Well that didn’t take so long. Cheers.
Could have saved us a lot of time by just making that the OP.
But then again that’s not why he does it.
Suppose someone says:
A hypothetical chauvinist who thinks women can’t be good pilots responds:
That’s exactly the same construction, quoting and explicit emphasis that Urbanredneck used. It clearly means that being a man is a necessary condition for learning to fly (but not that learning to fly is a necessary condition for being a man); and that contrary to the prior claim its not “people” [in general] who learn to fly, but men in particular.
Huh. I grasp that and yet I still see the broader subject as murky.
There is a definite population of men, specifically some trans-men, who have periods. And who need Pap smears, and so on.
There is nothing wrong with marketing to them. And there is nothing wrong with marketing to the much bigger demographic of women who have periods.
In this specific I’m guessing the number of women insulted that a specific product is less exclusively packaged to sell to women only is tiny, and those upset that as men the product they require is being marketed to and packaged for the overwhelmingly larger demographic is smaller yet.
Not sure it is true for all specifics though. And when such a circumstance is more commonly true for one or the other or both sides of an equation how does one decide who needs to get a grip?
Perhaps the whole issue would have been avoided if they had added the transgender symbol rather than removing the female one.
I mean, in this case it’s also not murky - the simple, capitalist solution would be to have a range of products available : pink tampon boxes with all the Venus symbols, right next to the neutral tampon boxes, right next to the steel blue hardcore Xtreme ONLY FOR **REAL **MEN tampon boxes. They can even make the pink tampons slightly more expensive to keep with current acceptable and A-OK market standards. If there’s a market niche, someone’ll eventually try to fill it and it’ll be eyerollingly terrible.
But still, everyone’s included, everyone’s happy, and there’s a buck in it. Peace achieved !
At which point it becomes clear that those who strenuously object to a consumer product existing or being marketed in a particular way or being packaged in a particular way AT ALL are the ones who need to go outside and breathe deep for a few minutes. And maybe stop burning their own shoes.
Okay, now try to come up with a neutral example. Because in your example, women are being insulted. (although not by being called less-than-people, admittedly.)
Maybe I’m just touchy, but I felt insulted, and I seem not to have been alone in feeling insulted. I think urbanredneck doesn’t think women are quite exactly full people, and he expressed it accidentally in that statement.
Which, BTW, is pretty much what happens here. One brand of tampons opted to be ever so slightly more inclusive to make ever so slightly more money (and, one expects, to seize the opportunity to create a controversy and have their brand name plastered all over the place). There still are dozens of brands being marketed for women. But this one brand doing this one thing is ERASING WOMEN FOR EVER. Yeah, OK.
Woke marketing is going to be exhausting, isn’t it ?
First off, this whole story smacks of corporate manipulation similar to the Nike Betsy Ross flag brouhaha. An activist whose name no one has ever heard of lacks the power to “force” a billion dollar company to do anything. P&G is doing for this attention.
Secondly, the Venus symbol often just denotes the female sex, not necessarily gender. Can’t speak for anyone else, but I think biology when I see it on maxi pads and gynecology signage. I only think of feminism or womanhood unless the context specifically supports these interpretations. Since the trans movement has promoted the idea that sex and gender are distinct, I wouldn’t expect them to get hung up on a symbol used in a biological context. If a man has the equipment that causes vaginal bleeding periodically, then he is anatomically female. That symbol doesn’t exclude him.
That said, I could imagine how a trans man’s dysphoria might be aggravated every time it’s that time of the month, he’s reminded of his feminized anatomy, and seeing that Venus symbol further grates on his psyche. But we can go too far in validating this angst, especially for a subject like periods. When I started mine at the age of 12, I do remember feeling a sense of embarrassment over the whole “becoming a woman” thing. I wanted to stay a carefree little girl, not transform into {insert stereotypes internalized about women due to sexist programming}. With time and maturity, I realized that periods are just a biological function that half the human race goes through, and being embarrassed about this fact of life is just a hang up that needs to be gotten over. Go to the grocery store and get that package of bright pink pads off the shelf and keep it moving, dude.
I left my crystal ball in my other pair of pants so I can’t speak for Ben nor read his mind ; but there’s no indication that we should approach this notion from a question of angst or dysphoria (nor should we, really ? Do we only move forward from a base of hurt ?) or what people actually think about when seeing the Venus symbol. I’m reasonably sure Ben doesn’t have a panic attack every month and has “gotten over it” in like 3 seconds.
Rather his activism is more broadly about carving a space for the existence of trans as a valid section of the population, about keeping this discussion (and, hopefully, acceptance) going, for people to be further exposed to the sex/gender gap if they haven’t already and so on. Seeing HD’s ummm enlightened and no doubt thoroughly researched and wildly empathetic take on the subject, it’s evidently going to take a little bit of time. But who are we to judge ? We’re *still *working on basic ignorance up in here :p.
That P&G is opportunistically seizing this opportunity for some free advertisement is not in any sort of discussion. Soulless capitalism is going to capitalist soullessly. No human experience will go un-monetized. But that’s going to happen either way. In a sense this is a symbiotic relationship between a major corporation’s biological need to make all of the money all of the time and a minority starved for opportunities to be heard by the mainstream.
And ultimately, it’s kind of disheartening that a minuscule change in packaging could ever be construed as “going too far”.
