[This is the second post in a series, criticizing the recent campaign by anti-feminist Glenn Sacks against The Family Place. I’d like to remind readers that “Alas, a Blog” will match any contributions you make to The Family Place this week (up to $800 total), so please donate, and then let me know in comments or through this form.]
[Links to the posts in this series: One Two Three.]
Prominent right-wingers Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin recently praised Glenn Sacks’ campaign against The Family Place, a domestic violence shelter that provides help to both female and male victims of intimate violence. Reynolds said:
They didn’t try to get anybody fired but they contacted them and asked them, “Did you realize that your money is supporting these ads? Is this what you want to do?”
They made a very big point of being very polite about it and not making any threats. They did get some action and did it without trying to get anybody fired or booted from their jobs or doing anything vicious.
Because there’s nothing vicious about attempting to cut off the funding of a domestic violence shelter.
I suspect that Reynolds learned this from Glenn Sacks’ site, where Glenn claimed this “achievement” for his campaign:
A sub-group of our protesters who I selected called over 50 of The Family Place’s financial contributors to express our concerns about the ads. Most contributors said they sympathized with us, and many told us they thought the ads and the subsequent protest were an embarrassment to The Family Place. Many contacted Family Place Executive Director Paige Flink with their concerns.
Several of The Family Place’s financial contributors withdrew or reduced the financial gifts they planned for the end-of-the-year giving season.
Like Roy Eduso in The Village Voice, and the blogger at Glenn’s Cult (warning: that link makes an annoying noise), I was concerned when I read this; I’d hate for the anti-feminists to succeed in depriving abused women and men of desparately needed support and services.
Fortunately, according to Paige Flink, Glenn vastly exaggerated the effects of his campaign. Unfortunately, contrary to what Glenn Reynolds (and, probably, Glenn Sacks himself) believes, the calls made to The Family Place’s volunteers and donors due to Glenn’s campaign were anything but polite.
Ms. Flink was kind enough to talk to me on the phone. Glenn Sacks declined to make any “on the record” comments to me.
Can you tell me how long you’ve been at The Family Place?
I have been on staff at The Family Place for seventeen years, and I was a volunteer for three years prior to that.
Is it a difficult job?
It is hard work, but when you see success… It’s unbelievable the families that we help. Even if they’re only in the shelter for 45 days, the difference is incredible. If we help them get a job, or go to school, it really improves their life for years to come. It’s awesome.
Plus I see bad things happen to women and it just makes me mad. The oppression is true, it’s real.
Glenn Sacks claimed his activists convinced some regular Family Place supporters to withhold donations. Have you seen any evidence of that from your end?
The only thing I know for sure is I got an email from a man who said he’d never give again, because of this. He once gave $25, in 2003.
It’s possible that [Sacks] convinced somebody besides that one donor.
Have you heard from any of your donors who had been contacted by Glenn’s campaign?
Yes. They were horrified.
What were they horrified about?
They were horrified that they were contacted. Not about the ad campaign. Horrified that someone from outside the state of Texas would call and say “don’t give money to The Family Place.” There was one of my board members who received 25 calls from the same woman.
What did the people calling them say?
It was… they were paraphrasing, so I don’t know exactly. They were told that you should not support The Family Place. This is a terrible campaign, they’re not a good organization, you should not support The Family Place, and we’re asking you to stop donating to The Family Place.
Some of the vile language and verbal abuse we took on the phone was horrific. The kinds of things they said to our staff about what they’re going to do to them was awful. I’ve had some “you’re going to go to hell, you’re a fat lesbian luring women into those shelters so you can prey on them.”
If I reply back to a victim I really am cautious in how I speak to her, because how do I know it’s a victim? We screen our clients on the phone, but…
I didn’t know there was this atmosphere out there of people who would say… horrible things to people they don’t know. They’d write in all caps like they were screaming and yelling. This is not a world that I’m used to. And the people would would say verbatim what he had said, like they’d drank the kool-aid… It was just amazing. It lasted a very short window of time. It was not much more than 10 days and then it fell off.
Did the campaign succeed in doing damage to The Family Place?
No, as a matter of fact, what he did was make us even more visible, in venues where we wouldn’t necessarily have been visible. We are not an AM radio organization. So even though some of it was negative… For example, he was on one of the radio stations here, and a huge organization, a very conservative group, emailed the radio station saying we support The Family Place. So just the name of The Family Place being out there might, in a perverse way, help, because we might reach someone who needs our services.
