So the Super Bowl was an amazing, dramatic game with awesome, daring plays and oh my god Saints.
But the advertising.
Every other ad was about how horrible women are, and how they ruin everything for men, all the time. The Dodge, Flo TV, and Dove ads come to mind--you can only strike out at those evil women if you buy our product and stick it to them! YEAH. How dare women make you go to work and eat fruit and use soap? Those bitches.The rage, the anger toward women was breathtaking. The cold fury of the men in the Dodge commercial might be comic if it weren't kind of serious. Let's not even get into the Bridgestone ad where the guy ditched his hot wife for a set of $300 tires. The most positive gender relations one was Google, and they showed no actual humans, and the voices in the background made it clear it was a manful man doing the proactive searching. And of course it ended with a baby.
It's like watching a broadcast from an alien world. I do not understand this place.
If you watch these ads, and mainstream sitcoms, you see this place. This place where men and women can barely stand each other long enough to have mutually unfulfilling sex and procreate. Where women are the sole source of everything irritating and wrong in a man's life, plus she's never hot enough, plus you have to, like, interact with her sometimes. No amount of lower pay or discrimination or suffering is enough to punish her for the simple act of being a woman. And men are simple and stupid and violent, but obviously should be given the keys to the world because women just suck so much. And of course men have no interests that a woman could ever share. Men hang out with their bros, women hang out with their girlfriends, and every once in awhile a treaty is negotiated to allow intercourse.
This is hell.
And it's enforced by practically all of mainstream culture--most stand-up and situational jokes are predicated on our all understanding this implicitly, and believing it's the natural order. That is will always be the natural order, I'm looking at you, science fiction.
Why would anyone volunteer to live in this world? And yet.
And yet homosexuality is still a terrifying topic for the people who live most ensconced in this culture, most committed to never having genuine intimacy with your wife because she's an icky girl with icky girl problems and products and interests. Not like you and your man friends. You guys are awesome. But not gay.
It seems to me the fight against gay rights, among all the other things it is about, is also about the fact that this culture presents no compelling reason to be straight.. I mean, if men and women hate each other, naturally and unavoidably, why not turn to your homosocial groups for sexual partners? Reproduction doesn't even seem to be enough--only women want babies anyway, and have to set traps for men to get them. There are many reasons for homophobia, but I just can't see how the men (and women, who don't want anything to do with their men) in these ads can hate women so much and still be counted as part of heterosexual society. And yet CBS wouldn't air an ad from a gay-dating service. Hate women, guys, but don't look at each other. Ever.
Most of the people I know are not like this--though the division of interests is strong even in geek culture, where boys often exclude girls from their games and are shocked when they want to play, where video games and comics are marketed to this very segment of male culture, playing even more blatantly to a sense of powerlessness there, and girls are presented as the threatening Other. Certainly my husband and I share most of our interests, and since we spend a lot of time together, we enjoy each other's company and are not in a state of constant war. Of course, I'm not straight and he grew up in a different country, so who knows where we get this alien idea that you might like the person you marry. That you might choose them and love them and make a life together where, yes, you clean up and eat fruit and go to work and it's not your partner's fault that you do those things.
I'm disgusted by all of it. I just wanted to watch a football game. You know, like the big girl I am.
- Gender Bowl
-
catvalente- February 8th, 2010
infuriated
2010-02-08 06:55 pm (UTC)
The really galling thing is they KNOW, from statistics, that 50% of their audience is female, and yet they persist in this myth that football is guys-only, and not just guys, but "Real Men" who are emotionally stunted neanderthals who love nothing more than pissy American beer.
2010-02-08 06:57 pm (UTC)
2010-02-08 06:56 pm (UTC)
I didn't watch the superbowl or the commercials, and I don't really watch TV shows except on DVD and then only occasionally, but still I am deeply and constantly aware of this weird stereotype wherein people who're in relationships can't stand one-another and so forth. It's inescapable, and oppressive, and terrifying.
As a (relatively) straight man married to and deeply in love with a (relatively) straight woman with whom I get along very well and share quite a few interests, it is a paradigm that I can't understand at all, and I'm glad to see other people saying more-or-less the same thing.
2010-02-08 07:45 pm (UTC)
I didn't watch the superbowl or the commercials, and I don't really watch TV shows except on DVD and then only occasionally, but still I am deeply and constantly aware of this weird stereotype wherein people who're in relationships can't stand one-another and so forth. It's inescapable, and oppressive, and terrifying.
This.
2010-02-08 07:04 pm (UTC)
Even friends of mine who can be so egalitarian at times will make me feel shitty for being male - not for being male and doing something typically masculine, but just for having a penis. Woo.
I didn't watch the game, as I was on a train with friends, but I watched the ads this morning. I can't even muster up anger at them, because they just seem so blatantly stupid.
