Althouse: The Mexican government installed a seat on the Mexico City subway sculpted into the shape of a nude male torso, complete with penis.

March 31, 2017

The Mexican government installed a seat on the Mexico City subway sculpted into the shape of a nude male torso, complete with penis.

As explained in this NYT article, it was to teach a lesson about the problem of men sexually harassing women. Here's the public service ad produced:

"These particular ads came about after UN Women and the Mexican government took open submissions for ideas on a campaign to target a male audience. Around 40 agencies submitted pitches and J. Walter Thompson won." (I used to work for J. Walter Thompson — back in the 1970s.)

There's a second ad, taking aim at the asses of unsuspecting male citizens:

ADDED, next morning: Let me be explicit about my objection to this. The government — attempting to fight sexual harassment — is engaging in sexual harassment.

51 comments:

eddie willers said...: Damn....build that wall!; 3/31/17, 5:40 PM
Amadeus 48 said...: Let's get that female torso out there. Equal time, baby.; 3/31/17, 5:48 PM
David Baker said...: I wonder what Pope Francis thinks.; 3/31/17, 5:49 PM
johns said...: sometimes a penis is just a penis; 3/31/17, 5:50 PM
tcrosse said...: They could try this in San Francisco to boost ridership.; 3/31/17, 5:51 PM
Beach Brutus said...: Ad No. 1 seems to confirm the consensus that no one wants to take a penis to the rectum.

If Ad No. 2 wants to suggest that women do not like men looking at their bum, then why are yoga pants and other form-fitting clothes so popular-- does someone compel the women I ogle wear them?; 3/31/17, 5:51 PM
Bob Loblaw said...: Jesus Christ. Feminists are a cancer on society.; 3/31/17, 5:52 PM
mockturtle said...: They could try this in San Francisco to boost ridership.

;-D; 3/31/17, 5:52 PM
Beach Brutus said...: .... and that subway was probably paid for with remittances from Mexican illegal aliens.; 3/31/17, 5:53 PM
Bill, Republic of Texas said...: @Beach Brutus

I was in Mexico couple months ago. Yoga pants are passe. The young women were wearing what I called "read my lips" pants. They made with some tight stretchy material and brightly colored. Very nice.; 3/31/17, 5:59 PM
n.n said...: Insult half the population with a pretense to help the other half. Quasi-religious.

This approach to securing liberty progressed as a protection racket in America.; 3/31/17, 6:00 PM
JackWayne said...: When did Cass Sunstein take his nudge to Mexico? Shouldn't that count as a flagrant export violation?; 3/31/17, 6:03 PM
Bill, Republic of Texas said...: I don't know about all y'all but after watching those videos I'm totally #woke.; 3/31/17, 6:07 PM
campy said...: They left off the legs so there's no manspreading.; 3/31/17, 6:08 PM
n.n said...: The juxtapositions are interesting. On one hand, it is claimed that women are fully responsible for themselves, their dress, their finances. On the other hand, there is a presumption of male guilt and the female chauvinists claim that resurrecting abortion rites was critical to save the mother from the baby (i.e. choose, conceive, abort).; 3/31/17, 6:21 PM
n.n said...: What this proves is that there is a minority of men that are believed incapable of self-moderating, responsible behavior. Women, too. This is why, for example, there are traditionally dress codes, not to infringe on a woman's liberty, but to reduce the risk of stimulating a male or female simian derivative.; 3/31/17, 6:25 PM
Mr. Majestyk said...: It's a big nothingburger, but still, it makes me feel less than. I noticed that even though one of the hombres clearly didn't want his ass gawked at on a TV monitor, one senoritas persisted in looking.; 3/31/17, 6:26 PM
David said...: Those who were against the wall might want to reconsider.; 3/31/17, 6:29 PM
JohnAnnArbor said...: Wait until Laslo sees THIS thread.; 3/31/17, 6:57 PM
Bill said...: Having been enlightened by this Teachable Moment™, men by the thousandfold will be begging the women in their lives for forgiveness.; 3/31/17, 6:59 PM
Virgil Hilts said...: When we were younger, we would occasionally just for fun tune the TV to the local Spanish language channel and then make bets as to how many minutes it would be before a male slapped / punched / struck / strangled a woman or girl. I think 20 minutes was about the longest we ever had to watch. Whether it was realistic or not, why the desire to show so much male on female violence on Spanish language TV (and many of these shows may have been made in the U.S.)?; 3/31/17, 7:12 PM
chickelit said...: JohnAnnArbor said...Wait until Laslo sees THIS thread.

