p.j. sent in this (probably parody of a) Trojan condom ad that reminds men to be ever-vigilant in their search for signs of gender boundary-crossing because you just never know when the hottie you pick up on the street might actually be a cross-dressing man:
You can see this message quite a lot if you look for it–the idea that men are constantly in danger of having their masculinity threatened by another guy who refuses to play the gender game according to the rules. This might have something to do with the fact that men punish each other for crossing the gender line much more than women punish each other (or than women punish men, for that matter). [Note: Use of “girls” instead of “women” as the equivalent of “men” corrected thanks to a comment by Jack.]
Of course, you could argue that if you’re that worried about it, maybe you shouldn’t have sex with complete strangers you picked up off the sidewalk. Or that finding out that stranger is a man rates pretty low on the list of problems you might encounter if you’re regularly picking up strangers standing around on the sidewalk and asking them to have sex with you.
Thanks, p.j.!
NOTE: A commenter asked if this is really a Trojan ad. I have to admit I was a little unsure. I did as much of an online fact-check as I could manage, did a search for every combination of words related to Trojan, cross-dressing/transvestite, and hoax/parody I could think of, and checked Snopes, and I couldn’t find anything saying it was fake. But this is probably one where you might want to introduce it with a disclaimer (which I should have thought to put up here initially) that the theme is still sociologically interesting but may not have come from the Trojan company itself.
