Are we ready for the third wave?

The Link Editorial Board

MONTREAL (CUP) — Displaying nubile females like they are about to be fucked is nothing new for advertising — asses in the air, coy looks over the shoulder, crumpled and vulnerable posture. It screams “Stick it in,” as much as “Buy me!”

Boy, is it ever a slap in the face when companies and organizations claiming to have ethical business practices continue to desperately resort to sex to sell their products.

Whether it’s the American Apparel ads on the back page ads of the Mirror featuring “Dov’s girls” — scantily clad immigrant women who work at his clothing factory (“Meet Laura . . . She is looking to get sponsored for her visa”), or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals using naked women to advocate against fur, it is choices like these that bring the ethical debate to a new level of paradox.

In reality, these ads aren’t sexy; they may even be dangerous. They are part of an attempt to alter the criticism of sexism and the inequalities that exist in a patriarchal world where men have more power than women at various levels in society.

In fact, American Apparel CEO Dov Charney is just one of many leading the charge against “political correctness,” which in his opinion has created an unbalanced culture that’s unnaturally constraining. Sure, being too PC can verge on obnoxious, but the alternative should not be reactionary against women’s desires for equal rights.

“Feminism is extremely restrictive,” says Charney. “You can’t call a woman a bitch, you can’t call her this, you can’t call her that . . .Yet, she can do whatever she wants. It’s out of balance and that’s why young people haven’t embraced feminism, because it’s out of balance.”

“Women initiate most domestic violence, yet out of a thousand cases of domestic violence, maybe one is involving a man,” he was quoted as saying in a recent Canadian University Press feature. And this, Charney decries, “Has made a victim culture out of women.”

So, do we buy it? Hell no.

Unfortunately for Charney, and others hoping young women will prostrate themselves at the bearded-ones’ feet and be dragged towards the next sexual revolution, the general

public must see beyond these myths. If not for their own well-being, for the fact that all over the world women continue to be violently and sadistically oppressed by men, especially the ones with power.

A recent CBC report revealed that in the Eastern Congo’s civil war from 1998-2002, over 40,000 women and girls (aged 3-80) were tactically raped, beaten and brutally mutilated by the military and rebels. They continue to come forward today with reports of such abuses.

When hundreds of “illegal” demonstrators at an International Women’s Day march in Turkey denounced the unequal treatment of women, they were beaten and tear gassed by police. One recurring, widely publicized piece of footage showed a woman on her knees getting kicked in the face by a police officer.

And of course, there are continuous cases of violence against women close to home. Several years ago, RCMP member Jocelyn Hotte was charged for chasing and gunning down his ex-girlfriend Lucie Gélinas on a highway outside Montreal, also seriously wounding passengers — including the now paralyzed Pierre Mainville. This was a tragedy that could have easily been avoided had the Sûreté de Québec taken Gélinas’s pleas for help and her 911 call a week before the murder seriously.

And these are not the only cases where abuse of power and violence against women take place. When faced with the horrible abuse of power on one hand, and oversexed advertisements on the other, there is little reason to doubt the importance of sticking up for women.

These injustices remain — in Canada, in Turkey, in the Congo — and all over the world. While Canadian women are afforded on a daily basis many privileges those in other regions of the globe are denied basic access to, there are still many barriers we face. Invisible (or subconscious) discrimination exists in all spheres, especially the professional one.

While women make up a little more than half the world’s population, the glass ceiling is still in place. Women still make less money than men do for equal work and are denied opportunities to which men have ready access.

This may not be the case for all, but it is most certainly the case for some, and it is not fair that these inequalities exist.