A light-hearted ad about hair removal: cue feminist outrage

Today’s Irish Independent carries an angry column by the festively-named Orla Tinsley, complaining about an advertisement for hair removal.

I should state at the outset that I have nothing in particular against ordinary hair on women. I actually prefer women to have some of it in the natural places, and I find a bit of down on a woman’s upper lip rather charming. But some people don’t like it, and if a woman wants her skin to be completely smooth, that is up to her. Her body, her rules!

Ms Tinsely, however, thinks otherwise:

Veet, the US manufacturer of hair removal products, have unleashed a new level of misogyny in their latest advertisements.

The TV ads which were first shown two days ago on US television have garnered a slew of complaints on their Facebook page and across the internet. They seem to be suggesting that without the almighty Veet product to guide us, women, with our less than smooth legs and prickly armpits will in fact turn into men. Let that sink in for a second.

So the ad portrays women turning into men as something not desirable? But hang on – how is that misogyny? Oh well. Ms Tinsley goes on to describe how the ad shows a man waking up and finding in horror that the person sharing his bed is in fact another man. The ad’s slogan is “Don’t risk dudeness.”

Firstly, what is dudeness? Newsflash Dude, the word ‘dudeness’ itself is now pretty much a term used for both men and women by both men and women.

Is it? I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used to describe women.

Major fail there, Veet. But we’ll take it you mean some misogynistically-driven, narrow minded idea of gender construction. Now that that’s clear,

It isn’t.

let’s talk about the alarming hint of homophobia and transphobia going on.

Thanks to Ms Tinsley and her ilk, the word ‘phobia’ is well on its way to becoming so overused as to be meaningless.

After the hairy alarm is raised the suggestion becomes that it is two men in a bed together that is in fact a nightmare.

Who the hell edited this?

That anything other than a conservative perception of gender identity or sexual identity – including hair – would cause your partner to leave. We suddenly live in some 1950’s throwback era and also some sort of gender marker panic machine has been made that can be pressed by the hysterical advertisement devisers at hair removal HQ if you’re failing at womanhood.

I don’t know, but I suspect that in the 1950’s women actually shaved a good deal less than they do now. Razors were more expensive, there were no more modern hair removal products around, and women were a good deal less likely to be seen strolling around Mediterranean beaches wearing bikinis. Anyway, Ms Tinsley, you press a button, not a machine.

Because according to Veet the slightest sign of stubble demonstrates your lack of commitment there ladies. The usually irritatingly light handed woman shaming that hair removal advertisements court unfortunately feels mild in comparison to this full on moronic series of advertisements. They are insulting, rude and have nothing to do with women.

Wait – first the ad was misogynistic, then it warned women against becoming like men, now it has nothing to do with women. Make up your mind.

But now Ms Tinsley gets to what really bugs her about this ad. It’s the fact that, fume though she might, most women don’t think like her.

Some lessons for Veet : shockingly, both women and men have hair. And by the way some women have so little hair they choose not to shave. Others have thick hair, curly hair, flat hair .. I could go on.

Please don’t.

They keep it or they remove it and will remain to do so as much or as little as they like.

Would it be petty of me to write “sic” there?

Whether it’s on our legs, our arms or other parts of the body. Men also have hair, shockingly. Some choose to be hairy, some smooth, some ruggedly in between. Hair is a normal indicator of a healthy developing human being. One would wonder if whoever came up with these advertisements has ever met an actual woman.

One would wonder if Ms Tinsley has ever met anyone in charge of a business. A business caters to a demand that already exists. It does not create that demand.

As it happens, I have met a few actual women, and oddly enough, many of them choose to shave. One acquaintance, who was earning around €30,000 per year before tax at the time, spent over a grand having her bodily hair removed by laser treatment. This was entirely her decision, and not one that was perfidiously put into her head by some shadowy corporation.

Ms Tinsley goes on to huff and puff about some other ad, and ends her column in the confident expectation that shoppers will now ignore Veet’s products in disgust. Good luck with that one.

We should probably feel some pity for Ms Tinsley. The world will never conform to her expectations of it. Women will continue to strive towards ideals of beauty, to gain victories over their female rivals and to be pleasing to men, while she rages impotently on the sidelines. “O this is counter you false Danish dogs!” Still, she needn’t feel too sorry for herself. A national newspaper did, after all, print this hysterical, poorly-written little rant of hers. As oppressive and patriarchal as she imagines the dominant culture to be, she nonetheless has easy access to the public square. She, and others like her, won’t be going away any time soon.

