Written by: Sam Rabie

Edited by: Orli Adamski

Not I, the Pervert

Family’s eyes, 

once so knowing, now a disguise. 

Ogling, 

they peer and pry. 

“It’s been 6 months, how tall you’ve grown,” 

   they say into my chest, 

   determined not to undress.

A woman! They declare. 

   Womanish. 

A woman in this tight dress 

not a woman when I ache

   not a woman when I cry

      not a woman I recognize.

Yet I aspire 

Boobies, breasts. 

Or do I admire?

I once ogled

   through asexual eyes.

Now, I still stare

   at her chest

      and mine.

Hunger to objectivity.

   Who is the pervert, not I?

With the same phallocentric gaze 

as those innocent schoolboys, 

androgynous to all that walk by. 

   Scared of touch, oh, just nine. 

   Eyes trained by engorged titties

   on computer sites.

   They mock and whistle 

   at little sweet Jane.

with breasts, she must contain.

Or bear the shame. 

Asexual, they remain–the schoolboys and Jane. 

   But not Suzie,

   the ghostly gay child 

   made mad by her refusal 

   of the phalocentric gaze. 

Not innocent,

   not the child insisted upon

   just the blur in the frame

   they cannot name.

Suzie: the rib of Genesis, 

from which we are all born 

into a world before corruption. 

   Can we let her restore? 

For,

you undress me,

   talk into my chest. 

I look back, press them up, to my best. 

Who is the pervert?

   not my family,

    nor I. 

Just the guys,

if you ask the world,

that trained our eyes.

Artist Statement 

“Not I, the Pervert” traces how the objectifying male gaze forms, circulates, and embeds itself in everyday dynamics shaping our internalized perceptions. Drawing on queer and feminist thinkers such as Lee Edelman, Kathryn Stockton, and Alice Walker, this poem exposes a tension in which the schoolboys and “little Jane” remain culturally coded as asexual and pure, even as they absorb and reproduce the male gaze that has been ingrained. Suzie, the ghostly “gay child,” disrupts the myth of the sexless natural child. Drawing from Stockton, Suzie embodies the queer child who refuses the fantasy of purity. Although Suzie functions as a counter-force to the male gaze, echoing Edelman’s “death drive”, she is still shaped by the very system she troubles. She resists the gaze, but she is not outside it. Invoking Genesis, I aim not to romanticize Suzie as pre-corrupted, but to highlight how queerness exposes the absurdity of innocent narratives and unsettles the assumed naturalness of the male gaze. By narrating the schoolboys (who wield the gaze), Jane (who internalizes it), and Suzie (who troubles it), I map how this gaze becomes an ingrained and insidious force. The poem asks the reader to sit with the discomfort of recognizing their own participation in this looking, how, in different ways, each of us becomes “the pervert.” 

Laughing at the Gaze

Eyes,

everywhere but on mine,

unbashful, they stare

as if caught in a sudden light

   where’s your shame?

Faces pass, 

feet keep moving,

   heads stay turned. 

Eyes drop, 

   fixated, 

   magnetised to my chest.

Nipples, summits, piercing cloth.

Gold bars catch sunlight,

   sharpening their stare.

Unapologetic eyes… 

they don’t meet mine.

“HEY,” I bark. 

But the faceless face 

   has already slipped

      out of sight. 

I stand, mad,

wanting to cover

   but not I. 

My chest refuses straps, 

the harness meant to cage 

   my beautiful breasts. 

Sometimes I indulge 

in the whimsy of a colourful bra 

   but daylight is no place

      for a concession.

My shoulders have cried enough,

oh, trust me, I tried: 

Perky, bouncy 

   once I aspired.

   Each morning 

   I strapped into 

   my shiny push-up bra,

   bulletproof, 

   an impenetrable shield.

Soft breast-buds

   lost beneath layers.

   Shoulders pressed back, 

      eyeballing myself 

      in the mirror. 

a fraud,

fraught with armour,

   ready for war 

   at the thought

      of little schoolboys’ 

      beady eyes. 

Now, armour, rest aside. 

