QUICKIES 02/20/2012
By Regendering is a powerful tool to reveal unexamined gender stereotypes in anything from movies to literature. This tool, called the HTML5 Gendered Advertising Remixer, allows you to regender children’s toy commercials by playing the audio for a boy’s toy commercial with the video for a girl’s toy, or vice versa.
The Athena Film Festival attempted to put a dent in the male-dominated movie industry this week, saying they, “[celebrate] the stories of women who have made a difference across the globe.” The link includes ten clips from the movies shown.
Avid misogynist Foster Freiss (yes, that’s really his name), a major donor to Rick Santorum’s campaign, said on MSNBC this week that, “You know, back in my days, they’d use Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.” The host, Andrea Mitchell, had a pristine moment of what is this I don’t even, because she’d never truly believed that anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like. The video is worth the watch.
Even Rick Santorum, the man who described rapists as being on a Blues Brothers-like mission from God, is backing away from this guy, pretending he’s “had a consistent record on this of supporting women’s right to have contraception. I’ve supported funding for it.”
Image is of Polly Pocket, from the HTML5 Gendered Advertising Remixer.
“You know, back in my days, they’d use Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”
Also, according to Wikipedia, it wasn’t particularly effective either; considering teen pregnancy in America peaked in “his day”.
One thing that Friess is right about is that that is rather an old joke (in fact one I recall having heard a few times before). I’m sure that he told it under the impression that whatever went over well with the Good Old Boys (R) was good enough for the public. Of course that’s the problem with the GOB network; since they only let certain people in, you don’t get to test those jokes around many poor people, or racial minorities, or queers, or, you know, the majority of the human race who are women. So you get so many clueless surprised white guys who get “caught” saying something that they thought was fine the last few dozen times they heard or said it.
And as has been pointed out, the teen pregnancy rate is very low right now… though not as low in the South, where conservative politicians rule and people tell that joke (because honestly, there are misogynists everywhere, but in the South old farts with their old-timey off-color jokes about the old days are practically cultural icons.)
wow, those movies look awesome!