Like the godaddy ads - there Danica Patrick is, first woman to win an IndyCar race, and she sits there chomping on the most irritatingly dull "color commentary" as women gyrate in front of her for GoDaddy.com. I'm not irritated by the naked women selling internet service (seems appropriate to me), so much as sad that this was the best way they could utilize her in this ad. In the massage ad she had an outright grimace on. Argh.
2010-02-08 07:11 pm (UTC)
2010-02-08 07:05 pm (UTC)
I mean, if the only reason to be with women is cuz you have to...you really can't have another option and still expect society to flourish and multiply, now can you?
Let's not tell people they don't have to hang out with that other icky gender, they might stop having babies and then how will we get paid?
~ponders your rant and is glad not to have watched~
2010-02-08 07:12 pm (UTC)
2010-02-08 07:06 pm (UTC)
Don't get me wrong, the UK is no better. Our gender programming is just as bad (on the deoderants too), but the superbowl stuff in particular seems to be way off the charts.
Saw an valentines advert for the Katherine Heigl movie "The Ugly Truth", with a picture of her holding a heart (caption: FOR HIM!) and then Gerard Butler (FOR HER!). Wow. Not only is it a movie so offensively neanderthal about the sexes and how a woman should please her man (leading to reviewers asking 'why does Katherine Heigl hate women?') but seriously... do they think no-one's gay or bi? Do they really think half my female friends wouldn't jump Heigl?
If I had the money I'd start a gender-neutral product line. I know enough female sci-fi fans to make millions off it.
2010-02-08 09:12 pm (UTC)
hmm?
2010-02-08 07:07 pm (UTC)
2010-02-08 07:13 pm (UTC)
2010-02-08 07:07 pm (UTC)
I was thinking about this after I read your deodorant rant the other day (you are on FIRE right now. I think you are speaking the soul of a lot of people right now. That's how you're making me feel, anyway.)
I have a Theory. There are, inevitably, little annoyances that are part of sharing a space with someone (example: I am constitutionally incapable of replacing the toilet paper roll. My partner is constitutionally incapable of throwing away the caps from beer bottles. In this way we test each others tolerance.) I think these cultural memes provide a valve for a lot of these frustrations through humor of a really hyperbolic sort.
No, men don't REALLY think women are the root of all No Fun-ness in their lives, but the fact that they got married and had a baby is the reason he had to trade in the Miata for a mini-van, which is less fun, and that perceived loss of freedom is frustrating in a low-level way.
Culture is complicated, and it makes me tired. =p
Anyway, mostly I was just compelled to offer a fist-bump of solidarity, because you've spoken my heart twice in two days. =)
I'm sorry idiot commercials mucked up an otherwise fun experience.
Also, WHO DAT!
2010-02-08 07:15 pm (UTC)
But in that case, the irritations don't have to be gendered. They have made it all about gender (even though I am incapable of putting laundry away. I can do it, just not put it away) and nothing else. And I do think some, even a lot of men, think that about women because they have been programmed to, 24/7.
And thanks, glad to rant for you.
2010-02-08 07:10 pm (UTC)
In "Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers" Gordon Neufeld argues that since about the second world war children have been peer-socialized instead of learning their identities from parents, pointing to this phenomenon as a main reason for many problems associated with youth culture today.
I think that he's right, and I also think that peer-socialized children turn into adults without a clear sense of self. Maybe that's why it's so easy to persuade even adult men to accept whatever marketable definition of "man" is going at the moment, but even as it undermines and minimizes women, the acceptance of it undermines and minimizes men. The resulting pain and confusion perpetuates violence and deep emotional issues, causing a negative ripple effect in society as a whole.
ETA: Your deodorant post the other day made me lol: I'd just given up and bought men's deodorant the previous week. It costs half as much for the exact same ingredients. The only difference is packaging and scent. Pfffft.
Edited at 2010-02-08 07:12 pm (UTC)
2010-02-08 07:47 pm (UTC)
I'm also struck by the number of people in my generation who are profoundly alienated from one or both parents. Not just that their parents are divorced or what have you, but that from a young age they actively resisted any kind of identification whatsoever with Mom and Dad. Not as role models, not as protectors, not a blimin' thing. They chose peerage as an influence, rather than parentage, because the parentage they were getting (by their own description of it) sucked. Maybe that tells us all we need to know.
2010-02-08 07:12 pm (UTC)
I try not to watch tv anymore for this reason. I remember when, once upon a time, commercials tried to be impressive and creative and interesting-- not slimy and off-putting.
Or maybe I'm only having misplaced nostalgia? But to me, it really seems like shit like this is becoming more and more common, sexism and outright misogyny more blatant in pretty much everything mainstream I stumble upon.
