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Comments
Yes, what I meant to convey was not that sexism against women is only present in Western culture, but rather in places that have traditionally been more gender-neutral, new ideas concerning the objective inferiority of women are almost invariably coming from Western society, especially through advertisement.
And they're seen as okay because our culture does not give two shits about treating women as anything other than commodities. Take a look at a few more advertisements, though be forewarned that they contain some rather disturbing imagery:
This one is not only sexist, but also transphobic. Two women are trying to out-feminize each other, and eventually the cisgendered one "wins" by pulling out a pack of tampons. Moral? Women need to be as feminine and attractive to men as possible, or else they can't be treated like real women.
Yeah, this one is old, but I bring it up to point out the fact that, beyond the traditional gender roles being reinforced, it's more imagery of submission/domination.
This one might confuse you as to why it's bad. After all, it's condemning rape, right? No, it's saying that, rather than it being the rapist's responsibility to not rape, it's the victim's responsibility to make sure that they take precautions to avoid rape. It's a reinforcement of rape culture.
http://925.nl/images/2010-11/ss1.jpg ;(linked for nipple)
Once again, a men's clothing ad saying that women are just sex toys.
Some more rape imagery (it's harder to find; look for all the face-recognition boxes).
God fucking damnit.
I think you are overstating it there. Can you provide specific examples of cultures that had gender equality or better for women before Western contact?
Also, there's no shortage of sexism against males in advertising either. For that matter, there are some amusing (to me) cases of racism in ads, too.
TL;DR this motherfucker except for the moe Batman jokes (Which are best jokes, of course)
I just wanna say that context is everything. As an example of something that affects us all, let's refer to me. Now, we all know I'm amazing, there's hardly any contest there. But we make coke and drug jokes about me. And I play with them too even though they're racist because no harm is meant. Of course, not everybody has the same sense of humor and some people tolerate some things that other people simply do not. All that you can do is know your audience, like with any other kind of jokes.
Okay, after a Google search for "impact of western advertisement on traditional 'gender roles' in non-Western nations", I suppose you are right that there's no hard evidence to suggest that the influx of Western opinions regarding gender roles, especially those in advertisement, result in a change of perception for those living in said non-Western countries. According to this site:
Hofstede used the terms masculinity and femininity to refer to the degree to which a culture values assertiveness or nurturing and social support. The terms also refer to the degree to which socially prescribed roles operate for men and women. Hofstede rated countries and regions such as Japan and Latin America as preferring values of assertiveness, task-orientation, and achievement. In these cultures, there tend to be more rigid gender roles and "live to work" orientations. In countries and regions rated feminine such as Scandinavia, Thailand, and Portugal, values of cooperation, nurturing, and relationship solidarity with those less fortunate prevail, and the ethic is more one of "work to live." Of course, it is important to remember that associations with gender vary greatly across cultures, so that elements considered masculine in one culture might be considered feminine in another. Negotiators may find it useful to consider the way gender roles play out in the cultural contexts of their negotiating partners.
So, considering the fact that gender constructs can differ even in between cultures some people might consider more homogenous than in reality, I suppose that part is incorrect. That would also be corroborated by this here study, which indicates that media is not entirely to blame for inaccurate idealizations of women in a culture:
In a study reported by the University of Chicago in 1999, anthropologists looked at body image in different cultures to see what can be learned about distorted female body images in industrialized countries. In every culture studied, the body was seen as a means of enabling women to carry out social and economic roles in addition to conjugal and reproductive roles. Women in non-Western countries saw the ideal female body as being slender. However, in their conception of the body size that would appeal to men, non-Western women were far more accurate and than their Western counterparts, who seemed to be heavily influenced by images of "ultraslim" women in the media. However, as part ofthe study, the anthropologists also compared women's perception of the bodypreferences of men in Auckland, where there is a lot of media exposure, withtheir counterparts in Samoa, where the influence of the media is limited. There was no difference in the accuracy of women's body perceptions in the two cultures, leading the anthropologists to conclude that media influence does not entirely explain distorted body image.
