Classic backlash. Back in the day, when women wouldn’t even have had the choice, this would have been beyond the pale: making fun of the servant class for being servants, indeed. But now, women are liberated and stuff, so obviously if they go shopping (including for their partners) it must be because they like it! because they biologically can’t help themselves from doing that housework stuff! So it’s ok to make fun of them for that now!

It’s a bit like what happened (is happening) to African Americans: it would have been really obviously horrid to blame them for being poor under slavery or segregation. But afterward, now that they’re liberated and equal and so on? Well their poverty must be their fault! They can’t help it, they just can’t help scoring lower on IQ tests etc. I have relatives who have this reasoning. No, we’re not on speaking terms anymore, why do you ask?

That sign is just stupid all around, but calling it misogynist is hyperbole. I don’t see anything about hating or resenting wives who buy pants. It’s just waiting. Waiting is boring. I think sports are also boring. Finally, I like picking out my own pants.

Ugh. A decade ago, I worked at a small boutique on Union Street in SF that was a few doors down from several pubs and bars. Our male owner once told us to tell women that came in on Sundays to go steal their bf/husbands’ credit cards while they were watching the game. He wanted us to tell them it was ok because men expected women to spend too much money. Plus, men didn’t want women around while they were trying to enjoy teh game. Gross. He thought that was sooo funny. None of us were stupid enough or sexist enough to try that sales pitch.

This fits in neatly with the genre of cleaning product commercials in which the wife tries to get her husband off his ass to help clean while he’s watching “the game.” In a healthy relationship, of course, the man wouldn’t want to sit around on his ass while his wife cleans the house, and he would mention in advance that he wants to watch the game and maybe they could put off the cleaning until after.

In terms of things like shopping, he wouldn’t have to sit around in a department store on his laptop either, because if he really didn’t want to go shopping with his wife, he’d feel free to say so, and she wouldn’t really care if he stayed home. And of course if he needs slacks its primarily his damn responsibility to notice and go get some.

But I mean, why have a healthy relationship? Stereotypical gender roles are just such fun for everyone involved.

The ad is definitely promoting a misogynist stereotype, but I agree with irv4u2 in that it, in and of itself, is not hateful. It is stupid and annoying. I am noticing a lot of ads like this, some that are much more misogynist in their promotion of the stupid stereotypes.

What irritates me is promoting products that all people like only to men. It is a clear indication to me that this company only wants to talk to men and/or can’t conceive of the fact that women use the product and have plenty of disposable income that they will spend.I am very happy to spend my money, but not at places that only care to hawk their wares to those with penises.

Antigone, just cuz someone SAYS “amusing yourself while being bored” is “hatred”, don’t make it so, no matter how many academics say so.  “We’ve re-defined a bunch of words, and you must adhere to their New Brave Meaning.”  Not so.

I’m with irv4u2: much ado about zilch.  And with Ursula too. Stupid, yes, hateful no.  Amanda got her panties in the wrong twist on this one.

Because, of course, it’s impossible that your wife might want to watch the game with you.  Seriously; I hate sports, and most of the women I’ve dated have been huge fans of at least one team, if not more than casual observers of an entire sport.  The “men watch sports/women shop and do housework” dynamic on its own is boring and the presumption that it exists in every sports fan’s household is insulting to both men and women—the relegation of women to menial tasks is so screwed up I don’t even understand how it ever took hold on society in the first place, but the “men watch sports” side of the dynamic is often accompanied by incompetence around the house, at the grocery store and, apparently, knowing how to buy a damn pair of pants without <strike>mommy</strike> your wife holding your hand, which is why she’d rather just do it without you.  How much of a fuckup does a person have to be to need someone else to buy pants for them?  I’m sure the kind of man who finds this ad appealing drags his feet like a whiny five-year-old at the department store, constantly disappearing whenever his wife turns her head and running off to the power tools section.  Fuck that guy, and fuck anyone who would assume he dominates his demographic.

I do seem to have noticed an increasing number of ads saying women should shut up, especially while men are watching sports. The first one that comes to mind is the Superbowl commercial where the Mrs. Potato Head’s mouth comes off, and Mr. Potato Head can finally relax without having to undergo the loathsome experience of listening to his wife talk.

Eric, I find your comment to be too patronizing to Amanda to be glad that you agree with me. I understand her reaction because after walking around in the patriarchy for 5 hours or so, it is hard to not want to beat the crap out of stupid stuff like this (i.e. your rational defenses break down and you’re left with emotion and violence). It becomes hateful when you understand the stereotype it is promoting, but only because the stereotype is so well known and accepted as “normal” rather than insulting.

If this company had other ads in their series that said “chat with your friends while he buys you shoes”, the ads would still be gendered, which instantly cuts out half of your potential audience. So it is not a hateful ad per se, but the stereotype it promotes is stupid. That is enough for me to decide not to buy their product or resent the fact that I ever gave the company money.

Commercials in general assume the worst about men and women both.  There’s overt misogyny in a large portion of the commercials I see on TV and in magazines. The one I hate the worst, and is in my opinion one of the most egregious varieties, is the “men are too goddamned stupid to [insert activity that ‘smart’ housewife has to do for him]” narrative.  Double whammy!  It’s hateful towards men while also reinforcing the “women must be held responsible for doing all of the work” meme.

Remember, kids: without exception, advertisers think you’re stupid.

I don’t get what about that sign isn’t misogynist (and misanthropic, but the two march hand-in-hand). Do we have the assumption that women have to do work, while men get to play? Yes, we do. Do we get the assumption that that’s the natural order of things? Yes, we do. Do we have an ad targeted specifically to men, assuming that women don’t exist? Yes, we do. Add them up, and if you’re not coming up with an anti-woman bias, I don’t know what to say to you, because as they say, there are none so blind as those who will not see.

At any rate, the other part I find massively offensive as a man is the assumption that I wouldn’t want or care about what pants I was getting, because caring about your appearance is woman’s work. I mean, I can sort of get an ad that would joke about streaming video while your wife shops for herself—still stereotyping, of course, but at least it’s reasonable for you to want to do something for yourself while your partner is doing for herself.* But you’re shopping for clothes for you, and you have the temerity to be annoyed with your wife for being boring and looking for clothes for you? WTF? Who the hell is going to be so disconnected from his partner that he can’t be bothered to care when she’s actually doing things to help you? Christ on a cracker, I know men can be idiots sometimes; I am one. But that takes asshole to a whole new level.

*Although most normal humans would solve that by saying, “Have fun at the store, dear, I’m going to watch the game,” or, I don’t know, going along and expressing interest in things your partner likes because you like them, and sucking it up, just like they suck it up when you talk about your Lost obsession or your favorite tennis player or how you’re learning a new type of crochet.

in and of itself, is not hateful.

It’s not hateful if you don’t define “cruel and mocking” as hateful. The wife works hard for you, you treat her like a servant and joke to your friends about how women are such gold-diggers and love to spend your hard-earned money, she puts up with you because all men are as selfish and obnoxious as you are and she can’t do any better. And of course you wouldn’t want it any other way, for example a wife who made more money than you, because then you wouldn’t get the fun of feeling superior and acting put-upon while getting all the benefits of having someone work for you.

Appealling to spite is the best way to get someone to do something stupid.

Agreed on the doubly shitty misogyny of that ad. However, I am not convinced that there has been any sort of increase in that kind of ad. Weren’t print ads from the not-so-distant past even worse, joking around about shit like smacking women around who don’t cook properly?

Do we have the assumption that women have to do work, while men get to play? Yes, we do. Do we get the assumption that that’s the natural order of things? Yes, we do. Do we have an ad targeted specifically to men, assuming that women don’t exist? Yes, we do.

All of this.  And another old trout to boot: we have the assumption that women are bossy creatures who constantly feel a need to make-over their schlub SO in the image she wants, your own taste be damned. 

That is one multi-dimensional package o’ negative stereotypes right there.  Locked and loaded.

This is an ad which bespeaks a very deep male pathos.  The misogyny is there, but it’s used mostly for purposes of camoflage.  This ad contains three points, two of which are misogynist, while the third centers around contempt for men.  The two introductory points function in such a way as to lead up to the third point, which is the key to the whole ad.  Here, listed in order, are the three points:

1.  You (the male reader of this ad) wear the pants.  Your wife does not.  She buys your pants for you, wilth your money.  (She buys your pants and you don’t hold her purse.)

2.  Women are pre-programmed to shop.  It’s not like it’s a woman’s “job” to shop the way it’s a man’s job to do man stuff.  Shopping is a part of a woman’s role, the way compacting the trash is part of a trash compactor’s role.  (The way displaying sports makes up the reason for being of a sports feed.)  You wouldn’t expect to congratulate a trash compactor for compacting trash, would you?  (It’s dirty work but somebody has to do it.)

3.  You (the male reader of this ad) are profoundly dependent on all the conveniences with which you have surrounded yourself.  Consequently you are profoundly dependent on your wife.  Your wife owns a subtle kinship with your sports feed, in the sense that they are both there to serve you (also in the sense that neither one of them should expect to be made much of for doing so).  But.  There is very little that is immediate in your life; you don’t even buy your own clothes; instead, you get your wife to buy them for you with your money.  Once when you were a small boy your mother bought your pants for you and now your wife does it; which means that you’re just as dependent on your wife and your sports feed now as you were dependent on your mother then.  Nothing has changed, except: when you were a kid you might have played some sports on your own intiative (perhaps a touch of Pop Warner football or whatever), but now you sit back and watch better men do it, vicariously, the way you get your pants bought for you by your wife.  You’re pathetic.  Better spend your money when we tell you to, loser!!  Spend your money when we tell you to or we’ll let you know what we really think!!

