Corporate misogyny

[SecretCriticalThinker]

Can anyone see a problem with this? Please take the miss out of, and regressively stereotype, mothers in order to help us sell washing machines

You'll need to go on the Instagram post to read comments.

I get the joke.

I don't get how it's acceptable for a big corporate to request the lampooning women/mothers.

@Baileyonice

I've not checked the statistics myself. If you are correct, rather than this justifying a massive misogynist piss-take in order to help raise the profits of a corporation, a more egalitarian approach would be to consider: what are the likely reasons mothers, particularly the working class ones, are higher users of Facebook.

Ie: why might this group have lower literacy levels (not my opinion but suggested by the comments on the reel), where are the fathers on forums discussing SEND, children's health and wellbeing, safeguarding, and organising birthday parties, allergies, school uniform, child care, housing etc ? And what practical and financial factors may limit working class mothers being able to give and receive support from their peers in real life?

A little interrogation of why Curry's have seen fit to use a pejorative stereotype of women who have children in order to set up place for snide and condescending mockery would also be worth considering.

Wasn't the point of intersectional feminism to consider the multiple factors that create inequality?

Mothers, especially those from lower socio economic backgrounds, get treated like absolute shit by large swathes of society. Rather than jumping on an insidious corporate marketing stunt to compound this, it would have been refreshing if at least other women, if not men, had seen it for what it is.

Philosophy Tube said one thing I kind of agreed with, when he was still Ollie, namely, "Modern liberalism just tells you who it is okay to hate*."

Not okay: trans people, kinksters, LGB, immigrants, racialised minorities, some but not all religious minorities (Muslims, no; Jews, not sure)

Okay: white people, old people (Boomers grrr), people whose ancestors came from colonialist countries (but only the European ones), Christians (but maybe not Catholics; the Pope seems cool) anyone with a better job or more money than you, women

*Personally I feel "hate" is an over-used word. I'd change it for, "people it's okay to laugh at just for being who they are."

Can you clarify what exactly you are arguing about, I've lost track.

@Baileyonice

For me, the issue isn’t simply that a joke was made about “Facebook mums”; it’s who is being invited to laugh at whom, and who benefits from it.

A huge corporation is taking a recognisably female, often middle-aged and/or working-class group and using sexist stereotypes about them to generate engagement and sell products. The women being mocked are portrayed as stupid, uncultured, superficial or xenophobic, while the reality of the unpaid domestic and caring work many mothers do is completely ignored.

I don’t see this as satire punching up at power, or as an oppressed group reclaiming a slur. It’s a powerful company exploiting an existing sexist stereotype and encouraging people to pile on a group with relatively little power to control the narrative.

And the fact that some women join in doesn’t make it any less misogynistic. If anything, that’s part of what makes this kind of misogyny so socially acceptable: it gets packaged as harmless humour, so anyone objecting can be dismissed as humourless or oversensitive. Presumably that what you think of me!