About the Gillette Ad

Gillette has a new ad out. Instead of trying to sell "shaving systems" with ever-increasing number of blades, they are lecturing men on how to be better men. You can see it here. Currently it's running 2-1 against with nearly 1,000,000 down votes and around a half million up votes. The ad combines elements of the #MeToo movement with a long line of men at their grills excusing bad actions by saying, "Boys will be boys."

Personally I find the ad offensive.

At its core the ad is based on a stereotype and a misconception. The stereotype is that men constantly engage in bullying and sexist behavior because we don't know any better. It's excused because all men do it and it's almost expected of us.

But this isn't so. I'm in my 60s and I've never heard a boy or man excused from bullying, etc with "boys will be boys". In fact, I've only heard that phrase on TV. If a guy sees a boy beating on another then he'll break it up. If he sees a pack of boys bullying a single boy then he'll step in and stop it (unless he's in personal fear for his own safety). I personally broke up something like that once. Men (and women) know that sort of thing is not allowed and we stop it. That's part of toxic masculinity.

The ad has a quick shot of "mansplaining" where a boss has his hand on a woman's arm while he explains what she "really" meant. I question how often that actually happens. I certainly never saw it. I was in hundreds, maybe thousands of meetings during my career and  never saw anything like that happen. If it had, most of the women I worked with would have bitten the guy's arm off for explaining what she'd just said.

We also knew not to touch female coworkers. Even in the 1980s it was forbidden and, after the Clarence Thomas confirmation in 1991, every man in the country got training telling him not to touch female coworkers.

That's the misconception that's at the heart of the #MeToo. It isn't male privilege that let these men get away with sexual assault. Regular guys would be arrested in a moment for that stuff. And it wasn't white privilege. It was rich guy privilege. Go back and listen to Donald Trump on the hot mic Billy Bush tape. He's saying that he likes to kiss and touch women and they let him because he's rich and famous.

There's an additional element to it, too, though, Progressive Privilege. Look at how many of the men caught in #MeToo have been on the far left. There's a pair of factors at work here. One is a sense of entitlement, "I do so much good that I'm entitled to break some rules." That's reciprocated. Look at the reactions to Bill Clinton's impeachment. Multiple feminists came out and said that they didn't care what he did to individual women in private because he kept abortion legal. There's a related feeling that "He's one of us so he couldn't really have done such a thing." Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen confessed to that attitude in December, admitting that previously he'd dismissed all allegations about Clinton out of hand because "he's one of us."

This is the progressive version of "boys will be boys". Bu tit had nothing to do with ordinary schleps at their grill and no scolding from a "shaving system" company will affect it.