In this ad a lack of regard for women is present, but incidental.  It’s mostly there to paper over the disdain for men which forms the ad’s core.  Which makes sense, because this ad is all about vicariousness and the pathos it entails: the contempt which appears to be foisted upon women (vicariously, at second hand) is actually directed at men.  (As usual, what at first looks like flattery ends up extracting a price.)

I meant to say that the stereotype is hateful, specifically, not just stupid.

Sadly, I have seen the demographic that this ad appeals to.  Too many people in America are just bumbling through life, doing what their parents did, never realizing why they are miserable, blaming other people. I talk to some of these people at work and their lack of self-awareness isn’t apparent when they talk to me, so that they do what they do, and tolerate what they do is mindboggling. I’ve been to a super bowl party where the men watched the game on the couch and the women socialized. It would have made me sick if I wasn’t busy getting drunk just to have a good time.

I am not convinced that there has been any sort of increase in that kind of ad.

I can’t speak to a recent increase, but I’m pretty sure this kind of thing isn’t new.  I’ve seen vintage ads along these lines from the 50s and 60s—even 70s.  Check out the second one (there’s ‘punishing the servant class for doing your work’, right there):

http://guyism.com/2008/11/the-9-most-disturbingly-misogynistic-old-print-ads.html

I can’t speak to a recent increase, but I’m pretty sure this kind of thing isn’t new.

I’m 28 and my mother was able to take full advantage of second wave feminism herself. My point in saying that is that the messages in the ads are not new and have been picked apart and defined as negative for now two generations. It may only seem like an increase to those of us who are sick and tired of the promotion of harmful tropes. It may be an increase, but whatever it is, there are too many of them out there, period.

Ursula, I agree (and was responding to other posters).

I will say sometimes I get really effing sick of casual hatred for my gender being an incidental side-effect of another gender’s inward-directed angst.

Me too. It’s sad that so many men hate themselves and are miserable, but I’m tired of being blamed for it and expected to laugh when people insult me for things I don’t do and don’t want to do.

irv, deliberately strewing contempt for women—-both in the assumption that they should do thankless work and like it, and that men should roll their eyes and mock them for it—-is classic misogyny.

Eric, mocking me for having panties (i.e., for being female) and mocking me for not liking unfair stereotypes (that I, being female, am automatically boring and a member of a class of people required to do unpaid work and like it) is pretty fucking misogynist, too.  If you don’t like being called a misogynist, stop being one.

Lots of women are the clothes buyers for their husbands. In many cases, the lack of ability to buy fashionable clothing is a matter of learned or chosen helplessness. Or a dynamic in which the wife insists that the man dress better, the man being unmotivated enough to make the effort, so the man hands over the reins-of-power to the woman when it comes to what the man’s choice of clothes will be. Clothes are frequently a power struggle in relationships, and many times it is solved by handing over control to someone else.

Jeff at #12:

Who the hell is going to be so disconnected from his partner that he can’t be bothered to care when she’s actually doing things to help you?

May I introduce you to my partner’s father? My partner says he’s infected with Massholery. I think he’s borderline Aspie and clinically dissocial/anti-social (actually both).

Last week he got upset at her mother when she told him he was high maintenance. She had neglected to pick up a prescription for him and he went off on a tirade.

She does all of the cooking & associated kitchen work, all of the cleaning, she takes his grease- and oil-stained $85 aloha shirts to the cleaners (for some reason he refuses to wear less expensive shirts when he works on his rental bobcats and tractors) and retrieves them, and she buys his pants (as well as the rest of his clothes). Plus she keeps the books and does the billing at their business.

And this jagoff has the nerve to berate her as “a bad wife” when she doesn’t get one of her wifely tasks completed.

I despise this man.

The one I hate the worst, and is in my opinion one of the most egregious varieties, is the “men are too goddamned stupid to [insert activity that ‘smart’ housewife has to do for him]” narrative.  Double whammy!  It’s hateful towards men while also reinforcing the “women must be held responsible for doing all of the work” meme.

Many of those ads are specifically targeted at women.  It appeals to them by claiming they’re superior to men (since men are supposedly too stupid to figure out how to clean a toilet) while also charmingly reinforcing the age-old meme that household chores are a woman’s responsibility.  I think both messages appeal to women who have exactly zero affinity with feminism.  They’ve accepted their lot in life, don’t want that challenged because that might make them doubt their choices, and still want to get their cynical yuks in about men’s alleged incompetence.

Yet more evidence that it’s not feminists who hate men.

My 56-year-old brother, recently divorced, asked my 80 year-old-mother to buy him pants for Christmas. Because he’s unusually tall and it’s ‘hard to find’pants that fit.

That smoking crater you’ve noticed at my brother’s address? Coincidence.

“Stream sports while your wife buys you slacks”

I don’t really appreciate advertising that assumes I’m a total warthog. This just makes me go “fuck you, I hate sports, I’ll buy my own goddamned ‘slacks’, take whatever it is you’re trying to sell me and ram it.”

They’ve accepted their lot in life, don’t want that challenged because that might make them doubt their choices, and still want to get their cynical yuks in about men’s alleged incompetence.

What’s fun is when sexists get pissed about that “men are stupid” meme and think women must have come up with it. It’s supposed to work in your favor, morons. I guess even condescending to women and throwing them a bone is more than they deserve; they should be happy to get a punch in the face for their trouble.

Years ago, when I lived in Orlando, there was an article about a high end strip club.  One of the patrons told the writer that he liked to hang out there while his wife shopped at the mall.  He figured it was a fair trade - both of them doing something they liked to do.  I remember thinking, wait a second, she shops for the entire family (and you know that’s what she’s doing) while he looks at naked babes.  She’s doing a necessary chore, while possibly deriving some enjoyment out of it while he gets pure enjoyment and entertainment of watching strippers (with the underlying subtext that these are women that he vastly prefers looking at and would much rather fuck than his wife).  It really pissed me off and I wanted to write a letter to the editor about it but wasn’t able to find the exact words to describe why it was so offensive.  Nearly twenty years later and nothing has changed, apparently.  Men streaming sports while women do chores for them, with the men pretending that they’re both enjoying themselves.  I hate shopping and unless I’m strictly buying clothes for myself I expect my bf to accompany me.  Shopping is not my job and I’d be damned if I’d be buying pants for him.

There’s an ad I hate right now about AT&T;‘s ability to stream/record 4 different programs on one DVR.  The man of the house wants to watch MNF on his ‘lucky couch’.  The Wife/Mom and the kids want to watch something or do something else upstairs, so she asks him to go to the basement to watch MNF.  He won’t b/c his team might lose if he’s not on the lucky couch.

She tells him they can record programs and play them back on any TV.

He whines like a toddler and sings “I’ve got my lucky couch” to the MNF themesong while she and presumably the kids stomp off to the basement.

I fail to understand any of this commercial, other than it’s really nasty infantilizing the man and misogyny toward the Wife/Mom.

It’s football, and it’s on right now.  Does she want him to tape it and watch it on the lucky couch later?  He’s got to hope no one mentions the score to him,then, which can be problematic.  We routinely tune in to shows 20 mins in so we can fastforward through the commercials, but it’s hard with sports b/c people will call and otherwise try to interact with us.

The commercial where the Dad wants to cancel one show and the Mom and two kids all “Mexican standoff” him b/c they all want to save some show is better b/c it makes sense—they all want to watch 4 different shows that are on at the same time, and with AT&T;they can.

But Lucky Couch doesn’t make sense.  Wife/Mom and kids aren’t after anything in particular, much less 3 shows that are on during the game.  They just seem to want to kick Man down to the basement, which would be annoying, since Sunday/Monday football is a known time activity and their desire to kick him out seems baseless and capricious—EXCEPT that the Man is the biggest whiny asshole on the planet with his “Lucky Couch” drivel.

All I can figure is that it’s supposed to be funny, and you’re supposed to get the 4 in one DVR pitch from the narrator.  But it’s not funny.  It’s annoying misogyny, with the associated misandry.

As for seeing more of it?  We’ve had men should be real men backlash going on in earnest for longer than the W administration.  More movies and tv shows are blatently sexist as well as the ads.  I think it’s easier to look at when sexism ebbed for a bit than to wonder when sexism started to rise again—the ebbing was the anomoly.

Also, I realize that men’s clothing sizes are more standardized than women’s but do guys regularly buy, or have someone else buy pants for them without trying them on?

In many cases, the lack of ability to buy fashionable clothing is a matter of learned or chosen helplessness. Or a dynamic in which the wife insists that the man dress better, the man being unmotivated enough to make the effort, so the man hands over the reins-of-power to the woman when it comes to what the man’s choice of clothes will be.

It may also have to do with a formative environment where one grew up wearing uniforms to/from school and/or being so poor that one wore whatever was handed down from older relatives coupled with the fact expressing too much concern over appearances or dressing in “too feminine” colors often resulted in teasing/beatings from the local schoolyard bullies. 

