Advertising has gained such phenomenal power, it’s now allowed pretty much everywhere.  And because it’s allowed pretty much everywhere, it has gained phenomenal power.

In fact, it has almost single-handedly destroyed the concept of public space because of its invasion of said public space with constant and loudly-proclaimed messages intended for private gain (not for the public good). 

This power has increased tremendously with the Internet.  No need to go into detail: everyone who uses the Internet is familiar with the intrusive pervasiveness of advertising.  More than that, given the addictiveness of online games and social media, advertising in those contexts is especially pernicious.

And who is it who creates all these ads?  Who is it who decides which words and which images the rest of us will be forcibly exposed to day and night for most of our lives?  Predominantly, male business students.  Male business B students.  (They’re the ones who major in Marketing.)  That is to say, largely uneducated young men.  Who probably didn’t take any courses in the sciences or the humanities after high school (and they probably didn’t do very well in those courses then).   Who probably took just one psychology course during university, the one focusing on manipulating human behaviour.  And who probably haven’t read a book, not one, since they graduated (and they probably read as little as possible of the books they were supposed to read before they graduated).  All of which is to say that they probably have very little comprehension of sexism, racism, environmental responsibility, …   In fact, I remember reading the words of one young man who’d said “I was studying political science at the time, so I had never thought about social processes like misogyny and sexism.”  (What?  What?!)  And I suspect business students are even less aware, less informed, than poli-sci students. 

So they have no clue as to the consequences, for both men and women, of seeing images of subordinated and/or sexualized women every day all day.  They are similarly clueless about the consequences of showing pick-up trucks and ATVs driving through pristine forests.  They know that attention is grabbed by flashing lights, and they surely know that driving a car requires one’s full attention, but apparently they can’t put two and two together and so continue to put huge billboards with flashing lights along roads.

And here’s the thing: people should understand the consequences of their actions before they’re granted unsupervised freedom to act.  Certainly before they’re granted the power to bombard people with words and images (which are, yes, HARMFUL).  With power should come responsibility.

So how is it that our government grants them such power?  How is it that it allows such HARM?  On such a large and relentless scale?  Legislation is for idiots, for those who cannot govern themselves, and clearly …

(What’s that you say?  Freedom of expression?  But freedom of expression is not, should not be, unlimited.  It is justifiably constrained when it violates others’ rights … to privacy (to be free from intrusion), to safety (to be free from harm), to autonomy (to be free of manipulation) …)

So in addition to all the radfem censorship on reddit …

I posted the following on the AskMen subreddit:

Why do men rape?

That’s my question. Seriously. Why do men rape? I just wrote a novel answering that question, Impact, but I’d like to hear from men. (And perhaps should’ve posted here BEFORE I wrote the novel. Didn’t occur to me.)

I immediately received the message:

Sorry, this post has been removed by the moderators of r/AskMen.

Moderators remove posts from feeds for a variety of reasons, including keeping communities safe, civil, and true to their purpose.

I assumed it was an automatic removal, and I assumed that it was the word ‘rape’ that triggered the removal (which in itself would be telling—they anticipate getting, or do get, a lot of ‘Which way do you like to rape cunts the best?’ queries … ?).  So I sent a note to the moderators, asking them to please read my post and reconsider.

Then I see received another response:

Your post has been flagged as trying to figure out a specific person’s or group of people’s actions or thinking. 

Seriously?  It’s taboo to try to understand people’s actions or thinking?  WTF.

I decided to experiment and posted the same question on the AskWomen subreddit. 

It was also removed.  Reasons:

Graceless generalizations are not permitted

– People are not a hive mind.

– Speak only for yourself.

Do not

– generalize across all people of a gender, race, or ethnicity

– ask for mind reading

– ask for us to defend/justify other people’s behaviors

– assume that all people in a gender, race, or ethnicity do/think something

– ask for ‘male equivalent’/’female equivalent’ as these would not exist for most things due to different cultural processes

– exceptions: discussion of cultural norms; quotations

Woh.  First, notice the difference.  The women’s response is SO much better.  More detailed, more explanatory …   It is, in a nutshell, indicative of superior thinking. 

And yes, I agree.  The way I’d phrased the question was assuming a hive mind and generalizing across a sex.  I could rephrase it: Why has rape become normalized in our culture?  That would clearly fall into the exception of ‘discussion of cultural norms’ …

Even so, I wonder at the ‘Speak only for yourself’ rule.  Limiting oneself to anecdote is no way to acquire knowledge.  Are we to assume no one knows anything but their own subjective experience?  Could no one have referred me to, say, Smithyman’s 1976 research, recently mentioned in The New York Times?  Or the NFB film, Why Men Rape?  Not to mention Neil Malamuth’s work … And why is it a problem, as it was for the men, to ask for mind reading?  Do people not know their own minds?  Have we become so incapable of introspection?  Or is it, in the second case, that I was asking women to read men’s minds?  Even so, can’t we speculate?  With good reason and evidence? 

“On Earth, where his remotest forebears lived, a person could be indisputably responsible for the deaths of thousands and still go down in the history books as some sort of great hero. … Why, he wanted to know, were the names of Samson, Napoleon, Joan of Arc, Ulysses S. Grant, and Julius Caesar not obscenities, spoken after dark in whispers of revulsion and shame?”  p17-80

“The miners … expected retirement benefits from their Rationalist employer, John Donaldson.  Mr. Donaldson went home, did the arithmetic, and called out the police because it was cheaper.

“The strikers, who had enthusiasm, attacked the police, who had yeastguns.  The enthusiasm made martyrs; the guns, holes.”  p109-110

“If I were inventing democracy from scratch, I would not have invented political parties” (p17). Yes! “Mindless partisanship insists on a team mentality. My team versus your team …” (p17).

“Decisions are made on the basis of public opinion research far more than on the basis of policy analysis by the civil service” (p75). Yeah, when did THAT start to happen?

“If a citizen truly needs the intermediation of a lobby to get the attention of policy-makers in Ottawa … then we have no real democracy” (p173).

And then there’s the FPTP (First Past the Post) system Canada uses. In the 2008 election, “The Bloc won 50 seats with 1.3 million votes, while the NDP won 37 seats with 2.4 million votes. The Green Party won just under 1 million votes … yet won no seats” (p199). ‘Nuff said.

Well worth the read! (A surprising, but not, answer to what the fuck is wrong with our world? How have we gotten to the point of no return?)