Blacklisting Mozilla

The idea that a business executive could find his company’s internet browser blacklisted by online businesses, and ultimately be forced to resign from his job, simply because he once made a donation to the campaign against same-sex marriage in California, might be thought to be some luridly paranoid right-wing fantasy. Yet it has happened to the now former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich.

The other day I overheard the following snippet of conversation between two female office employees, A and B. A is from south Dublin, an irreverent computer geek-type in her early twenties. B is in her fifties, and from the northside.

A: Omigod, did you hear that loads of websites are now blocking Firefox, because the CEO, like, came out against gay rights? They said they didn’t want to encourage people to use Firefox because his position was so wrong.

B: (Without looking up from her screen) : Well, it is wrong.

That short exchange says a great deal. First, there is the assumption, picked up and casually parroted by A, that making donation to a campaign for preserving traditional marriage is equivalent to “coming out against gay rights.” A is not, so far as I know, a fierce ideologue, and I doubt if she willfully distorted the facts as she had received them. Whatever the source for her information about l’affaire Eich, it had given her that impression.

Then there is the attitude of B: basically indifferent to what happened, but of the opinion that the man in question sounded like a nasty piece of work and had got what had been coming to him. That, at least, was what her words and tone implied. In some matters, crime for example, B is solidly conservative; I have heard her speak in favour of killing child abusers in various cruel ways, for example. But where same sex marriage, or “gay rights”, as she imagines, is concerned, she is on the side of the mainstream culture.

These people are not Utopian academics or liberal D4 journalists; they are two very ordinary Irish people, working in an office in the private sector. How they talked of this subject shows how completely the pro-SSM lobby has come to dominate the language of the debate. Twenty years ago, I doubt if many homosexual activists would have argued that opposition to same-sex marriage made a person unemployable. Today, normal citizens barely raise an eyebrow at the prospect.

Fighting Words From The Bishops ... 77 Years Ago

Rorate Caeli link to this fascinating piece today, to mark the anniversary of the end of the Spanish Civil War. It's a statement of the Irish Bishops from 1937, in response to a letter from the Bishops of Spain. What a contrast to the sterile, politically-correct episcopal Newspeak of 2014.

The Left still not getting Islam

The Immigrant Council of Ireland is not happy. (Nothing new in that, you might think.) The reason is that a member of the judiciary made an ... injudicious remark in court. From the Irish Independent:

A judge has caused outrage after saying he thinks "Muslims feel they can actually beat their wives" during the trial of a Somali man accused of burglary at his former wife's house.

Judge Anthony Halpin’s comments made before a packed courtroom yesterday caused a government minister and the Immigrant Council of Ireland to say he needs to immediately clarify or withdraw the remark made during a criminal case.

[...]

Judge Halpin, who started sitting in the Tallaght court in September 2011, made the comments in relation to Muslims during the case of Khadar Younis (46), of Belfry Hall in Citywest, Dublin, who had denied breaking into his divorced wife's home while she was asleep in bed. He also pleaded not guilty to breaking a protection order and being in the possession of a knife while in the house. 

The court heard that his former wife, Kara Ibrahim, wanted to drop the case, saying Younis was a good father to their four children, but not a good husband to her.

Defence solicitor John O'Leary told the court that his client had been divorced by a Muslim cleric under the Qur'an. 

Judge Halpin responded, saying: "I think Muslims feel they can actually beat their wives".

Which sent the ICI reaching for their smelling salts.

Last night the Immigrant Council of Ireland called on the Judge to withdraw the remark.

“While we have not seen the court record the remarks as reported to us are disappointing, wrong and offensive.

“People in positions of authority in the community have a particular duty not to feed racism or xenophobia, this applies to politicians, local media commentators and members of the judiciary. The remarks should either be withdrawn or clarified as a matter of urgency,” a spokesperson said.

At least one Imam was not pleased either.

Dr Taufiq Al Sattar said the comments were in contradiction to all religious teachings.

