#metoo

[Frank Underwood]

Again, women kill their offspring at a much higher rate than men do, even when the fathers are in the household.

The reason the conservatives are saying the right things about feminism nowadays is that the conservatives are so familiar with what a scam looks like (as they've been dishing them out for ages)

True, which is why I don't understand leftists who now affiliate with the right. Just because they're correct about third wave feminists and SJWs doesn't make them right about everything.

On the other hand, I do understand the frustration leftists have with our side having become so corrupted and immersed in identity politics.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

NBC News ran a brief piece on the Gillette commercial last night, predictably soft-pedaling the backlash to it (there are tons of women producers in TV news today) by admitting that some men found it "condescending" but made it sound like their dislike for the ad just proved its validity. They never even came close to addressing it being an expression of culturally-approved, overt hatred of all men (because, y'know, it's encouraging men to be "their best" rather than the pigs they fundamentally are) and no one sees misandry as a thing.

---------------------------------------------

https://hotair.com/archives/2019/01/15/gillette-ad-backlash-international-news/

I wrote about the new Gillette ad yesterday and focused primarily on the ad as a sales tool, i.e. a way to signal to millennials that Gillette is a brand worth paying a premium for because it cares about social justice. I thought that was enough but today there are lots of stories about the backlash to the ad. Here’s one from the BBC which notes the response to the YouTube clip has been pretty negative.

The full version of the ad (there’s also a 30-second edit) has been viewed over 6 million times. The bad news for Gillette is that it has 461,000 dislikes and just 149,000 likes, or roughly 3:1 negative response. Over at Reason, Robby Soave writes that some conservatives are over-reacting.
Yes, the ad invokes “toxic masculinity,” an ill-defined concept sometimes deployed by the campus left in overbroad ways. But most of the ad depicts men deciding not to bully each other, harass women, or commit violence. Are these really “leftist social priorities”? Do conservatives really wish to portray them as such?…

It made a very modest statement—treat people better—in hopes of selling more razors to people who agree. Again, why is this bad?


Similarly, Jill Filipovic at CNN also thinks the backlash is a bad sign:

"It shouldn’t be a controversial proposition: The best a man can be is kind instead of cruel, generous instead of petty, protective instead of predatory. But already, Gillette is facing backlash for its latest ad, which takes on toxic masculinity, bullying and harassment…

It’s sad but predictable that imploring men to be better — not just for women, but for other men and boys — is met with such hostility from people who apparently accept the lie that cruel and predatory behavior is part of men’s natural makeup. There’s a stereotype that feminists hate men, but the opposite seems to be true: Anti-feminists who claim to be defending men are the ones who actually seem to have a fairly low opinion of them."


There’s a lot more stuff like this out there. Basically, if you find the ad offensive, there must be something wrong with you:

https://twitter.com/JohnFugelsang/status/1085262907905056769

John Fugelsang‏Verified account @JohnFugelsang
If you're a man who's outraged over a Gillette ad that encourages men to not be horrible selfish pricks PLEASE let the rest of us know who you are.

11:50 AM - 15 Jan 2019

• 6,751 Retweets
• 32,358 Likes
• 

I wasn’t particularly outraged by the ad as you can see in my initial reaction to it, but I think the complaints about the backlash are overlooking a bunch of things which are lingering in the background. The context is a razor company offering men a lecture on toxic masculinity. That lecture emanates from a leftist perspective with certain assumptions: a) masculinity is toxic, b) everything is political, even razors c) call-out culture is the appropriate response to social problems, and d) anyone who disagrees has proved their own guilt.

None of this is stated in the ad. Even a) is only mentioned briefly. But this is the broader context the ad is tapping into. You can, of course, overlook all of this and simply say the company is offering a heart-warming call for men to be better. But I suspect the same people would feel differently about the assumptions being made if all the men in the ad were, say, black or gay or Hispanic. Suddenly, the exact same message wouldn’t be heart-warming it would be correctly seen as condescending and racist (or anti-LGBT) to assume this subset of men needed a lecture from a razor company. The fact that the men shown behaving badly in the clip are white and straight doesn’t make the assumptions themselves any better, it just makes them easier for people to ignore. This is still a condescending message aimed at men from a razor company.

The bottom line is that most men aren’t bullying or condoning bullying or harassing or dismissing women in the workplace. There are certainly men who are and I’m not saying those problems don’t exist, but I remain extremely skeptical that this ad (or any similar ad) is going to change them for the better.