2010-02-08 07:15 pm (UTC)
I've never understood why someone would want to marry someone who wasn't also their best friend. Possibly I just had good role models, though.
2010-02-08 07:17 pm (UTC)
2010-02-08 07:17 pm (UTC)
On the broader topic -- I think this is a significant portion of why I detest so much conventional comedy. It doesn't just present me with these horrible things; it presents me with them and then asks me to find them funny. Which makes it all the more sickening. At least if it's a drama, the characters are suffering pain as a result of their stupid sexist dysfunction. And advertising is the worst of all, because advertising has no time for subtlety; it has to go straight for the blunt object and then beat you over the head with it. And it's usually trying to be funny, too.
Well, it's a chilly day today; at least I'll have my white-hot rage to keep me warm.
2010-02-08 11:58 pm (UTC)
2010-02-08 07:20 pm (UTC)
A lot of how these commercials and sitcoms present me with no compelling reason to be a "man" by their definitions. Somewhere along the line, manhood seemed to shift into something awful: the worst part of frat-humor and the baffling skittishness about any knowledge of anything to do with women. All sorts of things started to get recoded: Knowledge that used to be just lore about the way the world worked got gender coded.
And that part doesn't even make sense: Presumably, if a straight man wants to pick up a straight woman, would it not behoove them to learn something about that "mysterious" world? And yet, in plot after plot, it's the last thing men are supposed to learn, or even have an inkling about. It's not like Girl Knowledge is written in encoded cuneiform or anything, and requires skilled deciphering, but it's treated as something nearly as mystic.
I really wonder if this is some sort of "Divide and Conquer" design at work, meant to rob us of all concept of how to have satisfying relationships, so we have that much more unease, which they can then sell us merchandise to correct. So it makes sense that they enforce it repeatedly, until the trope sinks into our skins.
2010-02-08 08:49 pm (UTC)
2010-02-08 07:22 pm (UTC)
2010-02-08 07:22 pm (UTC)
I've opted out of most sitcoms, too. The reasons aren't dissimilar.
2010-02-08 07:23 pm (UTC)
I see it also in the proliferation of shows about "man caves" and the programming on the supposed "man channels" and "woman channels." I prefer the science channel, thank you, except when they're airing some idiotic anti-environmental stupidity like Swamp Loggers.
On the other hand OMFG the Saints won the Super Bowl!!!! (We're all a bit giddy down here.)
2010-02-11 04:00 am (UTC)
Remind me again why guys aren't allowed to find something funny unless it involves one bodily fluid or another? It's always gore, sex, or something that should be in the toilet.
2010-02-08 07:24 pm (UTC)
As far as I'm concerned, the Dodge Charger is anything but manly. The new Challenger is far more 'manlier', but of course I'm a woman so I shouldn't know that. In which case, I imagine a lot of these ads bothered the not so manly men as well.
Also, I really hope there's a special place in hell for those damn GoDaddy commercials.
2010-02-08 07:29 pm (UTC)
2010-02-08 07:28 pm (UTC)
2010-02-08 08:25 pm (UTC)
2010-02-08 07:42 pm (UTC)
2010-02-08 07:45 pm (UTC)
2010-02-08 07:51 pm (UTC)
"What, did all of Madison Avenue think we'd gone back to living in Mad Men?"
Seriously?
2010-02-08 07:54 pm (UTC)
I get just as tired of this presentation of masculinity as you do of being portrayed as the Great Enemy. It's like we're not so much anti-women as we are pro-stupidity in general.
2010-02-08 08:25 pm (UTC)
2010-02-08 07:57 pm (UTC)
And I think my blood pressure will do better to watch the Puppy Bowl instead of trying to catch up on these ads somewhere.
2010-02-09 11:16 pm (UTC)
The mental images.
I had to find one.
Puppy. Bowl. :-D
2010-02-08 08:06 pm (UTC)
It's anticipated to produce the largest audience for the entire year, across the board.
This...does not bode well. This is supposed to be the very best the advertising industry has to offer. Supposed to be.
I wrote a lot of emails and letters after the last Super Bowl. Time to do it again, methinks.
2010-02-08 08:07 pm (UTC)
Oh and ditto to all of the above.
2010-02-08 08:13 pm (UTC)
I grew up critiquing how well I thought ads would do since my Dad worked for a big 5 ad agency (the first one with a female co-founder). I mean- we actually watched the Cleo's every year. Regardless of which gender they were directing those ads at- they were bad. They made women angry and/or alienated and men feel inferior or simply not empowered or desirous to buy something. Car companies (tire companies, etc) need to look at how spending decisions are actually made in the average household, especially during tight economies- joint decisions. So both genders need to feel attracted to a car or tire or even a food product. Or maybe we just took a trip in the Donna Reid time warp machine and all items will be brought home to us ladies.