Women's products advertisements are for privileged women only.

I've been sick lately, which means I've been watching a lot of stuff on Hulu. And since my gender on Hulu is still set to "female," I get a lot of ads for products geared toward women. Products like KY Intense, menstrual pads (y'know, if you don't want to think about your pad you might consider a cup), yadda.

And what I've noticed is that all of these ads are geared toward straight women.

Take the KY Intense commercials, for instance. It's being marketed as "specially formulated to create female satisfaction" (whatever that means). Yet in every commercial I've seen, it shows a man and a woman (clearly married) discussing how much better it has made their sex lives.

I'm all for women's sexuality being shown in a positive light, really. The general message of these ads - that women deserve to be satisfied in bed - is a good one. However, while the sexualities of straight, cisgender, thin, white, married women are being encouraged, the sexualities of virtually every other kind of women are being erased.

For instance, all of the couples are cis and hetero. Despite the fact that the marketing of this product has, ostensibly, nothing to do with testosterone-fueled penis bearers, you can find one in every single commercial. Two women having sex using KY Intense and having a great time? Unheard of. A het couple wherein both members have estrogen-fueled bodies and vulvae? Unheard of. (Not that I'd expect to see that in this day and age, but erasure is erasure.) I am left uncertain, as well, as to the usefulness of this product for trans women of varying body types. Since the product is "clinically proven to enhance female satisfaction," I assume that it was specifically formulated to work on womb-generated vulvae and left at that. Given that we are at a point where trans women are visible and being recognized as women, it would be great of KY to try to include them in this shallow quest to make a buck.

All of the couples have been white, as well. The sexual satisfaction of black women, Asian women, etc.? Doesn't matter. Well, it matters inasmuch as "they'll see the ads and buy this product too, so we're good" but that's it. There's no real interest in promoting the idea that there are happily married non-white couples out there, having gratingly traditional hetero sex and using KY Intense to make things more pleasurable. I don't know that I have the depth of information necessary to explain why this is so harmful, but it has to do with stereotypes regarding black people never getting married, and Asian men being emasculate/feminine. Basically, they're not considered physically capable of engaging in a "normal" relationship.

And, of course, they are all thin, young, and able-bodied. Heaven forbid we hear about fat, old, and/or disabled people having any kind of sex life - much less talking about it on television. Sex is gross if the people involved aren't perfect.

(And they're all couples. Despite the fact that a woman might want to get some "female satisfaction" without a partner. I guess solo sex is still too nasty for TV.)

For other ads, this becomes even more grating as there are even fewer reasons to put the woman in a relationship, yet she somehow manages to hook up with Mr. Wealthy McCisgender every time. An ad for menstrual pads, for instance, includes a woman saying good-night to her lantern-jawed white date at the end of the night, while fantasizing about giving him smoochies. Ads for other products show our thin, frequently white heroine preparing dinner for her family, roughhousing with her children, and arguing with her husband - all expressions of privilege in some way or another. Not every family is white - for better or worse, black folks have garnered a position as the other "American" race and appear infrequently. Yet we never see a man of Asian descent playing the dim-witted, meat-chomping foil who fails to detect his wife's yogurt. We never see a mother in a wheelchair sharing a special moment with her child. Never an old woman preparing dinner. God forbid we have some combination of these.

Even as young, white, thin, able-bodied, straight, married, cisgender women are being oppressed by many of these ads, every other kind of woman is being erased.

There's one exception that I know of - the Hamburger Helper commercial, which is a completely disgusting and exploitative piece showing why poor single moms should stop eating fast food, which is making them fat, and buy someone else's unnecessary product instead. Good times, yo.

"Scott was just a regular guy until one bite changed his life forever." A rant.

Firstly, the new "Teen Wolf" TV series is coming out on June 5th. That's five days from now. I am so pumped.

I know it's going to be terrible. It will be full of melodrama and teen angst and privilege denial; you know, the usual. I'm hoping, at least, that it will be the kind of terrible that I can stand to watch instead of the kind of terrible that makes me throw up my hands and wail in despair.

It's not looking good, though. I was browsing the promotional website and I found this gem:

Scott was just a regular guy until one bite changed his life forever.

At first I was like...
And then I was like...

It boggles my mind how the phrase "just a regular guy" is still considered a valid descriptor. It shouldn't, I realize, but it does. It really bugs me that this descriptor is being applied to this Scott guy, who judging by the promo videos is anything but regular. I mean, he's...