So I’m still thinking the campaign was very successful. When Glenn went on CNN, we got so many positive phone calls to our hotline that night, saying go for it, don’t back down, don’t let him do that to you.
I want to make sure it’s clear that we had a 60 day contract on those buses. It is not true that we took down our ads down. That’s not true. It was always going to end on November 30 — that was all the money we had.
I feel very strongly that the donors in this community understand what we’re doing in the family place. We have a lot of credibility. So I feel like our donors are going to stand beside us. It’s a shame that we’ve had to take anything away from the mission of this organization to even waste time in defending what we’re doing. It’s been a drain on time … it isn’t productive.
How much time did you have to spend dealing with this controversy?
I don’t know… hours, I had to spend hours. Thinking about the right strategy and how to respond and how to stay true to the message of The Family Place. If it’s five hours then it’s five hours too many.
We have a page on our website that we did make gender-neutral in response.
I’d like to thank Ms. Flink for talking with me.
My next post in this series will feature more from my interview with Paige Flink, including her advice to men’s rights activists who want to help male victims of violence. In the meanwhile, don’t forget to donate to The Family Place! Even very low donations are worthwhile, and remember, this week they’ll be doubled.
Comment deleted (on the grounds that he hadn’t read the post with sufficient care before raising a question) by the author.
Yeah, I totally didn’t see this coming. Really. Seriously. I completely didn’t tell Glenn that this wasn’t exactly the kind of behavior he could expect when he sics his dogs on the woman’s shelter.
You know what? I personally think the Men’s Rights Movement does have some legitimate grievances. The problem is that the movement is so stuffed with rage-filled men that it will never, ever accomplish anything about them. They shoot themselves in the foot with every step.
You can hear normal moderates mention some of the legitimate things that MRMs scream at the mountaintops. And you know what? They come up with those ideas on their own. They don’t hear them from Glenn Sacks or any other MRAs.
Whether or not men need an advocacy group, any address of male-specific issues will come from the mainstream, not from advocates.
I will take the annoying noise down. I actually put it up there to amuse my daughter (she giggles like silly everytime she hears it). But it is annoying :-)
Pingback: GlennSacks.com » Blog Archive » A Response to Family Place Executive Director Paige Flink over DART Campaign
On my blog I’ve responded to some of the answers Ms. Flink gave to Barry’s questions. I’ve pasted my responses in below.
Deutsch asks: Glenn Sacks claimed his activists convinced some regular Family Place supporters to withhold donations. Have you seen any evidence of that from your end?
Flink replies: The only thing I know for sure is I got an email from a man who said he’d never give again, because of this. He once gave $25, in 2003. It’s possible that [Sacks] convinced somebody besides that one donor.
Sacks responds: Not true, although to be fair to Ms. Flink, she probably has no way of knowing about all of the people who didn’t contribute or who reduced their contributions in light of the controversy.
Also, the campaign was not simply done by “Glenn Sacks’ activists”–Fathers & Families, a national shared parenting organization, was my partner in the campaign. F & F’s Executive Director is Dr. Ned Holstein, MD, MS, a public health specialist.
Deutsch asks: Have you heard from any of your donors who had been contacted by Glenn’s campaign?
Flink replies: Yes. They were horrified…Not about the ad campaign. Horrified that someone from outside the state of Texas would call and say “don’t give money to The Family Place.”
Sacks responds: Actually, many of the donors we contacted were horrified by the ads and thought they were an embarrassment to the Family Place.
Flink says: There was one of my board members who received 25 calls from the same woman.
Sacks responds: I doubt this, but if it happened, it certainly didn’t happen with my sanction. If Ms. Flink would like to give me the name of this person, I will check the story out on my end and, if it’s true, make sure this individual never has anything to do with one of our campaigns again.
Deutsch asks: What did the people calling them say?
Flink replies: It was… they were paraphrasing, so I don’t know exactly. They were told that you should not support The Family Place. This is a terrible campaign, they’re not a good organization, you should not support The Family Place, and we’re asking you to stop donating to The Family Place.
Sacks responds: We said it was a terrible campaign, and many of the donors agreed, as have numerous domestic violence authorities, medical & mental health professionals, educators, family law attorneys & prominent citizens.
