A human face instantly captures attention over other stimuli. Despite this perceptual priority, face perception is prone to bias. Faces tend to be perceived as more male under uncertainty (e.g. Watson et al., 2016). Here we investigated face perception under uncertainty in the foveal and peripheral visual field and the effect of presaccadic attention. In our first experiment, participants fixated a central cross and discriminated biological sex of either centrally or peripherally presented face stimuli morphed between female and male face images. To manipulate perceptual uncertainty within the foveal condition, faces were masked after 65 ms or 110 ms. Obtaining psychometric functions, we expected a growing male bias (PSE shift) with increased uncertainty (increased JND). We found the expected differences in uncertainty but a male bias in the peripheral condition only. Within the peripheral condition, male biases increased with increasing JNDs. In our second experiment, we aimed to reduce uncertainty and male biases in the periphery by a presaccadic attention shift. Participants either executed a saccade towards a peripheral face or held fixation. Upon saccade detection, the face was masked, and resulting presentation durations were replayed in the fixation condition. Contrary to the expected presaccadic enhancement, JNDs did not differ between conditions and a male bias was found for both conditions. We reason that pre-saccadic attention might not have overcome the visual mask that remained visible about 200 ms after the saccade. We conclude that peripheral face perception is male biased and that presaccadic attention cannot “unmask” a postsaccadic mask.