Personally, I prefer to wear colors which seem “cool” to me while being seemingly “low maintenance”...which means lots of black, dark khaki, or dark blue/grey colors.  Bright colors are not only too troublesome in terms of being easily dirtied, but also looks bad on me because my skin tone is so pale.  Don’t know whether that is fashionable or not…and I would rather not care, especially considering everyone keeps saying I look great in a suit….yet wearing one leaves me with a feeling of being in a straitjacket of corporate or upper/upper-middle class wannabe moron vibe.

Oh!  I just remembered how I knew that the woman in the story was shopping for the whole family.  The story came out during the holiday season and the wife was doing the Christmas shopping while her husband was at a strip club.  And yeah, he thought that was an even trade.

exholt, don’t take that statement personally or think it was a criticism. As someone currently sitting at his desk wearing a tshirt and old jeans, I think that is all fine as long as the person is just doing what he’s doing. In many coupledom situations, one partner may have a different, uh, “vision” for how he/she sees her significant other dressing, and thus tension is created, and sometimes this tension is resolved by having one partner (usually the woman) take over the “fashion” part of the household.

Also, I realize that men’s clothing sizes are more standardized than women’s but do guys regularly buy, or have someone else buy pants for them without trying them on?

I prefer to buy/choose my clothes to ensure I get exactly what I want rather than entrust others. 

Probably derived from experiences of repeatedly experiencing relatives who bought other items like computers where they didn’t do enough research and ended up getting me something which fell apart very quickly because the quality was crap.

The KGB ads irritate me - and not just because they are charging for information that can easily be found on wikipedia with ANY smart phone. There is one where a guy wants to know his girlfriend’s bra size. My answer to that question would be to ASK HER. If he wanted to buy a bra as a gift for her, he should be close enough to her that he could pick up one of her bras while she was in the bathroom and check the size himself. The fruit comparison that is offered is just more stupid because, as anyone familiar with bras knows, that is only one half of the equation.

do guys regularly buy, or have someone else buy pants for them without trying them on?

Not every time I buy pants, but fairly regularly I will see a pair of pants in a store or on ebay with my measurements listed and buy them, knowing that they will fit. I’m average-sized, and men’s pant sizes are actual measurements, so pants listed with a waist x length size is almost guaranteed to fit. There are some edge cases where this might not work (particularly tight-fitting pants will be harder to squeeze into at my waist size, and I might have to go an inch larger), but that general rule tends to work well. YMMV if you are particularly stout or tall, of course.

I would go into fashion marketing just to launch a line of women’s clothes that uses actual measurements as sizes. I think it would be revolutionary.

@keshmeshi: thanks for articulating my thoughts better than I did! 

God, I *hate* the advertising industry.

M,
You are into SciFi and Fantasy, are you not?  I would guess the answer is yes, given your Battlestar Gallactica obsession.

You might try reading a series of novels called Gor, which we’re written by a professor of philosophy by the name of John Norman.  I really think you might dig them if you got into them.

[to the thread in general, because I have no wish to engage with this poster.]

That’s really creepy. Is it addressed to Amanda?

The combination of assumed familiarity, addressing Amanda with an abbreviation that no one else calls her, with the recommendation that she read a series of books that are intended as porn, and “run the fuck away if you ever meet a guy who owns this, then block his number and warn all your friends” porn at that, with not even being explicit about what the books are (nice little touch of “trick the bitch” fantasy there), with it all being totally off topic for the thread… it adds up to super mega creepiness and it’s ringing stalkeriffic warning bells for me. I just felt like I should say that.

In many coupledom situations, one partner may have a different, uh, “vision” for how he/she sees her significant other dressing, and thus tension is created, and sometimes this tension is resolved by having one partner (usually the woman) take over the “fashion” part of the household.

ahh, but this comes back to the old housework thing, where women get judged more for this stuff—if your husband/significant other looks like a schlub or illkempt, the woman gets criticised or judged for it. clearly, you are not taking “proper care of your man!”. ugh.

Daisyparker - I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who noticed that.  Describing the Gor novels as “scifi/fantasy written by a philosophy professor” and telling someone they should read them without any warning is fucking creepy, and just plain mean.

Lots of women are the clothes buyers for their husbands. In many cases, the lack of ability to buy fashionable clothing is a matter of learned or chosen helplessness. Or a dynamic in which the wife insists that the man dress better, the man being unmotivated enough to make the effort, so the man hands over the reins-of-power to the woman when it comes to what the man’s choice of clothes will be. Clothes are frequently a power struggle in relationships, and many times it is solved by handing over control to someone else.

Of course, the solution is, “Honey, will you help me pick out some slacks?” not, “Honey, buy me some slacks while I watch sports.”

Even when someone is in an overt servant position, it’s usually not okay to make fun of them for being so boring while they wait on you.

Hmpf. Some guy waited upon hand and foot *of course* needs to believe his lazy, incompetent ass is in some way worth more than the woman getting the work done, or he’d develop some humility and we can’t have that.

Rumblelizard: Commercials in general assume the worst about men and women both.

Good point. “There’s something wrong with you and buying our stuff will fix it!” is the eternal message of advertising.

daisyparker #47: That guy is on crack. Or new to the internet. I have seen more competent trolling by 13 year old fangirls.

MonkeyShines has always been a creep. Because he’s been pretty much ignored, he has only become creepier over time.

The Gor books are scary rape porn.  I have no idea why anyone would think a feminist would enjoy them.

Antigone, were you being condescending to be funny or mean? I hope it was the former. I liked the cookie picture.

The more I think about that sign, I do find it to be misogynist after all. I guess the idea took a while to sink in. You’d probably have to be sexist to find that sign amusing, and I think that’s why I just thought it was stupid.

Stream sports while your wife buys you slacks

“Play Nintendo DS while your mommy buys you slacks.”

I mean, really, that’s the message. It’s almost as insulting to the men as it is to the women.

I hate shopping for clothes, and when I have to re-stock the high-end of my wardrobe I’ll usually ask a woman to do me a solid and come along with me for input. But geez, I’m not clod enough to sit on the sidelines playing with my mobile while she does all the work.

do guys regularly buy, or have someone else buy pants for them without trying them on?

Only stupid or infantile guys. For anything tailored (including slacks), you have to try on. For casual stuff, I usually head into the Banana Republic-Gap-Old Navy empire (where sizes are standard and the colours/fabrics are easily matched) with a rough idea of my waist/length. But even then, I have to spend 10 minutes trying on a couple of pairs of pants to confirm before grabbing the same other colours and heading for the till. But to have someone else choose my pants or any other clothing without my involvement? Please.

You might try reading a series of novels called Gor, which we’re written by a professor of philosophy by the name of John Norman.  I really think you might dig them if you got into them.

And why do you think a feminist who’s not an extreme D/s aficianado might enjoy these “philosophy”-infused fantasy novels, creep-o?

I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find that your mommy (or some mommy substitute) still buys your slacks, Monkeyshines. And your Tarl Cabout Underoos.

MonkeyShines has always been a creep. Because he’s been pretty much ignored, he has only become creepier over time.

Yep. He has a weird and unfulfilled obsession with getting Amanda’s attention, but clearly hasn’t progressed beyond the elementary school mentality of “he hits you because he likes you.” I hope for his sake that he is a high school boy, because this kind of behaviour in an adult male is pathetic.

Amanda doesn’t ban him becasue he does provide some entertainment value as a sad figure of fun. I’ll also bet he has some interesting Gor fan-fic about a love-lorn court jester who’s held in contempt even by the harem girls—until one day ...

My girlfriend buys me pants all the time. She shops at secondhand stores and as I have almost the figure of a lanky teenage boy even at 42, there are plenty of cool pants from Structure and other high end places from when that 16yo basketball star morphed into a linebacker. I used to just buy Dickies at Fiesta Mart before I met her.

But the whole issue here is that she enjoys this. She also likes sports more than I do. I pay her back with pet food samples from work and a modeling session. BTW, she’s more into sports than I am.

Just decompressing from two hours of Christmas shopping with BF, and I see this. Argh. We both hate shopping, we recognize it as a chore, and we view it as shared responsibility. So dear misogynist admakers, kindly fuck off. Thanks.

YMMV if you are particularly stout or tall, of course.

Or, y’know, short. I know how tough it must be to find clothes when you’re a particularly tall man, but at least there are stores acknowledging that unusually tall men exist. /rant

Okay, sorry. Anyway, pants-buying: gotta try ‘em on. Even between pants with allegedly identical inseam and waist measurements, there can be some pretty significant variation. This matters a lot when you don’t have Average American Man size and proportions. I’ve had a lot of success lately with Old Navy, but I still reject more pairs of pants than I end up keeping. The ad is stupid. It really is like your Mommy buying you little baby overalls when you’re three years old, because who cares if they look a little goofy?

Daisy and everyone else..thanks for the heads up on the Gor series. When I read that post I was interested, before I saw who posted it of course, in the books. When I googled them I didn’t get more than a basic summary of plot lines and blah, blah, blah. Nothing about rape/porn creepiness. So thank you. I’m sure Amanda has it well in hand but sometimes I worry about posters like that one that seem fixated on her.

Monkeyshines is clearly like an advertising exec. He expects us to be stupid.

