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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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Not to be outdone by Bud Lite, Miller Lite has apparently been running their own "woke" beer advertisements: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_NtBQWZqaHo

IMO the campaign here is actually clever, take this "bad" thing, use money to buy it, and turn it into a "good" thing. Whoever came up with this idea: cool idea.

But here's my question: is any of this old "bad" stuff actually bad? Let's look at contemporary things like onlyfans, instagram, tiktok, the hundreds of reddit 'gonewild' type porn forums, etc. It seems to me that many women, given the chance, enjoy wearing bikinis, being sexualized, being lusted after etc. Not all women, obviously, since some women don't like this, but...isn't this trying to strip the pro-sexualization women of their agency?

Aside from that, isn't Miller saying that women belong...in the kitchen? Don't go out to the beach and get drunk and have fun. Wear modest clothing (like the person in the ad), stay inside in the dark, and make things for people to eat.

Also: the claim that women were the primary brewers historically, is not only dumb, it's also wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weihenstephan_Abbey?useskin=vector

But here's my question: is any of this old "bad" stuff actually bad? Let's look at contemporary things like onlyfans, instagram, tiktok, the hundreds of reddit 'gonewild' type porn forums, etc. It seems to me that many women, given the chance, enjoy wearing bikinis, being sexualized, being lusted after etc. Not all women, obviously, since some women don't like this, but...isn't this trying to strip the pro-sexualization women of their agency?

I don't really understand what this paragraph has to do with the advertisement. It seems like the implication is supposed to be "it was bad for beer companies to use sexualized images of women to sell beer" -> "it's wrong for women to post sexualized images of themselves" but it's not clear to me that the second statement follows this first. It seems to me there are lots of ways the first statement could be true without the second statement being true.

Aside from that, isn't Miller saying that women belong...in the kitchen? Don't go out to the beach and get drunk and have fun. Wear modest clothing (like the person in the ad), stay inside in the dark, and make things for people to eat.

I don't understand how this can be a takeaway from this advertisement. Literally every scene involving a woman is outside the home. The advertisement depicts women involved in several parts of the brewing process, every one of which is outside their home. "Stay in the kitchen by.... making fertilizer to grow hops to brew beer for our giant corporation!" Just, what?

Also: the claim that women were the primary brewers historically, is not only dumb, it's also wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weihenstephan_Abbey

I don't understand how the existence of Weihenstephan Abbey demonstrates that women weren't the primary brewers historically. Especially when the advertisement mentions brewing that predates this abbey pretty substantially.

Sure. One way I think it can be wrong is that reinforces harmful notions of masculinity by connecting perceived success as a man (attractive women will sleep with you) with consuming a particular product (their beer). I think this is common in a lot of marketing that uses sex or sexuality to sell some other product but isn't present in transactions about sex more directly.

The other argument might be that it is wrong to make these images when they are commercial. What I can't get is a reason why commercial images are worse than non-commercial ones.

The reason these images are bad in a commercial context is the implication that the individuals so depicted will sleep with you, or be more into you, or that you will be more successful at attracting the kind of individual so depicted as a result of consuming the product in question. Not obvious to me how a similar principal could be at work in non-commercial contexts.

If men wanting attractive women to sleep with them is a harmful notion of masculinity, I'm rather concerned about the future of humanity.