With the birth name of Claudia Cumberbatch, Claudia Jones was born on February 21, 1915 in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. She was a communist author, activist, and journalist active in the United States and Great Britain. She was imprisoned and deported by the U.S. for violating the anti-communist McCarran and Smith Acts.
Born in the British colony of Trinidad as Claudia Vera Cumberbatch, she later adopted the name Jones as "self-protective disinformation". She came to the U.S. as a child when her family migrated to Harlem.
Growing up working poor had a lasting impact on Jones; her mother died when she was twelve from work-related exhaustion and she herself caught tuberculosis at the age of 17 from poor living conditions, leading to lifelong lung damage.
In 1936, Jones joined the Young Communist League USA to help support the Scottsboro Boys, a group of young black men being subjected to a legalized form of lynching in the American South. Jones became a prominent author within the organization, editing its monthly journal "Spotlight".
As a member of the Communist Party USA and a feminist black nationalist, Jones' main focus was on creating "an anti-imperialist coalition, managed by working-class leadership, fueled by the involvement of women", and championed women's causes inside the Party.
One of Jones' best known works is the 1949 piece "An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!". In the work, Jones shows an understanding of what would later be called "intersectionality", writing: "The bourgeoisie is fearful of the militancy of the Negro woman, and for good reason. The capitalists know, far better than many progressives seem to know, that once Negro women begin to take action, the militancy of the whole Negro people, and thus of the anti-imperialist coalition, is greatly enhanced."
Following a hearing by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Jones was found in violation of the McCarran Act for being an "alien" (a non-citizen) who had joined the Communist Party, despite the fact that she had identified herself as a party member when completing her Alien Registration in 1940. She was ordered to be deported in 1950.
Before Jones could be deported, however, she was tried and convicted with eleven others, including her friend and communist of note Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, of "un-American activities" under the anti-communist Smith Act.
After serving several years in prison, Jones was released in 1955 and deported to the United Kingdom on December 7th that year. She immediately joined the Communist Party of Great Britain upon her arrival in Britain and remained a member until her death.
Jones continued her activism in Britain, campaigning against racism and sexism, speaking at trade union rallies, and visiting China, meeting with Mao Zedong. In 1958, Jones founded the West Indian Gazette, Britain's first major black newspaper, and helped organize celebrations of Caribbean culture that became the annual Notting Hill Carnival.
Jones died in 1964 at the age of 49. She is buried next to Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery, North London.
"It was out of my Jim Crow experiences as a young negro woman, experiences likewise born of working-class poverty that led me to join the Young Communist League and to choose the philosophy of my life, the science of Marxism-Leninism - that philosophy not only rejects racist ideas, but is the antithesis of them."
- Claudia Jones
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There's nothing wrong with feeling sexual attraction, it can only be "bad" if you act on it inappropriately in some way. My best guess about what you mean by "feeding the male gaze" is sexualizing women or "seeing women in a sexual way that are not trying to present themselves as such".
If that is what you mean, then I'm happy to tell you that you're probably not doing anything wrong. When the concept of the "male gaze" is brought up in media criticism, it's about how women are presented by an outside entity, like a director in a movie or a video game. To distinguish: Think of Bayonetta or Irene Adler from BBC's Sherlock, these are women whose sexuality is a core aspect of their character, who purposely present themselves in a way that invites people to be attracted to them. They are sexy because they want to be sexy. Now on the other hand, think about Megan Fox' character in Transformers or literally any female character in Mortal Kombat 9 (look up pictures on google). These are characters who do not define themselves by their sexuality (Sonya Blade from MK9 is supposed to be a tough, no-nonsense military woman), but are regardless presented as sexy and put in skimpy outfits purely to please the (primarily male) audience, hence "feeding the male gaze". They are sexy because others want them to be sexy, they are sexualized.
However, in either case, the "guilt" is not on the onlooker. If you experience sexual attraction to Megan Fox when watching Transformers, that's not on you, that's partially on Michael Bay and partially on God. Sexuality is not a choice, even for straight men, you can't just choose not to be attracted to an attractive woman. The same goes for your private life, feeling attraction is something natural that is completely out of anyone's control. It only becomes problematic if you act inappropriately in any way that affects the person you're attracted to.
Maybe this is not at all what you're talking about but well, for what it's worth, that's what "the male gaze" means.
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You should try not to feel guilty about it, that's not good or healthy. Sure, a lot of the time the best thing you can do is just accept it's there and then ignore it, but going further than that and feeling guilty won't help anyone or make you a better person.
That part of your sexuality has been somehow socially corrupted and is therefore undesireable is a pretty sketchy idea to begin with. Despite whatever vague thing tiktok thinks it means, male gaze is a theory in media criticism, it's not really something you engage with on an individual level.
Finding women attractive isn't a bad thing. Wanting to bone every pretty girl you see is normal. Recognising that it is just hormones is better than feeling guilty.