So I guess I was wrong there.
But this part of your post was more interesting to me:
Also, there's no shortage of sexism against males in advertising either. For that matter, there are some amusing (to me) cases of racism in ads, too.
Nobody is saying that racism is advertisements is worse than sexism, or vice versa. I am just providing examples that showcase the fact that there is a greater prevalence of sexism in the media than racism. I saw that commercial with the black people and the KFC, too. But coming across a mock-KFC poster for a political party in Australia with the slogan "Tiny breasts, giant thighs and legs" (I can't seem to find it at the moment, but I will amend my post if I do) is rather disconcerting and far more symptomatic of the objectification of women in our society. Finally, most advertisements that you would probably deem as sexist towards males are not, or at the very least are not as wildly common as those towards women. If you could provide examples I would gladly show you how.
Another note is that many of those ads up there are less sexist and more endemic of the trend of promoting rape culture, which is far more problematic and disturbing than most other things I can think of off the top of my head.
CountryPumpkin - On the anti-rape ads, I think it's worth pointing out that you do get adverts advising people on how not to get burgled or have their cars stolen and no-one says "that's promoting theft culture, you should be persuading thieves not to nick stuff." The two aren't actually mutually exclusive.
You'd be on sounder ground with some of the older advice that used to be given out, along the lines of - "Women! Avoid rape and murder by not going out after dark." I remember seeing, back in the 80s, what must have been a feminist response to this pinned to a notice board where my Dad worked, suggesting that men shouldn't go out after dark any more to avoid frightening women. I was so young I assumed it was genuine official advice.
It is true that in practice, the "telling women how not to get raped" stuff tends to predominate. To take the minicab advert as an example - that ran in London. Do you know why women get into unbooked minicabs late at night in London? Because the London Underground stops running at about midnight and all the regular black cab drivers have gone home by then? Has anyone done anything about that? No, because no-one wants to spend the money or piss off the rail unions or the taxi drivers.
There was an American study that showed that had a scenario in which groups of people could ascribe jewgolds to different social activist groups. Some actors in the group made mildly privilege-abusing jokes before the test started, and said groups ascribed less jewgolds to the social activist group that was the butt of the joke. I think the study itself was with feminism, but my Google-fu is letting up.
Also relevant, which popped up during the search: http://dbzer0.com/blog/feminists-dont-think-all-men-are-rapists-rapists-do
While I can agree with the article, I dislike the use of guilt as an argumentative weapon.
^^ That's a very good article. A rape culture that makes light of sexual assault not only promotes the idea that rape is more normal than it should be, but also stigmatizes its victims; it's kind of like how using a slur traditionally used to bash a group (like the f-word for gay people) is a bad thing to use, even when it's being done in the context of "Man, he's such an idiot!" instead of being used to insult gay people.
CountryPumpkin - On the anti-rape ads, I think it's worth pointing out that you do get adverts advising people on how not to get burgled or have their cars stolen and no-one says "that's promoting theft culture, you should be persuading thieves not to nick stuff." The two aren't actually mutually exclusive.
You'd be on sounder ground with some of the older advice that used to be given out, along the lines of - "Women! Avoid rape and murder by not going out after dark." I remember seeing, back in the 80s, what must have been a feminist response to this pinned to a notice board where my Dad worked, suggesting that men shouldn't go out after dark any more to avoid frightening women. I was so young I assumed it was genuine official advice.
It is true that in practice, the "telling women how not to get raped" stuff tends to predominate. To take the minicab advert as an example - that ran in London. Do you know why women get into unbooked minicabs late at night in London? Because the London Underground stops running at about midnight and all the regular black cab drivers have gone home by then? Has anyone done anything about that? No, because no-one wants to spend the money or piss off the rail unions or the taxi drivers.
