liberty in a world that objectifies women. Several women have argued that hijab allows them freedom of movement and control of their bodies. Understood in such terms, hijab protects women from the male gaze and allows them to become autonomous subjects. Others have argued that the veil only provides the illusion of protection and serves to absolve men of the responsibility for controlling their behavior.

The Veil Unveiled: The Hijab in Modern Culture
Illustrated with photographs, drawings, and cartoons gathered from popular culture, this provocative book demonstrates that the veil, the garment known in Islamic cultures as the hijab, holds within its folds a semantic versatility that goes far beyond current clichés and homogenous representations.

Whether seen as erotic or romantic, a symbol of oppression or a sign of piety, modesty, or purity, the veil carries thousands of years of religious, sexual, social, and political significance. Using examples from both the East and West—including Persian poetry, American erotica, Iranian and Indian films, and government-sanctioned posters—Faegheh Shirazi shows that the veil has become a ubiquitous symbol, utilized as a profitable marketing tool for diverse enterprises, from Penthouse magazine to Saudi advertising companies.

She argues that perceptions of the veil change with the cultural context of its use as well as over time: in a Hindi movie the veil draws in the male gaze, in an Iranian movie it denies it; photographs of veiled women in Playboy aim to titillate a principally male audience, while cartoons of veiled women in the same magazine mock and ridicule Muslim society.

Shirazi concludes that the practice of veiling, encompassing an amazingly rich array of meanings, has often become a screen upon which different people in different cultures project their dreams and nightmares.

Faegheh Shirazi is associate professor of Middle Eastern languages and cultures in the Islamic Studies Program at the University of Texas, Austin. She is the author of several book chapters and articles on issues related to women in Islam in numerous publications, including Critique and Journal for Critical Studies of the Middle East.

Veil: Modesty, Privacy, and Resistance and Rage Against the Veil

"Western-ideology feminists (in the East and the West) have dominated the discourse on the veil, viewing it as an aspect of patriarchies and a sign of women's backwardness, subordination, and oppression. This unidimensional approach narrows the study of the veil ... and leads to a distorted view of a complex cultural phenomenon," she writes.

Modest dress is a way of life for observant Islamic men, she argues, and male veiling--as a symbol of masculinity and virility--is also present in various parts of the Middle East and Africa.

For women, veiling in contemporary Arab culture fulfills many functions, she says. It can signify privacy, kinship, status, power, autonomy, and political resistance.

Drawing on her own fieldwork, an extensive bibliography, and her analysis of religious texts, El Guindi stresses the "centrality of the cultural notion of privacy" in veiling. Modest Islamic dress, she says, grants women a kind of "bi-rhythmic," private, spiritual space even in the public sphere. It is a mistake, she suggests, to presuppose that the Islamic faith denies women the right to express or enjoy their own sexuality: "Islam accepts sexuality as a normative aspect of both ordinary and religious life."

Free from the male gaze and from sexualized attention, observant, veiled Islamic women should not be pitied, insists El Guindi. Instead, she says, they must rightly be understood to be observing--and drawing pride from--Islam's central tenets: privacy, humility, piety, and moderation.

Pride in Islamic observance, in addition to support of national and women's self-determination, also lies at the heart of the adoption of the veil in political struggle, she contends. Tracing the creation of a new Islamic political consciousness in Egypt, Palestine, and Iran beginning in the 1970s, El Guindi suggests that veiling as a part of this activism "espouses egalitarianism, community, identity, privacy, and justice.... Reserve and restraint in behavior, voice, and body movement are not restrictions. They symbolize a renewal of traditional cultural identity."

Sacred Ways of Seeing:

Darshan: To see with reverence and devotion

barbelith threads of interest:

Thinly veiled

The Eighties, Athena and the appearance of the homoerotic poster...

Feminism 101

Trans men/women and men/women are/are not the same

(I'm sure there are more help me out?)
 
