New Gillette Ad is feminist propaganda?

Turgon

Turgon

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This is a new ad from Gillette that seems like one big propaganda piece promoting the Metoo movement and manipulative in a number of ways. Considering Gilette's parent company is Proctor and Gamble, it seems like another dividing piece that's gotten 14 million views in the last 3 days with some serious backlash on social media - just read the comments section - and subtle in turning masculinity as a whole, which includes roughhousing and the trials and tribulations that kids and young boys face into something that needs to be stamped out and done away with. When I watched it, I could ALMOST agree with some of what was promoted, like the father helping out the boy that's being chased by a group of boys, but overall I think the devil is in the details and in the backdrop of the current climate, it's a load.

This seems like another step towards targeting the next generation of boys and steering them towards being more like girls. And I don't mean that in a derogatory sense because there isn't anything wrong with guys being more in-touch with our emotions and sensitive in certain ways, in fact that could be a strength, but at the same time the world can be a harsh place too, other people can be cruel, and yes, boys will be boys and will play rough and learn their limits through trial and error and how to channel aggression and sexual impulses into positive directions, etc. and learn to stand up for themselves. Without that, those impulses can go underground and come out in all sorts of strange and twisted ways. So it's as if they're trying to take away this rite of passage in order to develop in a healthy way and I fear for boys growing up who have to navigate through this.

 
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It is a very simplistic comercial, for simplistic though. To be a good man, is more then that, I would have like to see more serious situations, like war, like violence against animals, to see "real" men defending hard situations, to become a real heroes for their kids. Against injustice we need men and women, together, to be heroes for the futur generation we need both.
 
George Monbiot wrote an article about the Gillette ad, and he says men are complaining because in reality, they are afraid. :rolleyes: There's so much 'Not Even Wrong' with this article that I wouldn't know where to start. Among the highlights, Jordan Peterson is a "macho ideologue" and "meat-eating is strongly associated with conceptions of maleness, which inhibit a switch towards a plant-based diet, essential to avoid environmental breakdown." I'm not usually into name-calling, but right now I feel a strong urge to call him a soy-boy. :whistle:

Here it is in full:

The fear that lies behind aggressive masculinity
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Why do so many men love Jordan Peterson and hate the Gillette ad? If they’re truly strong they don’t need to prove their virility

What strikes me most is the fragility. Gillette makes an advertisement calling on men to challenge abusive behaviour, and thousands furiously proclaim they will never use its products again. The American Psychological Association (APA) issues new clinical guidelines advising that a masculinity characterised by dominance, aggression and emotional repression can be harmful to men’s mental health, and the world’s conservative media falls into a collective faint. So much for the strong and silent types.


If “real men”, according to the men’s rights movement, are tough and commanding, why are the exponents of this doctrine so easily discomposed? Why does the slightest challenge to the norms they proclaim – by a razor ad or an academic body they had probably never encountered before – trigger this frenzied testeria?

In thinking about male identities, I’m struck by the inadequacy of the terms we use. The notion that men should be distant, domineering and self-seeking is often described as toxic masculinity, but this serves only to alienate those who might need most help. Its proponents describe their behavioural ideal as traditional masculinity, but conceptions of maleness, like conceptions of the family, have changed radically from century to century. In the furious response to the advertisement and the new guidelines, in the enthusiasm for the psychologist Jordan Peterson and similar macho ideologues, what I perceive is a fearful masculinity.

If you are at ease with yourself, you don’t feel the need to call other men cucks. If you are strong, you don’t feel threatened by strong women. In a fascinating article last year, Pankaj Mishra argued that perceived crises of masculinity often accompany anxiety about economic or national decline. Just as US humiliation in Vietnam stimulated an appetite for “such cartoon visions of masculinity as Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger”, 9/11 helped to spread morbid fears about the emasculation of western powers, and the need to assert a new ideal of manliness. The perceived loss of both political and gender dominance has provoked some men to respond with homophobia and misogyny in a crude attempt to restore male authority.

As the APA guidelines reveal, fearful masculinity inflicts tremendous harm on men as well as women. The men who are most exercised about their manliness, a 2011 study suggests, are half as likely to seek preventive healthcare as those who are less anxious about male identity. They are also less willing to request psychotherapy. The APA links these attitudes to the far higher rates of suicide among men than among women.


