Gillette Ad | Gender Quotas | School Freedom | March for Life - EP4 - The Truth of It

G'day I'm Martyn Iles and this is 2019's first episode of the

Truth

of It. Welcome back. This is weekly newscast on politics and current events and you might ask well why well to cut through the fake news and bring you what it says on the tin which is the

truth

of it. Today is Thursday, January 24th 2019 and we start with the big news of the week which is

Gillette

- the major men's razor manufacturer - caused the big controversy of this past week by launching an advertisement on

January 13th. An ad that opens with the words: bullying, toxic masculinity, the Me Too Movement and then it asks the question - "is this the best a man can be?" before showing men engaging in a whole range of bad behaviors - sexist behavior, misogynistic behavior, mansplaining and these sorts of things towards women, to the background refrain of boys will be boys, boys will be boys. But it's interesting and roughly the halfway point the ad then declares,the narrator says, but

something changed and you might say well what changed what turned men from a tribe of misogynists into something different and the something change is accompanied by newsreel footage concerning the MeToo Movement, for those of you who remember that, that came out of Hollywood against so called against toxic masculinity as if that was this defining moment at which the men of the past started to have an epiphany but the ad is very qualified. It says that some and I quote "Some men have

started to do the right thing." it says, "but some is not enough because the boys watching today will be the men of tomorrow." Now there's a major sexist element a major

gender

-based element to this ad but there's also a race-based element to the ad. It's worth noting this - of the 43 examples of bad behavior that are depicted, 42 of them are by white men and only one is by a black man. Turn that around look at the seven examples of good behavior that the ad includes

because of course there's got to be a lot less because only some men have started to do the right thing because thanks to MeToo Of the seven examples of good behavior five are by black men and just two are by white men. So far on YouTube that ad has garnered 700,000 likes and 1.2 million dislikes. It's caused great division, great controversy but here's the difficulty in dealing with this and as I've been thinking about it I've wondered at this as well. Many people will watch

that ad and they will say well is there really a big deal? What's wrong with saying that well it's a bad thing for men to behave badly towards women? What's wrong with saying that the boys of today will become the men of tomorrow? At least those point a reasonable right and you know what? There's some

truth

in that. Absolutely. I'm not going to begrudge that point but there is a lot of others as those numbers indicate who are watching that ad and they know that something

isn't right. They know that well quite apart from the fact that that's a lie that some men have started to do the right thing since MeToo That's just not correct and it's a very sad and low view of men in the world at the moment but apart from that people know there's something going on here and also that is correct, it is absolutely correct because let's deconstruct this what's really being said and from what ideological basis is this ad really coming from? Well you

know let's look at the company itself. Do they put their money where their mouth is? Do they live.. do they walk the talk if you like? Are they really trying to protect women from the evils of sexualization? And bad behavior from men. Are they really trying to help men be better and become the men of tomorrow for the boys of today. Well you know this company, it's the same company that widely advertised as its brand by putting models in exceedingly tight-fitting leather body suits at

motorsport events and literally writing

Gillette

across their backsides, so women's bodies their backsides in particular are being used as billboards for the

Gillette

brand these are promo girls at motorsport events frequented by men. Now I'm a white man that was completely unaffected by the MeToo Movement and I'm here to say that that is categorically absolutely wrong and I raised that issue because I want to say what's really going on here in the brain box of the

Gillette

marketing team. You know it's the same thing that we saw in the week previous from the American Psychological Association it is that thing where by what the American Psychological Association said traditional masculinity is harmful - they made that declaration and some of the things defined is traditionally masculine by that Association are things like competitiveness, risk-taking, stoicism. So they're attacking what it means to be man they're attacking masculinity writ large. **

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