The biggest problem with using analogies like theft in the context of discussing rape is that they're incorrect. A more correct analogy would be this: A man works in an office in a bad part of town. He carries his laptop in a bag to and from the bus station and his office building. On the way to the bus station from work, he gets robbed. Is it his fault? Of course not; he just happened to work in a bad part of town, and the fact that he needed his laptop for work, and he worked in that part of town, was almost certainly out of his control (insofar as the fact that he can't decide where his workplace is; in this scenario, this is the only possible place he could find work). Similarly, a rapist is going to rape a woman regardless of what she does. If we could set up two scenarios exactly identical to one another, with the only difference being that the woman is wearing a short skirt and a tank top in one, and jeans and a t-shirt in the other, it will have no effect on whether she gets raped, because a rapist (one who preys women as a stranger, anyway) is going to have the mindset of rapigng her. It's not like he looks at a woman and says "Welp, she's wearing pants, guess I can't rape her!" Imagine, if you will, a serial killer who kills people wearing hats. If everybody in the city stops wearing hats, it's not like he's going to stop killing people. He's going to keep doing it because he wasn't killing people for wearing hats, he was killing them because he likes killing.
Also, the taxi ad in question is terrible for two reasons: 1) It belittles rape victims (By recontexualizing a woman's cry for help as advice to not take unmarked taxis); 2) It has imagery that is probably even more disturbing and terrible to a rape victim than you or I, and might cause them to have a panic attack; 3), Even if the message of not taking unmarked cabs is a good one, there's still the message of "If you do X, you will get raped, therefore, getting raped is your fault." It is textbook victim blaming, even if the advert's message is different.
It's only polite to shout ' trigger warning' before telling rape jokes.
Anyhow, the whole scenario of stranger rape is takes too much spotlight anyway, since it's a smaller percentage than rape by someone the victim is familiar with.
I agree with vandro. Yes, I feel like shit. No, that shouldn't be my reason for not making the jokes.
The issue here is people going "Oops, you dressed in clothes you like, you're just asking to get raped."
Yes. Whilst it may be true that once a rapist has selected a target, nothing she does will stop him trying to rape her, I don't think rapists just pick victims totally at random. And whilst it's unfair to expect women (e.g.) to cut their hair because there's a rapist on the prowl who's obsessed with long hair, there's nothing wrong with advising them to check how secure their locks are if the guy likes to break in through weakly locked doors.
Rape by men the victim knows is actually a good example of this. A lot of that happens in the context of domestic violence and there's nothing mutually incompatible between encouraging women not to tolerate domestic violence and to report it and with discouraging men from acting violently. I have actually seen a campaign that tried to do the latter, at least (it was along the lines of "if you beat up your wife/girlfriend/kids, we'll prosecute you even if she/they won't testify."
There have been studies. From countless copypastas that fail to provide a link to the study in question(my google fu is weak today):
- A Federal Commission on Crime of Violence Study found that only 4.4% of all reported rapes involved provocative behavior on the part of the victim. In murder cases 22% involved such behavior (as simple as a glance).
- Most convicted rapists do not remember what their victims were wearing.
- Victims range in age from days old to those in their nineties, hardly provocative dressers.
Edit: guise, guise, we're doing the rape obsession thing again
Yeah, I kind of figured that avoiding violence has more to do with knowing to avoid sketchy areas.
^^ To quote someone we all know - "Why the fuck are they so obsessed with rape?" OK, I'm prepared to drop this one. I think everyone's made their points.
Summary of how the rest of this discussion would go:
>sideglance to rape fetishism
>person is stupid enough to admit to said fetish, feels victimized
>analogies to other media and that they do not promote said behaviour(violence and vidya)
>various scientific studies supporting either side, all inconclusive
>person suddenly falling into preachy morality out of nowhere, copious use of the word enabler, person in question has at least one questionable fetish we know of
>anecdotal examples galore
>discussion of how much a dudette can drink before it becomes questionable, temporary derail of drinkers vs. non-drinkers
>invocation of kooky fringe feminists
Have I missed anything?
Also, >complaint that expressing exhaustion at the discussion is a silencing tactic
Well that was a stupid post. Ignore.