My chest sits plainly on my ribs,

swaying with its own certainty,

braless in its terrain. 

   unprotected,

      I strut ablaze. 

I walk,

   prance, 

      dance.

onto the battlefield, 

   skin electric in time. 

Unwarned, unbound.

I know your eyes are coming. 

I see their gleaming sheen. 

grazing 

up

   and 

      down. 

looking

 through 

    and all around. 

So I lift my chin, 

 slow my pace, 

      and wait 

    searching,

      starring

         back. 

I mimic your blank stare.

      Eyes, 

   I catch my own 

in the reflection of your 

    all-consuming leer. 

Even in my sexiness, 

dancing on your stage,

   a performer,

   I manipulate.

  bend, 

   refuse, 

   and slip out of 

      your 

     unblinking gaze. 

Mischievous laughing, 

I’m strong? 

so, I disobey. 

Artist statement 

In conversation with “Not I, the Pervert,” “Laughing at the Gaze” criticizes the objectifying male gaze from a mocking lens. Instead of tracing how the gaze forms, this piece explores what it feels like to be reduced to an object through an eerie, uncanny, and mocking tone. Drawn from personal experience, the speaker recalls the awkward, uncertain days of first bras, the padded, push-up contraptions she once depended on. She exaggerates their bulk as “bullet-proof,” laughing at how desperately she wanted the illusion of breasts pressed up to her collarbone. Although she reminisces with humour, it’s tinged with discomfort, performing her conception of womanhood. After lingering in this memory, half-absurd, half-solemn, the poem returns to the opening scene, where her chest now sits confidently on her ribs. Now, she seeks out the objectifying eyes. This poem is inspired by a moment in Tits Up by Sarah Thornton, found in the section “Hardworking Tits,” where a stripper confronts her patrons’ gaze to force recognition of her humanity. The speaker assumes a similar stance, enacting a brief micro-resistance and claiming what power she can in patriarchal dynamics. In the end, she laughs, uneasy, almost uncanny, as she dares to look back, occupying the space between pain and the dark hilarity of feeling like an object.

Ode to the Yitties: on Bosom Ballet 

Yitties, titties, tata’s, and bitties, 

 the swinging, flopping flesh. 

 my stress ball, my built-in heater, 

  Sometimes they prance as if in a theatre. 

Their shape and weight, 

   swing, squish.

Once amazed my little beholden eyes. 

Bee stings, swollen buds,

longing for round, bouncy jugs.

Of different shapes, sizes, and colours.

   None to force under duress, 

simply, they should express. 

A wonder, a comfort. 

   The all-knowing, large, soft chest. 

   My aunt’s bosom, 

   a pillow for my sunken eyes, 

      cries and whines. 

The soothing nursery rhyme: 

Hang low 

   Sagacious or bodacious

Tie them in a knot

   Tie them in a bow

Jive and jiggle. 

Shimmy and mingle.

Laugh at their peculiarity. 

Smile because they’re your friends. 

Dress them up in lace and satin. 

   Or press them to forget, so they don’t divest. 

Free,

   sometimes in comfortable rest.

   A shelf atop my tummy, 

content, without stress. 

Artist statement 

Unlike the earlier poems, which confront the chest’s relationship to the dictating force of the male gaze through discomfort, tension, and resistance, this poem considers the chest removed from those controlling patriarchal forces and assumes a light-hearted tone. It asks readers to imagine what empowerment might look like when the chest is approached through play, humour, and expressive joy, reclaiming the chest that has long been “colonized by patriarchy” and allowing people to engage with themselves in a more playful, liberatory way. Inspired by Sprinkle’s “Bosom Ballet” featured in Tits Up, Annie Sprinkle, a performance artist and former sex worker, uses her breasts like instruments, swinging, lifting, and moving them as a kind of dance. This poem celebrates that spirit, treating the breast as expressive, joyful, strange, and funny, rather than purely sexual or objectified. It is an invitation to laugh with the body, to treat the chest not as something to manage or conceal, but as capable of creativity, play, and pleasure. 

References 

Thornton, Sarah. 2024. Tits Up: What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us about Breasts. W. W. Norton & Company.