An advertisement from Thailand is actually a poignant three-minute film.
It is good to be reminded that we should be kind to one another, even (and especially) if we expect nothing in return. As ad that does that is far more than just an ad.
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
That was beautiful.
Yes, altruism works -- it’s why we are social animals.
It’s certainly a very sweet commercial that left me choked up several times (for my own personal reasons).
Regardless, it is reasonable to understand that if the restaurant owner had a son, he would probably be dead, his bill not paid.
Women do have a cross-culturally acknowledged attribute of beauty within homo sapiens, and women do have a privilege of not only having that beauty but of having other members of homo sapiens defer to them and respect that beauty in many ways, including making opportunities available preferentially to beautiful women. Discounting on price. Reconsidering decisions.
It would be wise for all women to check their privilege and understand the many privileges of being a woman compared to the many burdens and some privileges of being a man.
It would be wise for all women to check their privilege and understand the many privileges of being a woman compared to the many burdens and some privileges of being a man.
I’m amazed you managed to interpret that in the context of gender privilege. Sounds like someone’s got “issues.”
Marcus, you should unpack your female privilege backpack: (there are many lists of such, google female privilege checklist)
Sounds like I have issues?
Yes Marcus, I have issues.
You Marcus sound like a cunt that makes fun of people that have issues.
http://www.wihe.com/displayNews.jsp?id=400
1. I am physically able to give birth to another human being, and then do my best to mold her or him into the kind of person I choose.
2. I am not automatically expected to be the family breadwinner.
3. I feel free to wear a wide variety of clothes, from jeans to skimpy shorts to dresses as appropriate, without fear of ridicule.
4. I can choose to remain seated to meet most people.
5. I am not ashamed to ask for others’ perspectives on an issue.
6. I feel free to exhibit a wide range of emotions, from tears to genuine belly laughter, without being told to shut up.
7. My stereotypical excesses in shopping, clothes, jewelry, personal care and consumption of chocolate usually are expected, even the source of jokes.
8. Public policies generally offer me an opportunity to bond with my offspring.
9. I am among the first to get off a sinking ship.
10. I can usually find someone with superior strength to help me overcome physically challenging obstacles, such as changing a tire or cutting a huge Christmas tree.
11. Changing my mind is seen as a birthright or prerogative.
12. I feel free to explore alternate career paths instead of being bound to a single career ladder.
13. I am used to asking for help, around the kitchen table or the proverbial water cooler or the conference room.
14. People I’ve never met are inclined to hold doors open and give up their seats for me.
15. I can be proud of the skill I have worked to develop at stretching limited financial resources.
16. I am not ashamed of using alternatives to positional power to reach my goals.
17. I know how to put a new roll of toilet paper in use and am not above doing it for the next person.
18. I am not ashamed to admit that the decisions I make reflect my personal values.
19. I am not afraid to create and maintain honest relationships with others.
20. I do not fear being accused of having an ethic of care in my professional life.
21. When I enter an office, I am likely to encounter those who can help me “in low places.”
22. I am more likely to get hugs than handshakes, depending on the situation.
23. I am less likely to be seen as a threat, which allows me more subtle alternatives.
24. I can use men’s “sheer fear of tears” to my advantage.
25. I can complain that these female privileges are relatively minor compared with the vast assortment of dominant male privileges, but I wouldn’t change places for the world.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, the plot is reminiscent of the “partly true” story of Dr Kelly and the Glass of Milk.
I have a number of issues with the advert. It cynically plays on an emotional response to create an association between a strong positive social message and a corporation without any evidence that the company in question behaves so generously and selflessly.
It smacks of a religiosity “lead a good life and you will be rewarded (in this life or the next)”. You should be encouraged to be generous, charitable, understanding of the suffering of others because it is the right thing to do. Doing so as a hedge against some future potential misfortune is inadvisable.
Many people live in societies with no socialised medicine and no affordable medical insurance. Are such people to be measured against some arbitrary scale before they are provided with care?