Our list of campaign endorsers includes many prominent domestic violence authorities, including Dr. Donald Dutton, former member of the OJ Simpson prosecution team and author of Rethinking Domestic Violence; Erin Pizzey, a British family care activist who founded the first modern battered women’s shelter in 1971; Patricia Overberg, MSW, the former Director of the Valley Oasis Domestic Violence Shelter in Lancaster, CA; John Hamel, LCSW, author of Gender-Inclusive Treatment of Intimate Partner Abuse; Claudia Dias, MSC, a Domestic Violence Intervention Facilitator in Sacramento; Jan Brown, Founder and Executive Director of the Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women; Jayne A. Major, Ph.D., founder of Breakthrough Parenting Services in Los Angeles; and numerous others.
I would also add that The Family Place’s ads were so offensive that two major billboard companies–Clear Channel Outdoor and CBS Outdoor–rejected them. Jodi Senese of CBS said the ads “can be both misleading and disturbing.”
Flink replies: Some of the vile language and verbal abuse we took on the phone was horrific. The kinds of things they said to our staff about what they’re going to do to them was awful. I’ve had some “you’re going to go to hell, you’re a fat lesbian luring women into those shelters so you can prey on them.”
Sacks responds: Like any good Executive Director, Ms. Flink is deft at public relations, and here’s another example. She’s conflating the calls made to The Family Place’s financial contributors–calls made by a hand-selected small group (several of whom are mental health professionals), with calls made to The Family Place itself which were made without my sanction. I never asked my readers to call The Family Place–not once. When someone would post The Family Place’s phone # in the comments section of my blog, I’d delete it.
I’m not surprised that some of the callers were angry or rude, but I have tens of thousands of readers and I can’t be expected to keep track of what each one of them does.
As for the alleged lesbian-bashing, I’m on the record publicly as a supporter of gay rights and gays’ rights to marry. I’ve also publicized numerous cases of lesbian women being unfairly denied joint custody of their children after divorce or separation–an issue which the feminist left, which normally has a good record on gay rights, has ignored.
Deutsch asks: Did the campaign succeed in doing damage to The Family Place?
Flink replies: No, as a matter of fact, what he did was make us even more visible, in venues where we wouldn’t necessarily have been visible.
Sacks responds: Anytime one launches a high-profile protest one of the drawbacks is that you bring attention to the people you’re protesting against. Our campaign generated a lot of media attention, particularly in light of the fact that we launched it a week before the presidential election. Ms. Flink obviously wanted attention and didn’t care too much about negative attention–she made that clear in interviews she gave right after she put the ads up.
Flink replies: I want to make sure it’s clear that we had a 60 day contract on those buses. It is not true that we took down our ads down. That’s not true. It was always going to end on November 30 — that was all the money we had.
Sacks responds: I never said they took the ads down. From the beginning it was clear that the ads were coming down 11/30 and they did. I knew when we launched the campaign that DART would probably try to run out the clock, deflecting wide-spread criticism by saying “The ads are coming down soon anyway.” That’s exactly what they did. (DART also made a point of saying that the ads were only on the outsides of 45 out of 800 buses in their fleet.) Our success lay in other realms.
Flink says: I feel very strongly that the donors in this community understand what we’re doing in The Family Place. We have a lot of credibility.
Sacks responds: That may well be true, but their credibility was sapped by these embarassing ads and the protest against them.
Flink says: We have a page on our website that we did make gender-neutral in response.
Sacks responds: That was appropriate for The Family Place to do, and I commended them for it on several occasions.
Flink’s ad campaign was wrong and the Domestic Violence establishment of which she’s a part has many wrongheaded policies. During the campaign I called Ms. Flink to discuss the issue with her. I never received a phone call back, but in my voice mail I did commend her for the good work that her organization does on behalf of abused women. I’ll reiterate that commendation here.–GS
I hope you’ll let us know next week how much was donated by the Alas community.
So you got Paige Flink to make some unverifiable charges against Sacks, and the campaign he helped run. “They were mean to us on the phone. One of them called us lesbians! ZOMG! And no one really stopped contributing.”
That doesn’t seem like a terribly meaningful interview.
Did you consider asking her about the meat of the campaign’s charges? About the research that shows women initiate a significant portion of domestic violence and how her ads didn’t address that? Or about that research and how it is under-reported?
What did she say when you asked her that?
I did commend her for the good work that her organization does on behalf of abused women
That’s nice. Did you also commend her for providing emergency shelter and outreach counseling to men, therapy to male victims of incest and court-ordered batterer’s treatment to male, female and adolescent offenders? And have you thought about how the reduced contributions to The Family Place will affect their ability to provide those services? What are you doing to ensure these services will be equally available to men in the Dallas area after your self-touted success in reducing The Family Place’s funding?