In researching both prostate cancer and loneliness, I discovered the extent to which manly reserve kills. Fears we cannot bring ourselves to name soon grow into terrible secrets. As they grow, they become still harder to share, and therefore to assimilate and endure. Because men have often been unwilling to discuss an issue that threatens their virility as well as their lives, funding for prostate cancer research has lagged behind the money allocated for other malignancies. As with breast cancer, effective treatment requires the breaking of taboos.


In writing about these issues, and in touring the album about beating loneliness I wrote with Ewan McLennan, I discovered that thousands of people seemed to have been waiting for permission to relax their stiff upper lips. In normalising our frightening conditions, in connecting with others who have been suffering in silence, we find a collective strength we cannot find alone. Those who urge us to shut down, man up and grow a pair push us towards disaster and despair.


One of the many he-men responding to the new guidelines, David French, writing in the National Review, asserts that becoming a “grown man” requires “oppressive” discipline, aggression and risk-taking. But to me, growing up – whether as a man or a woman – means abandoning anger, aggression and the need to dominate. It means learning to talk about fear, loss, joy and love. It means learning both to listen and to share, to name your troubles and engage with other people’s. You need to be strong to admit your weaknesses. In admitting them, you build your strength.


The age-old mistake, which has stunted countless lives, is the assumption that because physical hardship in childhood makes you physically tough, emotional hardship must make you emotionally tough. It does the opposite. It implants a vulnerability that can require a lifetime of love and therapy to repair and that, untreated, leads to an escalating series of destructive behaviours. Emotionally damaged men all too often rip apart their own lives, and those of their partners and children. I see both physical fitness and emotional strength as virtues, but they are acquired by entirely different means.


Those who deny their own feelings tend to deny other people’s. Some men clearly find it easier to order a drone strike, separate children from their families or build a wall than to admit and address their own vulnerabilities. There is, as Madeleine Somerville has discussed in the Guardian, a powerful association between perceived masculinity and a lack of concern for the living world: real men don’t recycle. A study in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests that meat-eating is strongly associated with conceptions of maleness, which inhibit a switch towards a plant-based diet, essential to avoid environmental breakdown.


What sort of a man are you if you have to go to such lengths to prove your masculinity? The confident construction of identity does not require crude cultural markers, but emotional literacy and honest self-appraisal. The more we proclaim our strength and dominance, the weaker we reveal ourselves to be.
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If I were a man I would be afraid of the picture that’s painted there. And angry, very angry.
Unfortunately, we are living in a time where a brand known for products as insignificant as razors is used as a gateway for brainwashing and expending a political agenda. Luckily the consumers are more aware than the crazy woke agency that came up with this unbelievably idiotic marketing coup. Know your target group…

I couldn’t bring myself to watch the whole video at once. Instead I took a break and researched Gillette in Germany. This schizophrenic, fractured brand identity is really just a mirror for the incoherent discourse going on. In Germany Gillette’s female product range is a sponsor for the (now highly discussed) casting show “Germany’s Next Top Model”. You know the drill: young girls dreaming of a glamorous model life competing in swimsuits to gain a contract with Gilette.

Come on Gilette give me some direction here: First of all, if you are now going all SJW, shouldn’t you be offering unisex products (but there is a silly pink tax to earn money with, right?) and what exactly are you promoting? Unrealistic body images for young girls and harshly judging and hurting assumptions about men in general? That will change society for the better for sure.

I have an idea for the hero of your next campaign: cleanshaven, sexless, faceless dolls. As dead and insignificant as your brand hopefully becomes.

Sorry for the rant, but the madness is getting to me.
 
I saw that,

Paul Joseph Watson did a piece on the Ad:


I liked what he said, it’s free advertisement via virtue signaling, which is so in these days.

Note how most companies that go in that direction tend to fail a la Star Wars. There seems to be a perception that the SJW mindset is where society is headed but it really isn’t, they’re just louder and very well positioned but the great majority of people do not resonate with this.
 
maiko said:
I have an idea for the hero of your next campaign: cleanshaven, sexless, faceless dolls. As dead and insignificant as your brand hopefully becomes.

