Sunday, July 12, 2009

Misandric Monday - Sexism and Sexual Abuse in Marketing

misandry

Why does every single ad for any sort of 'self-defense' class or martial arts school feature a photo of a woman sexually assaulting a man while the man makes a face of agony? Is this all they teach?

Why is it always a woman sexually assaulting a man? Why is it never a man kicking another man? Why not a woman kicking a woman? What are they trying to say when they only ever show a graphic image of a woman sexually assaulting a man? If it weren't sexual, there would be no reason not to show a man kicking a man, or a woman kicking a woman.

An image just like this one has been featured in every single issue of "Memphis Fitness" magazine for as long as I can remember. Depending on how many ads they run for various martial arts schools, they may have several of these images, but always featuring the same scenario as this one - a woman sexually assaulting a man. Always. Memphis largest newspapers, "The Commercial Appeal" and "The Memphis Flyer", have the same ads with the same images of misandric sexual violence. Sometimes these photos are displayed on billboards alongside our highways.

When did graphic sexual violence become acceptable for every single magazine and newspaper, such that they think nothing of running these ads and showing these images to anyone who happens to pick up their publication? When did it become not only acceptable, but common, to display and encourage sexual violence for everyone, including our children, to see?

What do you suppose the magazines and newspapers' response would be to a request to run an add for self-defense those showed a man slamming a woman onto her back, with her feet up over his head while he pressed his groin against hers and she made a face of pain and terror? It's a legitimate judo move, you know. So what if it has sexual overtones? We're all about the self-defense and anything goes, right?

You and I both know what would happen - that ad would never see the light of day.

2 years ago a feminist hate group in Colorado used tax-payer funds to hire a feminist artist to create a sculpture featuring nothing but severed male genitals hanging from strings and a sign that said something about stopping sexual abuse. This obviously sexist threat of sexual mutilation of males, and only of males, was then hung up in the public library and forced on every single person who entered the building.

People complained and many parents pointed out that their young sons were extremely traumatized by the display. Yet the library refused to take the display down or even to move it, saying it had a First Amendment right to threaten sexual mutilation of males if it wanted to. Of course, they didn't word it that way. They wrapped their statement in political and religious jargon to try and portray themselves as victims who were merely empowering women, blah blah blah.

Finally, an outraged man did the only decent thing he could, and tore the display down, taking the clay penises and testicles and placing them all in a box which he then carried out of the building with him. Most citizens indicated to The Press that they were glad to see the "burning cross" finally taken down. But the feminists naturally were, as ever, outraged. They had the man arrested and thrown in jail.

Why is it considered OK to hate males to such an extreme degree that blatant threats of sexual abuse are found everywhere on display, without a word of protest against them? Or, when protests are made, the authorities rush to protect the sexist offenders and arrest the ordinary citizens who demand some sort of decency?

Why would anyone wishing to attract students to their school or class consistently use imagery that so clearly states hostility towards one entire sex? Am I the only one who considers what a bad marketing strategy this is? Small wonder that most martial arts students now are females.

I know why men don't protest this sort of thing more than we do. We never get taken seriously and the end result is always simply more of what we were protesting to begin with. Whenever we admit that something hurts all we ever get is more of it. But I do wonder, why do mothers with sons never protest this? Why do they teach their daughters to treat males this way but never even think to teach their sons to have enough self-respect to not tolerate being treated this way? Why are the Christians not protesting this hate? Have we been so inundated with this total contempt for males for so long that it simply escapes everyone's notice now? Has it become such a common part of our daily landscape that we don't even recognize it anymore?

Why does everyone get upset about rap songs that call women "bitch" and "ho", yet never see the clear and obvious consequences of these images and this message of castration as a positive thing? What's worse, calling a girl a name, or telling a boy that for him to be sexually abused is empowering to women and therefore a good thing? To "take it like a man" has apparently come to mean lie still and allow yourself to be castrated. Nothing could be less 'empowering' than that.


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