This goes all the way back to the 50s for sure. I can recall my mother forbiding us kids to watch “Father Knows Best” because it made fun of fathers. Originally, when it was a radio show, the title ended with a question mark, and according to this cite they continued to challenge the concept suggested by the title.
Good points, Rubystreak. Most of these things are covered in one college class or another. They are also topics in teacher workshops if there is a refocusing on the issue over time.
It’s not as bad as it used to be. But it still takes place in subtle ways because it is a long haul. Twelve years of guys being called on four times as often as girls can make a difference. (I don’t know what the actual stats are now.) If a coach says, “Be tough or I’ll make you sit with the girls.” – that teaches gender discrimination to the next generation. But male students are steered into certain courses such as drafting and industrial arts and females are not, that teaches discrimination.
Fascinating comment! Wouldn’t it be easier just to give ourselves permission to be who we really are and not play out a role? My husband knows that I have all of the muscle tone of Olive Oil. (His daughter and one of his granddaughters are strong as oxen and math whizes too.) Your comment about women holding strong opinions without logical justification “because that’s just the way they are” is reminiscent of baseless racial jabs made at blacks in the 1950’s. I suppose you were trying to be funny and I’m humorless, right?
I don’t think that being childish and stupid is the same thing as being playful. And I do think that more men and women should be encouraged to be more playful without being made to feel like children. Sometimes I think there should be recess instead of a coffee break on the job.
All of these thoughtful comments make me glad to be a doper!
You might want to try reading my post more carefully. I think you’re confused.
Holy shit, finally, someone else who sees it too ! Thank you for this thread ! I was just commenting the other day on a minivan commercial that depicts the father trying to figure out how to fold down the minivan’s seats, then the mom says “move outta the way” and pushes him aside and flips the seats down into the compartment in about two seconds, the dad just hangs his head and walks away.
Typical commercial nowadays ! I HATE this too. It makes men look like everything you described !
There is another thing I’ve noticed about commercials too, they’re too PC sometimes. I have nothing against being liberal and correct and I don’t know about you, but when I ride around town in my new Volkswagen, I don’t have a Chinese woman friend, a black friend, a white male friend and a young Mexican child in the car with me like a few car commercials I’ve seen. This is just totally ridiculous. I can understand one commercial like this, but putting people of every ethnicity, gender and age in a car commercial just to appease the masses is absurd. It’s almost like a joke.
I agree though with your OP, I’ve noticed it too often. There ARE many commercials that make me sit and say in sarcasm “yeah, you big, stupid white man, just kill yourself” because the commercial has presented him that way.
Assuming I count as an average guy - why am I supposed to be up in arms? Nobody I know will think I’m stupid based on a commercial. I don’t think random people on the street are going to assume I’m stupid either. Stereotyping a minority is one thing, I can see the harm in that. But I don’t believe these ads, while they’re definitely stupid and annoying, are harmful to me in any way.
Some people might believe the real-life dopes are actually more important, and therefore more deserving of attention or scorn, than the ones in commercials.
I agree with vison in particular. And plenty of men are probably getting rich off these commercials, so they’re not offended or concerned by the stereotypes. Money makes pretty much anything okay.
But what do I know? I find the ED euphemism “male enhancement” mildly offensive.
I don’t like dumb male stereotypes either, but when I think how much a poorer a place the world would be without Homer Simpson, Ralph Kramden, Fred Flintstone, Archie Bunker, Al Bundy, Bill and Ted, Garth and Wayne, Beavis and Butt-head, Dumb and Dumber, and the Bud Light guys trying to bring beer bottles into the opera, I can’t complain too loudly.
:dubious: Men are a minority.
Spare me. I believe there are more men than women in the world, by an almost negligible amount. I know it tilts slightly the other way in the U.S., but men are hardly disenfranchised. Do you think a lot of children get their impressions of men only from TV?
Usually the white guy is driving. Everyone else are passengers.
Because the white man is the only one rich enough to own a car. The others are just free-loaders trying to leech off of him.
What the fuck are you talking about? Are you just upset that you’re being corrected in an error? Get over yourself.
