Comments on: Waking Up To The Link Between Violence And Sex

By: Violence Against Women on Prime Time Up Since 2004 » Sociological Images

Violence Against Women on Prime Time Up Since 2004 » Sociological Images — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:21:04 +0000

[…] here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. […]

By: Repertoires of Contention: The PETA Prototype (Trigger Warning) » Sociological Images

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 21:13:29 +0000

[…] from a protest by the Alliance for Animal Rights in Russia. Like the protests PETA in the U.S. and Animals Awake in the Netherlands, this Russian protest personifies animals as (mostly) women and then displays them brutally […]

By: Keepin’ It Classy: PETA Compares Fat Women to Whales » Sociological Images

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 03:32:14 +0000

[…] posts: women in (fake) lettuce bikinis, Dutch animal rights ad shows stripper brutally murdered, not sexualizing older women, PETA ad banned from Superbowl, women as bloody packaged meat, […]

By: ConservativeAnchor

ConservativeAnchor — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:53:08 +0000

That was the dumbest damn video I’ve ever viewed.

By: Sticking Sex Where it Doesn’t Belong: PETA | Feminist Vegetables

Sticking Sex Where it Doesn’t Belong: PETA | Feminist Vegetables — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:57:15 +0000

[…] by making it sexy to think about women being subjected to violence. It’s not ok. Read more here. And then, if you think you can believe the results are real PETA ads (they are), try searching […]

By: hypatia

hypatia — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:06:23 +0000

“However, ads that rely on analogies like women=fish, Jewish people=chickens/pigs are in my view, waaay over the line. I find myself wondering if these kinds of campaigns come from groups of people have lots of respect for animals, and very little for other human beings.”

Exactly, equating women with fish does more to lower the status of women than raise the status of fish. A human is just not comparable to a fish whose ability to feel pain is completely up to debate. http://www.dtmag.com/Stories/Weird%20Stuff/03-04-ecoseas.htm

By: Katherine

Katherine — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:34:18 +0000

It seems to me ads like this rely upon analogy for their effectiveness: gutting a fish is in some sense *like* gutting a woman. We are upset by gutting women, therefore we ought to be upset by gutting fish.
I am reminded of PETA campaigns from a few years ago where they alleged in side-by-side photos that the factory farming are *like* Nazi concentration camps. [a good sample of these ads can be found via Google image search]
I have a great deal of respect for vegans and activists who oppose cruelty to animals. However, ads that rely on analogies like women=fish, Jewish people=chickens/pigs are in my view, waaay over the line. I find myself wondering if these kinds of campaigns come from groups of people have lots of respect for animals, and very little for other human beings.

By: adam

adam — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:41:37 +0000

PETA actually made an ad strikingly similar to this some time ago (maybe this video was “inspired” by it?). It also makes a much better analogy than a simple play on the word “strip:” “What if you were killed for your coat?” It is also triggering, and though the violence against women motif is still there, it does not exploit the link betweens ex and violence.

“Fur is Dead”
http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/video.asp?video=fur-is-dead-psa&Player=wm

By: Ashley

Ashley — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:41:33 +0000

Yeah, killing a woman and gutting her alive is NOT the same as killing fish and gutting them alive. Do we need to send the Netherlands a memo?

By: Cola

Cola — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:06:28 +0000

Noir, yeah, it’s uncomfortable how women and women’s bodies are always used as the surface on which we paint our messages. Maybe this ad doesn’t normalize this kind of violence, but it exploits the very real pain and suffering that women often endure because that violence has already been normalized. It shocks me, but I don’t have to watch a woman violently murdered to know that it’s wrong. What it amounts to is not a lesson “murdering is wrong” but torture porn. It’s awfully close to a lot of horror movies and their depictions of sexualised violence against attractive young women, too close for me to give it a pass for using “shock” to send a message.

I’m a vegetarian, and I’m disgusted. I don’t need any more reminders that women are perceived as weak and vulnerable, that only attractive young women are worth looking at, and that we’re all disposable.

By: Elena

Elena — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:35:23 +0000

And it’s not as if sacrificing every sardine painlessly was economically feasible. Honestly, a better approach would be to work first for sustainable management of fisheries rather than worrying about the pain threshold of fish. It’s not as if their lot in life didn’t already involve being gutted alive by non-human marine predators.

By: Noir

Noir — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:23:00 +0000

I don’t think that the problem is that “normalizes” violence against women, the problem is that trivializes it and uses in a exploitative way to “made people aware” about… fishing.

And fishing is a very complex area. As if it isn’t something that, for example, lots of working- class women use as a way of living. While being victims of violence that richer people benefit from.

I think it’s very hypocritical.

By: Dawn

Dawn — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:55:39 +0000

I think any violence like that depicted above would have been shocking. It would have been likely even more shocking had they used a male stripper but they used a woman because they wanted it to be titillating. And also because violence against women IS ubiquitous in advertising and that’s likely where their minds went to first. It reenforces the idea of women as vulnerable and yes, that sex & violence are intermixed. But it’s sex (as represented by women) & violence that are intermixed. So I don’t think you can unlock the Jezebel interpretation from your own.

But I tell you, this ad so infuriates me that it makes me want to go send money to groups that hurt fish. Kinda like how the Peta ads make me want to wear fur. (Then I come to my senses but still.)

By: Undefined

Undefined — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:51:06 +0000

I agree that this advertisement relies heavily on just how shocking the murder at the end is. I don’t at all agree, therefore, that “there is no reason to spend the first half of the commercial titillating us, only to have it suddenly turned into a horror show.” The shock is significantly enhanced by the contrast; and the fact that the advert seems to rely precisely on that contrast is itself significant. I think it suggests that the interpretation proposed here is entirely off: the opposition – the complete shift in tone – between the sexy atmosphere of the first part and the horrific violence of the second is key. The advert doesn’t normalize the connection between sex and violence: it seems to trade heavily on the extreme cognitive dissonance engendered when the two are juxtaposed. I suspect the advertisers might have been relying on that dissonance as a way of making their message stick. Insofar as the ad might be taken as normalizing the connection between sex and vilence, I think this can only come about if the viewier is already prepared to readily connect the two, and treats the above as nothing more than confirmation of the normality of that link (which obviously needn’t involve that she finds that normality acceptable). As the post suggests, Americans might be especially prone to this interpretation; but the advert is, after all, Dutch. Perhaps things are different there..?

By: lisa

lisa — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:49:10 +0000

Thanks jeffliveshere,

I added an update pointing out the pun.