I know this isn’t really the self-styled forum for it, but I think I need to reboot my daddy blogging ways. You’ll understand why when you watch this video.
Some context: I met Terence on the Cape Town tech influencer scene back when I did the review thing for a salary (I do it mainly for the love now) and he was about to leave his job to go full-time Afrodaddy. It’s worked well for him and I am a little jealous. But that didn’t influence my reaction when I caught wind of his response to the Gillette ad.
Gillette ad, for context:
My read is this: it’s a great piece of advertising that really sparked a debate. I got quite woke about it in a twitter thread immediately after watching the Afrodaddy video.
What if I told you the cure for gender-based societal issues is to first stop putting people into gender-based boxes? In among all the Gillette wokeness is the forgotten concept of stripping away gender assumptions. On this planet we just happen to call adults with penises “men.”
— Lindsey Schutters (@SharpSchutters) January 25, 2019
Masculinity and femininity is a farce. Marketing terms designed to sell you things. Positive response to these tactics is effectively giving up a small piece of your humanity.
— Lindsey Schutters (@SharpSchutters) January 25, 2019
My point is that ridding the world of gender ideas is the only way we win. I try in my own house to get equality between my daughter and son, but there is always a comment about “girls/ladies don’t do that” reaching my daughter from someone else. Again, the girl does not need to be reminded that she is a girl and that she should behave in a different way. Those are all societal ideas constructed by men to maintain control.
It is not the responsibility of the girl to sit in what can be viewed as an uncomfortable position so to keep the view away from her vagina, parents should be indoctrinating boys that they shouldn’t be staring at a girl’s vagina in the first place. And if you extrapolate that out to general sexual assault, the onus is on the man to not rape or assault a woman.
How do we get to that place? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure a healthy relationship with sex is a good place to start. As a society, we should encourage positive discussions about masturbation. Sexual freedom has long been taboo in our world and it really shouldn’t be. Heinous crimes against women, children and homosexuals are born out of this repression of information and dialogue.
If we first seek to be human and accept all facets of the human experience as innate to our species, that’s a good starting point. Remove all the norms and replace them with chaos. We should then accept that we all start off as the pure white light of the full sexual spectrum and form our own preferences as our character mature.
You can start right now by getting naked more. Start at the gym change room. Do it at home, among your family. Stop being embarrassed by your nudity. Teach boys that penises come in all shapes and sizes and that having being circumcised doesn’t make you anything more than a male with a bit missing from his penis.
Start by considering a world where a genderless creator encouraged consensual sex between an unmarried young heterosexual couple and that child became an A-sexual philosopher who changed the world. Whether his parents got married after is unknown because where the hell was Joseph when his son was marching to the cross? Mary was a successful single parent who loved her son despite knowing that he valued his work over the traditional role of providing offspring to take up the carpentry business.
But I digress.
The Gillette ad is a clever bit of marketing in a time where men have realised that a razor is a razor. Also, beards are trendy AF right now and it’s a terrible time to try and sell overpriced razors to a generation who have wised up to your lies. Subscription services like Dollar Shave Club and increasing global trends in barbershop visits are hurting Gillette. I can’t remember the last time I bought one of the company’s products – or Shick, for that matter – because I use old school blades when I trim my mane.
I’m saying that we should be thinking of ways to remove ourselves from blatant gender-based marketing traps like this. If you made one razor that men and women could use to shave the parts they choose to keep smooth, Gillette would never be in a position to divide society like this. We need to take our power back. Rant over. I’m gonna go hug my son and daughter and teach him that he is no different from his sister except that he has a penis and she has a vagina.
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