Nope, not the only one. Sociological Images has a great Pinterest board that is all about how men are seen as the default and women are Other. It’s called Women vs. People https://www.pinterest.com/socimages/women-vs-people/
Okay, but that has no relevance to the plain and unambiguous meaning of Urbanredneck’s sentence in the English language, which puzzlegal misparsed. He’s said enough egregious stuff in this thread that we really don’t need to be manufacturing extra outrage for things he didn’t say.
This reminds me of the push by certain British tabloids to claim that any egg-shaped candy that does not have the word “Easter” printed on its packaging is offensive to Christians.
How absolutely DARE you not positively identify my weirdly cribbed pagan ritual which I’ve never stopped two minutes to think about as Christian ?! 
Actually that reminds me of a Medieval class when the TA was going over the re-strengthening of Christianity and establishment of a strict canon in early post-Roman Europe, how missionaries would go around to stamp around tons of weird heresies and pagan rituals that the locals perpetuated in the name of Christ. To which I, the eternal smartarse, naturally raised my hand to say that to this day Christmas and Easter incorporate a lot of pre-Christian imagery and symbols and it’s all due to ad hoc accomodation and cultural appropriation and compromises of the dayto convert more easily. He went “I don’t think you quite understand. This is about educated monks stumbling upon villages were people were once a year riding honey-covered pigs on the plazza, trying to hit each other over the head with fennels and calling it the Last Supper”
I still get a kick out of that mental image.
I said nothing personally about Ben’s feelings or panic attacks, so you’re looking reactionary. And frankly, using these emotional loaded terms in a dismissive way undercuts your advocacy here. Dysphoric responses to periods is a thing in the trans community. There’s not point in ignoring this.
Yes, and to reiterate my point, this desire to carve out a space needs to be thoughtfully considered when it comes to terrain like biological functions that have been historically stigmatized due to their association with women. It’s still common to find cis-men acting like merely touching menstrual products requires forfeiture of their precious man cards (and I’m being only a little hyperbolic), so I can understand why feminists are giving this whole thing the side eye (although I can’t relate to being outraged about it).
When the interests of two historically shat upon minority groups bump into one another, I think we need to be able talk things out without getting disheartened. Because the Venus thing isn’t that serious, at the end of the day. If you think alternative opinions are unreasonable, oh well, I tried.
It seems to me that most sanitary products are gender neutral. The packaging may be pink, but that is about it for the most part.
Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk
“Always… made for people who possess an active uterus.”
Well, it would be better than the “Have a happy period!” bullshit from a few years ago. Seriously, who thought that was a good idea? “Enjoy your crotch-bleeding and cramps!”
Speaking as someone who used to stock those products on shelves in a store… not pink as often as you might suppose. Lots of dark blue with orange stripes, purple, blue, yellow, green… There’s a brand of tampons that package the tampons in a assortment of colors in each box. Why? I dunno - so you can color coordinate your handbag with your tampon wrapping? Diversity pride? The CEO’s kid liked rainbows? Inspired by a the look of a box of crayons? Who knows?
Now I’m really confused. Didn’t you enjoin the trans community to be mature and get over it like a second ago ?
Look, can we not just make fun of HurricaneDitka’s thoroughly offensive wrongness about it all instead of doing the woker_than_you thing, or the feminister_than_you thing or… whatever it is you’re doing ? I’m not the wokest or the best informed or even the most empathetic guy out there. I recognize that. I’m absolutely aware of that. I *am *trying.
The hostile, purity test firing squads help… who ? Or is it “whom” ? Fuck English grammar is my wider argument.
Counterpoint : you carve where you can. You get what you can possibly get. Best is the enemy of good enough. You send all the letters to all the things and maybe one of the things responds for some reason and you’re like “OMG yeah !”.
At the end of the day, Ben’s cause gets exposure. And then we fuckers have these inane debates about whether it was proper or what is too far or hypothetically speaking and me I know this one guy… and Ben’s still winning because yesterday we were talking about Pokemon.
Good work, Ben.
… yeah, going by your phrasing you *really *don’t sound disparaging about it at all :dubious:. Feminists need to embrace transwomen, period. Also sex workers, and non-white women… It boggles my mind how fragmented the movement can get when the opposition is still, like, winning and stuff. It’s all very Spanish Civil War - which, reminder, the POUM and the FAI and the international brigades and the two separate popular fronts and the cataluñians ALL COLLECTIVELY LOST. Same goes for the radical revolutionaries of 18th century France.
First you win. *Then *you can start faffing about. The timeline is crucial :p.
And I think it’s OK for the minority of the minority to do “weird” things at the fringes, because that’s where it all begins. Whether we’re talking about first wave feminism or gay rights or whatever it all started with “absurd !”, “ridiculous !”, “attention seeking” stuff at the fringes.
Of course the Venus thing isn’t serious at all. Actual women don’t give a shit. Real world trans don’t give a shit. P&E absolutely do not give even a trace amount of a solitary shit. And yet here we are, talking about it. And HD obviously gives a GIGANTIC shit, as does the anonymous but “prominent feminist” Daily Mail TERF brigade.
Why is that ? And isn’t it OK for *those *people to out themselves as reprehensible trogs and henceforth be mocked because that shit won’t come off their timeline ? Isn’t it OK for the trans community to know that, fake as it may be, some genuinely powerful corps position themselves on their side, and for support from the general public to pour in wherever it may come from ?
Also, the passive-aggressive “if you think…I tried” stuff only brings to mind the “I’m only saying I want to exterminate people, sounds like you have some growing up to do” Hitler meme. C’mon. Be better, please ? Nothing about this is a contest.