London Times Quotes Sacks, Nathanson, Young on Anti-Male Advertising

I’m quoted on the problem of anti-male advertising in the recent London Times piece Dorks, dweebs and dummies. The article discusses several  anti-male ads.

One involved the 2004 anti-father Verizon ad “Homework,” which depicted a bumbling, idiot father trying and failing to help his 8-year-old daughter with her homework, as his contemptuous wife tells him to leave her alone and go wash the dog. Several thousand of my readers and radio show listeners called or wrote Verizon, the Associated Press story on our campaign ran in over 300 newspapers, and the commercial ceased airing three weeks later. To learn more, see the campaign page here, and also my column Why I Launched the Campaign Against Verizon’s Anti-Father Ad (Pasadena Star-News & others, 11/18/04)

The other anti-male ad discussed is the recent Trojan ad (called “When Pigs Fly,” I think), which depicts men as pigs. I told the Times, “A boy looking at that would think that men are just inferior, disgusting animals and have to change and jump through hoops in order to be as good as women.” To watch the Trojan ad, click here.

Below is the section of the article (penned by Dan Bell) which deals with American advertisements. Canadians Paul Nathanson and Katharine Young, authors of Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture, are also quoted. To read the full article, click here.

Grunting, dimwit, male stereotypes alarm fathers

In a smart bar lissom, single women sip cocktails and contemplate potential mates. The prospects do not look good, however, for the men in the bar aren’t men at all – they’re pigs. This was the premise of a recent US advertisement for that nation’s market-leader condom brand, Trojan. The punchline came when one pig trotted off to the gents, bought himself one of its products and was transformed back into Homo sapiens. Ads such as these have led to an increasingly strident protest at the way that men are portrayed in the media.

According to Paul Nathanson and Katharine Young, two authors at the heart of the movement, the advert exemplifies the growing phenomenon of misandry: hatred of men. They insist that misandry is now pervasive and that we should be every bit as alert to it as we are to misogyny.

They argue that men are now routinely defined by a limited set of negative stereotypes: the man as fool, slob or irrelevance. And they contend that nowhere are these archetypes more apparent than in advertising.

But is it really of concern? “Ask women why they thought it was a problem when they were ridiculed,” says Nathanson. “I don’t think men and women are different in that respect. Do two wrongs make a right?”

Left unchallenged, he says, these images take on the patina of truth that will seep into the minds of those who implement laws and develop policy.

One man making a stand is Glenn Sacks, an American journalist whose newsletter reaches 50,000 subscribers. In 2004 he was alerted to an ad for Verizon. It showed a father trying to help his daughter with her math homework only to be humiliated by her and her mother.

Sacks, who has a son and daughter, says: “The worst thing about it was not that it shows the man being an idiot, because we see that all the time, but seeing the man portrayed as an idiot in front of his daughter and ridiculed by her mother in front of his daughter.”

He says his campaign prompted 3,000 people to contact Verizon and the ad was pulled.

But what most concerns Sacks, Nathanson and Young is the potential impact on boys growing up surrounded by images that tell them there is no acceptable or dignified way to be a man.

“If you just have a bunch of negative images, how are boys ever going to develop a positive image of themselves?” says Young.

Sacks is appalled by the Trojan advert, and concerned about the message it sends to boys such as his 14-year-old son. “A boy looking at that would think that men are just inferior, disgusting animals and have to change and jump through hoops in order to be as good as women.”

Like Nathanson, he doesn’t believe that these stereotypes stay locked harmlessly inside the TV. After a sex education class at school, his son complained, “It’s always the boys who are wrong; boys who are trying to put one over on the girls,” – “and they get this drum beat,” says Sacks. “They are just fed a steady diet of this.”

The American Coalition for Fathers and Children The American Coalition for Fathers and Children is dedicated to creating a family law system which promotes equal rights for all parties affected by divorce. Contact the ACFC at 1-800-978-3237 or visit them on the web at www.acfc.org.

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