I am not familiar with the people Sacks names as supporters, but here’s what are some of the first few Google results on the first few names:
Dr. Donald Dutton – found by a British Columbia tribunal to have sexually harassed one of his female students; a finding based not on her testimony, but on an audiotape of their conversation. This incident is relevant to evaluating Dr. Dutton’s views on gender, including his claim that detached, emotionally unavailable behavior of the mother is as much to blame for the creater of male batterers as the “shaming and violent behavior” of the father. Incidentally, Dutton never was called to testify in the OJ case.
Erin Pizzey – her own description states that she sought to open, not a shelter, but “a small community centre for women and their children so that my vision of the lessening of the isolation found in the Western world due to the breaking down of the extended family could be ameliorated.”
Dutton’s and Pizzey’s opposition to the ads may make sense in the context of both individuals’ stated opposition to feminism, but is actually quite puzzling in light of their view that “violence was a learned pattern of behaviour from early childhood.”
Clear Channel’s and CBS’s refusal of a non-commercial ad is unsurprising. Clear Channel also has refused to run an anti-war ad with an image of a bomb and the slogan “Democracy is best taught by example, not by war”; any environmentalist ad criticizing Salt River Project and its plans to build a coal mine; anti-WalMart ads from unions; etc. On the upside, Clear Channel will approve some political messages, such as one from an openly white supremacist group that put up bilboards saying, “Stop Immigration – Join the National Alliance.”
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I am sorry to differ on this one, but I do not like the ads. I was also put off by the ads that ran under the men teaching boys campaign in New York City as well, and I have to add, our little PTA received negative comments from parents to that effect. Partly this comes from being the mother of a son, but I struggle to understand how this type approach will be successful. It breeds resentment and anger, and the nature of the ads kind of justifies that. I for one would be furious if child abuse ads were targeted solely at mothers. I understand the tactics of MRA’s can be dizzying and troubling, but on this one, I have to give credit for standing up to an ad that is problematic. Did you have the opportunity to ask Ms. Flink about the direct charges by Mr. Sacks, I would be curious to hear her thoughts on that, and look forward to reading the rest of the interview. In sum, I can see how it is offensive, have felt that emotion when considering the impact these ads have on my son and his father, and would prefer a more intelligent approach the breeds less contempt.
marabel,
Why would an ad of this type bother your husband or son? Unless your son has witnessed domestic violence (either of you beating your husband, or your husband beating you), the statement in the ad that boys who witnessed DV are twice as likely to beat their wives is rather irrelevant to your son. It would be like my getting offended by an ad that said the children of racists are more likely to be racists themselves. I’m not the child of a racist, so I’m not worried about such a circumstance’s increasing the probability of being racist myself.
It is very strange.
i see a lot of people saying “I don’t like this ad.”
Then they are told that they are basically wrong: that they shouldn’t like the ad, or that they don’t really like it. This makes no sense.
In addition, various people here–PG in particular–keep saying, in essence, that it is inconceivable that someone would be offended by or dislike the ad. I am not sure why that keeps getting repeated in the face of a variety of people who say they are offended by the ad, or that they do dislike it.
Fine, fine, we all have differences of opinion. But what I don’t get is the mindless stubbornness here: Sure, I think the ad is problematic, but PG, it’s not too hard for me to understand your position. You don’t seem capable of doing the reverse, yet you seem to be implying that it’s your opponents who have a limited ability to see the real truth.
Not liking the ad is not completely synonymous with finding it offensive, or especially with finding it so offensive that you want to harm the effective nonprofit that financed a brief campaign using it. Also, the people offended by the ad are not the target audience, so the fact that some find it offensive doesn’t necessarily make it a bad ad.
I haven’t seen a single person say this, Sailorman. I’ve seen people (including PG) argue that the reasons people dislike the ad are wrong or illogical, but not that that their opinion is inconceivable.
Can you support you claim with a direct quote, please?
As for “mindless stubbornness,” please attempt to be more civil in the future.
What lonespark said.
I understand that people are saying they are offended by the ad. I am asking why they are offended. Offense, particularly to the point that one attempts to have the ad taken down and the organization that put it up financially penalized for doing so, is not self-explanatory and not a matter of mere aesthetics.