Thanks for the link to snopes.
I don’t see the religiosity of the ad myself, though I do agree it is certainly a very manipulative commercial. I have seen many examples of these sickly sweet, heart touching, but ultimately manipulative ads coming out of Asia. It may just be more accepted there as a legitimate for of advertisement. They aren’t cheap ads, they’ve all run long with very high production values.
Re: the reference to socialized medicine, that itself is similar to the Breaking Bad cartoon going around
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/2013/09/breaking-bad-anywhere-but-america-edition.html
What makes it manipulative?
It’s an ad for a phone company and the ad seemingly has little to do with the attributes of a cell phone plan.
Instead we get this 3 minute film that absolutely tugs at your heart.
And the tag in the commercial, the only part of the commercial related to the product is “giving is the best communication”, which sounds wonderful, but um, I don’t what that means or if I even believe it. I tend to think speaking, writing, even making a movie are better forms of communication than giving, but here Professor Singham, I made you this piece of arts and crafts out of googly eyes and a piece of cotton, so there, we just communicated.
Then there is the question of veracity. As jaggington points out, the story of the movie is not real. It’s not a story from a recent period in Thailand, it seems to be a somewhat true, somewhat false story from the 19th century in the US told and retold and magnified and magnified until now we have at manipulative heart tugging story telling at its finest.
Well it sure made me feel good, gosh it made me feel great! That Thai telecommunications conglomerate True must be one great company. I am going to buy their phones and sign up for that plan because I just know how great they are and want to associate myself with that.
Imagine the cognitive dissonance I will have if I sign up for their competition. Man, I must suck. Sure I saved a few bucks by going with the telecommunications conglomerate False, but False sucks because True gave that kid free medicine and paid for his medical school bills as well.
https://www.google.com/search?q=psychologists+work+with+advertising
So in total, this ad feels contrived and straight out of some advertising company’s marketing department aimed like a drone at your heart in order to empty your wallet.
HTH
Not sure if blinkered or trolling.
It IS an ad. We all know that.
Sponsors of ads want you to buy their product. We know that too.
It is not a true story. Would anyone think it was? It IS an ad, after all, not a PBS documentary
But it is a good ad because the message of the ad is a good one. Whether it persuades you to buy the product or not is up to you.
Just because something is good and tugs at your heartstrings does not make it manipulative. What I would consider manipulative is something that coaxes you to think approvingly of something that is bad.
wtfwhateverd00d,
You seem to see everything through a lens of male grievance. The fact that the soup shop owner had a daughter and not a son seems a trivial thing.
Do you really think that women have more privileges than men? The list of female privileges that you gave seem tongue-in-cheek to me.
Some of them are tongue in cheek, I think that is in order to mock these so called privilege checklists.
I am a bit rushed and bleery eyed, so I apologize if this turns a bit ranty or is hard to understand.
I think that if you look at the history of the topic, you will find that 70s feminists were excoriated and rightly so by 80s feminists for being racist (feminism was about white women) or being elitist (feminism was about rich white women’s problems).
So here’s an odd thing. I think 70s feminism did some very good important things. But to listen to 90s and 00s feminists, they often just express lots of a) hatred for 70s feminists and b) distance themselves from 70s feminists.
One particular problem for feminism came up when they were asked, repeatedly, to answer questions like this:
Who is more oppressed, a white woman asked to make coffee or a hispanic woman unable to get a job?
Who is more oppressed a black lesbian or a white woman who is a victim of domestic violence?
Who is more oppressed a white lesbian or a black transgender woman?
Out of this set of perplexing questions for feminism came intersection theory and the Privilege Knapsack. Intersection theory
Now back when I had an anthropology interest, I would have said that anthropologists use words like privilege to understand group dynamics, and to appreciate the different paths, the different things that diverse people bring to a conversation.
Privilege and Intersection is used as tools to help communicate, bridge gaps, raise understanding.
But Professor Singham, when you look at modern contemporary feminists, what is clear is that:
Privilege and Intersection is not used at a group level, but used on the level of individuals.