In the US, men are a minority. This is a fact. You appeared to be unaware of that fact. Pointing out that men are not a minority on a global scale is remarkably dishonest of you. You do know that white people are a minority on a global scale, right? If you want to talk globally, then any depiction of white people is a depiction of a minority. But that’s clearly not what you meant by “minority” in your post, now was it?
I don’t know what you’re talking about by “men are hardly disenfranchised” and “children get their impressions of men only from TV”. I made no claims whatsoever about such things. You may as well have told me your ice cream flavor preferences for all the relevance it has to what I said.
That’s not political correctness. No one is going to complain if they market just to Caucasian males. That’s the automobile manufacturers trying to sell as many of those damn vehicles as they can. Political correctness takes the blame for a lot of stuff, let’s not add marketing decisions to the list.
I was not and am not, it’s just irrelevant to my point. There are more women than men in the U.S., yes, you’re right. Men are a numerical minority, without question, but I don’t think they belong in a discussion of what are considered “minority groups” socially, since that also usually means people who are or have been oppressed.
Remarkably dishonest but true, I guess.
Is there a global racial majority? I don’t think there is. If there’s no majority, this is hardly relevant - although I’d say stereotyping white people would be a bad thing.
Then you understood some of the individual sentences in my post without understanding the point I was making. (Ah, the Dope.) So maybe I can explain it better:
I believe stereotyping minorities on TV can be a harmful thing because some people can end up believing in the stereotypes, absent actual encounters with the people being stereotyped. I don’t think that men are in danger of being stereotyped due to “dumb husband” commercials. Men have a dominant position in society, and everybody seeing the commercials has a husband or brother or father and so on, so I don’t see any threat from the stereotypes. I think they’re a cliche of lazy writing, and annoying but not a danger to anybody.
But women are routinely listed as “minorities” even though a systematic and ingrained oppression of women ended many years ago.
Don’t believe me? Step foot on any college campus in this country and watch as the women run circles around the men in everything.
I think it’s interesting that a couple of posters in this thread have said that the insults to men in these commercials are really worse for women.
That what these commercials really show is not sexist mocking of men in general for being stupid, unfit as parents, and incapable of caring for themselves, it’s that men are still ‘the power structure’ and so it’s OK to make fun of them.
You actually think that having shit flung at them is good for men? Deriding an entire gender in commercials by painting them as bumbling idiots who would die if they ever had to live on their own, depicting them doing such stupid things as sucking on a wolf’s teats and being unable to add 2+2 is good for men? Is it good for the little boys who watch these commercials and TV shows? How about when little girls are showing up at school wearing T-shirts that say things like 'Boys lie. Poke ‘em in the eye.’ and ‘Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them.’ without being punished?
Is that good for men? Is it good for men when it’s considered wrong to make a T-shirt that says ‘Boys are good.’?
You have a very strange idea about what is good for men, and society in general. I’ve said before on these forums and others that mass media that is deliberately mocking of all men is wrong, it’s wrong the same way it would be if it mocked women. It is not because women are the victims of sexist male-bashing, either. Anyone who thinks so is a misandrist shit head.
I’m not sure I would say all systematic oppression has ended - things have improved a great deal for women, although I would say at the highest levels (and therefore the slowest to change), there are significant improvements to be made still. I do think those improvements will happen over time.
I went to college not that long ago. And I think most college students are female. But I don’t really see the connection with your previous thought.
Personally, I always thought it would be a riot to send a pair of twins (one boy and one girl) into school with the boy wearing a “Girls Are Stupid” and the girl wearing a “Boys Are Stupid” shirt. Then sit back and see which one comes home with a note from the teacher.
I blame Aristophanes.
I’ve been in this discussion before. I think women are pretty equal all things considered. Other people don’t. Neither side seems like they’re going to change their mind anytime soon.
My point is that in a few years these women will be graduating college and entering the real world. In a very short period of time the working world will be flooded with qualified (and ambitious) female employees in every industry. Women will hold all of the cards when it comes to high level management positions in my lifetime. In my chosen field (libraries), they already do.
Yeah, what a dumbass.