As Ethics Alarms struggles to regain even the wan level of traffic it had before the holidays hit with their deplorable priorities of family and reflection over ethics commentary, let us hail today’s Comment of the Day creator, Tim LeVier, as well as Glenn Logan and, for he still surfaces now and then, King Kool, all of whom have remained steadfast not only from the beginning of Ethics Alarms in 2010, but on The Ethics Scoreboard, its less active predecessor, before that.
Here is Tim’s Comment of the Day on the post, The Gillette Ad:
We live in interesting times. I see both sides of it. Part of my wants to say that this is no different than when a man tells a woman to smile. This is women saying “calm down” or “be more sensitive and peaceable”.
I don’t believe for a second that this message wasn’t crafted by people I don’t want the message to come from…but that’s just negative confirmation bias, right?
In fairness, it’s not a bad message, if taken as honest, straight forward, with no ulterior motives….but there’s the rub. We’re convinced there’s bad intent here.
It’s the kind of message we want to get from our fathers – and many of us do. We want to get these messages privately because of shame and pride.
How many times has someone sat in a Sexual Harassment training seminar complaining about the reasons and motivations for why he had to be there, since he wasn’t the problem in the company? Our lashing out at this message comes from a similar place. Some of us can’t relate to it because we’re not shit-bags….but some in our society can.
Another part of me likes the ad because it’s empowering men, men with good and ethical instincts, to speak up and be heard. We let too much slide in our society saying that confrontation is bad, to let people live their own lives, and that someone else will be responsible for making things better. We let dog-walkers continue with their day when we see them leave a pile of dog-shit on city or HOA property, we see litter on the side of the road and leave it to city maintenance. We tolerate impatient customers in the check out lane at the retailer, or have crazy incidents at a 7-11 that show the clerk isn’t taking his job seriously. I’ve taken a lot, stayed silent, and chalked it up to patience. I’ve also blown up and acted irrationally. Life is simply a rough balancing act.
But yeah, if there’s one message I do like from this ad, it’s the “don’t be silent” message….good men should be heard from too.
Part of the war on men and boys. This ad ignores all the fine and ethical things men have done over the ages and is disgustingly pc.
Well done!
“I don’t believe for a second that this message wasn’t crafted by people I don’t want the message to come from…but that’s just negative confirmation bias, right?“
Well, maybe not:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/01/the-social-justice-warrior-women-behind-gillettes-men-shaming-ad/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LegalInsurrection+%28Le%C2%B7gal+In%C2%B7sur%C2%B7rec%C2%B7tion%29
Following some of those links, and reading comments, I came across this one:
[Kim Gehrig is the woman behind the Gillette ad, and it is worthwhile to read up on her background and her other advertising work]. [Heaven help us . . .]
Great find!
This reminds me of the emasculation described in Fight Club. That movie should probably serve as a warning….
I agree.
However, speaking for myself, it is not a message I want to get from a razor blade company, or any company for that matter. Companies can be social justice warriors on their own time. If they want to shame me into joining them, I’ll reject both their message and their right to take up my valuable time pandering to others by virtue-signaling.
Even Subaru, who transparently panders to the Left, does so in such an unassuming and thoroughly wholesome manner that it’s impossible to take offense. Gillette should’ve followed their example.
I finally watched the stupid ad today. I was neither offended nor impressed. I had no desire to by Gillette products afterwards, either (which pushes the ad towards incompetent).
Two parts peaked me. The first was the description of “some men all ready are [exhibiting the desirable traits]…”. This is gratuitously insulting. I would say the vast majority are. The other was the fathers scolding the two fighting boys, “Hey, we don’t do that”. Alizia’s post provides a good summary why. Obviously, it was staged for the commercial, but what was shown was not an unfair fight or bullying, but truly boys being boys. It was a “knock it off” situation, not a “that contradicts your male identity” moment.
[blockquote]Companies can be social justice warriors on their own time. If they want to shame me into joining them, I’ll reject both their message and their right to take up my valuable time pandering to others by virtue-signaling.[/blockquote]
Hear, hear. I heard some attempt at justification by appeal to emotion (which, despite its prevalence to the point of ubiquity is still an informal logical fallacy) which explained that Gillette was once a strong and dependable American razor company that’s falling on hard times due to dollar shave clubs and a recent hipster beard renaissance. Gillette, the opinion claimed, attempted to ride the wave of current public opinion out of market failure.
The excuse omitted facts regarding their products being objectively overpriced at a time in which manufacturers found they could undercut a suspiciously cornered market with a superior product at lower cost. Caught in desperate times of their own making, Gillette decided to market its inferior, overpriced product to a market it now resented by talking down to it with a heavy-handed, patronizing message. It chose to commit what we all fundamentally understand is a soft crime out of desperation. Unfortunately, we all fundamentally understand that no good end can justify any means absolutely.
