gender: prejudice/discrimination

Gillian sent us a series of overtly sexist Polish commercials for MOBILKING.  Gillian says:

MOBILKING is a newest Polish cell phone operator. It is advertised as a telephon [company] for “real men only”, implying that it’s not for “girly chit-chats”, but rather for “serious bussines talks” (meaning talking about breasts, cars and beer).

Gillian tells us that, after complaints, the commercials were pulled, but after the negative publicity they went viral and gave the cell company more publicity than ever. 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2LBaJB5RT4[/youtube]

Two more of the commercials show a hyper-sexualized woman putting on football gear and a mechanics uniform and asking “But can she play like a man?” and “But can she fix anything like a man?” respectively.  The answer is, of course, “no.”

First, the commercial (found here):

I love and hate this commercial because of androcentrism.  Androcentrism is the idea that we value masculinity over femininity such that we admire both men and women for performing masculinity.  Androcentrism explains why we tend to like it when women drink beer, play sports, and become lawyers, but do not typically think it’s equally awesome when men cry, wear skirts, learn to knit, or become interior designers.   Here is my crash course on androcentrism.

In any case, I kinda love the fact that the hot chick in this commercial represents strength and we’re obviously supposed to think she’s awesome.  But the guy in the commercial, who is supposed to represent sissy hippy environmentalism, doesn’t exactly come off as awesome.  He is funny, stupid, ridiculous.  And I kind of hate that.  In a perfect world, men would be allowed to do things associated with femininity without being considered uncool.

A New York Times article about politicans and parenting offered this figure illustrating what percentage of Democratic and Republican voters say they would be likely to vote for a woman with and without children and a man with and without children.

I found this collection of vintage ads at the Mail online:

When I was copying the website link, I noticed that this story was in the “Femail” section. There’s the homepage, of course, and then there’s “News,” “Sport,” “TV&Showbiz,” “Health,” “Science&Tech,” etc. etc., and then there’s “Femail,” the section targeted at women. It seems to be mostly fashion with some mother-daughter stories of various types. I wish sometime I’d see a magazine (or magazine section) aimed at women that didn’t see “women’s issues” and science/technology/news/sport/etc. as completely different topics.

I did like this story about elephants doing math, though.

I don’t know how “real” any of this is, but this what I’ve been able to collect on this matter…

If you are connected to the internets, you have probably heard these messages left on some unsuspecting woman’s answering machine.

The messages have been attributed to Dmitri the Lover, a professional seducer of women and teacher of seducers of women. Here is a screen shot of his wholly misogynistic website:

Here, too, is a news article detailing how he lost his medical license due to inappropriate sexual advances and has been accused of rape many times ‘n other great stuff.

Thanks to Jason S., Brett W., and CoRri V. for the links and info!

NEW!  Still at it, a reader alerted us to Dmitri’s “meeting” this January:

THERE IS ONLY ONE OPPORTUNITY EACH YEAR FOR HORNY MEN TO SEDUCE WOMEN THIS INSECURE, GROSSLY UNDERFUCKED, AND HIGHLY IMPRESSIONABLE.

More (his emphasis):

As a MEDICAL DOCTOR, Dimitri The Lover is extremely cognizant of the fact that studies have show over 60% of women worldwide suffer from a psychological disorder at some time during their lives.  In Canada’s northern climate, January is the worst month of the year for psychological symptoms, primarily because a decrease in the level of sunlight and shortened hours of daylight cause “Seasonal Affective Disorder”.  Exacerbated by both the post-holiday psychological letdown from unrealistically high pre-holiday expectations, and the effects of alcohol withdrawal on the neural pathways, this condition causes many women to fall into a MILD REACTIVE DEPRESSION.  Therefore, these once proud sluts become insecure and begin to doubt the value of their existing relationships, which even in the best of times are just barely adequate to meet their psychosexual needs.

Maybe you’ve never noticed, given that feminists are always talking about the ladies, that there are lots and lots and lots of things that (real) men are not supposed to do. For instance: drink fruity drinks, wear pink shoes, look at their fingernails the wrong way, enjoy a “chick flick,” like a girl, like cats, prefer not to fight, care about grades, eat salad… should I go on? You get the gist.

Comparably, women have got it good. We’re allowed to knit and play soccer, be a mom and be a lawyer, take dance and karate, wear skirts and pants!

How do we make sense of this? Crash course: Femininity is just for chicks. When men do feminine things, they are debasing themselves. Masculinity is awesome and for everyone. When women do masculine things, they’re awesome. This is sexism: Masculinity rules, femininity drools. Men are encouraged to stay away from femininity, so their individual choices are constrained, but they also are staying away from something debasing. In contrast, women are required to do a least some femininity, so women are required to debase themselves, at least a little bit, even as they are given more options.

I say this all to introduce these two hilarious examples of men and how they have to worry about doing masculinity (sent in by Vesko J.).

How To Give The Perfect Man Hug

How I Sit On The Bus

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Alongside an article in the New York Times today was this graph comparing the percentage of positive statements made about Obama versus Clinton by the media over the course of the primary race.  The article discusses whether players in the U.S. media think their coverage was sexist.  Lots of people do not think so.  It has some really interesting quotes from people in front of and behind the camera.

Click here to see a montage of sexist statements about Hillary Clinton by media pundits.

Emily sent us this classic Goodyear tire ad. The ad starts out talking about mileage and showing men, but then moves to a segment where a woman is driving and there’s scary music and we’re to presume that she’s maybe being chased or is in danger–and you want to be sure your wife has good tires so she can get away.

NEW! This ad for the VW Bug also plays on the idea that women are terrible drivers:

Text:

Women are soft and gentle, but they hit things.

If your wife hits something in a Volkswagen, it doesn’t hurt you very much.

…

She can jab the hood. Graze the door. Or bump off the bumper.

It may make you furious, but it won’t make you poor.

So when your wife goes window-shopping in a Volkswagen, don’t worry.

You can conveniently replace anything she uses to stop the car.

Even the brakes.