By David Futrelle
Gillette’s new ad challenging toxic masculinity has got a lot of people talking. Unfortunately, most of them seem to be angry dudes attacking Gillette for challenging them to be “The Best Men Can Be,” and using the ad as an excuse to call other men “soy boys,” cucks, sissies, pansies and f***ots.
The ad, which took on an assortment of related issues ranging from bullying to sexual harassment, has gotten 5.6 million views on YouTube since it was released Sunday. It’s also gotten more than 400,000 “dislikes,” nearly four times the number of likes.
If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is. I have mixed feelings about giant corporations trying to position themselves as progressive entities, but the ad itself is pretty good, as these things go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koPmuEyP3a0
So what are the online, er, critics saying? I spent a while reading through some of the reactions on Twitter, where the video was also posted, and, well, let’s just say that, just as comments on any article about feminism prove the need for feminism, Tweets about videos challenging toxic masculinity prove the need for videos challenging toxic masculinity.
Let’s start with Jeffrey here, who conveys some of the flavor of the response with this weird attack on Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks, who appears briefly in the video as an example of a journalist talking about the #MeeToo movement.
But most of the attacks weren’t misogynist attacks on women; they were, rather, misogynistic attacks on the allegedly insufficient masculinity of the Gillette executives behind the ad, and on those the ad was designed to appeal to.
Did I say men? I meant “soy boys.” Or at least that’s what the commenters meant.
Apparently, all the excess testosterone in these manly men’s systems has rendered them incapable of original thought. These aren’t the most creative of people.
Still, some eschewed the “soy boy” insult in favor of assorted old-school insinuations of inadequate manhood.
Others mixed-and-matched old and new school insults with gleeful abandon.
Others descended into straight-up homophobic attacks:
Others went with everyone’s favorite transphobic slur.
Such an inventive play on Gillette’s famous slogan “The Best a Man Can Get.”
And it’s not like anyone else thought of that joke. Oh, wait.
Yes, I’ll have the combo, please.
On second thought, I’ll have one with everything.
But perhaps the strangest contribution to this whole debate that I ran across while, er, researching this piece by bumbling around on Twitter came from our old friend Stefan Molyneux, the culty Canadian “philosopher” and YouTube blabber, who had this observation about the ad:
Stefan is suggesting, in a sly if not-quite-plausibly deniable way, that the ad is somehow going easy on Jewish men and exempting them from the “toxic masculinity” accusations, almost as if there were some big Jewish conspiracy on Madison Avenue to go along with the one in Hollywood.
How do I know this is what he’s getting at? Molyneux is an increasingly open anti-Semite who pretends to oppose anti-Semitism; he regularly tweets regurgitated anti-Semtiic talking points and, in a tweet the other day he explicitly denied that he has any Jewish blood in him. Which is evidently a big concern in the circles he hangs out in these days.
My question, of course, is how he can tell that none of the guys in the ad are Jewish. I mean, there are a LOT of boys and men in the ad, and it kind of seems statistically likely that at least a couple of them are Jewish. But evidently Stefan’s Jewdar is better than mine.
Turns out Stefan wasn’t the only one thinking about Jews. So were these guys, and they weren’t quite so subtle as Stefan in their tweets.
(I’m not quite sure how this fellow decided she was Jewish; I found no indications as to her religion online. “Gehring” is a German name but as far as I can tell not one specifically associated with Jews. Not that anti-Semites are big on accuracy.)
So I guess the problem isn’t just that a lot of men are poisoned by toxic masculinity. I guess a lot of them are also Nazis, who turn every discussion into an opportunity to talk shit about Jews.
I mean, we knew that already. But how convenient to be reminded of both facts so colorfully in this little collection of tweets.
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@Weird Eddie:
That was my first reaction, followed by a great upwelling of empathy for Dr Lisa Dunne, whoever she is, and the terrible psychic aftermath she doubtless incurred as a result of her “search of more eclectic internet sites and forums”. Broscience and NoFap, can you imagine? She deserves some kind of medal.
I wonder if that was meant as some cargo-cult version of stem cell treatment.