Generalizations, generally, are nothing more than an understanding of things as a set. To see the pattern connecting multiple individuals to come to an overarching understanding is simply what we call expertise. A mechanic can understand internal combustion engines but be thrown momentarily by a peculiarity in a single engine. To understand that peculiarity and adapt his generalized understanding to suit the case is is either wisdom or intelligence depending on your proclivities. To ignore the new peculiarity as though it must necessarily fit the generalization without regard to the reality he’s confronted with is that sort of unintelligence which has led blue collar workers to reject experts as a set. Such also results in a busted engine, the practical wages of bias (I have an advanced degree in a hard science, so I present this generalization for my own case as my own hostile witness, lest you think I’m bashing experts).
Speaking to me, individually, as though I’m part of some general problem which I know myself not to be is the same. When our minds aren’t poisoned by the modern mood, that’s precisely the basis for our opposition to bigotry as well. Generalizations are a means of understanding particulars, not an excuse to gloss over them. The attempt to perpetrate this act as a large-scale public movement in the attempt to wipe out previous manifestations of the same crime is not only wrong, but it’s wrong for the same reason as the original enemy. Either this is a case of a hunter becoming the monster he hunts, or the perpetrator commits his crime deliberately like a con artist exploiting his mark. Regardless, no good end can justify any means absolutely – the example is as clear an illustration as I’ve ever seen that the evil act taints even the possibility of achieving a good end. To choose evil is simply to choose evil. Faust gets nothing in return for all he has.
Perhaps you’d quibble that Gillette’s ad speaks to men in general and not to individuals. I would argue that isn’t the nature of the modern message with which Gillette has allied itself. Each man, individually, has been branded as suspicious and “toxically masculine”; he is a sinister, scheming thing before and in spite of (perhaps, sometimes, “because of” (no evil regime can resist the Kafka trap fallacy)) anything he might say to the contrary.
I would like to boycott Gillette, but unfortunately I came to distrust major razor manufacturers for their inferiority years ago. I will instead use this soapbox to suggest others do the same (with risk that the host will suspect I’m soliciting, mitigated slightly by the fact that what follows will show that I have no brand loyalty whatsoever (only my brand opposition has been earned)). A classic safety razor delivers potentially a closer shave than any plastic, semi-disposable, $45, five-blade monstrosity on the market. My last set of double-edged blades came in a pack of 100, for something like $30, and they seem to make it through as many shaves individually as any of those strange modern multiple-blade plastic mountings. They’re also standardized, so I can and have switched manufacturers without having to replace my razor which has no distinguishing markings or branding on it at all. I’m currently using a blade from a Japanese manufacturer called “Feather”, but there are literally dozens of other manufacturers of similar quality.
If the enemy is to wage a war with us which it chooses not to call a war, then let us do the same. If the enemy is to redefine all our terms and use them against us, then let us stubbornly refuse to use their new terms. When possible, perhaps we can mockingly use theirs against them (but carefully, so as not to accept them ourselves) – I will call Gillette’s ad an inexcusable sexist tirade. If they are to disenfranchise anyone who opposes them, then let us disenfranchise anyone who supports them. If we refuse to patronize companies which voice opinions like this, then our money will slowly be curbed to ones which don’t. Two parallel economies will slowly emerge. This will be the end of the enemy. Pre-packaged generalization abused to the point of ignoring obvious particulars is probably their only distinguishing mark. It’s the cause of their constant, repetitive inefficiency. Their parallel economy will fail like every far-left economy in history before it, and we will remain. Cut them off, as they are cutting us off. Their own tactics will magnify the efficacy of ours. Use their own momentum against them, as one would to succeed in a physical fight. I’m no Randian or libertarian, but Ayn had a plan worth imitating with John Galt, if generalized properly.
There is an opinion-piece in today’s NYTs titled: “Beware the Furies, President Trump”. The photo shows: Jahana Hayes, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Lauren Underwood and Katie Hill.
The opinion writes says: “The three sisters, the “infernal goddesses” of ancient mythology born from the blood shed by Uranus when he was castrated by his son, were known for relentlessly hounding men. But the Furies took vengeance on wicked men who hurt women and swore false oaths.”
Oh Lord. Now we are moving into interesting territory! I was beginning to get bored by the rather predictable outlines of struggle today. Now though, we have new material! Oh Happy Day! This is wonderful for someone with literary pretension and a wee bit of Jungian theory!
Now, in the Agamemnon trilogy by Aeschylus, Orestes the son of Agamemnon kills his mother Clytemnestra in revenge for she killing his father. That act unleashed the Furies, the Erinyes, who haunt him and nearly drive him insane. It takes the intervention of Athena to put things right.
The implications here — in this opinion-piece — are bizarre and possibly even a bit psychotic. The implication is that women acting today — and I would extend this to imply general social hysteria, the notable one being Trump-Hate — is an emotional and irrational manifestation of ‘chthonic’ forces:
By mythic definition, though the Furies howl & rage today, an ‘Athena’ will have to appear to mediate their case against Orestes and free him from the haunting. And these terrifying Furies will have to go back underground.
I always did appreciate Ann Coulter . . .
🙂