“No religion says you should hurt anybody and no religion says you should harm anybody. We all have to be tolerant. We all have to compromise

“No religion says you hurt anybody, not your wife or your neighbour or anyone. This is common sense,” the cleric, who established a prayer centre in west Dublin, said.

No religion says you should hurt anybody? I cannot pretend to be an expert on Koranic exegesis, but the holy book of Islam does contain the following somewhat problematic passage:

“Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great." [Sura 4:34]

See here for more edifying passages on the subject. Don’t worry, it’s  pretty mild compared to what the Koran says about Christians and Jews, to say nothing of pagans.

But what I find interesting in this story is the position of the ICI. They censure Judge Halpin, not for criticising Islam, but for “feeding racism and xenophobia.”

Islam, as Muslims themselves will quickly tell you, is not a race. It is a religion that makes universal claims on mankind. It includes people of all races and Muslims are proud of that fact.

The left doesn’t grasp that. Because leftists do not take religion seriously, and because our society as a whole has come to see religion as more a matter of tribal self-identification than of belief and practice, they prefer to assume that Muslims are exotic dark-skinned foreigners, while Christians are boring white Europeans. Of course, neither generalisation is true.

Based on its statements as quoted above, the ICI is arguing that a particular religion should be above criticism, simply because many of its adherents in Ireland are immigrants. Irish leftists are normally passionately against religion’s being allowed to dictate public policy. But where Islam is concerned, apparently, this does not apply. Judges, and other people, will just have to learn to keep their opinions on some matters to themselves.

Of course, given that Christianity originated abroad (not too far, in fact, from the birthplace of Islam) and given that many Christians in this country come from eastern Europe and the Philippines, perhaps the ICI is going to denounce criticism of Christianity as racist too? Don’t hold your breath, though.

An Evening With Reza Aslan

On Monday evening I went to hear Dr Reza Aslan, ex-Christian, Muslim revert and author of both a history of Islam and Zealot, a bestselling book about the life of Jesus Christ, speak at Trinity College Dublin.

Aslan is man with a colourful history. Born in Iran into a family of “lukewarm Muslims and exuberant atheists”, he moved with his parents to the US in 1979 to escape the Islamic Revolution. As a teenager in the US, he converted to evangelical Protestant Christianity. At university, however, he abandoned Christianity and eventually returned to the Islam of his ancestors. He is now Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California at Riverside. His new book claims that Jesus was a Jewish freedom fighter and not a divine Messiah. It has had a mixed reception; the Irish Catholic (20 March) enthuses that is “has been described as a meticulously researched biography of Jesus”, while ChristianityToday says it “relies on outdated scholarship and breathtaking leaps in logic”.

Arriving at the College, I made my way to the Graduate Memorial Building chamber where the talk was to take place. Despite the fact that I hadn’t seen any posters on campus announcing the event, there appeared to be around a hundred people present. With a twinge of dismay I noted how young the students seemed. I bought a copy of Zealot, which was on sale by the door, and took a seat. Dr Aslan strolled in, accompanied by the meeting’s chairman Prof Benjamin Wold, and things got under way.

Aslan told us that he became a Christian in his teens, but began questioning the truth of evangelicalism when he went to study Religion at Santa Clara university. Astonishingly, he also told us that his Jesuit teachers “encouraged me to go back to the faith of my fathers” when his faith in Christianity began to wane. (Nice work, Jesuits!) Eventually, he decided that he could not conceive of one man as God, because God cannot be described in terms of human attributes. “My God is not a human being.” So it was that he returned to Islam.

The striking thing about Aslan is the charming and sophisticated way in which he comes across. A small, clean-shaven man in a black suit, with an American accent and the top three buttons of his shirt suavely undone, he does not look like the dangerous apologist for Islamism that some in the Counter-Jihad movement consider him to be. His message was well pitched for his audience. He stressed the subjective aspect of his search for religious truth and the individual nature of his own faith. In Islam, he says, he found “a central metaphor for God which was not merely emotionally satisfying, but which I already believed.” He told us that he had never asked an Imam’s opinion or advice about anything. He said he welcomed recent polls in the US which showed increasing numbers of young people describing themselves as non-affiliated religiously.