 
Olulabelle
21:52 / 13.10.06
One Quranic reference to lowering the gaze:

Surah an-Nur verse 31 reads:

And say to the faithful women to lower their gazes, and to guard their private parts, and not to display their beauty except what is apparent of it, and to extend their headcoverings (khimars) to cover their bosoms, and not to display their beauty except to their husbands, or their fathers, or their husband's fathers, or their sons, or their husband's sons, or their brothers, or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or their womenfolk, or what their right hands rule (slaves), or the followers from the men who do not feel sexual desire, or the small children to whom the nakedness of women is not apparent, and not to strike their feet (on the ground) so as to make known what they hide of their adornments. And turn in repentance to God together, O you the faithful, in order that you are successful.

This is also the section of the Quran that deals with why women wear the hijab.

In this instance lowering the gaze means not looking at what is 'forbidden to be seen'; for men that's the area from the navel to the knees, and for women that's the area from the upper chest to the knees.

The Quran is not clear about what not to display their beauty except what is apparent of it actually means but in the Sunna Mohammed explains that this means the face and the hands. So, as far as I understand it, this is why muslim women cover everything apart from their face and their hands.

This is the most widely accepted interpretation of this Islamic tenet and explains why most practicing muslim women wear the hijab. The niqab (or any kind of face covering veil) has different interpretations and these are widely argued within the Islamic religion so I definitely think we should avoid discussing the hijab and the niqab as the same thing.

I personally am very interested in women wearing the veil and how that relates to feminism, and how it can be compared to some western beliefs. Anna De L said in another thread: It's okay for women to wear the veil to stop men from getting all sexed up because that's female responsibility but it's not a rapists fault that he rapes a woman in a short skirt? In my brain the veil is logically inconsistent with other women's issues because the veil is for men.

I think the subject is deserved of it's own thread unless it will be ok to discuss it in detail here and for that to include the female response to women who wear the hijab or the face veil and their response to women who don't.
 
 
StarWhisper
13:19 / 14.10.06

John Bergers "Ways of Seeing" is a relevant book. Had a look to see if it is online but can't find it.
 
 
redtara
18:52 / 14.10.06
I think the thing about the veil that interests me in the current debate, and the part that seems to be lost, is the political dimension. It may be my assumption but, I get the feeling that the illegal/immoral beginnings of the conflict that is ravaging Iraq has politicised a great many young British Muslim women who, may not have worn the veil ten years ago or were part of a household where women wore the veil but, feel motivated to use it now to become visible in a political sense. I suspect that this response is inmeshed in Jack Straws discomfort.

As I said, no evidence, just observation and a feelng of mistrust of the 'passive, oppressed' cliche of Islamic womanhood.
 
 
Red Concrete
19:12 / 14.10.06
This is a wholly new topic to me, so I won't comment, except to make the point that the headscarf, certainly in the context of the gaze and feminism, is not a purely muslim or arab tradition. Both my grandmothers (Catholic) would have had several headscarves. Also, growing up in rural (also catholic) southern Europe, headscarves would have been regularly used 2 generations ago, and continuously used by women 3 or 4 generations ago (often with a hat on top of that). Also, see the platok and wimple.
 
 
petunia
19:49 / 15.10.06
I've been thinking about this the past few days and I think certain parallels can be made between veiling and not voting.

The act of veiling can be interpreted (in some cases, by some people) as a kind of 'stepping outside' of the realm of the gaze and of the politics of the gaze, of looks and look (look as how one appears; 'it's my look'). In the same way, refusal to vote is a 'stepping outstide' of the political realm and the interactions of power and political preference.

Just as refusal to vote can be an empowered and empowering act ('the whole system of votes and political parties is utterly fucked and i will have no part of it'), so too can the act of veiling be empowering. Refusal to play the games of beauty/ugliness, desire, look and gaze can provide a liberation from what can be a massive burden for many women. Refusal to play a game can also help destroy the game.