Sorry, Monkeyass, but feminists know about Gor. It’s pretty much legendary for being disgustingly anti-woman. (and I actually read one or two when I was a teen, so don’t think I am just going by reputation.)

btw, I’m with Ursula. I don’t buy stuff where the ads make it clear they are trying to appeal only to men. Maybe we need to make the companies aware of what their ad campaigns are doing, though, so they know we’re voting with our feet and not just not interested in their type of product.

Oh, and misogynist ads in the 50s and 60s can still be backlash. WWI and WWII were big opportunities for women to get out of the house and learn how capable they were in the workforce. They couldn’t put women back in long dresses after WWI, and after WWII, a lot of gals were restless.

Also, I realize that men’s clothing sizes are more standardized than women’s but do guys regularly buy, or have someone else buy pants for them without trying them on?

I can’t recall the last time I tried on a pair of pants at a store, no.  I wear a 40X32 (maybe I could pull off 38X32, but I don’t try), and so if it says 40X32, it fits.  Now, if one’s particularly discerning about how pants fit, or how the appear, maybe they wouldn’t do this.  It’s possible it relates back to the “totally blind about our appearance” training, and thus doesn’t apply to everyone.  Dunno about that.

The notion that what people of the opposite gender do for you is compulsive, along with the idea that this compulsiveness can be manipulated to particular ends, is very prevalent.

You can see it in Evolutionary Psychology notions that reduce us to being unconscious carriers of particular genes, or the Nice Guy’s notion that women have no choice but to respond to a specific type of stimulation by producing the reaction that is anticipated.

In all, I think the prevalence of the ideology of human compulsiveness is derived from observing group conformity to systems of power—for instance, in compliance with the boss’s orders.  Those whose educations have been rather too shallow imagine, I suppose, that people conform to what is expected of them, within hierarchies of power, because they are compulsive, and not because they are compelled to (by external factors).

So we have the ideology of compulsiveness at large.  It orginates from a failure to observe closely enough.

What about the current proliferation of the zombie motif, in film and drama?

I believe that the ideology of compulsiveness and the current interest in zombies both derive from the sense that most humans are far from free to do as they please with the lives.

Daisy and everyone else..thanks for the heads up on the Gor series. When I read that post I was interested, before I saw who posted it of course, in the books. When I googled them I didn’t get more than a basic summary of plot lines and blah, blah, blah. Nothing about rape/porn creepiness. So thank you. I’m sure Amanda has it well in hand but sometimes I worry about posters like that one that seem fixated on her.

As I recall from the one book in the series I read, called I kid you not, “Slave Girl of Gor”, the author’s general thesis is that all women, whether from Earth or Gor, really want to be dominated and raped.  Only pansy-assed Earth dudes aren’t man enough to do it.  Gorean males were described as twice as intelligent and dominating as Earth men, whereas Gorean and Earth women were roughly equal in terms of their inferior intelligence and desire to be dominated.  Oh yeah, and the Slave Girl heroine was described as “delicately but excitingly proportioned”.  Her measurements were supposedly 30-20-30.

I usually try to get away with just taking the size off the pants I already have, but often find pants can’t really work that way much later when someone else tells me about how the crotch hangs too low or the leg length is off. I don’t like being naked in public, and thus generally hate fitting rooms.

Don’t have a really good solution to this, but I’ve been able to get away with like three sets of pants for some years. I’m a bit more appearance-blind than most men, as I generally assume that nobody ever looks at me.

Don’t worry.  The chance that I’m going to pick up a sci-fi series recommended by a known moron falls well below zero.  I’ve taken a few smart people’s recommendations and picked up genre books, and hated the stilted prose.  I wouldn’t trust a sexist monster.  I didn’t even realize he was addressing me, it was so unlikely I could ever give a shit.

And I like shopping, but so does Marc. We have fun doing it together.  What can be a chore by yourself can be fun if someone else is helping you out, and you enjoy their company.  I guess that the idea that a man could enjoy a woman’s company doesn’t compute to sexist marketers.

I do recommend “Houseplants of Gor” http://www.rdrop.com/~/wyvern/data/houseplants.html

and “Gay, Bejeweled, Nazi Bikers of Gor” http://books.adultfanfiction.net/story.php?no=544176437

Decent parodies that also give you a glimpse of the author’s terrible prose.

What can be a chore by yourself can be fun if someone else is helping you out, and you enjoy their company.

Exactly. But as sitcoms teach us, men never enjoy the company of their wives.

exholt, don’t take that statement personally or think it was a criticism. As someone currently sitting at his desk wearing a tshirt and old jeans, I think that is all fine as long as the person is just doing what he’s doing. In many coupledom situations, one partner may have a different, uh, “vision” for how he/she sees her significant other dressing, and thus tension is created, and sometimes this tension is resolved by having one partner (usually the woman) take over the “fashion” part of the household.

Didn’t take it as such.  Just wanted to toss that out there as another possibility as that’s the reason so many male classmates from my old neighborhood would refuse to wear “feminine colors”, especially pink even into their 20s.  The trauma of being bullied was such it still affected them 10+ years afterwards….even though they’ll never admit to it.  The fear of being questioned on one’s masculinity is a powerful thing among insecure and/or traumatized dudes. 

Then again, I have seen a recent uptick in the numbers of men wearing pink shirts and clothing in the NYC area and younger Chinese men feeling no shame in wearing pink clothing or carrying pink electronics…..

So, something I do not understand:

If women are assumed to do all the shopping always because shopping is a girly women activity and real men never shop ever, then WHY is so much stuff advertised with the apparently deliberate intent to alienate all potential female customers from buying it? Who the fuck do they think is *left*?

I’d think alienating half your potential customer base must be a really stupid thing to do mathematically, but if women do more of the shopping then men, then women become MORE than half of your likely customer base. Deliberately alienating more-than-half of your customer base is pretty much the only thing I can think of that’s ever dumber than alienating half of it.

As long as “women do all the shopping,” I think ALL products should be marketed towards women. Including cars and large TVs and fancy cell phones. Marketing stuff towards men should be banned until companies can come up with a way to actually market stuff TOWARDS men and not just AWAY from women.

If nothing else, it’d be good for my blood pressure. I grew up with higher expectations than this, so I go into serious “THAT DID NOT JUST HAPPEN, THAT SHIT DOES NOT HAPPEN” mode at… well, almost everything these days, apparently. Either the back has lashed a *lot* from when I was little, or I was much more oblivious than I thought.

It’s real simple: if specific advertising works, it’ll get repeated, in slightly changed versions, for as long as it works.  If it doesn’t work, it gets dropped.

Advertisers don’t give a rat’s ass about anything other than getting more business for their clients.

Realistically, advertising used to be a lot more bland.  Sure there were stereotypes that fit in with the current culture, but they were as inoffensive as the culture deemed them; and God forbid any attempts at humor or edginess.

Now, being funny and edgy is what it’s all about, and some of that is going to annoy some people.  But if it succeeds overall, then it’s good advertising.

It won’t be all that long before Amanda writes a post mocking someone else’s claim that a specific advertisement defames Christianity or Christmas; then it’ll be someone else’s ox which is getting gored.

exholt wrote:

Then again, I have seen a recent uptick in the numbers of men wearing pink shirts and clothing in the NYC area

Maybe you missed the preppy look of the eighties, where even some manly men wore pink Izods.  The trick was to find the pink Izod with the green alligator, rather than the blue one.  If you had that, with your chinos and topsiders, you were just in.

All you’ve (correctly, though as usual accidentally) pointed out, Dana, is that the problem isn’t as much with advertisers as with the social attitudes that the advertisers are (understandably, from a profit perspective) playing to. The social attitudes need to change; nobody in this thread thinks that, say, banning sexist advertisements would actually solve the larger problem.

Defaming women and defaming Christianity are two very different things. I think you know that, but conservative “common sense” tends to encourage beating around the bush about such things.

Realistically, advertising used to be a lot more bland.

Dana, I don’t think even you are old enough to remember that era.

Sure there were stereotypes that fit in with the current culture, but they were as inoffensive as the culture deemed them

The “culture” deemed them inoffensive because those who were the target were not allowed to do any “deeming.”

Maybe you missed the preppy look of the eighties, where even some manly men wore pink Izods.

That never happened. Never. No one wore pink polo shirts in the 80s. I deny everything.

Even putting aside your attempt at juxtaposing “manly men” with “preppy.”

Maybe you missed the preppy look of the eighties, where even some manly men wore pink Izods.  The trick was to find the pink Izod with the green alligator, rather than the blue one.  If you had that, with your chinos and topsiders, you were just in.

As someone who was a child of the 1980’s, that may have existed in preppy neighborhoods or hangouts…but not where I grew up.  Anyone who dressed in pink or even “preppy” who was dumb enough to wander into my childhood neighborhood would likely find themselves targeted for a vicious beating and/or mugging from the local dropout teens/young adults. 

Even if there wasn’t the masculinity enforcement factor, one cannot rule out the anti-preppy/yuppie attitude that was common among many in neighborhoods like the one I grew up in.  Ah yes….the days when I heard many utterances/graffiti with anti-yuppie/preppy sentiments….

Thankfully I was too young/poor to participate in what passed for “high fashion” in the 1980s.  Looking back on my older cousin’s high school/college yearbooks….I cannot help but rotflol at the over the top hairdos and the overuse of spandex…....especially by the wannabe heavy metalists common in middle/upper-class suburbia where they resided…..