I dislike Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle, but I don’t feel the need to call the Guggenheim and insist they pull its exhibit. If I were going to do that, I’d feel the need to articulate why I think the work is so bad that it doesn’t belong in a museum that contains plenty of stuff that I do and don’t like. I would want to be prepared with an explanation of how the art is in some way clearly demeaning, destructive, etc. and without enough redeeming value to warrant its retention. If the curator then pointed out to me that I was in fact misunderstanding the work entirely and that had I bothered to watch the films instead of just wandering through the exhibit, I would know better, I wouldn’t continue to insist that the work was unmitigatedly terrible and needed to be pulled. I would make a better effort to understand the work.
I feel justified in questioning whether people who say they are offended really understand the ad, because I have seen those people repeatedly make very poor analogies to it that basically boil down to “This ad is saying ALL MEN are abusers and ALL WOMEN are DV victims, and NO MEN are DV victims and NO WOMEN are abusers.” Such a statement indicates the person either didn’t actually read the ad at all, or was terribly failed by the teacher who should have taught her about the concept of probability.
I understand that people are saying they are offended by the ad. I am asking why they are offended.
No you’re not. You’re holding out your enlightened example of not being offended by the ad and taking a position of moral authority and superiority.
And earlier, you’re intentionally ignoring that this is an ad on the sides of moving buses, and ignoring the difference in size between the primary message: “One day my husband will kill me” and “When I grow up, I will beat my wife” with the much much smaller explanatory qualifications: “People who witness…”
It doesn’t take a marketing genius to recognize what the message most people will come away with is.
And you’re also ignoring the factual inaccuracy of these two messages. Why only these two messages and not the equally factual message from a boy. “When I grow up my wife will hit me and beat me up.” “When I grow up my wife will kill me”
Or even the message Ampersand agrees is factual:
“When I grow up, my wife will kill me, and society will consider her ill, and punish her lightly.”
Barry Deutsch and you and Flink does not address the research that shows women initiate a significant amount of domestic violence.
Neither of you address the primary message is clearly one that says “All men are…”
All of you hide behind the much smaller qualifications, and ignore how one sided and sexist the campaign was.
Finally Deutsch pretends not to understand Sailorman’s point.
This is not the gender role discussion Deutsch pretends it is.
Sailorman observing:
In addition, various people here–PG in particular–keep saying, in essence, that it is inconceivable that someone would be offended by or dislike the ad.
Deutsch, pretending:
I haven’t seen a single person say this, Sailorman. I’ve seen people (including PG) argue that the reasons people dislike the ad are wrong or illogical, but not that that their opinion is inconceivable.
PG, declaring his moral superiority, and directly refuting Deutsch:
I feel justified in questioning whether people who say they are offended really understand the ad, because I have seen those people repeatedly make very poor analogies to it that basically boil down to “This ad is saying ALL MEN are abusers and ALL WOMEN are DV victims, and NO MEN are DV victims and NO WOMEN are abusers.” Such a statement indicates the person either didn’t actually read the ad at all, or was terribly failed by the teacher who should have taught her about the concept of probability.
Frankly PG, I feel justified in questioning Ampersand’s belief in women’s equality, based on his continual patronizing posts on their behalf. Of course, when I said that yesterday, I was told that if repeated, bannination would follow.
“ Why would an ad of this type bother your husband or son? Unless your son has witnessed domestic violence (either of you beating your husband, or your husband beating you), the statement in the ad that boys who witnessed DV are twice as likely to beat their wives is rather irrelevant to your son. “
This is the second message. The message which is smaller, more difficult to read, more likely to be missed and is offered as an explanation of the first message. It is impossible to miss the first message.
There are two distinct, indicative, significant messages:
1) I will beat my wife.
2) Children who witness domestic violence are more likely to experience domestic violence.
The two messages can be linked and the intended message be delivered only if the second message is received. The second message is difficult to read and rendered in much smaller text and will not always be received. Lacking the explanation of the second message it would be perfectly reasonable to be offended/bothered/shocked by the first unlinked message.
I interpret the first message to say loosely: “ I (any random, everyday, nextdoor neighbor boy) will grow up and beat my wife” and “I (any random everyday nextdoor neighbor female child) will be killed by my husband when I grow up” I read the implication here, if the second message is not available to explain the first message, is that abuse is so common that any person will grow up and be either abused or killed. The only gender depicted as being abused and killed is female and the only gender depicted as the perpetrator is male.
The overtone of the first message, when not clarified by the second message, is sexist.
jerry,
No you’re not. You’re holding out your enlightened example of not being offended by the ad and taking a position of moral authority and superiority.
