Have a feeling that we just don’t understand.
On a business librarians listserv I’m on, someone was seeking information about the expenditure of single women – the “Carrie Bradshaw” types. (That’s a reference to the lead character in Sex in the City for you guys who poo-pooed the series’ social significance.) Unbidden came these testimonials of women who went shopping for a new car or other large purchase with their father/husband/boyfriend, made it clear that the woman is the customer, and yet all the customer service people directed their attention to the man. In fact, one of the storyteller was the father, who notes that his daughter is the car nut and all he knows how to do is open the hood and sigh when something’s not working. To a person, the purchase was not made.
There was a Snicker’s ad in the UK that got axed as potentially homophobic. I can only imagine some people crying out, “it’s only an advert,” and that people are being “politically correct” or “don’t have a sense of humor” or “how to you even know thee protagonist is supposed to be gay?” Well, I remember the Snickers Super Bowl ad where they toy with a “Brokeback moment”, so I tend to be suspicious. The ad did bother me, especially the tagline, “get some nuts.”
Disney is working on its first black princess. Imagine my ambivalence about THAT. But the vitriol that shows up in the comments, especially those of the “get over it, it’s only a cartoon” variety, as though images don’t matter I found profoundly disturbing and annoying.
I guess what I wish for is that people try to see things from a perspective that’s not their own.
***
Someone on a Methodist listserv wrote this: “I get so much junk email from so-called ‘friends’ that I am a frequent user of snopes.com and truthorfiction.com. Unfortunately, when I confront these ‘friends’ with what I found out about the emails they have forwarded me, they act as if I have insulted their religion. Which
makes sense, because I have. The emails that they forward have become their religion.
Junk email has replaced whispering as the means of spreading false rumors. It is time for the Church to take a stand against this sort of thing. Sermon anyone?”
***
From my spam e-mail folder: “New reports show men are sex hungry”.
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