However, it can be argued that absenteeism is actually a failure to comply with a moral/ethical duty. If one does not vote, how is one going to make any kind of difference to the political climate? If one does not attempt to confront the gaze, to change it for the better, to disarm it, how can one expect the problem to ever be fixed?

In a society where the gaze rules the expectations of how women should look act and be, the act of covering one's skin can be a valuable protest. To say 'this is mine and i allow it to whom i wish' can be a great act of reclamation. Veiling is an overt act of power, which may be why it is both eroticised and reviled by patriarchy.

But this is only true of veiling when it is freely chosen. Veiling when enforced by law (specifically, male law) just becomes another symbol of owner and owned ('this is mine and i allow it to whom i wish', spoken by another). Veiling 'so as not to stir the blood of men who may be led astray' is just a poor excuse for this.

In an ideal world, the gaze would be powerless as each person would own themselves to the degree they desire, and the eyes would have no claim to ownership. It is interesting to wonder whether the gaze is better disarmed by subversion (playing the current game but by one's own rules, so as to change the current rules) or by flat refusal (refusal to play the game, thus breaking it down and letting it die).

What are other techniques one can use to 'combat' the gaze? Can they co-exist with veiling?
 
 
Ticker
21:05 / 15.10.06
What are other techniques one can use to 'combat' the gaze? Can they co-exist with veiling?

I've used direct verbal contact to deal with the gaze. When being looked at in uncomfortable way I engage with the person to foster their experience of my personhood. I feel empowered to do this because I feel I can protect myself. I don't respond to the threat of rape or physical violence as a tool of repression.

I'd be interested in the expereince of veils that have statements on them as a way of engaging with the gaze. I can envision a wide range of statements on colored cloth from the very simple "I am a person" to "this body belongs to me" to even more intense exploration of reaction.

What about full body coverings that said things like:

"Every two and half minutes someone is sexually assaulted"
"one out of six sexual assault victims is under 12 years old"
 
 
Quantum
14:00 / 17.10.06
John Bergers "Ways of Seeing" is a relevant book eirdandfracar

I've got a copy if you want me to look anything up.
 
 
StarWhisper
17:00 / 17.10.06
I have a copy too. Here are some excerps from one of the essays to give an idea of it's contents and raise new issues or contribute to existing ones. The article disscusses how women are seen primarily in the context of the nude in European oil painting, most of the direct disscussion of which I have not included in this summary. Quantum: invisible superhero or anyone else wants to check if it's o.k. or wants to post something extra that would be good.

According to usage and conventions...the social
presence of a woman is different to that of a man.

...a woman's presence expresses her own atutude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. Her presence is manifest gestures, voice, opinions, expressions,clothes...indeed there is nothing she can do which does not contribute to her presence.

A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself...

And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements as her identity as a woman.

Her own sense of bieng in herself is supplanted by a sense bieng appreciated as herself by another.

...One... [might say]: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.

What is striking about [the story of Adam and Eve] They became naked as a result of eating the apple, each saw the other differently. Nakedness was created in the mind of the beholder.

She is not naked as she is.
She is naked as the spectator sees her.

Etiquettes of modesty are not merely puritan or sentimental: it is reasonable to recognise a loss of mystery.

And the explanation of this loss of mystery may be largely visual.

The focus of perception shifts from eyes, mouth, nose, shoulders, hands - all of which are capable of such subtleties of expression that the personality expressed by them is manifold- it shifts from these to the sexual parts, whose formation suggests an utterly compelling but single process. The other is reduced or elavated - whichever you prefer- to their primary sexual catergory: male or female.

This unequal relationship is so deeply embedded in our culture that it still structures the consciousness of many women. They do to themselves what men do to them.

Today the attitudes and values which informed that tradition are expressed through ther more widely diffused media- advertising,journalism, telivision.

