We have previously discussed how Great Britain has embraced the “nanny state” in regulating speech and conduct that are deemed unhealthy or inimical to good social policy. The latest example are new rules to take effect in 2019 the will ban sexist or gender stereotypes from advertising. This includes showing men or women in gender stereotypical activities because such images are deemed to contribute to pay inequality or psychological harm.
The rules will also crackdown on ads that promote the concept of being more romantically successful with more beautiful bodies. Who will decide such questions? The Advertising Standards Authority of course.
Moreover, jokes will also be banned if they are deemed as advancing stereotypes. ASA’s Ella Smillie, who helped to devise the new rules, explained that “The use of humour or banter is unlikely to mitigate against the potential for harm. It’s fine to show people undertaking gender-stereotypical roles such a woman cleaning. But if an advert showed a woman being solely responsible for cleaning up mess within a home while a man sits around with his feet up, then that would be a problem.”
So Smillie and others will sit around and pass judgment on whether an ad is advancing a stereotype even in jest. That level of speech regulation is normally anathema in free countries but Great Britain has eviscerated free speech protections.
There is an alternative. You can let the marketplace address such stereotypes and leave it to customers to make their own decisions on the content of advertisements. That would be called freedom of choice and freedom of speech.
What do you think?
The classic, decades-long BBC science-fiction TV series “Doctor Who” is losing viewers rapidly over just such agonizingly scrupulous poltiical correctness (coupled with an inept actress playing the new incarnation of the Doctor, and even less ept scriptwriting).
Britain’s on a crash course toward social paralysis because it is attempting to legislate proper behavior to an extent that makes Victorian England look like Woodstock by comparison. This latest episode with their advertising industry is just one more case of 21st century Bowdlerism.
“Why does “inclusivity” always end up excluding those who fall into typical behavior patterns?”
Karen S, I think I will have to pin that somewhere. Brilliant.
There are statistical behavior and preferential differences between adult and juvenile males and females. In general, girls like to play with dolls and boys like to play battle games. That, of course, does not take into account each individual. When 85% of one study group prefers one thing, that means that 15% prefer the other. Such statistical trends are data, and an individual may fall anywhere on that range. Statistically, you are not going to win the lottery, but there are a handful of people who do.
Statistical preferences are useful in marketing, and in designing services, products, and other accommodations to appeal to the most number of people. Attributing nefarious intentions to such data is foolish.
Personally, I find it offensive that any company might be punished for advertising to my own tastes and interests.
How ignorant are the law makers going to get? Shall they require that dolls be marketed exclusively to boys? Sure, it will only appeal to, at most, 5% of the population, and it will turn off the other 95%, but it’s about virtue signaling here. Why does “inclusivity” always end up excluding those who fall into typical behavior patterns?
People are getting way too neurotic, and are offending everyone at their clumsy attempts not to be offensive. I also believe that women get the brunt of this Progressive badgering. It’s the typical feminine behavior that is getting penalized here. They don’t want women on TV ads acting feminine. How in the world are businesses such as women’s fashion supposed to be engendered in their advertising? Have everyone wearing genie pants like MC Hammer?
When you are marketing to female athletes, your copy is going to be edgier, tougher, challenging. When you are marketing lingerie, it’s seductive, edgy and/or feminine. I ride, slog through the mud in winter, pick hay out of my hair, and I still like girly things, too.
There is nothing wrong with me, or what I like, and I would greatly appreciate it if Progressives and Liberals would stop being so neurotic about the statistical differences between men and women. It’s like their own self worth will dissolve if they admit that more women want to stay home with their children than men do, and more girls play with dolls than boys do. You like what you like.
At some point, the world must come to the understanding that people are free in every case and that government is severely limited and restricted merely to facilitating the freedom of people through the establishment of security and infrastructure. People must adapt to the outcomes of freedom – freedom does not adapt to people, dictatorship does.
The thesis of nature, America and God is freedom and self-reliance while altruism and charity are industries conducted in the free markets of the private sector.