These ideas are not used to increase communication, but as shibboleths and dog whistles and shortcuts to help “other” out group members and dismiss their contributions and ideas.
Intersection Theory properly applied would diminish the role of evil PATRIARCHY in feminist theory. Literally. It would help feminists understand that we all together, man, woman, gay, straight, white, black create society, and that we all have different contributions, and that the average man on the street is living the same life of quiet desperation as any woman, equally powerless along most axis, differently powered along some.
Men have some privileged, women have others, south asian kids have some, and so do gays, blacks, and so on.
INSTEAD of using Intersection to bring people together, modern contemporary feminism uses Intersection to place a partial ordering on oppression, and then fetishizes the results.
There are literally conversations to answer who is more oppressed lesbian white woman or black straight woman.
Social Justice Warriors and Modern Contemporary Feminists use Privilege Checklists to bully and dismiss reasonable argument. To bully and dismiss without further consideration concerns from people that are not in the in group.
CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE!
That is not the cry of any actual human actually interested in equality or fairness.
So do your own research. Google female privilege checklist. VISIT THE SLYMEPIT. VISIT PZ’s Blog and other FTB Blogs. Understand how many women, skeptical, atheist, scientists, progressive, or with completely different characteristics oppose modern, contemporary feminism because of how alienating, judgmental, prescriptive, shunning, punishing, bullying it is.
Professor Singham, the evidence is literally all around you at FTB.
One legitimate response is this: mu.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative)#.22Unasking.22_the_question
There are respected theories that women hold much more power than men.
Look at Lysistrata.
Read Warren Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power
Read Esther Vilar’s The Manipulated Man
Read Cathy Young’s Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality
I hate to end with a wake up sheeple, but I realize my rant here almost necessitates a wake up sheeple / black helicopters ending.
But your blog swims in an orthodoxy of Feminist philosophy, and your question of disbelief that I might really think women have more privileges belongs to that orthodoxy.
Go check out the heterodox viewpoints including egalitarianism, humanism, equity feminism.
Do I think women have more privileges then men?
The answer is “mu”.
/sorry for long rant, I sincerely hope some of it makes sense, I fear none of it does.
FWIW, that is not how I, IRL, see everything. But the issues behind what you label and disparage as “male grievance” are real and substantial and I do believe it is useful to raise awareness and discuss them.
I believe if you mapped the story into real life you would find that it is not a trivial thing at all. As evidence, just perform any google search regarding “boy crisis schools”, read what mothers have to say about what their boys face at schools when mothers write to HuffPo, Salon, Slate.
Read Feminist Judith Grossman:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324600704578405280211043510.html
Judith Grossman: A Mother, a Feminist, Aghast
Unsubstantiated accusations against my son by a former girlfriend landed him before a nightmarish college tribunal.
Then read what feminists had to say to Ms. Grossman at Jezebel, Salon, Slate, The Guardian
Regarding Patriarchy, read Feminist Hanna Rosin “The Patriarchy Is Dead Feminists, accept it.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/09/the_end_of_men_why_feminists_won_t_accept_that_things_are_looking_up_for.html
Then read what feminists at Salon, Slate, Jezebel, Tumblr, The Guardian had to say about it.
Read thefire.org
I think if you read some of the references I’ve given, or read Ally Fogg at FTB, or Robert Franklin at https://www.nationalparentsorganization.org or Glenn Sacks at his archived site glennsacks.com you’ll come to realize it wasn’t trivial at all, IRL, it would be very significant.
Anyway, um, thanks for asking. 😉
Feminist Patriarchy Theory resembles centrifugal forces in Newtonian Mechanics.
Fermi Estimation.
1. How many papers have been written in Women’s Studies Courses whose central theme was “We set out to examine the role of the Patriarchy in the context of ‘z’ in order to apportion blame for Z on the Patriarchy”?
2. How many of the above papers had the following conclusion:
“After exhaustive research into social situation ‘Z’, we were unable to blame Patriarchy for social crisis Z”
Show your work.
