Stripping fish AND women alive is not okay

1st July 2009

Stripping fish AND women alive is not okay

posted in Feminist Topics, Pop Culture, Vegetarianism |

It looks like Dutch animal rights group Animals Awake is taking a few cues from Peta, an organization I’ve criticized heartily for treating women like a piece of meat to get men to stop eating meat.

Warning: the video is quite graphic in its depiction of violence against women, so if you’re especially sensitive to this, please don’t watch. Here’s a sanitized description of it instead: Playboy Playmate and all-around sexy vegetarian Ancilla Tilia is shown performing a Burlesque kind of strip tease for a roomful of ogling men. It’s all in good taste until a fisherman approaches her and hits her across the face with some kind of fishing instrument that looks like a two-by-four with a hook at the end and proceeds to disembowel her. The text “Stripping alive is not okay” then flashes on the screen, along with some supplemental text about how thousands of fish are flayed live every day. The slightly-less-graphic, behind-the-scenes photo shoot is here.

I get the general point of the ad, which is to anthropomorphize animals so that people will see them more as sentient beings and not merely fodder for their dinner plates. But many vegetarians, including myself, are so because we believe that a culture of violence towards any living creatures breeds a culture of violence towards all living creatures, including and especially women. Note that these kinds of ads never replace the bodies of tortured, brutalized and murdered animals with images of men – they’re always, always of women. The deliberate juxtaposition is intended to play on the imagery of women as helpless creatures in need of defending while also using sex to hook potential vegetarian converts, but it’s also more socially acceptable to objectify women as objects of meat than it is men. That the women themselves volunteer to be presented in this manner doesn’t change the fact that they are complicit in their own sexist exploitation.

There are many ways to get messages of vegetarianism across without doing so on the backs of women. For shame, Animals Awake, for shame.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 9:45 am and is filed under Feminist Topics, Pop Culture, Vegetarianism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 On July 1st, 2009, Alyssa (The 39 year-old) said:

I didn’t watch the ad, and I heartily agree with EVERYTHING you’ve written here.
I’ve always hated those PETA ads. In fact, I think they’ve done more harm than good. Why, WHY do they have to save animals by exploiting women?!?!?!?! It turns me off, even when I agree with the message. To me, it puts them in the same league as the burger ads that feature women in bikinis, which is nothing if not ironic.
Show that you care for ALL living creatures, INCLUDING WOMEN!!!!!!!

posted on July 1st, 2009 at 12:29 pm

2 On July 1st, 2009, Jackie said:

Well, once again, my respects to the horror film aspects of the ad are in conflict with my, it’s objectifying women aspect of the ad. Hey, at least it’s original though. It’s certainly more interesting then some PETA porn, with a naked woman standing for a “I’d rather be naked then wear fur” ad.

Now, I’m sure you can say well why is this any different. I have great respect for the type of imagery that’s in horror films. Like I said I was conflicted. I think this really gets the point across at a gut level. I actually like this ad much better which is in the same line:

http://adsoftheworld.com/files/images/humans1.jpg

Actually now that I think about it, really I do dislike this ad. It’s pointless violence to a woman, and you know I’ll watch horror films that have strong women in them. Women who fight back and don’t take crap from their abusers. This simply is some guy pulling a woman’s intestines out. Yeah, the idea is well why would you be less upset if this was happening to an animal. Really though, I think what an interesting thought would be is, would they do the same ad with a man? If they did would people be as upset?

This is like what the creators of Hostel did, where Hostel 1 was about men being tortured, and Hostel 2 was women being tortured. Then when there was so much controversy over Hostel 2, they said “Well why weren’t you complaining when men were being tortured in the original Hostel?” Makes you think.

Overall, I say hey, well at least they’re not targeting kids with graphic Unhappy Meals featuring graphic images of animals being abused, like PETA.

posted on July 1st, 2009 at 1:20 pm

3 On July 1st, 2009, Stacey Stardust said:

Ugh.

On a brighter note: if anyone wants to write Wakker Dier a letter about this and wants a Dutchie to translate, I’m here to help!

posted on July 1st, 2009 at 1:22 pm

4 On July 1st, 2009, Shanti said:

Rather irrelevant to the discussion, but I was interested in the fact that this woman, who is clearly portrayed as desirable, wouldn’t make it into an American ad of this type– she has a little fat and I could see her leg hair. I always forget that America enforces the beauty standard more than other countries, and this sort of thing always comes as a big surprise to me.

And I’m pretty much not okay with this ad, to get back on topic.

posted on July 1st, 2009 at 2:18 pm

5 On July 1st, 2009, Rachel2 said:

Jackie, I think the link you posted is far more effective at getting the message across than the video ad posted here.