This may require a whole new character.; 3/31/17, 7:17 PM
ALP said...: First video reminds me of South Park's "Eeek a Penis" episode.; 3/31/17, 7:45 PM
MayBee said...: Are there no little kids on the subway? I imagine that being quite frightening.; 3/31/17, 8:01 PM
SGT Ted said...: Man shaming. It will never end.

Notice they never do this shit in Muslim majority countries.

I don't mind women checking out my ass.; 3/31/17, 8:04 PM
gspencer said...: Shouldn't it be, well, sitting upright, so to speak?; 3/31/17, 8:05 PM
exhelodrvr1 said...: Why are you assuming it is a male torso?? I would think you would be more woke than that by now!!; 3/31/17, 8:11 PM
Jon Ericson said...: Try harder.
Or not.; 3/31/17, 8:29 PM
bagoh20 said...: Lets be honest for a second. Which sex spends more time and money and effort trying to encourage people to look at them sexually? Which sex puts that in our public faces more? Is it even a close call? The fact that nobody even thinks about that question puts the whole intent of this to shame. I'm not complaining about it. I definitely want it that way, but stop whining about your success. The humility is not convincing.; 3/31/17, 8:36 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Wouldn't it be an amazing thing if there were an ad campaign urging women to honor men for their hard work and sacrifice? I sincerely doubt that women want to live in a demasculized world any more than men want to live in a defeminized world.; 3/31/17, 8:52 PM
Known Unknown said...: "The juxtapositions are interesting. On one hand, it is claimed that women are fully responsible for themselves, their dress, their finances. On the other hand, there is a presumption of male guilt and the female chauvinists claim that resurrecting abortion rites was critical to save the mother from the baby (i.e. choose, conceive, abort)."

Camile Paglia says hello.; 3/31/17, 9:11 PM
bagoh20 said...: I said: "... stop whining about your success."

I could have said "stop whining about your luck". Imagine if we just didn't care, and we looked at you the way you look at us as dangerous, competitors, easy to manipulate and easy to blame. Imagine how much that would suck for all of us.; 3/31/17, 9:11 PM
Portlandmermaid said...: I ride crowded buses and all I could think of was, "Oh great, one less seat."; 3/31/17, 9:16 PM
The Godfather said...: I really don't understand the message that the first video is supposed to convey. It's objective is supposedly to reduce sexual harrassment of women by men, but how does this achieve that objective? If I were inclined to harrass women on the subway, I wouldn't be discouraged by seeing a seat that looks like a male torso. Can anyone explain this to me?

The second one is easier; it says that men don't feel comfortable having people look at their asses, so men shouldn't look at women's asses. But none of the men (unless I missed something) was wearing particularly revealing clothes or was otherwise displaying or flaunting his ass. If a woman walked by wearing such unrevealing pants, a man might look at her if she was attractive, but his focus wouldn't be on her ass. It's very simple: If you don't want people to look at your ass, don't display it.

The fact is that a lot of attractive women like to be looked at, and they wear clothes that, shall we say, catch the eye. I say bravo to that!; 3/31/17, 9:26 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: "The fact is that a lot of attractive women like to be looked at, and they wear clothes that, shall we say, catch the eye. I say bravo to that!"
Ah, but they want to control the male erotic gaze. They want to choose who finds them to be sexually attractive. This is such a timeless goal of the fairer sex it is amusing that it has been adopted by people who call themselves modern feminists.; 3/31/17, 9:39 PM
mockturtle said...: I ride crowded buses and all I could think of was, "Oh great, one less seat."

I'd sit on it. ;-); 3/31/17, 9:54 PM
mockturtle said...: David Baker ponders: I wonder what Pope Francis thinks.

Pope Francis doesn't think. He feels.; 3/31/17, 9:55 PM
bagoh20 said...: I have this argument with women all the time. I say "what would you think if I wore yoga pants with my balls and cock just laid right out there in your face on the subway, only separated by a thin gauze of fabric. You can't avoid it, I think it's hot and attractive, and you can't object or you are immediately a bigot. How would you like that world? Also, if you like it, you are even more reprehensible."

Nice standard you have there. They always tell me bullshit like they wear it for comfort or because they just like it. How would that excuse work for me?; 3/31/17, 9:56 PM
bagoh20 said...: I wonder, because I really don't know, but does the Mexican government warn about rape from coyotes taking you across the border?; 3/31/17, 10:09 PM
Barry Dauphin said...: !. Be wary of a government trying to "teach you lessons"
2 Isn't it an instance of sexual harassment?; 3/31/17, 10:20 PM
Phil said...: OH NO! Now the city of San Francisco will want one on every seat!; 3/31/17, 10:28 PM
chickelit said...: The message I'm getting from Althouse and her followers is that women and gay male bottoms are going to squoosh in and get all comfy/smirky with this seat while straight males are made uncomfortable.

