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1. Parting Shots / Stereohyped on 09 Aug 2007 at 5:21 pm

   […] And the advertising industry sinks even lower… [Racialicious] » Post A Comment Tagged: Parting Shots · Advertisements · Tisha Campbell […]

Comments

1. Jose wrote:

   Unfortunately, this behavior continues to stay commonplace in a male-dominated society. I’m glad you all spoke up …

   Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 12:24 pm ¶

2. Chris wrote:

   I’ve tried to track the origin of this ad a little, something I haven’t seen any of the bloggers talking about it do yet. I haven’t spent much time at it (such as trying to get in touch with Durex), but it seems like it’s a parody of this Burger King ad:
   http://www.adverbox.com/media/campaigns/2006/07/burger.jpg

   Do we know that Durex or someone they hired made this ad? I’m just saying we should find out.

   Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 12:42 pm ¶

3. Carmen Van Kerckhove wrote:

   Good point, Chris. I hadn’t verified that this was a real Durex ad. If anyone finds more info, please let us know.

   Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 12:57 pm ¶

4. Jeremy Pierce wrote:

   It’s a little strange to see an ally of the Christian Right on this issue pretending that the Christian Right would want to ignore this. It’s actually one of the things socially conservative evangelicals spend an awful lot of time trying to convince their teenagers is a real problem.

   James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family” and Josh McDowell’s “Why Wait” programs are as opposed to beer commercials that artificially inculcate immoral standards of beauty as they are to pornography, which they recognize as just a more extreme version of something they regularly decry as evil. I don’t know how anyone even remotely familiar with socially conservative evangelicals could make such a mistake. But I guess some people don’t think they need to know much about something in order to criticize it.

   Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 1:35 pm ¶

5. dnA wrote:

   The Christian Right doesn’t have a problem with objectifying women, they have a problem with sex and with birth control.

   Objectifying women is part of their platform; that’s how traditional gender roles work. The point of my statement is despite the use of obscenity, Byron’s values aren’t so far off from Dobsons, at least as far as the role of women is concerned. The only difference is the way the express themselves, one through obscenity and the other through religious doctrine. The goal, to remove a woman’s agency, is the same. Whether it’s the bed or the kitchen, the idea is to remove a woman’s sense or right of self-determination.

   Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 2:23 pm ¶

6. Blanky wrote:

   What is this crap? No, I don’t orgasm over the idea that my penis will cause great pain to someone I love. People like that are what I would call “sadists.”

   Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 3:36 pm ¶

7. ccch wrote:

   Ditto what dnA said.
   And to think I accessed that disgusting blog to read up on the article!!!. Left retching my dinner.

   Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 3:45 pm ¶

8. FrancesM wrote:

   Aww man I hope to heck this isn’t a real ad! Gross!
   ~F

   Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 4:12 pm ¶

9. Gregory A. Butler wrote:

   Maybe I’m “unmanly” or something, but, unlike Byron Crawford, I’ve never had fantasies of ripping apart a woman’s mouth, vagina and/or anus with my penis.

   If I like a woman enough to have sex with her, why would I want to cause her physical injury?

   Oh, and I don’t call a woman’s vagina her “hoo-hah” either (I haven’t been 5 years old for a very long time!!!)

   Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 4:13 pm ¶

10. al wrote:

    if that burger king ad is real, there is no way the durex ad is.

    the burger king ad also makes me uncomfortable though.

    Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 4:22 pm ¶

11. Jeremy Pierce wrote:

    dna:

    The Christian Right has no problem with sex and birth control. It’s actually a rare evangelical who is opposed to contraception. That’s the Roman Catholics view, and they’re hardly the Christian Right (they have opposite views on capital punishment, war, and social programs). Evangelicals are not remotely opposed to sex but do think there’s a proper place for it (i.e. in marriage). That’s a crucial distinction that your simplistic and childish caricature refuses to recognize.

    Dobson’s view of gender roles is largely based on the thesis that men and women need not be treated as identical in order to be equal . There are differences between men and women, and these are to be affirmed, since anything else would be forcing women to be just like men. Women have distinctive modes of reasoning and discourses of knowledge. My dissertation advisor has done a lot of work in this area, and she’s a political leftist of a Marxian sort, a highly-respect feminist, and an atheist who has no love for traditional Christianity or its moral teachings. There are ways that Dobson’s views will manifest themselves that she wouldn’t like, but the root idea is one that is very affirming of the identity of women as feminine and as equal to men despite being different from men in some ways.

    There is a core view that socially conservative evangelicals and contemporary feminists both share that disagrees with Gloria Steinem’s feminism, and that movement is to stop disrespecting women who choose to be stay-at-home moms, women who breastfeed rather than bottlefeed, women who do not seek to act in stereotypically male ways in order to succeed in life, etc. There is nothing about forcing women to be raped or forcing women to stay in the kitchen all day. There is a lot about affirming women in the roles that women throughout history have done and been largely unrecognized for, even though those roles have shaped society in ways that are at least as significant as anything men have done. Dobson has no beef with women who seek careers outside the home, but he does have a problem with people who insist that women are not free if they choose to focus on their family as their priority while their husband provides the income for the family.