Please read the thread. In my comment to marabel, my very first question was, “Why would an ad of this type bother your husband or son?” It was not a statement “Your husband and son couldn’t possibly be bothered by this ad.” I can point you to where I have asked questions about why people are offended. Can you point to where I have said that I am morally superior because I am not offended by it? I might be plausibly accused of claiming superiority in literacy or knowledge of logic, probability, statistics, advertising and graphics design — all of which I have questioned the people who were offended by this of perhaps not understanding very well — but I’ve never said that people who were offended were in any way immoral. On the contrary, I think it’s good for people to be sensitive; I just don’t think our sensitivities should run rampant over our ability to assess whether something does more good than harm.
And earlier, you’re intentionally ignoring that this is an ad on the sides of moving buses, and ignoring the difference in size between the primary message
Nope. Read the earlier thread on this topic — I specifically discussed the common use in advertising and graphics design of different sized and typed fonts as a way to grab people’s attention to a message that otherwise might not be much noticed.
And you’re also ignoring the factual inaccuracy of these two messages. Why only these two messages and not the equally factual message from a boy. “When I grow up my wife will hit me and beat me up.” “When I grow up my wife will kill me”
As you will see if you read the current discussion in the earlier thread, Schala and I are debating whether it would be equally factual to create an ad with a parallel message, to wit: “When I grow up my wife will kill me — boys who witness DV are more likely to be victims of DV.” The fact that some men tragically are killed by their wives is utterly irrelevant to the focus of this ad campaign, which is to convince victims of DV that if their children keep seeing them get abused, those children are more likely to be in abusive relationships as adults. The ads claim to have statistics to back the idea that witnessing DV makes boys twice as likely to beat their wives, girls more likely to be killed by their partners, and children of both sexes more likely to commit suicide.
If you want to refute these statistics, please do so — no one else has thus far. If you want to proffer statistics that show boys who witness DV are more likely to be victims of it as adults, please do so — no one else has thus far. In the absence of either refutation or statistics that indicate such an increased probability exists for boys to become DV victims, you’re deliberately ignoring the actual purpose and message of the ads, which is not “all men are abusers, all women victims,” but rather, “This is more likely to be your kid if you don’t get out of the abusive situation you’re in.”
And I refuted your claim that Amp was “patronizing” all women, by noting that he was not saying women categorically OUGHT to be treated differently than men, but instead was pointing out that women who commit filicide are more likely to be diagnosed as mentally ill than men who commit filicide, and that is reasonable and consistent with other social practices to treat the mentally ill committers of crimes differently than the non-mentally ill. (The Supreme Court has ratified this practice in part by finding executions of the mentally ill to be a violation of the 8th Amendment, while continuing to condone executions of other criminals.) You didn’t seem to have much of a response to this.
Moreover, you seem to be having the exact same problem in this discussion: not grasping the difference between saying that X is more likely among women than among men, and saying that all women are X.
roger,
But if you really are taking the first line literally and ignoring the second line (which is a very bad way to read anything, especially advertising*), then why would people interpret it to apply to themselves based on gender? After all, maleness is not the only characteristic of the boy, and femaleness not the only characteristic of the girl.
Suppose Rosie O’Donnell were to look at the ad with the boy. If she reads only the first line, why would she not apply it to herself? The person saying he’ll beat his wife is someone with a female partner (like O’Donnell), white (like O’Donnell), apparently middle to upper class (like O’Donnell), etc. The only race being referenced as abusive is White; the only race being referenced as the victim is Black. The only way for someone to know that the salient characteristic of the boy is his maleness is to read and understand the second line, which refers to him as a boy and not by his race, sexual orientation or socioeconomic status. And someone who actually understands the second line will know that this is not a statement being made about all boys, but a statement being made about probability regarding a certain subset of boys who are being damaged by their abused parents’ failure to leave the abusive situation.
* The ongoing defense here of people’s being lazy readers reminds me of the defense of forcing the DC mayor’s aide to resign because he used the word “niggardly.” Yes, some people sincerely got offended because they thought he was using a racist slur. But those people should be encouraged to ask questions and pick up a damn dictionary, not encouraged to use their offense as a cudgel on something that was not intended the way it was received. If the people offended had asked the speaker, “Did you just say nigger?” and he had said Yup, or refused to explain, they would have been justified. Similarly, if Sacks had asked The Family Place, “Are you saying that all women are DV victims and all men are abusers?” and TFP had said Yup we are, or refused to explain, he would be justified.
roger says:
I have pointed this out on my website regarding the “size” of the print. Glenn Sacks and his fanbase at his blog had absolutely no problems reading the name of the agency or their motto on this ad. I might add the motto font size is 1/2 of the disclaimer font size. I don’t know about others but this is where my issue lies. You can see the motto and state it over and over on numerous blogs yet you cannot see the “disclaimer” which is twice the size of the motto?