All this went down well with the middle-class students who had come to hear him. A fire-breathing fundamentalist Imam, like one of those the British government always seems to be vainly trying to deport, would not have cut much ice with them. But an urbane, exotic-looking academic who came out with things like “For me, the symbols and metaphors of Islam have profound meaning” was something else altogether. And it was clear that what Aslan had to say fell on fertile ground. The girl sitting next to me giggled with pleasure whenever he made a dig at the American right. When, at the end of the talk, I asked him to sign a copy of Zealot, he greeted me warmly, shook my hand, signed the book with a roccoco flourish, handed it back and – I’m not kidding – winked at me. In fact, he was so very charming, he made me feel clumsy and loutish.

At one point, Aslan mentioned findings of a poll by the Pew Research Centre, which in 2012 found that one fifth of US adults, and one third of US respondents under the age of 30, claimed to be religiously “unaffiliated”. As far as I could tell, this basically seemed to mean that they were “spiritual but not religious” – they believed in something, but preferred not to be associated with a particular religious structure. Aslan explicitly said that he thought this was a good development.

I was reminded of something that the author Christopher Caldwell said in his book about Muslim immigration, Reflections onthe Revolution in Europe. Part of Islam’s appeal lies in its simplicity. It has a simple theology, no sacraments, no clergy in the Christian sense of the word. It has no religious hierarchy. This means that Islam is potentially attractive to people who dislike, or think they dislike, “institutional religion”. It also means that Islamic groups, whatever they may call themselves, cannot claim to speak on behalf of all Muslims. This week, it was reported that a butcher in Cologne was repeatedly threatened by young Muslims who felt “provoked” by a plastic pig in his shop window. It was cold comfort when a Muslim organisation, DITB, assured him that the youths had “misunderstood” their religion.

Aslan may well think that a rise in the unaffiliated, a weakening of the tribal links that tie many Westerners to Christianity, will be good for Islam. Judging by the warm reception he received in Trinity College on Monday evening, and the absence of challenging questions from the floor about his critique of Christianity, he need not fear much resistance.

The Media and the Mob

Gerard Cunningham, writing in The Village, is not happy about what he considers to be the scant coverage given to the “Pantigate” affair by the mainstream media.

You’ll recall that Rory O’Neill made remarks on the Saturday Night Show on 12 January which described certain named individuals as homophobes. The individuals, aware that they did not, in fact, have an irrational fear and hatred of homosexuals, objected to this, and solicitors’ letters were sent. RTÉ duly removed the segment from its player and apologised for any distress that might have been caused.

Cunningham:

Broadsheet.ie, TheJournal.ie and Krank.ie reported on the removal of the clip from the Player. The next day the Irish Independent reported that John Waters had complained to RTÉ. The Mayo News picked up the story too (O’Neill is from Ballinrobe), and that was about it. Noel Whelan and Una Mullally wrote opinion pieces in the Irish Times from different perspectives, but there was little other reporting in the mainstream press.

Well, he’s just mentioned at least seven separate articles in different, mostly national, newspapers. Not exactly an airbrushing from history.

Cunningham goes on to tell us that, thankfully, “bloggers”  rescued the “story” from the oblivion into which it was threatening to fade.

The story that hardly anyone old-media was reporting refused to die. Blogs proliferated and were shared online, journalists were tackled on twitter about why they weren’t covering the story ... RTÉ received a lot of heat online for their actions (over 800 complaints about the apology) but the truth is, it could have been anyone. [He means, I think, that newspapers are so terrified of being sued for defamation that they would all have behaved much like RTÉ did.]

Given the current cultural climate in Ireland, it probably isn’t too hard to whip up 800 hotheads who take umbrage at the suggestion that support for traditional marriage does not equal “homophobia”, and get them to fire off an e-mail. Cunningham seems to think that because a lot of angry comments are floating around Twitter about something, that thing must necessarily be an issue of major national importance.

RTÉ estimated that over 2,000 people attended a protest over the affair on Sunday 2 February. In contrast, the reactionary Reform Alliance conference attracted 1,400, after weeks of front pages and endless hyperbole on television and radio.

Ah. Up to now, Cunningham’s tone has been fairly measured. But reactionary is one of those buzzwords that, like bourgeoisie and patriarchy, immediately have the effect of nailing one’s ideological colours to the mast. (As an aside, I cannot think of any conservative equivalent for a liberal – I mean, a term used to describe a liberal which a liberal would not use to describe himself. Godless liberal, perhaps, but you’re not going to see that in a mainstream magazine, unless it is being used ironically.)