Sorry for the rant, but the madness is getting to me.
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Don't apologize, that was a great rant maiko! What I found ironic about the Gillette thing is that they still charge more for women's razors than for men's. I guess their feminism stops at the bottom line. And I'm guessing after this major mistake the bottom line is going to look a lot worse.
 
Beau said:
Don't apologize, that was a great rant maiko!
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I agree, I thought it was a great rant and informative to boot! I didn't know that Gillette sponsored "Germany's Next Top Model", and I think it's more than a little hypocritical for them to be bashing toxic masculinity out of one side of their mouth and then supporting the objectification of women out of the other.
 
Judging by the comments and uproar over the ad at least we can take heart that everyone in the world hasn't gone completely stupid over this toxic masculinity BS. Gillette deserves a boycott both from real men and the women who appreciate real men.
 
Odyssey said:
Judging by the comments and uproar over the ad at least we can take heart that everyone in the world hasn't gone completely stupid over this toxic masculinity BS. Gillette deserves a boycott both from real men and the women who appreciate real men.
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I absolutely agree. I just tossed my Gillette 'Daisy' razors in the trash and won't be buying any more.
 
loreta said:
It is a very simplistic comercial, for simplistic though. To be a good man, is more then that, I would have like to see more serious situations, like war, like violence against animals, to see "real" men defending hard situations, to become a real heroes for their kids. Against injustice we need men and women, together, to be heroes for the futur generation we need both.
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One of the most glaring problems with feminism and associated ideologies is everything is seen only through the lens of power and oppression. Human psychology is reduced to innate bias. History is important only insofar as it highlights the oppression of particular groups. Relationships revolved around power dynamics. Work and success is centered on power dynamics. Culture is about power dynamics. Our food is all about power dynamics. And of course, self improvement is also about power dynamics. In all this obsession with power, there is no actual understanding of the psychological dynamics of control and the desire of power over others. If there was, these current ideologies would be destroyed because it would be understood that this is human thing, not a man or woman thing.

This need for control is a very real thing and it is destructive. These ideologies center on the need for controlling others, which comes from a very different place than from someone like Jordan Peterson who is looking to aid rather than control. You can tell by the results. There are endless accounts of how young (and older) men have turned their lives around by taking responsibility for their lives. But I've yet to see anyone talk about how their lives have improved, how their relationships are better, they're doing better in school, etc, after becoming a Social Justice Warrior. In fact, what we see is the opposite. These people often become more angry, they destroy family relationships and friendships, and then they blame the world for its 'oppression' as their lives continue in a downward spiral. It seems the only decent way to tackle this human need for control is through accepting responsibility. When you deny that, the alternative is to try and control others and the outcome is never good.

Within these control-based ideologies, the 'other', the oppressors ('the man' has been taken too literally here!), must be called out, shamed, and reformed. A line is drawn between the victim and the oppressor, and there is nothing in between. So many men reject the Gillette ad because they don't accept being put in this false dichotomy. It's insulting, overbearing, and overreaching.

I think it's actually pretty normal and healthy for such campaigns to be met with ridicule. The self importance contained within such messages is so massive that it should be made fun of. This is part of an age old game that has been played among children and adults alike, usually by boys and men. Once self importance is sensed within a group, taunts begin. If the individual doesn't take themselves too seriously, they either playfully accept the taunt, or maybe engage in the game of taunting back. However, if they hold resentment through an impenetrable self image, the teasing and taunts will accelerate until either the person can come to their senses and joins the game, or they leave the group. The result is this game protects the group from detrimental effects of raging self importance. This is likely one of the big reasons why Trump was elected in the US. He's an exceptional troll. Most trolling behavior is just making fun of the absurd results of self important people. There are obvious pathologicals who get mixed in with these crowds, but as a general mechanism, I think the case can be made that it is a protective social dynamic.

This has been countered in recent years by classifying this behavior as bullying or 'attacks' or as 'toxic masculinity'. In doing so, children's self importance has been allowed to grow unchecked by healthy teasing. Instead of making self importance an undesirable thing, it has been nurtured and allowed into the group. The end result is the group is poisoned by toxic levels of delusional self importance that syncs perfectly with toxic levels of control.
 
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