The American Founders indicated that freedom is natural and God-given. Citizens in the UK enjoy the same natural and God-given freedoms as Americans, understanding that nature and God are universal and infinite, caterwauling by collectivist, big-government types notwithstanding.
The people are free and the government is severely limited and restricted. In every case, freedom of the individual prevails over any abstract power of the state.
Under universal, natural and God-given fundamental law, as enumerated by the Constitution, the government in Great Britain has no authority to abridge free speech, free press, free assembly, free belief, free religion, the right to private property, which is claimed and exercised or possessed and disposed of “…in exclusion of every other individual…,” including the government, per James Madison, or any other conceivable natural and God-given right and freedom per the 9th Amendment.
_________________________
1st Amendment
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
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Someone please ring up the Supreme Court of Collectivists and inform them that, much to their chagrin, freedom of the individual holds dominion.
Jonathan nailed it: Let viewers decide.
Like I have said before, “mindsets” transcend the centuries. This is the same mindset that led Victorians to cover up furniture legs lest someone be sexually aroused. And, there is the same social pressure to conform.
Instead of pretending that people should have no sexual desires, and simply do their respective “duties” thru marriage, now we must pretend that there are no differences between men and women. I wonder where the “duty” fits into this new scenario.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeek,
Couldn’t one argue that allowing furniture leg exposure has lead us to same sex marriage?
Hmmm. Maybe. . .
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I believe that we’ve been told since at least Periclean Athens that democracies devolve into oligarchies, which devolve into tyrannies. It is particularly tragic for this to happen in the home of our great Anglo-American political tradition, but the internal logic becomes inescapable once the purpose of government shifts from protecting the people’s liberty to protecting the people.
Brilliant truth!
Whenever JT posts one of these topics I always think of isaac and how he preaches how wonderful the more developed socialist countries of Europe are.
Yeah, we have our share of morally woke totalitarians on here.
Such countries treat their citizens like they are handicapped or perpetual children, inserting itself into every aspect of their lives. Making decisions for them. Restricting what they can say, watch, write, or read.
Britain is currently ruled by an organization called the British Conservative Party, founded in 1865 by Benjamin d’Israeli. At least that’s what I’ve heard. The new rule in western ‘democracies’ is that elections must never be allowed to change government policy. (And, its helpful to insiders seeking to guarantee that elections don’t change policy when your head of state makes no visible interventions in policy and when your head of government is an elderly bint who spends a lot of money on Manolo Blahnik shoes).
wow i learned another word from you again
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bint
Interesting Arabic foundation. I had not realized “bint” was in use in the English language. “Bin” means “son of”, so Osama bin Ladin is Osama, son of Laden. It means the same thing as “ibn”, only “ibn” is used at the beginning of a name, and “bin” when it’s in the middle. So, it’s Ibn Laden or Osama bin Laden. Only, if you call him Ibn Laden, no one in the West will know who you’re talking about.
“Bint” means daughter, but her lineage will always be patrilineal. She will be daughter of her father, not daughter of her mother’s line.
there’s a lot of arabic language experts floating around these days, to say nothing of arabic speakers. however, this is not one of my talents. my arabic does not go past “Yallah Habibi” and the names of various foods.
It’s a ridiculous policy but sometimes one is forced to exaggerate a problem to make people recognize that it must be corrected.
What is the problem, and why must it be corrected?
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
gender stereotypes arise from different dna and will never go away.
politically correct apparatchiks are the problem that can go away however
I see a firm yet humane system of retraining camps similar to what the Chinese have implemented in Xinjiang except instead of re-educating Uighur Muslims, the goal will be to retrain formerly useless apparatchiks and bureaucrats into more socially beneficial skills like ditch digging and brick laying.
Stick to the important point. Brexit is a Very Bad Plan.
And you are a Very Silly Man. That dumb island had the chance to be out front on the dissolution of Merkel’s 4th reich, but they’ll screw that up too. Hopefully we won’t have to scrape them out of another silly dust up at the hands of an idiot.
Consider Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England.
Recently in the news.