    It may be rhetorically effective to represent others’ positions in a way that inaccurately reflects what they truly believe, but that doesn’t make it morally permissible to do so.

    Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 4:27 pm ¶

12. Kaywil wrote:

    Jeremy, thank you for clarifying. My point is that if you replaced the word “woman” with a race (i.e. Blacks, Latinos, etc.), many of us would be offended by what is prescribed as a woman’s nature. That includes staying at home to raise a family while men go out to work (those are social roles). There are cultural regulators that prescribe how we should act - not that we’re born that way (examples can be seen cross-culturally where some females of other races are seen to be less female because of cultural differences). Now, if those regulators are so ingrained in the consciousness of the society’s members, are those people really acting out of nature/choice? Which means some will accept that they should be treated differently because they are fundamentally different - not because they’ve been raised to believe it. That does not mean that I disagree that there are physiological differences between men and women, but I do disagree with the way in which roles are formulated, distributed, and absorbed into the society. The side effects can be seen in this post.

    Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 5:08 pm ¶

13. La - msviswan wrote:

    I’m actually glad the link to the BurgerKing ad was provided. It makes the Durex ad appear less legit, which does help a bit… lol.

    Then again… Maybe it’s a publicity stunt in hopes of circulating around the internet to controversially promote the product, while hiding under illegitimacy for protection against possible repercussion. Who knows.

    Even so, considering the idea for the Durex might have been taken from the original BK ad, it’s clear what the message is, even in the very BK ad. Sex and sexism sell and give people nasty ideas, mostly at the expense of women.. -sigh

    Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 5:44 pm ¶

14. Jeremy Pierce wrote:

    Kaywil,

    The feminists who take this view (e.g. Carol Gilligan and virtually all feminist philosophers nowadays) do not have a monolithic view on whether these differences are biologically-caused, socially-caused, or some combination of the two. Many think most such differences are in the socially-caused category. I happen to think it’s more complicated and thus place myself in the third category.

    But the issue isn’t what causes the differences. Something can be socially caused but have lasting impact on someone in a way that you can’t just treat that phenomenon as unimportant to the person’s identity and sometimes even the person’s capacities. (For example, IQ is almost certainly influenced by social background, and yet at the same time once you reach a certain age you’re not going to increase your IQ score by gaining knowledge. Those abilities are formed or not. That’s not entirely analogous because I’m not talking about abilities here but rather ways of engaging in life, including ways of communicating, ways of knowing, kinds of knowledge, kinds of reasoning.)

    As for the race question, I think your view is very similar to the predominant view among feminists. They think there’s nothing deeply significant about the differences between men and women. I think they tend to ignore the significance of the womb and its impact on what women’s lives must be like. Also, while I’m skeptical about some of the supposed scientific differences between men and women, would not be surprised that some of these have some basis besides just sex organs. I’d be extremely surprised if social practices explain all socially observable tendencies completely.

    With race, I have the reverse view. Racial categories exist entirely because of socially-conditioned categories that do not find their origin in biology. I’d be much more surprised to find biological differences between races that have much social significance besides the obvious things like skin color, hair type, bone structure, and that sort of thing. I’d much less surprised (and even find it somewhat likely) that there would be some differences, even if minor and only tendencies, between men and women. Something that causes such radical differences hormonally has got to have more effects than we realize.

    Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 8:33 pm ¶

15. Michelle wrote:

    I think the problem with prescribed roles for any group of people within society, is that it is inevitable that there are going to be people who do not fall in line with those roles. It is for those people that feminism, anit-racism and anti-stereotype groups work for. People should have the ability to follow their life’s course, irrespective of what the larger trend is for their group.

    Of course, I am different from a man and my wants, wishes, desires, etc. are shaped and informed by society, the media, genetics and hormones. I agree with that whole heartedly. In the wrong hands, however, that theory can be slightly restrictive and socially binding for people who don’t “fall in line”.

    Posted 09 Aug 2007 at 10:32 pm ¶

16. Fiqah wrote:

    This ad offends on levels. Eeeeuuuwwwww.

    Posted 10 Aug 2007 at 9:07 am ¶

17. eric daniels wrote:

    Someone needs to tell Crawford to shut the hell up, I think he is a st8 up nerd if you heard him talk which I did in a podcast. He reminds me of Howard Stern but even less intelligence on social issues. He proably will get a radio show and become a multi- millionare, that’s what passes for dialouge in this country.

    Posted 10 Aug 2007 at 9:43 am ¶

18. mr guy wrote:

    Man that ad is in bad taste.I guess it’s suppose to be one of those “politically incorrect” jokes.

    Posted 10 Aug 2007 at 10:02 am ¶

19. Hulk wrote:

    That ad was really disgusting. I hope they don’t use it anywhere.

