Well, I *Was* Thinking About A Droid
…and then this weekend I saw the Verizon/Motorola ad spots, which are all about how manly and robotic and fast and strong and super awesome and completely not girly the Droid is. Lines from the ad include “tiara-wearing digitally clueless beauty pageant queen” and, “it’s not a princess, it’s a robot.” Kara describes the ad at All Things Digital
“Should a phone be pretty?” [the ad] begins, using an odd series of images that is packed full of random misogyny. “Should it be a tiara-wearing, digitally clueless beauty pageant queen?”
Then comes all the manly imagery–a racehorse, a powerfully pointed Scud missile, bananas and buzzsaws to represent the Droid. A surging missile, as well as several creamy explosions too. Get it?
And let’s not forget the bunch of fey, effeminately-dressed mannequins, with one getting bashed with an ink-filled ball thrown by some tough masked thug with the line, “Is it a precious porcelain figurine of a phone?”
Then back to anti-women name-calling, saying an iPhone is a “princess,” unlike the Droid, “a phone that trades hair-do for can-do.”
The ad suggests that the Droid is a toy for techie men, and that women are universally delicate idiots who value aesthetics over tech capabilities. I’m quite disappointed, because I had been seriously considering purchasing a Droid (my family is currently debating between Droids and iPhones, although I think we’ll end up sticking with feature phones), and now my excitement over the phone has completely soured: I have absolutely no desire to support a product or a business that treats me, a potential customer, as an idiot. I have absolutely no desire to support the continued misogynistic stereotyping and dismissal of women by giving money that, ironically, I earned while working in a tech-related, male-dominated field, to a product sold with this ad campaign.
I wrote a letter to Verizon and Motorola, using the addresses from Geekfeminism’s post on the subject:
To Whom It May Concern,
I am currently a Verizon customer with a contract up for renewal and a phone upgrade. Based on the tech specs, I had been considering upgrading from my current feature phone and purchasing a Droid handset. Indeed, I was the one to suggest the Droid to my brother, who is also looking for a new phone; my father, who currently has an iPhone; and my mother, who is considering purchasing a smartphone herself and is also the final decision-maker on cell phone purchases and contracts for our family. I followed the early reviews of Droid on tech blogs and was strongly leaning toward a Droid over a BlackBerry or an iPhone.
Then I saw the “Pretty” ad spot for the Droid. In addition to being incoherent, the imagery and voice over in the ad suggests that the Droid is specifically a toy for manly, techie men. It suggests that women are obsessed with fluff and aesthetics and are too idiotic to care about a phone’s specs and technical capabilities (“tiara-wearing digitally clueless beauty pageant queen”; “it’s not a princess, it’s a robot”; “a phone that trades hair-do for can-do.”). I have no desire to spend my hard-earned money–money that I earned in a tech-related field, incidentally–on a product that is sold with misogynistic advertising. Congratulations: you’ve successfully soured my enthusiasm for the Droid and ensured that when I purchase a new handset, Droid will not be on the list of possible options.
Best,
[PD]
I Wish
…that movies would stop making jokes about getting people drunk in order to “have sex” with them. Deliberately feeding someone alcohol in order to get them drunk so that they’ll “have sex” “with” you is rape. Interestingly, it assumes that your victim would not willingly choose to do so when in her or his right mind, which ought to make it even clearer that plying her or him with drink is an explicit attempt to get her or him to the point where her or his judgment is seriously compromised and she or he is incapable of consenting to sex. Having sex “with” someone without their consent is rape. Getting someone to a point where they’re not capable of giving consent means that they are by default in a state of not consenting.
Rape is not just forging ahead and having sex when your partner says, “No.” Rape is having sex when you’ve made it so that your partner is incapable of saying, “No,” or is too drunk to know what the hell yes and no mean, or what they’re saying yes or no to.
The latest offender in this regard is Play the Game, an indie romantic comedy where a young, able-bodied white man tries to teach his old, white grandfather how to pick up “chicks.” One thing he mentions is that when you’re sharing a bottle of wine with a woman and she pours more wine into your glass than hers, it’s a sign that she’s interested in you. As an illustration of this idea, the young man has a bottle of wine with a woman at the bar and then tells her that he needs to go home to his girlfriend. Immediately, the woman asks him to stay for just one more drink and tops off their glasses. Cue a shot of the wine glasses, which look like this:
Her wine glass is a third full. His wine glass is full to the brim.
Hardy har har, indeed–except I must have been the only person in the theater not roaring with laughter. The wine pour becomes a running gag in the film, reoccurring again when the grandfather’s girlfriend slips powdered Viagra into his wine goblet and pours it completely full. Drugging someone without their knowledge! Getting Grandpa drunk and aroused when he’s already expressed an unwillingness to have sex with her! Specifically putting Grandpa in a position of physically wanting to have sex while mentally compromising him in order to overcome his intellectual desire to not have sex! HARDY HAR HAR! Later, the main character pulls the wine trick with the woman he’s been pursuing for the entire film, who has handily resisted him and expressed interest in other men the entire time–HARDY HAR HAR! Pouring people wine to overcome their stated resistance to having sex with you–HARDY HAR HAR!
Getting someone drunk in order to compromise their judgment so that you can have sex with them is rape. Yet, Play the Game treated it as a joke, presenting it as something that’s acceptable for young people to do at bars and as something that’s laughable for old people to do in retirement homes. It’s not a bloody joke, it’s a crime, but the movie normalized it as harmless fun, common behavior, and worst of all, as a sign that your rapist is romantically interested in you. Gee, I guess rape victims should feel flattered, eh?
On the one hand, women are frequently blamed when rapists rape them, and the victim-blaming is even more intense if the women have had so much as a drop of alcohol. The UK government even ran PSAs suggesting that being raped was the consequence of women drinking. On the other hand, pop culture serves up entertainment that treats getting people drunk in order to rape them as harmless fun. Rape is such a joke–if you’re the one pouring the wine.