Feel free to reference
blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com and/or any blog published at freethoughtblogs.com
Question: if your Fermi Estimation for #2 above is precisely zero papers have ever been turned which were not able to blame the patriarchy for any given social situation, how useful is patriarchy theory in describing culture? Can you call patriarchy theory a scientific theory?
For your own research:
Is Feminism a theory arising from scientific examination, literary theory, or marxist economics?
Historically what other groups have feminists first loudly opposed before rewriting history and claiming to be their biggest supporters:
A: African Americans and other Minorities
B: Gays
C: Transgenders
D: Men ??
Holy shit, you are so disgusting. I feel absolutely horrible for any woman who has to have contact with you. Fuck you, you blind, privileged and delusional asshole.
I don’t see how the female is privileged in this advert. The little boy was living in poverty and 30 years later became a top notch physician. The little girl was working in her father’s restaurant and 30 years later is doing the same thing.
You are obviously unaware of the fact that many women find men beautiful but that their relative lack of authority and power means that they are more rarely in a position to ‘make opportunities preferentially available’ to beautiful men.
Your ‘cross-culturally acknowledged attribute of beauty’ is cross-culturally acknowledged by heterosexual men!!! Sheesh!
“9. I am among the first to get off a sinking ship.”
You know, this used to upset me too, back in my MRA days. The story of the Titanic is tragic for many, many reasons, but the thought of them turning away fathers and young men over, say, elderly women -- merely because of their gender -- kind of pissed me off. (Which isn’t to suggest that elderly women do not have as much worth as all other human beings -- it’s just that, being elderly, they have less life to lose. In an emergency situation like this where terrible decisions have to be made, a system based on age and responsibility for others (parents of young children would get precedent) would seem a lot more moral to me. It’s fine if a man willingly volunteers to stay behind, and it’s always important to maintain order rather than just allowing the strongest to push their way to the front -- but forcing such sacrifice at gunpoint is evil.)
So yes, I hate the notion that men should be expected to sacrifice themselves (and forced if they don’t willingly comply.) I hate the notion that males are more expandable than females in a modern society where survival of the species really isn’t a concern.
But, uh, the whole “women and children first” issue really isn’t a “thing” nowadays, is it? It’s certainly not policy on any major ship lines or elsewhere. I mean, it wasn’t an issue on the Costa Concordia where, in the process of abandoning the ship, no deference was made based on gender -- which, of course, prompted some exceedingly stupid articles in The Daily Mail and other similarly mindless “news” sources (“where has men’s sense of chivalry gone?” and other such nonsense.) But, beyond a few peeps from some of the more conservative (and decidedly non-feminist) outlets, nobody cared. Which is at it should be.
This is bullshit. Don’t rewrite history.
Yes, there were problems with racism and homophobia in first and second wave feminism. No, feminists did not “loudly oppose” those groups.
Many First-wave feminists were abolitionists, and many abolitionists were feminists.
Yes, there was still racism. It was the frickin’ 19th century. There was racism within the Abolitionist movement as well. And some women did not like the fact that male African Americans got the vote long before women of any color did.
In the same way, the second wave contained homophobia, but was not the utterly homophobic movement you suggest. I’m old enough to remember it, and I remember lesbians leaders and lots of talk of gay rights. Yes, there was some homophobia. No, feminists did not “loudly oppose” gays. There was some fighting within NOW, as I recall, which was hardly the be-all and end-all of feminism back then. NOW was considered a rather tame, politically middle-of-the-road organization. As such, they tended to try and reflect mainstream values. But even within NOW, people fought to make lesbian issues a priority.
Transgendered people didn’t have much of a voice, but I’m not sure they had managed to unite into a movement back then. There was very little understanding of what transgender is in the 1960s and 1970s. And the fact that gender roles were under fire contributed to confusion and misunderstanding when people chose to “change” (as it was perceived) their sex.