“This is not an intellectually honest argument.
And too, we are under Barry Deutsch’s gun: his threat of banning if we somehow step over a line that he draws post-facto.”
Not just Barry’s.
You’re repeating yourself while adding no new information, and being unresponsive to the other comments in the thread. In short, you’re not only wrong, but tediously wrong. You’re also doing all this in the face of PG’s stunning patience toward your repetition, and her stunning patience in calmly, intelligently refuting your arguments (which you then repeat). Since I prefer to read threads populated by opponents who can at least concoct an interesting and avid argument which isn’t just a whine repeated thirty times in the face of contradiction, I rule you out of order, and out of Alas.
One day you’re in, and the next day you’re out. I’m afraid we can’t live with your design. Please pack your knives and go.
PG, Just to clarify, I found the ads offensive. I can accept that they are viewed as unfair characterizations, improper to use children in that way, sexist, racist et al. because that is how they struck me and I consider that to be counterproductive. I do not expect children in primary school to have the logical reasoning skills or interest level to observe the fine print and make causal connections and arrive at a Eureka moment. I do know from my seven year old, that big bold print that jumps out with an image is sufficient enough to fill the sensory machinations and inform. The ad my husband and I found offensive in New York, portrayed a boy in an oversized orange sweatshirt. The astute observation made by my husband at first glance, was that it was prison jumpsuit orange. I too was very troubled by the innuendo, and respect the interpretation. Marketers do not expect children or even adults to lounge over the phone kiosk qualifying an ads intent, or chase after the bus to ascertain the full meaning of an ad. In seeing the images of these bus ads from Dallas I had the same visceral reaction. If many men and women feel strongly how a bus ad creates a message that they find offensive, I am willing to accept that perspective and live with it. No need to tell them they are wrong and resort to diminishing their character for being bold to express an opinion, particularly when not chic or unpopular. I hope that answers your question PG.
“I feel justified in questioning whether people who say they are offended really understand the ad, because I have seen those people repeatedly make very poor analogies to it that basically boil down to “This ad is saying ALL MEN are abusers and ALL WOMEN are DV victims, and NO MEN are DV victims and NO WOMEN are abusers.””
I don’t agree with those others saying it paints ALL men and ALL women that way. But I do agree that it paints men as only possibly perpetrators and women as only possibly victims. Not an ALL proposition, but an ONLY proposition instead.
“If you’re a boy, you’ll either beat your wife, or not. But she’ll never beat you”
“If you’re a girl, you’ll either get beaten by your husband, or not. But you’ll never beat him.”
is what I retain from the ads
marabel and Schala,
I guess I just disagree on whether it is reasonable to expect people to read the totality of an advertisement and make an effort to understand it before they advocate for it to be pulled down and for the organization that created it to be defunded. I don’t think a gut-reaction of offense is sufficient to try to get money taken away from an organization that otherwise does very good work.
Also, I have a longstanding skepticism of the view that all advertising has to be done at a level that is appropriate to children’s understanding, and that any advertising that does not do this should be banned. My parents are quite socially conservative — when I was growing up, my mom would cover my eyes even when a married couple on TV kissed — but they did not join these sorts of campaigns to get child-inappropriate advertising, TV programs, movies, etc. removed entirely. Instead, they considered it their own responsibility to determine what came into the house and what their children saw. This meant they were very strict with us: for example, I could not sleep over at a friend’s house unless my parents felt that the other child’s parents shared their values.
While I don’t plan to be this strict with my kids, I do think this is the appropriate way to parent: not to militate for making everything at a 7-year-old’s level of understanding, but to limit my child’s exposure to what is not appropriate for him, and to take the responsibility on myself to explain to him what he does encounter and doesn’t understand. If I’m raising my kid in Manhattan, for example, that could be somewhat demanding — if we see something like a Calvin Klein ad, I’ll have to explain why the lady is on top of the man with his pants pulled down. (“That’s something some grownups do when they like each other as more than friends, kind of like how Mommy and Daddy like each other. It’s not OK for kids to do, and you shouldn’t do that to anyone or let them do it to you.”)
But I think that is my job as a parent, not the surrounding, essentially adult-oriented culture’s job. In particular where small children shouldn’t be roaming around on their own (like the Dallas bus system, or NYC streets), it doesn’t make sense to me to demand everything be at a small child’s level of comprehension.
