Male Matters Author
GENDER VIOLENCE
...It Makes Some Feminists Want a World Without Men...
...But what about women's violence? If feminists (and the media) don't take women's violence seriously, why should men take women's opinions seriously? After all, according to ideological feminists' own definition of hate crimes, violence is merely an opinion acted out, a view expressed by behavior.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT
"With this I will manipulate your little male brain." But all power carries a price tag.
"'Silly husband' commercials are starting to tax my patience"
Denigrate-the-man TV commercials seem to be common and popular. Is this because advertisers have learned that the fastest way to a woman's pocket book is to tap into female sexism? We know what the male-bashing ads say about men — that they are, as the commentary below says, “Silly Husbands” or “Ridiculous Lazy Idiots Who Can't Do Anything Right.” But what do the ads say about women? To me, they say women are more apt to buy a product if men are portrayed as foolish, stupid, incompetent, and wholly inferior to wives or girlfriends. One may call these ads revenge for women, but I don't recall ever seeing, even as far back as the 1950s, a single ad that made women look comparably bad -- not on TV, on the radio, or in magazines. Even black Americans have never been publicly denigrated by ads the way men are today. --Male Matters
Jacey Eckhart, jacey87@mac.com | January 27, 2008
At first I thought the TV commercial was an ad for a divorce attorney. Turns out it was a tax preparation pitch. In the H&R Block ad, this squirrelly lookin' husband tells his wife they are getting audited. The wife bends over him, concerned.
"Really? Well, maybe we should see the people that did our taxes," she says. Then she sneers at him. "Oh, that's right. We didn't use people. We used a box. Well, Greg, let's ask the box what we should do now."
The sad little husband doesn't say anything or even look at her while she holds up the box to her ear and mocks him.
"What's it saying?" he titters.
"Nothing. It's a box," she snaps.
I guess the message is supposed to be that if you want to avoid your wife's contempt, you're gonna need real live people working for you.
I'd agree with that. I'd even volunteer to be one of your people. Because I may know jack about the tax code, but I do know enough to ask this one question: What are you doing pussyfooting around with a wife (or a husband) who shows you that much contempt?
That's right. Contempt. Sneering, mocking, name-calling, eye-rolling, sarcastic, cynical, bitter-tasting contempt. Contempt is a very bad sign in a marriage.
Psychologist John Gottman, a leading research scientist on marriage and family, has long identified contempt, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling as major predictors of divorce. Even among these four, contempt is considered the most important indicator that a marriage is in trouble.
So why do we see it so often when advertisers are trying to sell us something? I guess it is supposed to seem a little like humor. After all, the Silly Husband has been a common figure in commercials, TV and movies for ages. I've been fine with that, but lately it seems commercials have taken on a more acrid flavor.
Instead of Silly Husband, the guy I see most often now is Ridiculous Lazy Idiot Who Can't Do Anything Right. That guy is so common that right after the tax commercial the archetype showed up again in a Domino's Pizza commercial. When the husband finds out he has 30 minutes before the pizza comes, he appears in a red satin robe. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
The wife deadpans, "What are we going to do with the other 28 minutes?"
That's harsh. If my husband said something so cold to me, I wouldn't stand there smiling. I'd sneak off somewhere to lick my wounds. Forget the pizza.
Sure, these are just commercials. I should ignore them, turn them off, stop watching so much TV. And yet, I can't ignore that human beings tend to copy the examples in front of them. How long before I'm the one rolling my eyes and listening to boxes and pounding on the doors of the Gottman Institute, begging them to fix my marriage?
I hope I never end up like that. Every time I see one of those commercials, I won't be thinking about my taxes. I won't be ordering a pizza. Instead I'll take that display of contempt and use it as a cue to pounce on my husband and kiss him all over. Because I got people. Specifically I've got one person who deigns to do my taxes. He's got me. Let's keep it that way.
Thank you so much for bringing this to light. I think that we have become
so used to seeing commercials like this that we don't even realize they are
offensive (which in itself is pretty scary).
You're so right, Matthew. The bias against males is so pervasive in our
culture today that it resembles whites' bias against blacks in the
pre-1960s South. --Male Matters author
If you have watched television within the last ten years you know that the
purpose of television commercials has changed. It is no longer to sell a
product. The purpose now is to show how many ways a white male can be
kicked in the groin, humiliated, degraded, and shown to be a lazy, inept,
without-a-clue idiot to the delight and amusement of the cross armed, eye
rolling model female.
A Bold New Look at the Sexes
Roy F. Baumeister: Is There Anything Good About Men?
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