With the perspective that Brexit may savage the economy, employment has to come from somewhere. (eye roll)
Prospect is for everyone standing in the stone soup line.
There will be a sufficient supply of that stone soup served up at the PC apparatchik re-education camps we establish in the “post-modern” future phase of “the West.”
Prof Turley, et;al,
Are you just trying to stay out of the line of fire, hoping for a few more bucks, another set of white radial tires & the Govt & the Wacko Commie Libs just leave you alone. LOL:) Fat Chance!
Or you could all just get used to your kids/grandkids getting R*ped in the A** by the Pedo Dim/Rino Commies.
Of so sorry, people just ignore whats in all of our faces. & How is Mueller implicated criminally in all that you must ask.
https://www.brighteon.com/5979284909001
Oky1 is seriously off-topic as well. Incoherent also.
Davids, your meds fail you, read the title to this piece, Gender Sterotype…, then look at my post: Men that are Mentally Ill & think they’re women, shaking their naked azzes off in front of lil kids with the local school administrators that invited them in because they love Pedos or are Pedos.
Now if you like sick phks like that you’ve got a personal mental illness that needs dealt with!
https://www.brighteon.com/5979335717001
More off-topic garbage.
Ya, that’s all you ever post, off-topic stuff.
What happened to you?
I’ll go off topic…
At 1:48 for the above video, I couldn’t help of thinking about Oliver St. John-Mollusc running himself over at 2:53. What a great twit!
the first girl looked like a Chinese migrant. One would not know this as an American but i have discovered that a lot of Chinese immigrants don’t eat canned foods, as they buy fresh nearly every day. So they do not have a can opener in the household and might not even recognize one.
Wny? I think they thin it’s more healthy (true). Also cheaper to cook from scratch (true). Also relate to the lack of safety notorious in mass processed foods sold in China– not same situation in America, but careful habits die hard.
Just imagine, if the Supreme Court could read the Constitution, Americans would have complete freedom of speech, press, religion, etc., private property that they could possess and dispose of “…in exclusion of every other individual…,” private commerce, only the “flow” of which among the several states could be regulated and taxation that included only “…general Welfare…” and not one iota of “individual welfare.”
Affirmative action, welfare, food stamps, quotas, Obamacare, forced busing, rent control, utility subsidies, social services, WIC, HAMP, HARP, HUD, HHS, TANF, SSI, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, Social Security Disability, “Fair Housing” laws, “Non-Discrimination” laws, “hate crime” laws, regulation – except that among the several states, etc. would be unconstitutional.
As usual, george is seriously off-topic.
Thanks for reading…again!
“…Great Britain has embraced the “nanny state” in regulating speech…”
– Professor Turley
The whole concept in 1776 was to eradicate powerful government and to guarantee the full and complete freedom of all people. The Founders declared that freedom is natural and God-given, which, by definition, includes the British Empire. That freedom is the singular topic; whether Americans are free or the unconstitutional government of the parasites can deny freedoms, confiscate property and tax for “individual welfare” or communistic redistribution of wealth and social engineering.
Did you know George that Ole Massa Tom was against the rights of inheritance? It’s in his papers. I mean he got a good inheritance but he theorized other people should not be so lucky. Ole Massa Tom, clever writer, big hypocrite, and a Democrat.
Inheritance is the only undeserved entitlement.
You’re in the wrong country.
You’re under the wrong Constitution.
What you want is the Communist Manifesto.
Try China, Cuba or the EU.
Not only money inheritance, but we inherit our DNA and our very lives from our parents. And nature cares not whether it is deserved or not. it just keeps rolling forward. Likewise cultural and national gifts are not inherited: the infrastructure you use, the language you learn growing up, your social connections, etc. All “unearned” and perhaps even from some perspectives “undeserved.”
What is “deserved” is rarely important either to the recipient or the donor, but, it occupies the commentary of third persons quite a bit.
Brits can’t afford to buy anything anyway. Half of the pubs have closed this century.
Britain is in a whole heap of difficulties. Here is yet another minor one.
Henpecked sissies.