1. White.
2. Straight.
3. Cisgender.
4. Completely able-bodied and -minded(as far as I can tell).
5. Middle-class.
6. Late teen-aged.
   
7. Conventionally attractive.
8. A sports player (lacrosse, specifically).
9. A citizen of the United States.
   

Do you know anyone who is like that? Anyone at all? I certainly don't. And I'm not just saying that because I hang around queer circles. I'm saying that because I have never (knowingly) met a human being who was that privileged. For instance, nearly my entire extended family is low-class. Most of us are not conventionally attractive (a few of us are bald, in fact), nearly every one of us who would actually admit to it is gay, bisexual, or pansexual, several of us are gender-nonconforming, the majority are over the age of forty, and nearly all of us are disabled somehow. It's the same basic thing on the Internet. You run into a few people like Scott, and a lot more people who are outside the cishetero demographic, physically or mentally disabled, poor, homeless, conventially unattractive, into unconventional fashion, members of plural systems, non-white, and/or non-States citizens. Most of us don't fall under all of these categories, but very few of us fall under "none."

So when these guys say that Scott is "just a regular guy," it occurs to me that it has no real-world applications whatsoever. Scott may be regular for someone with as much privilege as he's got, but he's not regular as a human being. Regular people, near as I can tell, aren't almost completely perfect until we get bitten by werewolves. Regular people want to be cheerleaders but don't make the cut. Regular people are lesbians. Regular people are middle-aged, single bookworms who wouldn't know how to date if the opportunity was staring them in the face. Regular people become construction workers because they can't afford college. Regular people become independent, then run out of money and have to live in their parents' basement. (True story.) Regular people are smart enough to be lawyers but aren't because even if they wanted to, they haven't had the opportunity. Regular people fall in love for reasons that don't make any sense, with people whom they have no business falling in love with for actual reasons that have nothing to do with societal expectations, and sometimes it works out anyway but usually they just break up. Regular people don't make the same predictable mistakes over and over - instead, they make ridiculous, embarrassing, mind-blowing, life-ruining, and/or trivial mistakes that most writers aren't creative enough to think of.

So until you can make your characters at least as normal as the casts of Buffy and Angel, don't call your protagonist "just a regular guy." The only thing regular about Scott is that he is exactly the kind of person people use as a cheap protagonist.

Children with privilege are the only ones who matter.

I will asplain.

I just read this post on Womanist Musings: Oh Oh, Bigots Steamed Because Sheriff Woody Endorsed 'It Gets Better Campaign'.

According to Alan Chambers, an "ex-gay" fellow who spends not inconsiderable portions of his time turning his internalized prejudice onto his fellow GLBP folk, it is saddening and disappointing to see a children's movie character speaking up about something that, to quote a quote, "at this point children have no need to know about."

Where do I start with this?

Firstly, I assume he's talking about the bizarro version of gayhood wherein it is a horrible, horrible curse and everyone who has it struggles with their feelings of abnormalcy and just wishes they could be straight, unless they're complete perverts.

Secondly, he also seems to be talking about the bizarro version of gayhood that magically kicks in at puberty (whereas straight children are straight from the age of four or so).

And thirdly, as usual, the only children that Chambers is worried about are the straight children.

This is a typical claim from bigots who are trying to prevent education in "politically-charged subjects" from happening at an early age. (Ironically, these are usually the same people who believe that children need to learn Christian Creationism in public school science classes.) I read about this frequently on Womanist Musings. White people say that children don't need to learn about racism, because it is just too horrible for their delicate little minds and their innocence needs to be maintained - plus, by teaching them by racism we might encourage them to be racist! Onoez! Of course, "children" is a misnomer -as Renee points out repeatedly, children of color in the United States start learning about racism as soon as they are cognizant enough to understand what the words mean (pretty much as soon as they have a good grasp on English.) So what they're really worried about are white children.

The same argument has been made re: disability. In another post, Renee shares the story of a woman who, in the process of giving birth to her children, sustained an injury that has rendered her unable to move any part of her body except her eyelids. The children's father, with classic sympathy, took advantage of her incapacitated state, took the children, and ran. Since then he has refused to let the children see their mother because he fears that it might scar them.

Really? SCAR them?