Choose... [an image of a traditional nude]. Transform that woman into a man. Either in your mind's eye or by drawing a reproduction. Then notice the violence this transformation does. Not to the image but to the assumptions of a likely viewer.


This is in no way a substitute for reading the book. It is an excellent book.
 
 
Lurid Archive
19:00 / 17.10.06

Choose... [an image of a traditional nude].

So I chose Michelangelo's David (honest! I went to Firenze a few months ago), and didn't find that the image was done an enormous amount of violence by reflecting on its masculinity. Much like the rest of the passage, I realise I'm supposed to nod along in agreement but am not entirely sure why.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
22:35 / 17.10.06
I'm kind of agreeing with Lurid here. I can think of a lot of classical works where the naked male form is presented in much teh same ways as the naked female form. When I think of any given nude female image I can usually think of male analog. I would certainly have to admit that you don't see certain kinds of male image as often as you see the female equivalent, but I do not feel that substituting a male figure for any given female nude will necessarily result in a shattering of expectations.
 
 
Ticker
22:40 / 17.10.06
I think it isn't always a big focal point, a body standing in space is much different than a body interacting with a space. However did you folks check out this link:

A Web Essay on the Male Gaze, Fashion Advertising, and the Pose

it does it in reverse putting male bodies in common current female positions.
 
 
alas
23:19 / 17.10.06
Lurid--I would suggest you actually read Berger's work, rather than using the selective quotations pulled out above. By the way, those statements are not in fact a single "passage" of his work; they are selected insights that are embedded in a text rooted in careful analysis and long term study of Western art. You may disagree with them as conclusions, but it's important to look at the evidence he presents, first.

It's been awhile since I read this text, I admit, but, for example his quotation about the nude I'm pretty sure is in the context of a discussion of female nudes, so your statement, about Michaelangelo's David, I didn't find that the image was done an enormous amount of violence by reflecting on its masculinity, is a straw man argument: Berger's not suggesting that reflecting on masculinity does violence, it's that gender matters in art--as xk's link makes clear, women's poses are generally distinct from male poses in art, and this is particularly true when nude, so moving from female to male would call attention to the fact that women are posed quited differently from men, men look silly or vulnerable when posed like women.
 
 
Lurid Archive
23:53 / 17.10.06
I didn't mean to be dismissive, especially since I haven't read Berger's work, and I'm certainly sympathetic to the argument that female images are treated and posed quite differently from male ones. But...I don't think that Michelangelo's David is *that* much of a straw man, since the pose struck is actually rather silly, vulnerable even. The figure is clearly inviting and aware of the gaze, in much the way that is described in the quotes and the web essay xk links to.

It was, as I said, the first image that popped into my head and I don't want to make too much of it, but it did rather undermine the exercise I was invited to reflect on.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:22 / 18.10.06
But...I don't think that Michelangelo's David is *that* much of a straw man, since the pose struck is actually rather silly, vulnerable even.

It's worth noting that David is armed.

I'm just saying. More when I get a moment.
 
 
Ticker
15:33 / 18.10.06

Haus is correct and here's a less seen image of David's sling

here's an interesting bit around David from the above site:


Traditionally, David was portrayed after his victory, triumphant over Goliath. Both Verrochio's and Donatello's Davids are depicted standing over Goliath's severed head. Michelangelo has depicted David before the battle. Davis is tense, but not so much in a physical as in a mental sense. The slingshot he carries over his shoulder is almost invisible, emphasizing that David's victory was one of cleverness, not sheer force. This interpretation comes from Gardner's art through the ages. Irving Stone is somewhat more specific in stating that David is depicted at the moment that he decides to engage Goliath.

