There's sexist and then there's sexist.

"Book Reading Party" Bud Light Super Bowl Ad 2010 Commercia
Uploaded by rosebudmag. - Sitcom, sketch, and standup comedy videos.

I didn't watch the Super Bowl so I didn't see the commercials but I began stumbling on a lot of sites where an intense conversation rant is taking place over the sexism in the Bud Lite commercial. Many of these are accompanied by the video of the ad so I got to see it. I confess that my first reaction to it was to crack up. Sure there is blatant sexist stereotyping going on here. But it is so over the top it is almost a spoof of itself. More the flavor of a sitcom written in the Jr High boy's locker room. The kind of thing that calls attention to crass behavior to mark it as crass. It leaves me wondering why Budweiser wishes to be typecast as a tasteless, low class beverage.

Compare that to the advocacy ad sponsored by Focus on the Family. The tone at first is touching, heart-string pulling with a woman talking as she gazes at a baby picture about how she still worries about her son who had a touch-and-go start in life and then Tim Tebow 'tackles' his Mom, knocking her off her feet which abruptly changes the mood to light-hearted and funny that quickly segues into touching again as mother and son face the camera cheek to cheek and the message: celebrate life appears on the screen along with the URL to Focus on the Family where the Tim Tebow story can be seen in full.




Which one of these is the most sexist in intent? Which the most dangerous for women?

I see a stark difference between them. The Bud Lite ad exploits our culture stereotypes while poking fun at them which actually works against implying that such behavior ought to be the norm. Which means we've come a long way from the 1950s era in terms of how women's and men's roles are depicted on TV and film.

The Focus on the Family ad though, is a subtle weapon in the hands of a declared patriarchal agenda that won't be content until women's roles are returned to the 1850s era. The ad presents a touching story of one family's triumph over adversity, one family's ultimate joy and sets it up as a tool in the service of enforcing a new dark age on women's autonomy.

I find it very telling that they chose the image of the son tackling his mother and knocking her to the ground. I believe it is a not so subtle (and yet probably un-conscious on their part) message from Focus on the Family as to their true intent.

Seen in that light it is not so funny; not so cute; and far from heart-warming.

I first became aware of the existence of this ad well before the day it aired. I received a number of requests in my in-box to protest it and call on CBS to pull it. But that goes against my sense of right as much as the religious right agenda does. It is more than just the free speech aspect too, though that is huge in itself. I would rather have it out there where everyone can see it in the full light so it can be examined and critiqued and become the subject of dialog and debate that engages everybody in a discussion of the implications. I do not hold with any stifling of another's voice. Not even when I disagree. Especially when I disagree.

Read more...

The Blog Against Theocracy Blogswarm

One of the fallouts from being so wrapped up in the final week of library access was missing the opportunity to participate in this Easter Weekend consciousness raising blogging event, The Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm sponsered by Blue Gal, Mock Paper Scissors, Neural Gourmet, and Talk2Action. Participants were to post on the theme at least once over the weekend and then email their link to BlueGal who would then post it on the BAT blog. There was such a huge response she is still busy getting the links posted. I discovered the project too late to participate as it was already after midnight Sunday when I surfed onto Orcinus, one of my regular haunts and encountered the meme for the first time in Sara's sunday post. I followed the link there to the BAT site and went on from there to T2A where I read several of the participating posts.

I considered knocking off a quick post and setting the timestamp back a couple of hours but my conscience wouldn't let me. Besides which I knew that knocking off quick posts is not my forte. I was exhausted from the day's family activities. And I still had over a hundred pages left to read in that novel, the last library book, which needed to be in the bookdrop by nine in the morning. So I returned my attention to the novel but my thoughts continued to return to the BAT blogswarm throughout the night and the next day. This evening I decided that the least I could do was write a post pointing to the project and do my small part to help promote it. Even though the weekend swarm is over, there are more than a few amazingly written and cogently thought out posts among the participants which will not loose their relevance in the passing of a few days, or even weeks.

I also want to make a point of saluting Talk2Action, a community site which is focused on this issue every day and features posts from a number of seasoned journalists and researchers. T2A requires a free registration in order to comment (not to just read tho) but that registration also allows the member to maintain their own diary on the site. I signed up with them last month in order to post a comment but by the time I got through the registration process I had forgotten what I wanted to say. Sigh. But I have been planning ever since to start keeping a diary there once this library thing was behind me. When I do start posting at T2A I will crosspost here at Joystory. The value of posting at T2A is the ability to participate in a dialog and get feedback from a likeminded community which is more about educating and finding solutions than it is about fear mongering or spluttering ones frustrations into the blogosphere. The threat of theocracy and the gradual erroding of the laws protecting liberty of conscience and the integrity of acedimic research are still themes that monopolize a great deal of my thought and I suppose they will for the foreseeable future. Well over half of the books I still had out last week touched on this theme in one way or another.

There is already talk of making the Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm an annual event. Personaly I think once a year is far from enough.

Read more...