PETA

There have been plenty of ups and downs around the world (wide web) this week.  Here's just a taste of the things we've been keeping up on:

PETA isn't content to restrict its sex-sells messaging to the porn site, either. The latest campaign features a woman walking down the street in her bra and underwear in a neck brace, a result of rough (like, put your head through the wall and land you in a neck brace rough) sex with her newly vegan boyfriend. Is this a PSA for sexual assault? No. It's PETA's attempt to shock us into adopting a vegan diet (or making our partners eat vegan, thus giving them the skills to leave us neck-braced and dazed enough that we forget to wear clothes to the grocery store). Because PETA thinks we should want sex to end in a neck brace, I guess?

Offensiveness of this ad aside (read more about the ways it normalizes violence against women in this post from New Black Woman), this and other similar PETA spots are just plain fucking lazy (heh). Next time they might as well skip the ad altogether and instead make a SEXXX PORN BOOBS VEGETABLES HOT BRAS word association game. Oh, wait...

Happy Labor Day, folks! If you have Monday off, take some extra time to read these great links from all over the web.

• Racialicious, close to winding down their series on interracial dating, kicked off a South Asian panel this week. 
• Colorlines responds to Katt Williams’ hateful remarks by showing us five comedians of color we ought to watch instead. 
• We peeked over Racialicous’ shoulder and saw them reading Indiewire’s proposal of a not-so-radical solution to the lack of funding for black indie filmmakers. 
• Former guest blogger Everett Maroon navigates the treacherous relationship between Dancing With the Stars and transfolk. 
• Transgriot reports on a shameful case of transphobia hiding behind a badge. (Trigger warning for transphobic violence.) 
• Slate reports on PETA’s quest to break the record for jaws-dropped-per-minute by launching a porn site. 
• Love is Not Enough declares no, my hair is not a petting zoo.
• FBomb goes back to school and has a high school sophomore call out her classmates for slut shaming.

Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below!

PETA has long been known for offensive, weirdly sexist, and lazy advertising. Their sexism-is-OK-because-it's-for-animals tactics are tired as can be, yet they seem determined to stay the course. Case in point: Their latest campaign revolves around the much-reported-on new TSA screenings, and it is chocked full of sexism, misinformation, and size discrimination (surprise! but not really). First, the video, which apparently PETA is lobbying to play at airports during the holiday travel season:

First it was Tiger Woods' deceased father chastising in the name of Nike, and now we have the late, great Bea Arthur reminding us to... not buy McDonald's? What to make of this?

Last week, I got a message in my inbox: Starbucks is now selling vegan cookies!!!! Vegan revolution OMG!! And my cynical first thought was, "What? And why the hell should I patronize an organization I lovingly refer to as Starfucks?" Maybe I'm an anomaly as a vegan, or maybe I'm just an idealist, but I care about liberation for all, not just the animals. We shouldn’t have to sacrifice one set of rights for another.

Good thing Carol Adams' The Sexual Politics of Meat is being re-released this year. Twenty years after its original publication and still PETA thinks objectifying women is an effective strategy to end animal cruelty.

Wow, Burger King did it. I was sure Carl's Junior had this in the bag, but no. Burger King has actually succeeded in airing the most sexist fast food commercial of all time. I’m talking, of course, about the ad for BK Burger Shots.

Where do I even begin? Let’s start with the idea that women are so baby-obsessed that they think everything small is a baby. Which leads us to the even weirder idea that when women think they are in the presence of a baby, they make orgasm sounds and want to do whoever is holding said baby/small thing/BK burger shot. But what offends me most is the assumption that hamburgers are so alien to women that they don’t even know you’re supposed to eat them.

 

[Also posted at Love in the Living Room]