For the record, don’t just inject things into your body. Science is a little bit more complicated than that.
I like the ad, and now I have to go buy some expensive razors to show my support.
I’m surprised and pleasantly shocked at this kind of advertisement….it makes me wonder if women now comprise the majority of their customer base. Venus razors.
I always liked the men’s ones better. I find the solid grip more practical.
I hate to say it, but… I have a nugget, a kernel of understanding where the feeling of upset comes from when an ad like this gets feted as being “woke” or “progressive.” Because this is a subsidiary company of Proctor & Gamble (motto: we only use child labour to harvest our palm oil some of the time) we’re talking about here. There is nothing “progressive” about a multinational; they make these decisions if they think there’s a market to be tapped, and they clearly think there is one to be tapped if they released a focus-grouped ad like this one.
So, they are kinda right when they call this “virtue signalling.” They’re paying lip service to a concept that they believe will net them sales without any investment in broader change.
That said, there is merit in the signal itself. Even if it is an ad for a product put out by a multinational only slightly less abhorrent than Unilever, representation does matter and if marginalized people see themselves represented in culture, that’s a good thing.
Naturally, assholes being assholes, their issue with the ad as less it being a cynical marketing gambit, but that the masculine ideal that Gillette was more than happy to contribute to since time immemorial is suddenly gone and replaced by that which they were told was the antithesis of the manly ideal (and their culture war enemy). They also seem oblivious to all of the cynical marketing gambits that Gillette played in being the “manly” choice for shaving.
Full disclosure: I use Gillette razors and will probably continue to use Gillette razors, as pricey as they are.
I can die now. A man on the internet has asked how WOMEN would like it if an ad told THEM that everything they were doing was WRONG.
Also, Speaker Pelosi is pretty badass:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/16/18185226/nancy-pelosi-state-of-the-union-shutdown
@Cat Mara:
It’s not exactly the kind of “literature” which is relevant to doctors, but the one example of intravenous semen injection I can think of is in Complicity, by Iain Banks. It… did not end well for the injectee. I wondered at the time how Banks researched that, but I suspect it involved a doctor saying “just fucking don’t, ok?”
When I was growing up, nearly all Gillette ads on TV seemed to be for women’s razors (sorry, “shavers”). Maybe I just paid more attention to those ads. Or maybe there’s more advertisement potential for selling overpriced stuff to women.
@ V.P.:
well, if losing an opportunity to get free t.v. time doesn’t get donald-the-dumpster-fire to open the government….
THAT much is certain!!
About a decade ago, I am drinking beers in a camper with Tea-party-ish guy. (Short version: friend of a friend on a rainy afternoon on a group camp-out.) Most of the conversation was fairly anodyne, but at some point he brought up the Subaru commercial with the polar bear. He went on at length that, although Subarus were good cars, that the commercial was stupid, and targeted toward “gullible environmentalists who wanted to be congratulated for buying a car.” (probably not exact quote, but close) It became apparent that what he didn’t like was having a big T.V. ad campaign targeted not-at-him.
I suspect that is what has these manly, manly men so up-in-arms. There is a big ad campaign for a product they use, targeted not-at-them.
@Weird Eddie
Yep – he’s not getting into her House unless he behaves. But he can always submit the SOTU in writing.
Manospherians should switch to shaving with Occam’s razor, and then maybe they’ll stop seeing attacks on masculinity behind every tree.
What is it with MAGAs and their bizzare/lame insults? Cuck, soy boy, NPCs I mean yikes. Do they really think They’re being clever with these?
… ummm… you DO know that he can’t read or write… right??
@Victorious Parasol:
I’m reminded of this great Mitchell and Webb Look sketch:
Buttercup Q Skullpants wins the internet, and my undying admiration.
Re: Jewish names: my family name is a bog-standard North British trade name, but my given name is from the Old Testament.
Also, in the UK, incredibly common in babies of any background assigned female between about 1958 and 1970. All over the country in the year of my birth were parents thinking “Hmm, we need something
for our little darlin’.
In my parents case, the name they had picked for me – Thomas – could not be used due to my lack of penis and they decided against Thomasine for some reason. Anyway, all through my school and college days there were never fewer than half a dozen of us with that name.