The problems were not papered over, then or now. They were discussed. The fact that you misrepresent those is due to MRA propaganda, which has no regard for history and is full of the sort of people who could imagine this particular advertisement reflects “female privilege.”
That is a very good point.
Ahh, female privilege. This author’s backpack is one where if we unpack it just a little bit more, we see that the privileges (at least in the U.S.) are anything but:
a) There are men who can give birth if they want and women who can’t.
b) For those of us who are physically able to give birth, it’s frequently used against us. There are many places where we’re not allowed to choose when or whether to have children.
c) Pregnancy and childbirth come with a lot of negative social, financial and biological consequences. Failing to produce children also comes with a lot of negative social (and sometimes biological) consequences. Existing in a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t situation isn’t really a privilege.
d) Plenty of women would much rather be able to produce children without the pregnancy or childbirth bits, but surrogacy is expensive.
e) Men can do the “molding” part of parenting just as easily as women.
a) This is definitely not an expectation in all the families with a single mother. Nor is it an expectation in most two-parent families anymore.
b) Even though women are expected to work, those who want to put their career first are demonized. Also, women still make less on average (especially women of color) and, outside of a very few professions, women workers are taken less seriously than their male counterparts.
c) If there are any men facing this and it upsets them, they should help feminists work on dismantling the patriarchy.
a) Women are constantly judged and ridiculed for what we wear and our choice of dress is very often considered an invitation to harassment, molestation and rape.
b) That we have more variety in the way we can dress is a consequence of being taken less seriously. The more seriously a woman is taken, the more confined her choices of dress.
a) So can men.
b) Unless it’s at the head of a banquet table or behind a CEO’s desk, staying seated is a position of inferiority. If women are more often “allowed” to stay seated, it’s because our authority is not taken seriously.
a) I don’t actually know any men that are ashamed to do this. If, beyond my experience, there are more such men than women, this is another example of why the patriarchy needs to go.
b) Any shame would come from the belief that asking for other perspectives shows the asker lacks in ingenuity and self-confidence. If fewer women feel ashamed, it’s only because we’re not expected to show as much of either quality in the first place.
Women showing emotion are told to shut up all the time. We are shamed as shrill, hysterical, PMSing, vapid, unserious, over-sentimental and irrational. (And women of color get it even worse.) We’re told our emotions preclude any ability to use reason, which is used to justify denying us rights, from voting (in the past) to choosing when and if to have children (even now).
People believing negative stereotypes about women is not a privilege. It’s the opposite of one.
a) Public policies also punish women for failing to produce offspring and disproportionately saddle women with child care duties.
b) If men want more public policy support in caring for their offspring, they should focus on demolishing patriarchy.
a) What is this, the 19th century? There’s no evidence that this was a regular thing even back then. Nowadays, people are usually instructed to give priority to anyone who is physically vulnerable.
b) Where women were allowed evacuation priority, it came as part of the enforcement of the belief that women (particularly white women) are inherently weak and helpless. That’s not a privilege.
a) Outside of certain types of athletes, so can men.
b) A lot of the things women need help with aren’t a matter of physical challenge but of a lack of know-how. And we lack that know-how because no one teaches it to us as girls like they teach boys.
Women’s supposed fickleness has long been a justification for our oppression, and even the most resolute of women is assumed to be capricious. Young women are denied more permanent forms of birth control on this basis all the time.
a) Women rarely make it to the top of any ladder due to entrenched sexism. We look for other work when we hit glass ceilings or are run out of a particular career by deliberate hostility and harassment directed at us in the name of preserving the boys-club.
b) We’re often forced to find other work because we’re either laid off for pregnancy or we don’t get accepted back by our companies if we take extended maternity leave.
c) Often we have to change our careers because our spouses abandoned us and we can’t otherwise make ends meet on our own.
a) So are men.
b) If fears of being emasculated prevent them, this is yet another reason to blow the patriarchy to smithereens.
c) When women ask for help, we not-infrequently run the risk of being expected to provide sexual favors or some other form of intimate access to ourselves in return.