--- John Sexton

 

[bmasters9]

I'd like to say this-- the more fingers that #MeToo/#TimesUp and Gillette point at men, the more fingers will be pointing back at them from men (myself included) who have been fed up with all that sensationalist bull gipp (and I would imagine, vice versa as well)!

 

[Mel O'Drama]

They never even came close to addressing it being an expression of culturally-approved, overt hatred of all men (because, y'know, it's encouraging men to be "their best" rather than the pigs they fundamentally are) and no one sees misandry as a thing.

Yes. It's so fashionable for men to be the problem that any objection they may make is not just invalid, it's seen as sexist bullying. A man who objects to the stereotypes in the commercial is then stereotyped as a narrow-minded, far right enabler, closing ranks with his gender. The "we believe you at any cost" ethos applies only to the people who made the commercial - while the opposite is true for the people it belittles.

In particular, Jill Filipovic's comments quoted in your post above are very telling. Her comments are riddled with the idea that without correction a man's default position is to be the worst kind of human being. Then she suggests that it's a choice. Finally she criticises those who disagree for disrupting the corrective process and, therefore, keeping men in their default position. It's the worst kind of distortion that bats away any objection to some incredibly self-serving lies.

Robby Soave's comments reinforce that. After all, if men "decide" not to be terrible people that suggests they're terrible to begin with.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Stephen Colbert addressed the ad controversy last night, and I was afraid he was going to come down on the side of Gillette and their supporters -- and at first it appeared he was. But ultimately didn't:

 

[Frank Underwood]

Here come the memes where they double down on their condescending, misandry bullshit:

 

[Michael Torrance]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/avidan...longer-the-best-a-brand-can-get/#661fb61e5ea5

For Men, Gillette Is No Longer The Best Brand A Man Can Get

Avi Dan, contributor

One might recall the 2017 Pepsi TV commercial featuring Kendall Jenner, with its unconvincing ad referring to the Black Lives Matter Movement. It was flip, inconsistent, and incredulous. Following intense criticism and backlash Pepsi Cola pulled the ad and had to apologize for it. Now, another storm is brewing on social media over Gillette’s new commercial, which wades unconvincingly and condescendingly into the #MeToo conversation.

P&G acquired Gillette for $57 billion almost 14 years ago to the day this year. What seemed to be a brilliant move, buying a high-margin, market-dominant brand, this soured quickly as grooming habits changed and competition intensified. The biggest threat came from Dollar Shave Club, a direct-to-consumer start-up with great appeal for Millennials. It ships its customers a month worth of razors for just $1, a deep discount tin comparison to Gillette’s price.

In the new commercial from Grey, Gillette, a company which made billions of dollars from men for over a century, disparages every one of those very same men. The brand clumsily attempts to contemporize its long-lasing slogan, “The Best a Man Can Get”, by featuring sinister males bullying and harassing – an action which Gillette describes as "toxic” masculinity. The ad is amateurishly stereotypical and mostly offers a caricature of masculinity.

What makes this ad so offensive is that Gillette doesn’t just condemn bad behavior, something most men do as well. It implies that the vulgar behavior represents the norm among men and, in doing so, it smears an entire gender. Substitute another gender, or ethnic group, in place of "men”, and you start getting a sense how outlandish this insight is.

The single most insulting moment of the 90-second video comes at :37, showing a bunch of men standing in a row behind their outdoor grills, in menacing posture. It’s not just that it screams clichés and stereotypes. Imagine a row of women as props in front of washing machines or ovens baking cookies (none of the grills contain meat, BTW. Only vegetables. Seems the food police visited the set during the shoot).

It seems to me that this is a desperate attempt to appeal to Millennials, however, it’s backfiring. Ever since the acquisition, Gillette has at lost at least 30% of its market share. There has been some evidence lately that Millennials favor purpose-driven brands that impact their world in a positive way. So, perhaps, that message might have been the motivation for this ad.

Gillette says that their motivation is to start a conversation about proper behavior – but, if that indeed is their intention, they are going about it in a very strange way. I don’t think that shouting accusations at their male customers and insulting them as brutes is an effective way to get them to listen. And I sure don’t need Gillette to facilitate a conversation about masculinity, or to deliver a sermon or a moral message.

Thousands of Gillette customers have taken to social media to express their outrage regarding this ad and to announce that they are switching to Gillettes’ biggest competitor, The Dollar Shave Club, which consequently went to Twitter with a message, “Welcome to the Club.” In the first day after the ad was posted on YouTube, negative comments this ad out-polled “likes” by an incredible 10 to 1.