Michelangelo was a citizen of the city state of Firenze (Florence). The national state of Italy did not come into existence until the 1800s. In the time the statue was made (between 1501 and 1504), power resided with individual cities. Firenze was surrounded by enemies that were much stronger than the city itself. When the statue of David was placed on the square in front of the city hall (where you can now find a copy), the people of Firenze immediately identified with him, as a cunning victor over superior enemies. To them, David was a symbol representing fortezza and ira, strength and anger. The statue had (intended) political connotations for the city state that had recently cast off the ruling of the Medici family. Note how David's character traits, are considered more important than his victory over Goliath, which is why Michelangelo depicted him before the battle, strong-willed and ready to fight.

Speaking of statues one of the most disturbing examples of being repositioned by the Gaze is a hindu statute of a goddess in the Boston Museum of Fine Art. She's had her arms and head lopped off so to present a 'classical' greek style of statuary. She was also taken out of a temple structure where she was a part of the balcony and intended to look with a visitor over the landscape. Not to mention her genitals were cemented over to be more acceptable. The whole transformation of the statue is well documented as well as the space she occupied with other figures at the original site.
 
 
Lurid Archive
15:50 / 18.10.06
While I'd be the first to admit I know very little about fine art, surely Michelangelo's David is an erotically charged figure which is fascinating in part because of the way knowing beauty of David, right? I really have no idea if that is a conventional way of looking at it...but I'd be hugely surprised if it wasn't, sling notwithstanding. Still, the association with war is interesting.

Not to mention her genitals were cemented over to be more acceptable.

This has been, as far as I can tell, a fairly popular practice at various times. The Vatican musuem is pretty much full of statues which have been vandalised in the name of modesty, for instance.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:21 / 18.10.06
While I'd be the first to admit I know very little about fine art, surely Michelangelo's David is an erotically charged figure which is fascinating in part because of the way knowing beauty of David, right? I really have no idea if that is a conventional way of looking at it...but I'd be hugely surprised if it wasn't, sling notwithstanding. Still, the association with war is interesting.

Dude, David. One of the most famous and successful war-leaders in Jewish history. As xk noted, the fact that he is not depicted actually standing over another man's severed head is a refined and surprising character touch.

If by "erotically-charged" you mean that the intention was that the statue was intended to reward the gaze with erotic stimulation, then ... well, no. I don't think that it was intended to convey this. I think that there is an interplay of a number of elements in the male nude, among which is often an element of admiration of the idealised beauty of the unclothed male form, and all public statuary is there to be looked at but I think it can be said with reasonable confidence that Michaelangelo's intention was not to create a sexually arousing figure or a passive recipient of the erotic gaze, unless this was a very complex and remarkably successful practical joke at the expense of the Florentine people in general and the Office of Public Works of the Cathedral in particular.

I think it might be worth thinking about how David's status as the most famous statue of the naked male body in the world, and probably the most famous and most reproduced single statue in the world, has affected perceptions, and also how methods and representations have altered in the progress to the present day both from the ideals of classical statuary influencing Michaelangelo and the Renaissance period itself.

For example, it seems to me that it's comparatively rare for modern public art to be nudes - in London, recent items of statuary on public display have included nude female forms - Marc Quinn's sculpture of Alison Lapper and Damien Hirst's Walking Woman, but in both cases, I think, they were making points about the nude, about public art and about the depiction of women in sculpture. For want of a better term, they are postmodern nudes.
 
 
Lurid Archive
16:57 / 18.10.06
This is possibly becoming threadrotty, so I'll keep it short...but, yes, David isn't pornography in the sense that it isn't meant to arouse the viewer. But the beauty of the figure, and the implied admiration for that beauty, is clear, isn't it? Feel free to laugh, but I find it hard to completely separate that from some kind of eroticism. Then again, I'd say much the same about many depictions of the crucifixion - maybe its a wierd Catholic thing. (As an analogy for what I'm saying, consider the way that slashfic may work against or regardles of authorial intentions, yet isn't entirely in the imagination of the fan.)

I think you may be on to something about the changing perceptions relating to nudes, though. It is certainly hard to imagine a similar modern male nude being accepted easily, without falling foul of conservative sentiments. In that sense, maybe your quip that David is a hoax on Fiorentinos has a grain of truth to it.
 
