If men waggling their squash in your face is acceptable you are PETA’s target audience

It is officially a trend now. With growing frequency we are seeing that outfits feel a need to inject themselves into the social narrative of gender issues and address what constitutes “toxic masculinity”. With a matching frequency these outlets step on a rake, and come out looking all the more worse for the effort.

Not having learned the lesson from the previous corporate embarrassments, PETA offers up its own video addressing masculinity. (I do not implore you to watch, but it is linked here for the sake of journalistic completeness.) It constitutes nothing more than a series of notably unattractive men, dancing in slo-mo to unlistenable club music. They each are sporting vegetables outside their clothing meant to replicate male genitalia, replete with lettuce pubic hair.

This visual assault plays out for a full minute, sans explanation, until at the very end we are served its tagline: “Increase your sexual stamina — Go Vegan”.

“Traditional” masculinity is DEAD. The secret to male sexual stamina is veggies. 😉 pic.twitter.com/51DUsqzyO3

— PETA (@peta) January 16, 2019

If these men are deemed to be exemplars of masculinity, then pass me the porterhouse. And bourbon. It is rather clear PETA intends to jump onto a growing trend here. It is also clear PETA has no earthly idea how to influence males, nor how to convey a rational thought.

Amazingly they are oblivious to the fact their own video actually is mired in all of the supposedly worst aspects of “toxic masculinity”. The video is solitarily male-forward, it is hyper-sexual and phallocentric, promotes a domineering attitude, and shows zero deference to female needs in its rapacious agenda. In addition, it is starkly pathetic and extremely successful at stifling arousal.

As our own Sarah Lee pointed out on Twitter: “ No One should ever marvel again at the birthrate dropping.”

No one should ever marvel again at the birthrate dropping. https://t.co/gxbMZmqbuX

— SarahLee (@sarailola) January 16, 2019

This becomes just another example of an attempt by a group to curry social favor and instead driving away any interest from the targeted audience. In the end no minds are changed, as it is preaching to an already approving audience, and the net result is those who were previously neutral are now repelled by your outfit.

Gillette razors tried to virtue signal with a video that attempted to redefine what constitutes “real men”. The result: they managed to instead anger their core customer. Further than that, it opened an unseen Pandora’s Box, as women also lashed back at the razor brand, stating its Venus brand razors are additionally problematic. The pink razors said to be sexist, in their pink coloration, and it has been pointed out they are also priced higher than the male equivalent.

The negative response to the company’s video is palpable. In a response to the blowback that Gillette was receiving another razor company – Harry’s Razors – took a telling action. Back in November of 2017 Harry’s put out its own version of a “corrected” vision of what masculinity should be defined as, in a Tweet sent on International Men’s Day. As Streiff noted, they expand on the ideal on their website.

Just yesterday Harry’s went back and memory-holed that tweet. (Details are here.) The reasons for deleting a Tweet from over a year ago are clearly seen in the Gillette Twitter timeline.

https://twitter.com/EWErickson/status/1085348890428223488

Pretty soon companies and organizations are going to come to the realization that cowing to the social scolds has the opposite effect of broadening their customer base. Dick’s Sporting Goods took a militant stance on guns, to appease those who hate guns and never bought them from its stores. The NFL thought it wise to encourage anthem protests, satisfying the agenda of many who rarely watched or attended games. Gillette has decided to criticise an entire gender comprising its primary customer base, in order to be looked at warmly by the other gender that purchases its products at a far lesser rate. And PETA, well — those it is trying to sway will never listen.

The intention of these companies is to change minds. What they end up doing is altering the opinion many held of their company — and it is rarely for the better.