The Panti Bliss saga shows Ireland still hasn’t worked out the appropriate paremeters for rigorous debate. It shows the tin ear of newspapers and broadcast media, which failed to register the level of support for Panti – next to no-one sided with the Ionas. It shows the powerf of social media to colonise stories that the old media cannot (or will not) cover. And a bravery which the old media seem tellingly to have forgotten.

Well, Mr Cunningham, if “next to no-one” disagrees with you, how exactly is airing your opinion online “brave”?

Cunningham does not specify whom he refers to when he says that “next to no-one sided with the Ionas.” Next to no-one in Ireland? But how does he know? Next to no-one he follows on Twitter? That is more plausible. But to imagine that angry Tweeters (is that the term for them?) constitute some kind of legitimate demos, whose mighty collective voice should determine the content of newspaper editorials, is to invite mob rule.

He is right about one thing, though: the power of social media. It can not only topple tipsy TDs, it can also determine the content, perhaps also the outcomes, of national debates. Time to get liking and sharing.

Praying for an acquittal?

From Colette Browne’s column in today’s Irish Independent:

If you want to know what rape culture looks like there is no more evocative image than a church full of the faithful bowing their heads and being asked to pray for the acquittal of a man charged with serious sexual offences.

As Cork's former lord mayor, John Murray, stood trial for the sexual assault of a teenager last week, a priest celebrating a funeral Mass in another part of the city used the occasion to pray for his exoneration.

The inference was clear. An innocent elderly man, a stalwart of the community, was facing scurrilous charges from a lying, scheming woman. She should not be believed.

But the jury did believe her and returned a unanimous guilty verdict. Today Murray, who first sexually assaulted the victim when she was just 13, is in prison awaiting sentence.

I can’t help feeling a little sceptical at this.

First, when was the last time you heard the prayers of the faithful at Mass calling for a trial jury to reach a certain verdict? The prayers of the faithful are usually much vaguer than that. And they usually have do with groups of people rather than individuals. “We pray for the sick, that they may experience the comfort of your love and find strength in their deepest need .” Is a typical prayer of the faithful. “We pray that Mary O’Byrne from up the road gets the all-clear in her scan next Wednesday” is not. And even when individual people are singled out, the prayers for them are usually of a general nature. “We pray for Mary O’Byrne, that she find strength and healing ...”

Second, none of the reports of the incident seem to mention exactly what Fr Crean – a retired Augustinian missionary, who apparently knew Murray personally - said. His words were not recorded. The Independent’s initial report of the incident yesterday did not mention any call for an acquittal. It merely noted that Fr Crean “used one of the Prayers of Intercession last Thursday to remember John Murray who served as Lord Mayor of Cork in 1993/94.” The Provincial of the Augustinians, Fr Hennebry, is quoted as saying that the prayer was “wholly inappropriate”, and the Bishop of Cork and Ross says they were “inappropriate and offensive”. He does say that “the comments were to do with a case that was before the courts.” But he does not say what the “comments” were.

“Remembering” X in a prayer is a very, very different thing from praying that the jury in X’s criminal trial return a verdict of Not Guilty.

Incidentally, here is shining piece of journalism from that earlier Independent report:

The Cotter family admitted they were appalled that an emotional family event should be used for such a prayer.

"We are all in shock. We didn't comprehend at first what had been said. I didn't hear it...when we went back (for the funeral meal) I heard things that were being said. One person asked me who was the man they were praying for so he could get off on the charges?"

"I was confused...I didn't know what they were talking about. If I had known then what I know now I would have approached him (the priest)."

She said the Cotter family were very appreciative of the fact people respected them enough not to walk out over the comments.

A few questions. Who is the “she” being quoted here? Was she at the Mass? If so, why did she not hear the words from the priest that the Independent thinks were so outrageous? Could Mr Riegel not find a more authoritave witness, i.e. someone who actually remembers what Fr Crean said at first hand? It appears not.

So what Fr Crean actually said remains a mystery. He may indeed have asked people to pray for Murray’s acquittal , but if he did, we have not seen much evidence of it. Naturally, that doesn’t stop our hard-headed, objective media from jumping to conclusions.