Then I lived in Italy, where it’s regarded as exclusively a Jewish name – to the point where some people I met insisted I must be Jewish.
I’m not. But there came a point when I no longer bothered to deny it – it was around the time someone wondered aloud whether my parents just hadn’t admitted it to me (although at the same time giving me this dead-giveaway of a name, for some reason). Very odd indeed.
@Weird Eddie
*angelic look* Pelosi knows that, too.
@Weird Eddie
Steroid hormones (and indeed steroids) are all pretty similar. I don’t know why sterols are a popular design, but there you go… you get the same basic kinds of molecule in animals, plants and fungi, and the common ancestor of those three predates the invention of sex by quite some time.
I think what bugs me the most about this is that these shitgibbons always want to talk the talk about traditional masculinity, but they never want to walk the walk. My grandpa is one of the most traditionally masculine people I know – he’s done blue collar work all his life and just recently retired from his job as a weldor’s assistant, he drives a big tuck, drinks his coffee black, and his hobbies are hunting and working on guns. He’s also one of the absolute kindest people I’ve ever met, and staunchly liberal is his politics. I’ve never seen him fail to help someone in need or even hesitate. He just jumps right in when he sees something needs done. I actually sometimes have to ask him not to help me with things because he’s always wanting to help carry things even though his back is going bad and he might hurt himself. That’s what I really hate when people like this talk about the idea of “traditional masculinity” – they like all the easy parts that bring to mind the traditionally masculine symbols of American culture like John Wayne and Schwarzenegger, but they never want to actually walk the walk on the hard parts like helping those in need and showing respect to everyone until they prove themselves unworthy of it.
@Weird Eddie:
But Stephen Miller can. You don’t think the Hamberdler himself writes the SOTU, do you?
@bluecat:
Ruth Hovis?
Well, gives me hope that they all change to straight razors and cut their own throats…
Seriously, these are the same people who whine about male suicide. The thing that is often caused by exactly that toxic mentality.
Even if it pisses me off that Gillette jumps onto the “co-opt the left to sell shit” bandwagon. Can’t wait to see the spokesman stop a riot by letting both sides touch his smooth skin.
@one of the tweeters or hooters: The usual statistics on POC’s to imply they are somehow more genetically prone to criminality and have lower IQ, as Watson recently revamped btw thinking time are “mature” somehow, then letting people accuse the “PC” science establishment when revocating his awards, not because it’s a scientifically inconsistent or at least an extraordinary claim needing extraordinary evidence this is not there, but because of pc ideology.
On the content, notice he lamented a very likely non existent racism against whites which I can guess is not implied anywhere in the spot (weren’t there struggling black kids which got divided as well just like white ones?), as excuse to make an actual racist claim against black people!
@Moggie
Exactly. Trump isn’t in it for the writing of the speech – he outsources that. (As do other POTUSes, to be fair.) But the performance of the speech? All that television time? The post-speech attention? He eats all that up with a spoon.
As people have written elsenet, Trump built this cage himself, and walked right in. Pelosi’s just shut the door behind him.
The entire outcry from these guys was from an ad that literally only showed men doing the right thing under shitty circumstances. But that’s against masculinity according to Twitter guys.
Why is catcalling, bullying (physical I might add!), degradation of women, fighting and generally being a shit person so closely associated with masculinity with them? It’s called toxic masculinity for a reason..
They can’t comprehend that you can be a good person as a man and be masculine and not be an asshole… Right?? Being an asshole =/= being masculine. But that’s what we’re being told by this outrage. That being a decent human male is just bad a wrong and should be discouraged and mocked. Wow.
Actually, and to loop back to what Jane Done was saying, is there any actual trend common to the various european countries who isn’t also common elsewhere ?
I have the impression that Europa’s rise into the industrial age was entirely coincidental, and that on litteraly any point, be it good or bad, Europa isn’t exceptional. Both for positive stuff like the (long delayed) rise of democracy, and for negative stuff like being intolerant bigots that prefer to die than change their own opinions.