Got it.

It's what I've come to expect from Althouse over the years.; 4/1/17, 12:39 AM
Sean Gleeson said...: First ad, "Seat Experiment": dumb. The text says, “It’s annoying to sit here, but it doesn’t compare to the sexual violence suffered by women during their daily travels.” Well, if it doesn’t compare, then it is not a good demonstration, is it? And then it says “9 out of 10 women in Mexico City have suffered some kind of sexual violence during their daily travels.” Shocking, if true! Why not show some of that, then?

Second ad, “Screens Experiment”: dumber. I mean, what the hell? Men standing on a train platform are mildly bemused to see that a monitor is displaying images of their butts. The text says, “This is suffered by thousands of women every day.” What is suffered, exactly? Are there really monitors at the Mexico City train stations that usually display the women’s butts? I will assume not. So, what are the women suffering? I guess the message is, women suffer from the knowledge that wherever they go, they are visible to others, including their butts.

The main effect of the second ad was to cast doubt on the claims made in the first one. I mean, if “being visible” is a type of “sexual violence,” then that 9 out of 10 claim is dubious.; 4/1/17, 1:09 AM
SweatBee said...: The beginning strains of the music in the ads sound distractingly too much like the Captain is about to tell us all about "SPACE! The Final Frontier..."

The second ad is too obviously fake, as I can count on one hand the number of men I know whose reaction to seeing their jeans-clad bum on a television screen would be to get irritated, embarrassed, and try to hide behind a man-purse. Most would point and laugh or even dance for the camera.

And, finally, the only men who walk around wearing the male equivalent of what most women wear around town these days are competitive bikers and runners, while they are actually running and biking. And even then most of the runners wear modesty shorts over their leggings. If they did dress like that, do you know what a lot of women would do? "Diet Coke Break!"; 4/1/17, 1:19 AM
Owen said...: How very appropriate for "welas asih" to contribute the usual verbal garbage.; 4/1/17, 6:41 AM
I'm Full of Soup said...: How come the train passengers didn't look Mexican? I'd have never guessed this was filmed in Mexico,; 4/1/17, 7:10 AM
Leigh said...: Ann, links didn't quite work for me. . . Perhaps that's why your comments are unusually sparse?

The first video showed a male (as per the narrator) puffer fish constructing an elaborate sand sculpture to attract a mate. An interesting little video, to be sure, but that's about it. The second video showed presumably male humans being objectified by cameras; the males, in turn, pretended to be shocked and horrified that any woman might notice their preening and peacocking. But no matter. I'd seen the original story w/photos and the true accompanying video elsewhere. It was a Mexico City PSA directed at male mass transit riders. The message was, in essence, "if you think sitting on the lap of an erect, molded man is uncomfortable, just imagine _________!" If the message was instead meant to convey, "don't be a bump on a log," it almost escaped me. In any event, after seeing the seat and watching the accompanying video, my reaction (dare I say it?) was, "Ingenious! So effective. What a way to change, yet minimize, violent criminal behavior! And what an empathetic salute to rape victims everywhere!"

Nah. In actuality, I sent a screen-grab of the bizarre subway seat to a few friends w/a note saying: "our civilization is doomed." They were gobsmacked and confused.

But whatev. Cue the feminist outrage, dissecting, and deconstructing -- it's already all over twitter. Though, in this case, the outrage seems warranted.

Score 1 for the advertising agency -- if only in the notoriety category.; 4/1/17, 8:24 AM
Fernandinande said...: The phrase "Mexican government" reminds me of "Mexican slicks".; 4/1/17, 8:44 AM
Scott said...: The Mexico City campaign is a little more to the point than the New York City Subway's "anti-manspreading" campaign -- another publicly funded assault on the dignity of men in order to promote third wave feminism.; 4/1/17, 10:11 AM
MayBee said...: “9 out of 10 women in Mexico City have suffered some kind of sexual violence during their daily travels.”

Yeah, but say people coming *here* illegally from Mexico are often rapists, and that's like being Hitler. Apparently, the correct answer is that the men who commit sexual violence are staying in Mexico.; 4/1/17, 11:33 AM
Frumious B. said...: A friend who lived there said that, in the afternoon, subway cars get split into women's and men's due to the harassment.; 4/1/17, 12:32 PM