Also, I realize that men’s clothing sizes are more standardized than women’s but do guys regularly buy, or have someone else buy pants for them without trying them on?

Mr. Kristin just tried on pants, in the store, before buying them for the first time ever today, I think. I’ve told him for 10 years that clothes are sized differently depending on brand and still the man would wave me off, buy them, get the damn things home and be pissed if they didn’t fit. And it was like it was a shocking new discovery every time. He was used to having his mom buy all his clothes before we married, and also having mom take back the clothes that didn’t fit for him (do not EVER marry a man who is used to this, or at least not without serious and explicit discussion of the issue, because otherwise it WILL drive you batshit like it drove me)) so he couldn’t get it through his head that he had to try things on if he didn’t want to schlep things back to the store. It took gaining some weight and 3 sets of pants in a row that didn’t fit for him to surrender to the dressing room.

“Play Nintendo DS while your mommy buys you slacks.”

I don’t even let my 10-year-old son pull that crap. He got the idea somewhere (probably his grandfather) that it would be cool and worldly to act like shopping for school clothes was all beneath his interest, this past fall, and I made sure to disabuse him of that notion and establish that *I* am doing *him* a favor by shopping for his clothes, not the other way around. If he wasn’t involved and fully present, minus the potentially-sexist ‘tude, fine, I wouldn’t force him to do it, but I wasn’t going to do it for him and I certainly wasn’t going to do it for him with him acting like I was dragging him around. (And if all he wanted was to stock up on a pile of identical jeans and a pile of identical shirts because clothes shopping bored him so much, that would have been fine with me.)

I have no citation for this, #73, so take it with a grain of salt- but I remember a 2005 marketing class in grad school teaching me that 80% of consumer purchase decisions are made by women.  Including car purchases.  And advertisers know this.

It’s real simple: if specific advertising works, it’ll get repeated, in slightly changed versions, for as long as it works.  If it doesn’t work, it gets dropped.

Dana, I think it was Amanda herself, right here on Pandagon, who wrote a good analysis of how marketing can actually work against its own interests because marketers are unable to see outside of their prejudices. It was in the context of movies being marketed to women, but I don’t think the issues are very different.

The ad is no more offensive than the slew of sitcoms on television that position men and fathers as either beer swilling twits or uncaring oafs.  Stereotypes are easy to comprehend and while they are largely lies they create an easy story to tell.  If the ad is offensive write a letter to the company saying so.  It won’t do anything but just like conservatives do, if you bitch enough, long enough, things change.  Especially if the company thinks their bottom line will be hurt. 

Atleast some of you recognize it cuts both way.  It insults everybody, it isn’t a women thing, it’s a human thing.  It tells us we’re unenlightened fools who walk around with the assumption our spouse should be doing everything and us nothing.

Antigone, it looks like we’re both tied at 1 for stupid posts, then. Last one to three’s a rotten egg!

Xeranar: when the woman and the man in a hetero relationship both assume/act like the man is a moron and therefore the woman must take care of him hand and foot, only one of them benefits from it. Would you care to guess which one? (Hint: it’s the one being taken care of hand and foot.)

The ad is no more offensive than the slew of sitcoms on television that position men and fathers as either beer swilling twits or uncaring oafs.

Grammar tip: when you phrase it that way, it sounds like you’re saying neither of those things are offensive. From the rest of your post I don’t think that’s what you’re saying, but nevertheless, it already sounds like you’re telling us it’s not that bad and we’re being hysterical bitchez. Or something. Your post seems to be defending and attacking the post at the same time, and telling us to complain about it and telling us not to complain about it at the same time. (“bitching won’t do anything but if you bitch enough it’ll do something”?)

“This ad is just as offensive as those effing sitcoms…” might put what you’re saying and what you sound like you’re saying somewhat more in sync.

[Quote]when the woman and the man in a hetero relationship both assume/act like the man is a moron and therefore the woman must take care of him hand and foot, only one of them benefits from it. Would you care to guess which one? (Hint: it’s the one being taken care of hand and foot.)

You’re saying that men enjoy being told their too stupid to be trusted with basic tasks? 

[Quote]Grammar tip: when you phrase it that way, it sounds like you’re saying neither of those things are offensive. From the rest of your post I don’t think that’s what you’re saying, but nevertheless, it already sounds like you’re telling us it’s not that bad and we’re being hysterical bitchez.

Just as you use a condescending tone to correct me when I didn’t need correction, I was using a sarcastic note to point out the complex hypocrisy that advertisers hoist on everybody everyday.  Father knows best and King of Queens are diametric opposites but equally offensive to a proper healthy relationship.  But you can tell that advertisers from their salaries and secluded culture they live in that they have no sense of what a healthy relationship is or care to promote one.  Course, there are plenty of adverts that promote healthy relationship and family dynamics but they aren’t aimed at individuals, they’re aimed at families and focus around children.

And I failed to close the quotes properly.  Excuse me on that issue. Also, I would like to make a point I support equality in all aspects, but I tend to be a bit gruff.

when the woman and the man in a hetero relationship both assume/act like the man is a moron and therefore the woman must take care of him hand and foot, only one of them benefits from it. Would you care to guess which one? (Hint: it’s the one being taken care of hand and foot.)

Well, yes and no. As everyone here knows, Patriarchy Hurts Men Too. But that phrase comes with the understanding that it hurts women a hell of a lot more, because it puts them in the subservient position.

But let’s face it - a conservative, unenlightened marriage is depressing from any direction.

The ad is no more offensive than the slew of sitcoms on television that position men and fathers as either beer swilling twits or uncaring oafs.

Yeah, and Al Bundy and Tim Allen were the funniest motherfuckers on their shows too.

Yes, Xeranar, when one is a servant to another person, the servant’s time is consumed with serving another person. The person being served is relieved of normal duties and free to pursue interests and grow in ways unattainable by someone consumed with serving. You might be “insulted” but women in this situation are permanently stunted from growing.

Furthermore, something that sucks more for women than men can also suck for me too. This isn’t a competition.

can also suck for men* too

I can tell you from EXPERIENCE that the University of Texas was full of preppie fratboys wearing pink Izods during the 80’s.

Just sayin’

I’m not a big pants shopper myself, and I only buy new pants under extreme duress. If I ever have a boyfriend/husband who expects me to buy him pants along with buying them for myself I’m just going to buy 2 of everything I like and he can cram his junk into that as best he can. :D

And I was *totally* that kid who hated clothes shopping, mostly because I started growing into my adult weight before my adult height—it all shifted around nicely eventually, but it took a while—so almost *nothing* in the kids’ section fit me without alteration. Apparently girls under age 16 all have hips, waists and thighs with the exact same diameter. 9.9 So I did that whole find-something-you-can-survive-and-buy-one-in-every-color thing. (And the whole driving-my-poor-mother-up-the-dressing-room-wall-every-September thing too.)

I do recommend “Houseplants of Gor” http://www.rdrop.com/~/wyvern/data/houseplants.html

Decent parodies that also give you a glimpse of the author’s terrible prose.

OMG I am reading “Gay, Bejeweled, Nazi Bikers of Gor” and I am dying. You killed me. That is the gayest thing I have ever read (and I have read a *lot* of gay things.)

He was the most manly man I had ever seen.

Even more manly than the manly men of Gor, who are, by and large, descended from Spartan warriors brought centuries ago by the Pope-Kings, and who were, of course, the most manly of all the men of Earth.

“Yer cute when you run, Sweet Cheeks,” he said.

Suffer with me, Pandagon’s readership. :p

“Lots of women are the clothes buyers for their husbands”

Really?  The whole idea fills me with revulsion.  That’s a mommy thing, not a lover thing.  I have never seen that.  My dad bought his own suits, and my brother has a big closet filled with clothes all of which he bought himself.  That must have informed my choices because I have honestly never been involved with a man who didn’t shop for himself.  Frankly if women are doing this for their husbands it goes a long way in explaining why so many marrieds I know are no longer having sex.

My brother is almost 30 and my mom still buys his pants.  It’s amazing.  He hates new clothes so much that he’ll refuse to try on new shoes even when his shoes are worn through.  And he hates shopping.  Unless it’s for toys.  Then it’s okay.  He’s also one of those guys who had a lot of male anxiety and couldn’t even hold my purse for 10 seconds while I buttoned a coat, lest the contact between purse and flesh turn him into a woman.  (He would hold it at arm’s length between thumb and forefinger so that surely NO ONE would think it was his.)

My dad will buy his own clothes, but seems to hate them as much as my brother does.  He doesn’t own very many, and doesn’t put a lot of effort into looking nice. 

My brother puts almost NO effort into looking nice.  The funny part is that his hair is really long and people sometimes mistake him for a woman from the back, but he refuses to cut it because he thinks it’s “cool.”  It looks dreadful.  And you would think that someone who can’t buy their own clothes lest they grow a vagina would not want to be mistaken for female ...

Oh well.

The belief that capitalism will automatically trump racism and sexism is an airy-fairy fantasy, easily disproven by the fact that equality only seemed possible when the federal government stepped in and started making laws about it.  Turns out that the masters of the world would often rather be surrounded by people who look like them—-and cater to the prejudices of people like them—-than make more money.  Which makes sense.  Money, on its own, is useless.  What it buys you is social esteem and power.  As do racism and sexism, so of course, they will be able to hold their own with money.