I’m quite surprised by this epic failure because P&G had always managed to scale the treacherous terrain of credible purpose-driven advertising quite well: They did a great job with the award winning #LikeAGirl campaign for Always, which encourages girls to be confident in the face of the fear of failure. In 2017 I picked P&G’s “The Talk”, which intended to start a conversation about racial bias, as the best commercial of the year (the commercial won a Primetime Emmy as well.)

Unfortunately, the Gillette campaign fails because it is self-serving and it’s embracing a social platform is pretentious.

Avi Dan is CEO of agency search consultants Avidan Strategies.

 

[Frank Underwood]

In the new commercial from Grey, Gillette, a company which made billions of dollars from men for over a century, disparages every one of those very same men. The brand clumsily attempts to contemporize its long-lasing slogan, “The Best a Man Can Get”, by featuring sinister males bullying and harassing – an action which Gillette describes as "toxic” masculinity. The ad is amateurishly stereotypical and mostly offers a caricature of masculinity.

The entire concept of "toxic" masculinity is a caricature in itself because it conflates sexual abuse and harassment with masculinity. We know there are shithead guys, but there are shithead women too. But the people behind this condescending, all men are pigs narrative want you to believe that women are incapable of being insensitive or even outright evil. Only us guys are capable of such repugnant behavior, and we must be reprimanded for it by the same companies who also want our business. Stop being a pig, now go and buy our razors.

 

[Frank Underwood]

This picture is so hilarious. Nothing says I'm a douche bag rapist more than a good ol' fashioned veggie barbecue!

Of course, the tendency people have to defend themselves from stereotypes only reinforces those stereotypes in the minds of these SJWs. If you're saying you're a nice guy and that not all men are bad, then surely the opposite is true. Ironically, I hear this from men more than women on social media. These are the so-called "woke" bros, also known as white knights.

It's like when Fox News brings on black people and millennials to bash black people and millennials.

 

[bmasters9]

It's like when Fox News brings on black people and millennials to bash black people and millennials.

Or when televangelists preach against television, on television!

 

[Michael Torrance]

Gillette knew it would get and wanted backlash. They have the moronic idea that controversy and being talked about is good. Except, being talked about and being purchased are two different things. If they cared to actually help their bottom line, they would check who does buy razors and appears clean-shaven daily at work. It is not the "woke" hipsters with faddish beards and goatees--it is the guys who barbecue every weekend, and if they want to insult them and tell them all of you are creating bullies and rapists, fine by me (I don't barbecue or breed anyway). Of course who ever green-lit this has some golden parachute deal when he is ousted so he won't suffer when sales do.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Looking at a list of brands owned by Procter and Gamble with a view to avoiding their products it's struck me how gynocentric P&Gs advertising is in general. Even on products that are aimed at both genders. The cloyingly smug Oral B adverts - with their complete absence of men - being perhaps the clearest example of this:

Presumably the unseen menfolk are too busy barbecuing corn on the cob to be at all concerned about their dental hygiene.

 

[Frank Underwood]

As far as bullying goes, I've experienced it at the hands of boys and girls. Girls can be just as vicious as boys. Not only have I seen girls bully boys, I've also seen girls bully each other. But instead of tackling issues such as bullying on a case by case basis, third wave feminism would have you believe that girls who bully are also victims of men and the patriarchy.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

 

[tommie]

As far as bullying goes, I've experienced it at the hands of boys and girls. Girls can be just as vicious as boys. Not only have I seen girls bully boys, I've also seen girls bully each other. But instead of tackling issues such as bullying on a case by case basis, third wave feminism would have you believe that girls who bully are also victims of men and the patriarchy.

Girls, in my experience, are often more vicious than boys because they tend to be more backhanded about it while at least male bullies are more upfront.

My experience of course.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Janice sums up nicely the Gillette ad, and its creator, Kim Gehrig, an Australian ad-maker whose feminist work provides a vivid picture of the very different ways women and men are represented in contemporary popular culture. :

"This is the quickest, harshest, and best criticism of that ad I've seen thus far." --

karen straughan​

 

[bmasters9]

Commentary by Christine Flowers, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer of Mon. Jan. 21, 2019 on page A10, on how Gillette's latest ad perpetuates this myth of toxic masculinity

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

 

[Snarky Oracle!]