 
Ticker
13:33 / 19.10.06
I think this is very much on topic Lurid so please feel free to keep going if you wish.

I think you may be on to something about the changing perceptions relating to nudes, though. It is certainly hard to imagine a similar modern male nude being accepted easily, without falling foul of conservative sentiments. In that sense, maybe your quip that David is a hoax on Fiorentinos has a grain of truth to it.

these changing perceptions, one might argue, could very well be the markers of the evolution of the Gaze.

To over simplify, if a culture has a moment when the ideal response to the nude body is one of intellectual and religious appreciation (the perfection of form/proportion the realized image of the Divine) how will that manifest in the average person's perception at that time? Compare that to a moment when the nude body is culturally equated with something else, perhaps slavery, savagery, or poverty.

A great personal experience for me was in art history class learning over the course of several months how to perceive images from other cultures as they were intended by the culture. The way to read an image is changeable. So while it maybe difficult for us to stop seeing the body's representation as sexual we do need to understand that it isn't an external constant from our culture. Another example might be with age perceptions of the body. Our culture says young bodies are not sexual and places some strict taboos around viewing them. We also say old bodies are not sexual and project unattractiveness on them. We can even see this play out with facial features and body types as culturally shifting.
 
 
TeN
14:21 / 19.10.06
I would also highly recomend reading Berger's Ways of Seeing for anyone interested on the topic
it's a hard work to quote, I feel, as some of his most compelling arguments are made through his "visual essays"
 
 
Good Intentions
01:45 / 26.10.06
All of this is interesting (I too rep for Ways of Seeing, which Berger contributed to and edited). I myself have investigated and experience the gaze more as a direct power relationship - here the example of interest to this discussion would be to compare pornography to the practice of gynocology. The same thing done in the same way to different ends.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:18 / 26.10.06
Way-ull. Hmmm. I think that the thing being done that you're referring to - looking at ladybits - is such a small and specific part of the activities of the consumer of porn and the practitioner of gynecology as to highlight the differences between the activities rather than highlight their sameness - isn't it a bit like saying that fisting and open heart surgery are the same action because they both involve putting on rubber gloves?

However, we can definitely look at the gaze as distinct from the act of looking, say - as I think that, to look at the Piazza della Signoria, David and the Sabine Woman are intended to invite different forms of look. To go back to your example: the act of gynecological examination of a woman by a man and the act of looking at a picture of a woman by a man (which could of course be consumed by people who are not straight or not men, just as gynecology is not an exclusively male profession) both involve a man looking at a woman (or photograpic representation of same). How do the acts of looking differ?
 
 
Good Intentions
07:18 / 27.10.06
What I'm thinking of is that both gynocology and pornography (being particular examples of the medical gaze and the possessing gaze) instantiate a power relation between the agent (the doctor / the paying customer) and the patient (the patient / the paid actress) where the agent through his position gains unmediated and unquestioned access to something that would otherwise be inappropriate for whatever reason. While the enjoyment of seeing in the case of pornography is the main concern, it would be a mischaracterisation to look for this same thing in the case of the medical gaze, not that it doesn't exist but because it isn't the central issue. Merely having the power relation reinforced by superfluously instantiating the gaze is enough, the joy of seeing comes after. And for this question it is the possessing quality of the pornographic gaze that is important.

I'm not certain how much sense I'm making, and I don't want to press the point too much in fear of thread rot.
 
 
Good Intentions
07:22 / 27.10.06
The type of thing I'm getting at is the retained organs controversy, where it was discovered that some doctors/hospitals kept organs from autopsies without asking the next of kin. The Royal College of Surgeons replied that autopsies are an indespensable part of the practice of medicine. Yes, but keeping the organs is superfluous - its a false dilemma. The doctors keep the organs because they have the power to, to flex their muscles, as it were, at their right to survey human life.
 
  
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