You’re saying that men enjoy being told their too stupid to be trusted with basic tasks? 

No, but for many who are in charge, it is preferable to doing basic tasks.  And anyone who pretends they haven’t seen a man feign helplessness in the kitchen in order to get someone else to do something for him is lying.

I would go into fashion marketing just to launch a line of women’s clothes that uses actual measurements as sizes. I think it would be revolutionary.

Please, no.  I have a hell of a time finding things in a size 30 because large numbers frighten women’s clothing retailers, I’d be completely SOL if I had to buy my tops in a size 54.

Fix the culture that says the numbers on women’s clothing are an assessment of her personal worth, and then we can talk about true number sizing.

Bon Appetit: Does not sound like fear of “being mistaken for”, more like a fear of being seen doing womanly things. Like buying suits. Or getting his hair cut.

Godless Heathen: Fix the culture that says the numbers on women’s clothing are an assessment of her personal worth, and then we can talk about true number sizing.

Fixing the numbers might be part of fixing the culture, because the numbers get tied to images, and the images need different numbers. If “inches” creates too-high numbers, just use “feet” instead, and after a few years everyone will want to dump the stupid point-somethings.

Godless Heathen - I was in my thirties when I found out that women’s designer jeans come in sizes 27, 28, 29 rather than 4, 6, 8 - seemed rather counter-intuitive to me since the most expensive boutiques like to carry sizes 00, 0, 2, and hide the size 4 and 6 clothes in the back. If I buy new clothing it’s at the Gap or Ann Taylor Loft or maybe LL Bean. I only found out about these chic sizes from dating someone who had a significantly fancier lifestyle. So I guess whatever you number the clothes, if those brands carry cachet, they are fine. Besides, some renumbering is going to have to happen soon, or they are going to need to go into negative sizes if someone is too small for 00.

I have a great idea for an non-misogynist ad for game streaming: point out that I can stream the game and buy my own pants during online the TV time-outs. That should work for men and women, doesn’t treat anyone like a servant, and recognizes that adults can buy their own damn pants.

The clothing thing is not limited to heterosexuals. My partner used to be partnered with a woman who bought all of her clothes. The ex knew her size and taste, would keep track of what she needed down to underwear, and the clothes would just appear. (She did not work outside the home and they had no kids, so shopping was her main hobby.) My partner is sometimes a little wistful that clothes no longer just appear, since the full extent of my shopping for her is picking up some underwear for her at Target if I’m there anyway and she mentioned that she needed to get some. My partner does most of the cooking at home and plenty of the cleaning and certainly does not treat me as any kind of servant, but buying my own clothes is enough of a task and I am not shopping without her. She is not good at picking clothing for herself, and I will say it is horribly exacerbated by the lack of options for women of size, but I’ll only do it if she is there with me to try on clothing. I’m not going to buy a bunch of things only to be told at home what she wants and what I get to take back. She has accepted that the package that is me does not include a shopping service, and does appreciate that I will go with her and find flattering clothing, or stand up to pushy saleswomen who want to dress her too feminine.

We have to distinguish between “learned helplessness” and “learned deferral”.  I handled an awful lot of divorces and have seen an awful lot of couples where the husband stopped doing stuff not because he was an idiot or lazy but because after the 999th time of “no, it’s not done that way it’s done THIS way, god, I can’t leave you to do anything” they started to shrug and say, (whether out loud or internally), “fine ... you do it”. 

It’s a poisonous dynamic.  There have been previous threads here on the issue of how girls/women are often raised with BS brainwashing on How Things Should Be Done and are explicitly and implicitly held accountable for living up to the BS.  Me, I blame that brainwashing for a lot of this nasty stuff.  (That’s not to let dozy sexist prats off the hook, mind, just to note that we’re not dealing with a homogeneous demographic in the “leave it to her” category.”

The most successful couples that I’ve seen generally have a realization are, for lack of a better word, functional: if Thing X needs to be done then as long as it’s done right it’s okay ... the key being the realization that there are various forms of “right” defined arbitrarily by one or the other spouse.

shit, I’m bad today.  Replace the last para with this one:

The most successful couples that I’ve seen are, for lack of a better word, functional: if Thing X needs to be done then as long as it’s done right it’s okay ... the key being the realization that there are various forms of “right” and “right can’t and shouldn’t be defined arbitrarily by one or the other spouse.

Anya: Men like sports. I’m sure of it.

Xander: Yes. Men like sports. Men watch the action movie, they eat of the beef, and they enjoy to look at the bosoms. A thousand years of avenging our wrongs, and that’s all you’ve learned?

Advertisers, take heed.

And if the woman joins in the Dudely World of Sports, that’s not cool either.  Lately I’ve been completely fascinated by football and my husband is totally weirded out.  On the one hand he likes getting to watch all the games, on the other hand, he kind of buys into the notion of femininity meaning something and thinks it’s odd for a lady to be into football.  (Or maybe he’s just mad because I keep dumping on the Browns? It’s not my fault they’re terrible!)

There’s even a commercial about this idea - the guy is talking about how happy he is to watch the football game in hi def, and his girlfriend giggles and says, this is nice, and usually I don’t even like baseball!  Ha ha, silly girl! Fast forward 3 weeks, they’re watching another game and she’s got a jersey on and is totally into it, shouting “Blitz! BLITZ!” He says, “will you marry me?” She says, “yeah sure.  COME ON!!WHERE’S THE FLAG!!?!” and he looks terrified.  Of what?  It’s fascinating.

I do recommend “Houseplants of Gor” http://www.rdrop.com/~/wyvern/data/houseplants.html

and “Gay, Bejeweled, Nazi Bikers of Gor” http://books.adultfanfiction.net/story.php?no=544176437

Decent parodies that also give you a glimpse of the author’s terrible prose.

There’s a general rule of thumb among people who’ve read the Gor books: there’s okay worldbuilding and story (albeit in a “Man strong!  Where’s the wenches at?” sorta way) until book X, where X is a number between 4 and 6, after which the author obviously started taking himself seriously and the really bad misogyny came roaring in.

The other thing to know about the series is that they helped filled a niche when Norman started writing them, which initially gave it some success: written porn.  When the internet took off, written porn was so easily available (some much better written) that there was no point in reading Norman any more.

You can see the same sort of thing with Charles Platt’s somewhat well known notorious novel “The Gas”.  Basically a molecule-thin story wrapped around sex scenes highlighting different fetishes, at least some of which are guaranteed to make someone ill.  When I read it a few years back, a revised edition that excitedly proclaimed how it had added more obscenity, I was bemused to realize that it was no more outrageous than the average day on alt.sex.stories.

Clothes manufacturers seem to assume that the avg. U.S. male has a pancake-flat butt. Being thin but still quite round in the back, I have to try on all new trousers.

I actually like shopping for new clothes once I’ve committed to the idea.

What’s stupid is the notion that I’m less of a man for *not being childish* about providing for my own needs. Advertising has been aggressively pushing the equation of masculinity with puerility—eclipsing or absorbing the classic masculinity=stupidity—for a long time now. It’s become so extreme as to be very weird.

I suppose that I am emasculating my husband because we are both expected to fold laundry while watching TV.

I don’t buy my husband clothing unless it is a very stock thing or a time crunch ... as in “we are going to a fancy party and my one pair of heels broke and can I get something for you?  A shirt in 16/33? Okay).  I do buy my sons clothes, but I MAKE THEM COME WITH ME ... no “you do it and I’ll go play” there either.

Please, no.  I have a hell of a time finding things in a size 30 because large numbers frighten women’s clothing retailers, I’d be completely SOL if I had to buy my tops in a size 54.

Don’t go to H&M;then ... they have US and Euro sizes.  Just bought a size 44 dress.

What, exactly, do these numbers correspond to anyway?  Oh, and they have changed over the years and fit is according to style ... one size 44 dress was too small, another just right because the cut was different.

Still can’t figure out what I’m doing in size 44, but I blame H1N1 for that.

He hates new clothes so much that he’ll refuse to try on new shoes even when his shoes are worn through.  And he hates shopping.

I do love to keep some sets of worn t-shirts, jeans, and sneakers with holes in them. 

My attempt to hold the line against the overly pretentious snobby fashionistas around NYC….and saves clothing for professional/occasions where looking nice is necessary from unnecessary wear and tear when all I want to do is to take long walks or head to a campus event/dive bar performances where formal dress is not mandated or even disdained. 

It may also come from a childhood where practically all my clothing were hand-me-downs from older cousins/relatives until I earned enough from my first job to get new clothes for myself. 

Heck, even now when I need to wear a suit and tie, one of my most chosen sets happens to be the same suit I’ve worn since my junior year in high school….many many eons ago.  It also served as the centerpiece of my costume where I went as a certain scandal-ridden governor this past Halloween and everyone thought it looked spiffy. 

ojd: I have a great idea for an non-misogynist ad for game streaming: point out that I can stream the game and buy my own pants during online the TV time-outs.

Or watch the game while waiting in line at the post office. Or whereever you happen to have to wait in line.

Ms Kate: Don’t go to H&M;then ... they have US and Euro sizes.  Just bought a size 44 dress.

There are no Euro sizes. There are German, Dutch, French, Italian and UK sizes. And whatever else.

