Think B4 You Speak: +, +/-
Plus: Following up on the last post, I poked around the ThinkB4YouSpeak site and the Ad Council’s site to see what the ads were like. Overall, the print ads (I haven’t looked at the vids) are well-executed: they’re simple, they’re to the point, and they challenge the viewer in unmistakable terms to consider what it means to use gay, dyke, and faggot as insults.
This ad addresses the claim that the speaker didn’t mean dyke as an insult, it’s just a word meaning seawall. Well, yes, dyke is a “chiefly British variant on dike,” which is “a bank usually of earth constructed to control or confine water,” but when people use dyke as an insult, they’re not using the word in that sense, they’re using it in the sense of “homosexual woman.” Not only that, they’re equating that meaning of dyke with uncool, wrong, dirty, etc. (Cf. “Pimping out” is a common phrase meaning to decorate, it wasn’t sexist!) The ad neatly takes down that kind of sophistry and then asks the viewer to stop using dyke as an insult.
This ad not only explores how “that’s so gay” actually functions, it points out that other stereotypes are harmful and insulting. By drawing an analogy between stereotyping cheerleaders as stupid girls that can’t speak without inserting like between every word, and using the phrase “that’s so gay,” the ad challenges the intent and veracity of the stereotype. The girl in the image doesn’t exactly look happy, and the point of the ad is that “that’s so gay” is hurtful and insulting. Similarly, the cheerleader stereotype is hurtful and insulting.
Plus/Minus: The ThinkB4YouSpeak site includes transgender people when it talks about the effects of homophobic speech, connecting it with bullying and harassment. It also includes “tranny” in the “Say What?” box in the left sidebar of the website (“Say What? Click a word to learn what it actually means, or actually doesn’t mean.”)
However, I would’ve liked to have seen a poster for “tranny” and other transphobic slurs, given how common transphobic speech is. Most of the people I know will avoid saying, “That’s so gay,” or using homophobic slurs, but the understanding that tossing out “tranny” to mean ugly, unfashionable, messy, gross, wrong, etc. seems to be less common and therefore would have benefited from being featured more prominently in the ad campaign.