And Schala, as I noted above, you could just as reasonably take away from the images and first line of text that only whites commit DV, and only blacks are its victims.
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I hope you don’t mind my commenting back PG directly to your experience, but it did touch on something that I have often thought was a shortcoming in how we address this notion of the cycle of violence. The scenario you paint, and the one I wish you well in achieving for your own is, for many, very different. What I am trying to say, is that you present a very stable and healthy ( you may differ on the latter :) ) upbringing. The parent you wish to be or parents you had and its structure is simply something many families do not have; so the way people see the genesis of this problem and understand this problem is varied. The parent in 2008 is simply not always there to inform and educate children in the way you seem to have been which makes the critique and concern expressed by some all the more relevant and valid.
“And Schala, as I noted above, you could just as reasonably take away from the images and first line of text that only whites commit DV, and only blacks are its victims.”
I would be against it for similar reasons were it portrayed that way. I don’t find it any less bad. Though I’ll admit I didn’t see that implication at first, that speaks of my racial blindness, I’m not always aware of racist undertones.
“I would be against it for similar reasons were it portrayed that way. I don’t find it any less bad. Though I’ll admit I didn’t see that implication at first, that speaks of my racial blindness, I’m not always aware of racist undertones.”
I think the argument is that race isn’t actually portrayed that way in these photographs. The race, in these particular photographs, is — perhaps not incidental — but clearly not meant to be read as essentializing. The presence of a black victim does not imply there are no white or Asian victims. The presence of a victim with curly hair does not suggest that no people with straight hair are ever victimized. Or, to get back to sociologically significant distinctions — the fact that all the children are skinny and conventionally attractive doesn’t mean that fat, ugly people aren’t affected by domestic violence. Such readings are strained, and have no textual support.
(On the other hand, you could make an argument that ugly people are excluded from the pool ofpeople recognized as domestic violence victims — but you would have to broaden your criticism so that it included many more examples than just these three. A systemic argument requires a broader pool. Likewise, if one were to be attacking *all* representation of domestic violence as centering on female victims, and never acknowledging male victims, that is an absolutely accurate — and damning — argument. It’s a perfectly valid reason to criticize something like, say, Special Victims Unit, which provides a decent sample size, but which I can’t remember ever showing a domestic violence incident in which a heterosexual male adult was victimized. You can also make a broader, systemic social critique that includes these ads. What isn’t supportable is the argument that these three advertisements, alone, constitute systemic oppression, without taking into account broader context, which would have to include the fact that The Family Place does address male victims of domestic violence, as well as looking at other material that represents victims of domestic violence.)
Therefore, it is a stretch to assume that these photographs are read as totally eliminating male victims and female perpetrators — the language used (IIRC) is “children,” not “sons” or “daughters.”
The sexes portrayed in the advertisements align with the vast majority of the experiences of people who witness or participate in domestic violence. It’s never a good idea to erase a minority experience, but at the same time, it would be disingenuous (and do a disservice to the people involved) to suggest that a parity exists between the sexes when it comes to domestic violence when, in fact, no such parity actually exists.
If the ad campaign were larger and more widespread, I would think it would be incumbent on the people making the advertisements to include shifting gender roles. In that circumstance, I would hope they’d also add images that show explicit non-heterosexuality. With three images, the pool is too limited to give a a truly varied representation which shows all possible combinations and outcomes. The choice to represent — within this limited pool — those scenarios which most often lead to people needing the shelter’s services makes sense.
marabel,
The parent in 2008 is simply not always there to inform and educate children in the way you seem to have been which makes the critique and concern expressed by some all the more relevant and valid.
I do recognize that I was privileged to have two parents who lived in the same household I did, and one of whom was working only one 9-5 job so she had time to keep a close eye on us. (My dad worked a lot more hours and thus was the stereotypical “big gun” reserved only for the worst offenses.)
However, the fact that some children are missing this luxury is not a reason to censor everything out of public view that is beyond a 7-year-old’s understanding. Rather, it is reason for both MRAs and feminists to work toward making parenting more available to children, both through their literal custodians and through a more “it takes a village” approach. Quite frankly, I don’t want to live in a world where everything in public view has to be dumbed down to a 2nd grade level of reading and comprehension.
Marabel writes:
but on this one, I have to give credit for standing up to an ad that is problematic.
“Standing up” = defunding a woman’s shelter? Nice thinking there. :-( How does that address the notion of the cycle of violence?
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