What, exactly, do these numbers correspond to anyway?

German women’s sizes are breast circumference (in centimetres) divided by 2, minus 6. Man leave out the “minus six”. Size times two is for tall people, size divided by two for stocky (which includes women with large hips—short sizes are often cut a lot more generous there). Rest of measures is derived from brest circumference by whatever formulas. To provide materal for the formulas, every two or three decades a lot of people are measured to keep up with people changing.

When in the 90s fitted tops got fashionable, I had to cross-dress in self-defense, or I’d have gone up five sizes in an instant.

What caught me about this was the notion than men get to define what kinds of consumption count as “shopping” (not theirs).  The guy is watching a game (the fact that he’s bought a bunch of new hardware and services to do so is somehow irrelevant) but what the woman is doing (making sure he doesn’t go to work with his ass hanging out of the pants that mysteriously split last week) is “shopping”.

And there’s still the myth among advertisers that men make all the decisions on shiny tech, or it would be “You can buy a pair of new slacks even while he’s streaming three football games”.

The most successful couples that I’ve seen are, for lack of a better word, functional: if Thing X needs to be done then as long as it’s done right it’s okay ... the key being the realization that there are various forms of “right” and “right can’t and shouldn’t be defined arbitrarily by one or the other spouse.

Yes, but there are many right ways of doing things that aren’t arbitrary.  I’ve had multiple delicate clothes items destroyed by my father or male roommates who decided to be “helpful” by dumping an entire load of wash into the dryer and setting the dryer on high.  I’ve seen the result of putting liquid dish soap into the dishwasher.  I’ve heard tell (fortunately have never experienced it myself) of ammonia destroying granite countertops, disinfectant ruining hardwood floors, and an errant wooden spoon killing the motor of a $300 Kitchenaid stand mixer.  While I’ll admit that many women do enforce strict arbitrary rules, there are right and wrong ways to clean and cook, and many men are ignorant of this whether innocently or by design.

A.  I don’t let anybody pick out my clothing.  B.  I don’t buy clothes for g/f unless maybe it’s a real nick robe or something.  C.  GOR!!!  I haven’t seen one of those for years.  Tell me it isn’t still being published.  I remember picking one up.  I couldn’t put it down it was so appallingly bad.  I kept thinking it was a satire or something.  ‘Self-sufficient woman finds happiness in abject slavery.’  Jeezus.

Goreans exist so that us normal, well-adjusted BDSM enthusiasts can have somebody even weirder to look down upon.

Also, I realize that men’s clothing sizes are more standardized than women’s but do guys regularly buy, or have someone else buy pants for them without trying them on?

My mother buys all my stepfather’s clothes, often without his presence.  She does have a sense of his taste, though. 

Unrelated to clothing, I will also say that, as more of my peers begin to get married, especially people from childhood who I’m mainly in touch with via facebook, I realize more and more what kind of total drudgery is expected of married women.  Even young, “modern” married women who grew up in the generation of Title IX, third wave feminism, “empowerfulness”, etc.  For instance a childhood friend of mine often gripes via facebook about having to wake up early to cook for her husband, who had to be at work at some ungodly hour.  And she’s not griping about the fact that her boor of a husband can’t pour his own goddamn cereal.  She’s griping about her husband’s work schedule.  The fact that being a wife = being a galley slave is totally normal to her. 

I’ve joked that I’d never get married, said I’m “not the marrying kind”, and pontificated about not boycotting marriage for political reasons.  But more and more I’m feeling like marriage really is a raw deal for women, even in 2009.

keshmeshi: ...and an errant wooden spoon killing the motor of a $300 Kitchenaid stand mixer.

Friends with teenaged children have a rule that whoever proves incompetent at housework gets easier tasks. Cleaning the toilet in an environmentally sustainable way is one of those extremely easy tasks. Their kids are all quite competent in handing kitchen appliances and knowing salad from weeds.

I’m enough of a control freak that I could not possibly hand over responsibility for buying my clothes to someone else. I am comfortable with gifts of clothes, but I can’t imagine someone else buying slacks for me (outside of the fact that I have enough pants to last me a long while).

Next, while I’m perfectly fine wearing a plain shirt and jeans, I do know how to recognize and appreciate nice clothes that fit properly. It’s one of those life skills that goes along with cooking for yourself, knowing how to change the oil and a tire on your car, doing your own laundry without ruining your clothes, cleaning the bathroom and kitchen, and ability to do basic maintenance around the house. These are standard skills that you should be able to handle in order to be a grownup.

I wish parents would teach these basic skills to their children before they go out into the world and get married.

But Lucky Couch doesn’t make sense.  Wife/Mom and kids aren’t after anything in particular, much less 3 shows that are on during the game.  They just seem to want to kick Man down to the basement, which would be annoying, since Sunday/Monday football is a known time activity and their desire to kick him out seems baseless and capricious—EXCEPT that the Man is the biggest whiny asshole on the planet with his “Lucky Couch” drivel.

I haven’t seen the commercial, but if the basement is not as nice a place to sit and watch TV, then that’s why they don’t want to go there to watch their shows.  Maybe it’s a “lucky couch” for the same reason—because it’s the nicest seat in the house and he likes sitting in it.

If women are assumed to do all the shopping always because shopping is a girly women activity and real men never shop ever, then WHY is so much stuff advertised with the apparently deliberate intent to alienate all potential female customers from buying it? Who the fuck do they think is *left*?
Comment #73: thecynicalromantic on 12/06 at 09:26 PM

They’re appealing to your reverence for the male mystique.  If you “get it,” if you disdain “housewives” and “girly girls” and what the ad represents as their oppression,  then you’re cool.  You might even be the cool girl, the “honorary guy” who likes sports and hangs out with the boys because the girls are too girly for you.

You’re still stuck with the shopping, of course, but you’re going to buy stuff that the guys like, and please them well, which represents a minor enhancement of your position.

Maybe you missed the preppy look of the eighties, where even some manly men wore pink Izods.  The trick was to find the pink Izod with the green alligator, rather than the blue one.  If you had that, with your chinos and topsiders, you were just in.
Comment #76: Dana on 12/06 at 09:37 PM

Pink-and-black clothing for both sexes was fashionable in the 1950s.

there are many right ways of doing things that aren’t arbitrary.  I’ve had multiple delicate clothes items destroyed by my father or male roommates who decided to be “helpful” by dumping an entire load of wash into the dryer and setting the dryer on high.

This. No doubt there are women who are really uptight and overly controlling about how the tea towels are folded, just because, but most of the time when I hear the phenomenon referred to, the criteria seem to be pretty damn reasonable. Buy the right brand of animal chow because otherwise the cat will starve itself or the dog will get the runs on the kitchen floor; fold the towels a certain way because it makes it easier for spouse/kids to grab them off the shelf with one hand; stack the glasses *here* and the plates *here* because it makes them less likely to be knocked off and broken when reaching for dishes than the other way around. That sort of thing.

If Man “helps” by doing the laundry and puts Woman’s cotton shirts in the dryer so they shrink and Woman has to buy new shirts (which they can’t afford), then he has produced a net loss for the household, not a net gain. This is true no matter how much credit Man thinks he should get for being willing to go through the motions of doing the laundry.

And let’s not even get into the whole “I cleaned the kitchen!” “Um, but you didn’t mop under the table and there’s dog hair and crumbs down there.” “WHY ARE YOU SO PICKY??” dynamic.

Oh! Plus, I think that usually when people are really wrapped up in things like having the tea towels folded a certain way, we have a word for that: compulsive behavior. And it seems to me like the caring thing to do, if one has a compulsive spouse who gets distressed when the tea towels are at the wrong angle, is to fold the fucking tea towels the way that makes her feel okay. Because it’s 5 extra minutes, and you’re supposed to care about each other.

kristen:
I do think that in taking some fairly simplistic views (men: stack things where they get knocked over; women: either correct or OCD so either way the men are wrong) you’re engaging in some pretty damned insulting generalizations. 

What I do note is that your counter-example lacks one pretty important element: power dynamics.  Often how the towels are folded (to use your example) has got bugger all to do with the towels and everything about establishing territoriality and fixing the rules for all engagements in the home.  I’ve noted before my bafflement that men who do that to their wives—and there’s truckloads of the bastards—are called what they are: control freak borderline-or-over psychologically abusive douchebags.  Women in marriages who pull that shit aren’t called that; they’re called bitches or nags or whatever, but those terms denote not only misogyny but also implicitly accept that the power lies with the male in the household and this is the only way they have to get back. 

Sorry, but I’m not buying it.  I’ve seen people reduced to walking on eggs in their own home lest they Do Something The Wrong Way.  A spouse that is constantly carping about that is a controlling creep and nobody gets a get-out-of-cobaggery-free card on gender.

That’s the hard stuff, of course.  I saw more cases, though, where the `male wrong / woman right’ explanation for the conflict was more benign than abuse but no less irritating: girls had been brought up by their moms the way that those moms had been brought up by their moms and the lessons boiled down to “your man will never know WTF he’s doing, so you know everything about the house and he doesn’t and don’t let him mess up”.  Sexist drivel.

