A lot of things have been bothering me lately, especially about certain advertisements and people’s attitudes towards feminism and feminists.

 The advertisement thing – obviously there are a lot of advertisements out there that reinforce stereotypes of men and women. Recently, I’ve been really pissed off by the Lynx advertisements – particularly the advertisement for Lynx ‘Vice’.

There are several different versions – all with a woman holding up a board with a serial number against a plain background. Okay, nothing TOO sexist about that…until you read the caption on the side saying ‘Lynx Vice: Turns Nice Girls Naughty’.

I think I’ve already mentioned that I think one of the reasons men may be drawn towards porn is because of that whole stereotypical ‘naughty/nice’ thing in which guilt and the feeling of being ‘naughty’ gives them a rush perhaps.

Porn is, like religion, based on the stereotype that there are two types of women: either naughty (aka, ’slag’, ‘bitch’, ‘vamp’ etc) or nice (aka, ‘marriage material’, ‘girl next door’, ‘prude’ etc). The language men use to describe women in porn or women that they ‘use’ also shows up a particular hate towards any women they view as an object. To them, women in porn and prostitution are just a means to an end – to be used, and then discarded. They are objects, not real.

I’ve got a big problem with this in that this suggests that women who are generally nice people don’t, and shouldn’t, enjoy a sex life. And that women who do enjoy sex are ’slags’ or unnatural. What the hell is wrong with enjoying sex and figuring out what makes you feel good?

By the way, porn doesn’t encourage women to find out what feels good for them: it treats them as a selection of holes, for the consumption of men (also, condoms are rarely advocated, and neither is safe sex). Or rather, all mainstream porn does. And it is becoming increasingly violent and torture oriented.

The Lynx ‘Vice’ advert pisses me off because it pushes the assumption that ‘nice’ girls don’t like sex. That they need a particular “smell” (in this case, Lynx) to make them act in whatever pornified way the man wearing this fragrance wants them to. And what’s wrong with not wanting sex too? Women and also men who don’t want or like sex get a lot of flack and ridicule.

Women who decide that they don’t want sex are called ‘prudes’ or ‘frigid’. It pisses me off that in a supposedly free society, whichever choice a woman makes, she is still pigeonholed and stereotyped.

I’ve also been thinking about people’s attitude towards feminism and feminists generally. I still think about when I tell people I’m a feminist, some people say ‘What does your boyfriend think?’. I think this is about misinformation from the media – pushing that stereotype that feminists are ‘bra-burning, man hating and hairy’.

Right – feminists never burnt bras (Amy has a great post about this piece of non existent history). Feminists hold men accountable for their negative actions and views, which feminists also do with women that hold negative views and do negative things, because women can also be anti-woman.

I don’t think anybody likes to think that what they do or say needs to be challenged – which is why men think feminists are man-haters. Because feminists try to expose the truth behind their use of porn and their use of women in prostitution and the views they hold of women, full stop. I believe that the core objection that many men aim at feminists is that they feel their ‘right’ to consume women is being threatened.

And I think a lot of MRA’s and trolls that aim insults at feminist bloggers are acting on this criticism and exploration of the underlying truth beneath pornstitution, rape, sex trafficking and culture.

Because they want to silence women that speak out. They constantly say ‘those feminists are silencing us!!!’ but in reality, women and feminists rarely get a platform or space to talk about what matters to them. When there’s reporting that there are more female bloggers than male bloggers, I think that’s great because women are getting a space where they can express themselves when many cannot do this in reality.

And the hairy thing? What’s the problem with female body hair? Even women seem to have an innate disgust about their body hair. It’s up to an individual what they do with it, but I wish women would be more accepting of it as part of their bodies just as men are accepting of their hairy legs and faces and so on. Why don’t men feel pressure to shave their legs?

Image From: Radical Graphics.org