OK, I got all worked up on
October 8, 2007 about a misogynist advertisement that turned out to be a hoax anyway.
It was pretty offensive, and I wrote about it. After doing so, I received a message from one of the writers here at E2 (I'm assuming it was a man who sent me the message, though I could be wrong) that read:
(redacted name) says re October 8, 2007: I spent 5-10 minutes beginning and backspacing over a message to you, I can't compress all of the myriad things I think are wrong with this writeup into this tiny little blab box. Suffice to say, if this is your idea of "really hateful stuff" I'm super-happy with how well your life is going.
And after I asked him to please explicate his frothing hatred of my post:
(redacted name) says re October 8, 2007: I enjoy dissecting ads also. Beyond that, I feel it is a critical thinkng skill critical to modern life, everyone should dissect ads. That said, I'd not have been able to summon the vitriol you were able to summon. To me the biggest offenders are the most subtle, the ones in you girly magazines you mention. This one is so blatant, so targeted... it's too stupid to be subtle. At the best it deserves the treatment given it by the blog you reference. They don't seem particularly upset, more bemused. The ad probably won't work, the only desired effect it is having is you and those bloggers and whoever else, talking about it.
And then:
(redacted name) says re October 8, 2007: Seriously, outrage? despicable? beyond the pale? It's a joke about geeks and sex, hardly the objectification of women that Clairol or Maybellene is guilty of.
I generally choose to be amused by stuff that explicitly objectifies women, because I realize that most of it springs directly from the hormone-addled brains of 16-24-year-old college students who spend most of their free time planning "Pimps & Hos" parties.
But seriously, folks, come on.
Not a single one of these objects could have been designed or implemented by anyone under the age of frat boys who snicker at songs like "Titties and Beer".
None of them. Not the urinal designed to look like a woman's red-lipsticked mouth. Not the toilet shaped like a dominatrix's headless torso so that you can piss and shit directly into your "Whip me, Mistress, and call me Susan" fantasies. Not the fiberglass casts of women's red-fishnet-and-stiletto-clad lower torsos bent doggy-style over sinks so that you can wash your hands while dominating an imaginary dismembered whore. And certainly not the urinal shaped like an upside-down woman's legs, helpfully spread so that you can piss into the hole where her vagina should be.
Seriously? Yep.
Maybe I should just laugh. Maybe it's just too stupid to be subtle and is therefore funny!
Or maybe it's sick. As in deeply, serial-killer-with-mommy-issues-level disturbed. As in, "I enjoy beating off to necroporn." As in, "Women are really much better without heads or with mouths that are open only as a receptacle for my bodily fluids."
From the blog that gathered these lovely images:
If you ever come across someone who questions why there's (still) a need for feminism, someone who suggests that sexism no longer exists or someone who asserts that it's time for a humanist movement to eclipse the feminist movement, just point them to this post. We've got women's disembodied parts being used as toilets in restaurants, on airplanes, in public fucking spaces, as if there's nothing wrong with it, and mounted disembodied breasts being sold as a gag gift as if there's nothing wrong with it. (It's a gag all right. I'm gagging right now.)
As I've said before: Telling a girl since birth that she is equal matters little if she travels within a culture that consistently sends signals to the contrary.
So by all means, go ahead and spend another 5-10 minutes beginning and backspacing over a message to me about how spoiled and silly a "girl" I am to be nauseated by this.
I dare you.