PS: It’s been my experience that spouses who are that douchey to their partners don’t give any credit for things done right.  Laundry done?  Kitchen clean?  Grass mowed?  Doesn’t matter.  They walk in the door looking for the things done wrong (or deemed wrong) and fix on them and that’s all they want to talk about, either to the spouse or to their friends, (“oh, that idiot John/Jane can’t get anything right ... Do you know what s/he did the other day???? Let me tell you…”)

All I can say is that I’ve heard a lot of men complain that they “can’t do anything right”, and although as I say I’m sure genuinely controlling bitchez *do* exist somewhere, I haven’t seen one yet myself. Every single time I’ve heard the complaint so far, it’s from men who’re really complaining that their SO is interested in whether a job gets done usefully, while the man feels like he deserves cookies for pretending to do housework even if very little useful stuff gets done.

In a way it seems to me a lot like the complaints about how hard it is for men to tell “what women want” in general because we’re such capricious and mysterious creatures. In reality, of course, we’re usually reasonable human beings with sensible reasons for what we want and the capacity to communicate it all clearly. Similarly men who don’t venture near housework because “her standards are too high” or “nothing is ever good enough” seem to be invested in maintaining the idea that housework is a murky and ineffable domain the depths of which they simply cannot plumb. Which benefits them, of course.

I would fully support a clothing manufacturer that made women’s clothes in actual measurements. Sadly, being plus sized (women’s 18/20 if that helps), I know these clothes would not be in my size.* The culture that says that a woman’s clothing size determines her worth is stupid and needs to go, of course, but that doesn’t mean that having easily measurable sizes can’t be done at the same time.

My father doesn’t have a whole lot of clothes, but growing up, he mostly only wore his coveralls with varying layers of underclothes, depending on how cold or hot it was outside. He ordered the coveralls from a catalog and the underclothes came in packs of 3 or 4. He keeps everything forever until my mother finally throws it out (unless he retrieves it from the trash). The few times that he has needed to dress up (generally to go to an annual dinner for the company he works for or relatives weddings), he wears suit coats and shoes that are decades old (I remember this horrid brown suede jacket he wore out to a dinner one year). My mom will pick up nice pants, a dress shirt, and maybe a tie if he needs it for a number of reasons. They all center on the fact that my dad is a farmer while my mom is a manager in the county health department. She knows how to dress nice and my dad knows how to stink. And also how to make very good steak sandwiches, properly medicate the cats, do his own laundry, raise tasty beef, and can keep his head free of dandruff even while showering only once a week.

My dad can shop for hardware, lumber, and farm implements well. He even is a regular at some tiny country grocery stores, but I shudder to think of him in a mall. The few trips I’ve taken with him to larger grocery stores have been exercises in mass confusion.

*They might, and then I would buy them to support them more, but averages being what they are… well, they are more likely to be in my size in that case, but women’s clothing manufacturers are trying to make women feel ashamed about being not thin and make clothing smaller than the average. and here we see the market at work

I’m sure genuinely controlling bitchez *do* exist somewhere, I haven’t seen one yet myself.

Try opening a divorce practice: guaranteed to turn you into a cynic about both genders or your money back!  I can’t recall who it was here but they once amusingly took me to task on that very issue, noting that my time in divorce law produced someone who was like a cop who’d worked shitty neighbourhoods all his life baffled by normal neighbourhoods, or something like that.  (They said it funnier.)

The housework is a real YMMV thing and one ought to be wary of generalizing; that’s why I limit myself to what I saw in my files.  I’ve seen guys who won’t lift a damned finger, and guys who used to be neat but were “not that way!‘d” into being thiiiiiis close to being like Bart Simpson after Lisa finished her hamster experiment on him: rolled up in a corner and incapable of movement.

I do think that in taking some fairly simplistic views (men: stack things where they get knocked over; women: either correct or OCD so either way the men are wrong) you’re engaging in some pretty damned insulting generalizations.

FWIW, it goes both ways.  Especially when you’re talking about people’s fundamental natures.  I’m of the “I cleaned the bathroom!  Where’s my cookie?  Oh, except I didn’t scrub the grout or wipe down that secret spot behind the toilet which seems to be a magnet for Dude Pee.  But I did such a good job!  Lookit!” 

I live with a dude who, in my opinion, is a bit of a neat freak.  He vacuums the living room rug like every 2 days!  He gets pissed when I do the dishes and don’t empty the food trap!  He begs me to Magic-Erase the scuffs my bike makes on the wall! 

However, I generally try to indulge him in all this stuff, because he’s my friend and I want him to not go completely insane.  And we’re not even in a relationship - just two people who live well together despite being of different genders (not to mention different ideas of what it means for something to be “clean”).

guys who used to be neat but were “not that way!’d”

I think a lot of “not that way!” behavior has to do with the fact that a certain number of women were raised to see the domestic sphere as not only their turf, but the only turf they were ever going to get.  They see the home as their space, and anyone who tries to influence the way it works as an interloper. 

I can imagine someone in a toxic marriage who feels like they have no other outlet using this division of labor as a way to passive aggressively torture their spouse.

Seeker, you’re describing my mom perfectly.  In fact, maybe I’ll give my stepfather your name when/if he ever decides to leave her.  He was one of those men who never married/lived with anyone until he met my mom in his late 30s and I remember visiting his house and being impressed with how clean and picked up everything was.  He was an excellent cook, took.  Note the past tense?

They’ve been married about 15 years and he doesn’t so much as look at the laundry room because my mother will mock his ass all day long for how “funny” it is to think he can do laundry.  My mom is heavily invested in gender roles and believing that women should be housewives and take care of their husbands.  Because she has a real job, she has to assert absolute authority over the housework and denigrate my stepfather’s role in cleaning.  That’s my psychoanalysis, at least.

Opoponax @ 130:
This. I was trying to form that thought earlier and couldnt put it into words.  The only caveat that I would put on it is that the programming isn’t limited to toxic marriages; it often is an ongoing if lower intensity dynamic for many ordinary marriages where the wife has received a `traditional’ upbringing. I’ve also seen it in more `modern’ women, too, but much, much more rarely, and with no real pattern as to Why.

stubbles @ 131:
Don’t you dare.  I don’t do divorces any more!  Back!  Retro me satanas!

Why does everyone assume that this hypothetical man “makes” his wife buy him slacks—or even asked her to do so in the first place?

To me, “slacks” is shorthand for an item of clothing that someone else buys for you that you have little or no interest in actually wearing—like a tacky Father’s Day tie or a lame Christmas sweater. Most guys would choose to never wear “slacks” if they didn’t have to. It’s just one of the many compromises we all make in order to get laid and stay gainfully employed. So, just like the way our generous girlfriends humor us when we buy them trashy lingerie, a sensitive man will likewise tolerate his girlfriend buying him sensible slacks even though it isn’t really what his heart desires. But the good news is that now you can at least get the latest sports scores when it happens.

Certainly not a brilliant ad—but you’d really have to go on a deep-sea fishing expedition to find anything worth getting offended about.

Well, Larry, it could be because to most of the country “slacks” is shorthand for “the clothes you wear to work every day.” It’s hardly just upper class jobs that have a dress code.

Who said anything about class (or “upper class jobs”)? Not I.

But thanks for supporting my point that “slacks” are seen as an item of clothing worn out of social necessity (“clothes you wear to work everyday”) rather than something men choose to wear because they really enjoy them. This is a crucial part of the ad’s message that is being completely ignored by the rest of this discussion.

I don’t think it is. I think the message is that you get to have fun while your wife completes an unpleasant task for you. Not enjoying wearing slacks hardly relieves you of your obligation to buy them if you need them. You aren’t ‘tolerating your girlfriend buying them.’ You’re taking advantage of your girlfriend’s willingness to do the drudgework.

But what if you don’t need them?

Or at least, you don’t think you need them but your wife does—because she likes how you look in them, or believes it will lead to a a raise, or whatever. From the man’s perspective, the wife is not carrying out an unpleasant task—but an unnecessary one. Several posters have offered specific examples of this dynamic: the woman thinks his wardrobe needs an upgrade, the man thinks it’s fine the way it is. Who’s right and who’s wrong is irrelevant. Guys who love their wives know that in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t a battle worth fighting and he should just bite the bullet and let her buy him some slacks that will make her happy. (Because guys don’t give a shit about slacks!) The ad taps into this common male frustration and offers some high-tech relief.

And contrary to most of the analysis in this thread, I see no evidence in the ad to suggest that she is buying him slacks for any other reason than her own free choice. I could understand the outrage if she were ordered or pressured to do so—but there is absolutely no proof to support that interpretation.

Except that, again, many many American men have to wear slacks to work. Probably most of them that have large amounts of disposable income to spend on the latest tech gadget.

I’m not seeing your point.

Yes, slacks are a necessity for most men, but they are nothing worth cheering about… even if your wife buys some for you… and especially if you feel you don’t really need a new pair. That’s not any man’s version of paradise. It’s just a brief purgatory that is now slightly less frustrating with the addition of live streaming sports.

Amazing Larry is amazingly dense.

It reenforces the Schlub of a husband who still wants to be a boy and play, while the wife/mother figure does the work of taking care of him because it’s her job.

I’ve told him for 10 years that clothes are sized differently depending on brand and still the man would wave me off, buy them, get the damn things home and be pissed if they didn’t fit.

I guess I’m an easy one. Tell me the inches on the waist and I’m good. If the ones I have don’t fit anymore, time to up size an inch.