    Posted 10 Aug 2007 at 2:36 pm ¶

20. Kaywil wrote:

    Jeremy, I understand your point of view, but those feminist who you quote have several different categories themselves and some don’t refer to themselves as feminists (i.e. egalitarians, equalists), so to blanket the ideas as feminist is committing the same sweeping generalization that you accused another commenter of.
    My other point is that these social influences that apply to race also apply to biological sex and gender. We have intersexed people and science has already confirmed the wide spectrum of biological sex, so the mentioning of ‘women’ is based on the assumption that there are only two categories of biological sex: male and female (although we are brought up to believe that) and that it is interchangeable with gender. So to say ‘women and men’ would be exploring gender roles, which are socially constructed based on the assumptions of biological sex (gender and biological sex are two different categories and must be defined and understood when being discussed). The discourse around that is beginning point of the same type of discourse that discusses the movement that is happening with race in America - where people are defining themselves as mixed race and biracial, not just the socially prescribed black and white. Studies of gender and society may shed some light - not just the radical feminist thought or the evangelical perspective.
    [IQ has already been discredited in academia inside and outside of the US.]

    Posted 10 Aug 2007 at 6:59 pm ¶

21. dnA wrote:

    Please do not allow Jeremy or the Christian Right to redefine feminism. It’s success in doing so its primary social triumph.

    Feminism is not a doctrine of “female superiority” it is about freedom and agency. And organizations like Dobson’s are intent on restricting that freedom and agency, no matter how well meaning they may be.

    Dobson referred to access to abortion responsible for “the biggest holocaust in history.” Never underestimate the ability or drive of the powerful to redefine themselves as victims in order to gain the moral high ground.

    http://mediamatters.org/items/200504250009

    Posted 11 Aug 2007 at 11:12 am ¶

22. Jeremy Pierce wrote:

    Kaywil, I remember saying that people were misrepresenting evangelicals and the Christian Right, but I don’t remember talking about any overgeneralizations. My claim was simply that they had the view drastically wrong.

    I do think overgeneralizations can be bad when they are relevant to the issue at hand. I don’t remember making that point at all in this discussion. The only time I remember mentioning overgeneralizations was to point out that there are lots of views on what causes differences between men and women. I think that was a concession, not a correction, however. So I’m not sure what you mean if it’s neither of those things.

    As for this instance, I’m well aware that there are lots of different labels that the general group of people I’m talking about use for themselves. Most of them call themselves feminists. Some prefer more precise terms, and others prefer not to label themselves at all. I’m not sure how that’s relevant at all to my argument. I don’t think my argument depends at all on what people call themselves.

    On your more substantive point, I have several things to say. One is that the existence of women as a real category and as distinct from men does not preclude there being a third category or multiple other categories. I think there are socially constructed elements of what we call gender, but I think biological sex is deeper than that and would have reality apart from those social constructions. The existence of intersexuals as an additional category shouldn’t affect that, and the existence of gender as social constructions on top of sex also doesn’t necessarily touch that.

    My argument about IQ did not rely at all on whether there is anything deep about it, just that there is something that it measures. It measures an ability to do well on such tests, at bare minimum. Since such test results are generally consistent, I take IQ to be real even if it turns out to be insignificant. I don’t equate it with intelligence in some objective sense. But some people do better on those tests than others, and that ability can be increased during childhood and even adolescence but not afterward. That’s what my argument relies on, and I don’t think anyone is disputing that.

    Posted 11 Aug 2007 at 4:51 pm ¶

23. Jeremy Pierce wrote:

    dna, I am not redefining feminism. I am going by what the mainstream of feminist philosophy considers part of feminism.

    So it’s abortion that’s driving this claim about restricting women’s agency? That’s not exactly a fair claim. They certainly do want to limit abortions, but you have to keep in mind what the pro-life assumption is. If fetuses have moral status, then it is morally wrong to kill them. Restricting people from doing that is then not much different from restricting people from killing anyone else. Would you be prepared to argue that it is anti-feminist to keep women from killing infants? It certainly does limit their options, but that isn’t an argument in itself. You also need to argue that fetuses have no moral status or a limited enough moral status that the rights of women are far more important. That’s an argument that I don’t think can be made convincingly, but you’re free to disagree. Whatever you think about that issue, you should at least be willing to recognize what the issue is for pro-lifers. It has nothing to do with limiting women. That is the effect, but it’s an effect of other laws too. The motivation is the protection of human life. The kind of misrepresentation you are engaged in is tantamount to treating pro-choicers as if they think the death of human organisms is a wonderful thing. Both sides misrepresent the other pretty easily. It’s immoral whichever side is doing it.

    As for your parting sentence, I’m a bit baffled. How are the unborn supposed to count as the powerful who are redefining themselves as victims? That’s a pretty ludicrous suggestion. On pro-life principles, abortion, which has a death toll far outnumbering the Holocaust, should count as a pretty serious crime against humanity. But how you can think the powerful unborn are redefining themselves as victims is beyond me.

    (For that matter, if they can redefine themselves as victims, doesn’t that acknowledge that they are persons who have a right to life and thus shouldn’t be aborted?)

    Posted 14 Aug 2007 at 5:16 pm ¶

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