a) This, like the boat thing, is based on the practice of infantilizing women. It comes at a social cost of being seen as inferior to men.
b) Women often face backlash if the seat-giver or door-holder feels we did not adequately acknowledge their chivalry. Same thing for if we don’t go through the door or take the seat. This shows the supposed “favor” is not a favor at all, but merely another way for men to act out the social dominance they feel entitled to.
c) Some men use door-holding and seat-giving as a means of getting close to women to sexually assault us.
a) So can men.
b) Financial ingenuity is more of a requirement for women since we still tend to get paid less and are more frequently left to support families alone.
c) Men are generally more respected when they share their knowledge of how to stretch a buck.
d) Men are automatically assumed to be more responsible with money in the first place. (See number 7.)
a) Neither are men.
b) Men have more positional power to begin with and are more respected and supported by society when they exercise it.
This one’s a joke, right?
Neither are men. Like, practically the whole Republican party is made up of men who brag about this.
a) Neither are men.
b) Courage means nothing in the face of negative stereotypes about women and relationships, such as how we are deceitful, back-stabbing bitches who secretly hate and envy our friends. Or how we’re lying whores who try to trick men into relationships by pretending to be pregnant.
c) Courage is useless in all the cases (such as within boys-club type hierarchies) where women are simply not allowed to create honest relationships.
a) Should women profess an “ethic of care,” it is usually assumed to arise from personal feelings/interests. It’s seen as confirming women’s supposed irrationality. We’re considered unable to see the world “as it really is” because we’re blinded by our emotions.
b) If some men really fear such an accusation, they should look to stomping the patriarchy into the dust.
I have no idea what this is getting at.
a) This wrongly assumes that all women want hugs in the first place. Many of us don’t.
b) Handshakes are seen as more professional, so it’s not actually a privilege to get fewer of them.
c) Some men use hugs as an opportunity to violate women’s boundaries.
a) When women are not seen as threats, it’s because we’re not taken as seriously. That’s not a privilege. We have to fight much harder to be given the same respect.
b) Frequently, women aren’t seen as threats because we’re not even allowed to compete in the first place.
c) Women’s status as a non-threat is used against us all the time. Men in particular feel justified in overriding our desires because even if we try to fight back, men assume they can overpower or override us.
a) See #6 and #16b.
b) The “fear of tears” is based on men’s annoyance with women’s displays of emotion. Rather than men taking us seriously, they most often trivialize or ignore the cause of our upset. It’s not a privilege when men assume that our tears are an insincere attempt to manipulate others rather than an indication of a genuine problem.
a) If we had to pick between them, nearly any woman would trade these pathetic “privileges” for male privilege in a heartbeat. But what we really want—the whole point of talking about male privilege in the first place—is to get rid of it.
b) Most of the things portrayed as privileges here come at a massive cost to women in terms of freedom and respect or are consequences of our lower social status.
Beatrice on Pharyngula says #21 “totally reads as ‘Women get all the shitty jobs, so I’ll have other women to rely on among cleaning ladies and office aides ‘.” If she’s right about what the author means, this is one of the shittiest “privileges” in the list because:
a) It doesn’t work out so nicely for the women “in low places.” Not only do they have crap jobs but they’re expected to suck up to people like the author who are happy to exploit them.
b) Women are more likely to feel they need help from “low places” because they’re held in lower esteem by their peers.
c) Men are allowed to exploit people in “low places” without having to pretend at camaraderie or ingratiating themselves.
I find this one quite revealing. First you get burdened with 100% of household chores and then if he does 10% of them after you ask him for help is a “privilege”. Here’s an idea: Men cannot help in their own household. They also cannot babysit their own children.
And what’s this thing about water coolers and conference rooms anyway?
Do you expect one person to move all the tables alone (how come you assume it’s a woman who got dumped with that job in the first place anyway?
Yeah, have a guy who spends some grand a year on electronics and he gets status and id seen as an expert. Have a woman who spends half as much on shoes and this is an excess.