Scare them, maybe. The kiddies probably aren't used to interacting with someone who is paralyzed (definitely, if Dad's behavior is any indication), and it will probably concern them, and they might not know how to act at first. But if they were actually allowed to spend time with their mother and interact with her, they'd get used to it. They could have a wonderful relationship and it wouldn't bother them in the slightest. Because KIDS ARE FLEXIBLE.

Which brings me to my next point.

Kids ARE flexible. They're also in a state of perpetual learning. Kids are open-minded, and often very compassionate (once they develop empathy). There is no better time for a person's life to begin learning about oppression and develop the desire to fight it than when they are a child.

And it doesn't take much. A child only has to witness one act of blatant discrimination to figure out that it's messed up (and yes, even privileged kids have the ability to figure out when someone is being put down) and speak out against it or even start a charity to fight it. (Not saying that the kid's going to be perfect at it, but the motive is there). You can read countless stories on the Internets and Highlights Magazine about a child who does something that seems incredibly plucky, like mowing lawns to earn money to buy shoes for poor kids, or refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance until true equality has been reached, or whathaveyou, all because they were given information about the issues in question.

But most children are not given this opportunity. Instead, we "shelter" them from these issues, protecting them from as much badness as we can. And what are they shown instead? Straightness, cis genders, whiteness, able bodies, single minds. At the point in their life when kids are most able to learn tremendous amounts of things about the world, we so rigidly filter their intake that they can only learn the most privileged side of the story. And the kids, being kids, suck it all in. Their understanding of the world, of society - of what behaviors and bodies "should" exist - becomes framed to prioritize these privileged bodies.

The result of this is that when these kids do begin to gain information about a new perspective, they have no idea what to do with it. When they begin to meet people who are fat, or need special equipment to move around, or have "weird hair," or "talk funny," they don't know how to react. They might know how to pity the crippled child, or to accuse the child who speaks out about racism of making things up or being too sensitive - the limited types of interaction that are conveyed in mainstream entertainment. But they don't have any real knowledge of how to handle these people on a tangible human basis.

Some kids are more flexible than others, of course. Some of them are very open-minded and will instinctively treat nearly everyone with some level of respect and kindness. But a lot more will not. Children who have learned that the world is a place of sunshine and roses and SCWAT bodies will freeze up when they meet someone who is different. They may refuse to deal with the "other" person. They may make fun of that person to assuage their own confusion. Or they may look to their peers to learn how to deal with the person - and their peers, having roughly the same upbringing, will teach them how to scorn the nonconformist.

As the privileged child ages, unless someone intervenes in xir life, nothing is likely to change. Instead, the problem crystalizes. By the time this "innocent" child has become a teenager or young adult, xe is now convinced that the world is exactly as xe learned it, or close enough, and xir reaction to a different perspective will likely range from disbelief to an outright refusal to consider the possibility. Sure, xe is now old enough that xir innocence is probably not considered an issue, and others might finally decide that it's time to teach xem about oppression - only to find that xe is lacking the core education needed to understand these concepts. The core education can be had, of course. And the education that builds upon it. And teenagers and young adults are, relatively, more impressionable than older people. But at this point there are two things stacked against them: firstly, they may not have access to the information they need, and secondly, they may simply decide that they don't want to learn because they have other things to worry about (like building their own life).

A young child doesn't have other things to worry about. A young child's job is to learn about the world. By preserving "innocence," by shielding them from anything that might be considered controversial or "too harsh" (apparently the real world is too much for children to handle), their parents are instilling a worldview that is one-sided and profoundly naïve. Not only does it hurt the marginalized - by implicitly training children to ignore their lives and struggles - but it hurts the child, by limiting xir ability to function with various "other" persons on a fully human level, as well as xir capacity to understand why extra work and sanctions are needed to protect marginalized persons.

As for gay children, transgender children, children of color, disabled children, and many others - all of them are getting a firsthand education in some form of discrimination. "Innocence" is a luxury that they cannot afford, at least for those realms to which they are privy. Through sheer happenstance of birth or life events, we were rendered clinically incapable of retaining this quality that is supposedly so valuable to a child's healthy development, and somehow we managed not to be ruined for it. Yet this inconvenient fact frequently gets swept under the rug by people who continue to insist that innocence is the most valuable thing a child could have - not understanding that maintaining the innocence of a privileged child often means destroying the innocence of marginalized children.