Sexist and dangerous Samaritans ad

[Meadowbird]

https://twitter.com/samaritans/status/1760599123923722266

A really bizarre ad - encouraging lone women to approach disturbed men on deserted train station platforms and ask them out for a coffee. What could possibly go wrong? They also will become sexier if they do apparently.

Any chance it feeds you different content depending on your answer?

I'm just thinking in many stations with staff, you'd be asking him where to get coffee while standing outside the station shop/cafe or next to the Costa machine. A good chunk of the rest would be in the middle of nowhere. Or in a wee town with amenities that won't open for two hours or closed two hours ago. Poor guy has potentially enough to deal with without a weird woman coming on to him or asking a stupid question to which the answer is, respectively 'duh!', 'how the fuck should I know!' or 'at this time!!!!!'

The intention is good, but we all know where that road leads. Perhaps they should have given it more than 5 seconds of thought and also considered the feelings and safety of the woman support person asking the question.

I wouldn't be surprised if the coffee line was deliberate just as the makeover the 'good' girl got clearly wasn't an accident. They could have gone with something very neutral like " nice weather we're having" but they didn't.

I'm not going to find out what content it feeds anyone. Couldn't get past that question.

That campaign looks bollocks too... "Small talk saves lives", really?
Someone determined on jumping in front of a train would have had these thoughts for a long while and likely received support from various places already. A "small talk" with some random woman off the bench isn't going to suddenly make him not suicidal.

^^ This. Or a male bystander helping him? Why does it make use of an emotionally-blackmailing notion of women as support human for everyone out and about, which as pp have said, plays on a split between “good sociable woman” and “uptight antisocial woman”?

Representations like this don’t just get in ads by accident. A whole team of people will have sat there deciding that the “bad” version of the woman should look dowdy and anxious, next to the “good” version of the woman (looks cooler, more appealing, more laid-back). They have deliberately designed it to play on women’s highly socialised cues to be “kind, helpful, appealing” etc. etc.

I for one find that immensely manipulative and irresponsible. It shouldn’t be the burden of ordinary women to “save” disturbed or troubled men. We are not just nice therapists and mother/girlfriend figures dotted around the landscape for men’s benefit when they need it. Not to mention the safety issues of encouraging lone women to approach strange men, who may be disturbed or a danger.

This reminds me of a plumber describing his marathon running in mind numbing detail and me responding vaguely, gosh you’re very fit. He looked quite disturbed but I’m in my 60’s and forgot that ‘fit’ has a different meaning with the young!

And, against my better judgement, I'm going to suggest that the stereotyping of Black women as sexually "loose" might have played a part in those casting and scripting decisions.

<<hides in nuclear bunker>>

I think the idea is to make you think about whether it is preventable or not.

It is honestly much better than that Sams advert because it tells you what to do after you've started that conversation.

I don’t understand this shift in attitude towards suicide. Sadly when I was a teen a friend committed suicide and another friend attempted it. It was drummed into us this was not anyone else’s fault or responsibility and if someone is determined to do it they will.

Now we have parents suing universities for not preventing their adult children doing this and random women being petitioned to step in. Has there been a change in thinking on this?

The campaign is based on research by Middlesex University and developed in consultation with people who have been personally affected by suicide. Before the launch across digital and traditional media, as well as with posters in railway settings, the campaign’s potential effectiveness was tested with commuters, the public and people with lived experience.

They should have tested it on Mumsnet.

I think the idea is to make you think about whether it is preventable or not.

And? They could have stopped long enough to think how a Yes/No question would land on anyone who's ever wanted to prevent a suicide. Not even a "sometimes".

It is honestly much better than that Sams advert because it tells you what to do after you've started that conversation.

Sure, fine, might be useful for everyone who gets as far as seeing it.

I was thinking it could be used the other way round, as in giving an excuse to the tripier sort of man to approach any young woman & start talking to her with the excuse that he thought she might be suicidal. You know they will, they've tried everything else.

I saw the longer ad too (thanks to whoever put it up) & the 'cool self' really annoyed me - she was so rude! So that would put me off taking the ad's advice, quite apart from the rest of it.

I think it’s the general social turn we’re having, back towards holding women responsible for men’s behaviour. He felt troubled? It’s women’s job to save his mental health. He felt unsafe in the loos? Women are not being kind enough to him. Etc. etc.

Budge up, women! You are doing so great that you need to share all your privileges around by “being kind” to men.

If this ad was really aimed at getting people to speak up and intervene, why isn’t it aimed at other men? Why aren’t the organisation spending that money on an ad raising awareness of the awful lack of mental health services and properly trained crisis help? Or to tell the guard? Or petitioning for better train barriers at stations that prevent track access? (There’s a huge case for these on accident grounds too, with many people seriously hurt every year in accidental track falls, but the rail networks resist them because - surprise - they are expensive.) Cheaper to guilt female passers-by than actually provide proper mental health services and safety provision. Of course it is.

"The campaign is based on research by Middlesex University and developed in consultation with people who have been personally affected by suicide. Before the launch across digital and traditional media, as well as with posters in railway settings, the campaign’s potential effectiveness was tested with commuters, the public and people with lived experience*

They should have tested it on Mumsnet.

What, over people who have actual lived experience of feeling suicidal?
I think they'd be better placed to say what is effective at "pulling them out of it" than mumsnetters.

I am typing and retyping this but I can't say it without being rude.

THINK about what you're saying for five fucking minutes before typing.

So. How do we go about raising these issues with Samaratins, Network Rail?

ASA?

There are two people involved in this scenario: the suicidal man and the emotional support human woman. By only considering perspectives of suicidal people, the researchers and advert makers ignore the impact on the emotional support human. Running the campaign past Mumsnet would have given them the perspective of a large sample of the people who are the world's default emotional support humans: mothers.

@ArabellaScott have I expressed the problem clearly?

Oh, my issue was the weird logic fail that suggested Mumsnetters and 'people with lived experience of feeling suicidal' were mutually exclusive categories.

I think that was because 'Falafel' was extending empathy towards males and envisaging MNers were all female, and therefore not actually humans with feelings. Just support humans, as you note.

By only considering perspectives of suicidal people, the researchers and advert makers ignore the impact on the emotional support human
See, this is where we're just coming at it from different angles.
You see yourself as a support human, and then there's men.
Fair enough.
I see it as we're all humans.

By only considering perspectives of suicidal people, the researchers and advert makers ignore the impact on the emotional support human. Running the campaign past Mumsnet would have given them the perspective of a large sample of the people who are the world's default emotional support humans: mothers
You see yourself and other women as emotional support humans.
You say mothers like you speak for all of us.

Also, how many men are attacked by female strangers?

I'm not sure how relevant that is to an individual male assessing risk. It's no better for him if he's attacked by another man - well, almost certainly worse.

Did you read the whole paragraph I quoted from the campaign? I was referring to the last part:

the campaign’s potential effectiveness was tested with commuters, the public and people with lived experience

They tested it with 'commuters' and 'the public' as well as 'people with lived experience'.

Obviously Mumsnet is part of 'the public'. Many will also be 'commuters' and some will be 'people with lived experience'.

My suggestion was just that mumsnet would be a good subset of 'the public' to test this on. If they'd done that they might have produced a better campaign which didn't suggest that women should disregard their instincts and put themselves in danger to rescue random men. And that this was particularly women's problem to solve - where is the video showing a man rescuing another man?

Yes, everyone knows coffee is a loaded word. I can’t work out why the ad agency would use it though or why the Samaritans signed it off.