Shanti, you are absolutely right. Oh. My Gosh. The woman has a little layer of fat!! Actually, I find her more desirable than most of the “beauty standards” we have here in the US. I, along with the general population, happen to LIKE a little bit of meat. Sticks are not sexy.

Relevant discussion: PETA makes me cringe. Their continual and constant use of women as objects pisses me off. This ad does nothing but perpetuate that. I agree with Rachel: SHAME ON ANIMALS AWAKE. Damn them.

posted on July 1st, 2009 at 2:44 pm

6 On July 1st, 2009, Rachel said:

Aren’t burlesque dancers generally more voluptuous than your standard size-0 actress?

posted on July 1st, 2009 at 3:04 pm

7 On July 1st, 2009, Rachel2 said:

I think so… And I think that’s because it’s what’s actually attractive.

posted on July 1st, 2009 at 3:09 pm

8 On July 1st, 2009, Charlotte said:

I don’t understand how this group thinks it’s okay to promote the rights of one living thing by objectifying another. It seems kind of hypocritical.

posted on July 1st, 2009 at 6:47 pm

9 On July 1st, 2009, D said:

This is disgusting. This ad would NEVER turn me on to vegetarianism. I am a vegetarian now, but I don’t approve at all of this, comparing women to fish, gutting women to make a point, not classy at all and words can’t describe how appalled I am.

posted on July 1st, 2009 at 9:17 pm

10 On July 1st, 2009, Melissa said:

Wow that actually shocked me at the end. I think maybe that’s their goal is to shock hoping to get you angry at fishermen killing fish. But I really think they miss the mark considerably because well one, there are no fish in the commercial, so the link to fish really isn’t immediatly obvious. However, the violent act upon a woman and the sexual reference is.
This was very repulsive and counteractive to any message about cruelty to animals.

I don’t think I’d want to watch that again it was way to graphic especially for a commercial.

posted on July 1st, 2009 at 11:58 pm

11 On July 2nd, 2009, Jackie said:

“I don’t understand how this group thinks it’s okay to promote the rights of one living thing by objectifying another. It seems kind of hypocritical.” – Charlotte

PETA’s being doing it for years.

posted on July 2nd, 2009 at 12:43 am

12 On July 2nd, 2009, Lc said:

This is terrifying.. and once again rehashes the view of the media of women as others, some sort of specialty group, that in their difference from what ‘real’ people are (white, hetero males), enables them to be objectified- if it were a man being ripped apart, it would surely focus on the man’s pain, and relating to the audience in some way; this woman is like a fish, rather than, you, (male), are being ripped apart relating to something within your own experience

posted on July 2nd, 2009 at 5:40 am

13 On July 2nd, 2009, a girl running said:

OMG – I wish I didn’t watch it

posted on July 2nd, 2009 at 8:38 am

14 On July 2nd, 2009, Lucy said:

I don’t even really need to watch it. Similar to Jackie, I love horror movies, but in most cases I’m not too offended (repulsed, of course, but not deeply offended) by that kind of violence against women because usually I watch them from a psychoanalytic/gender theory point of view and I can see how they’re entirely symbolic of events that happen in the human subconscious. In that case, it’s not random “violence against women,” because each woman represents a particular aspect of the psyche, and the violence has multiple layered meanings. (Thank you, film theory at Sarah Lawrence College.)

Something like this ad, however, and PETA’s whole catalogue of ads depicting graphic violence juxtaposed with sex doesn’t work in the same way. Just like you said- for people that allegedly abhor violence, it’s like they almost achieve this panting excitement from it, and in how viewers of these ads will react when they see that level of animal (or human) cruelty. It’s like they hate violence against living creatures, but it features so prominently in their advertising that you have to wonder what they would do without it. If you ask me, it’s beyond hypocrisy; it’s flat-out pathology.

posted on July 2nd, 2009 at 10:28 am

15 On July 2nd, 2009, rowdygirl said:

I didn’t watch the video after reading your description and I’m glad after reading the comments.
I’m not a vegetarian, but I am an animal lover. I know that seems weird, but I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.
It seems ridiculous, in this instance especially, to use sex to make your point. It’s hard to believe that they couldn’t come up with anything except a half naked woman to teach people about animal rights.

posted on July 2nd, 2009 at 10:31 am

16 On July 2nd, 2009, SJL said:

I didn’t watch the video, but I think that part of the offense that people take with it comes from the fact that the woman is doing a strip tease for the entertainment of a group of men immediately before her diembowlment. Which objectifies her on several levels, and also concatenates sex and violence in an uncomfortable way. I can understand the strategy of equating the fish with a person, but adding sex into the mix takes it to another place entirely. They could have just had a group of men and women go somewhere, like a cafe, and then get whacked with the fishing implement, a la a standard horror film.

posted on July 2nd, 2009 at 11:43 am

17 On July 2nd, 2009, Jackie said:

It’s the sex and violence that disturbs me. It makes it more intimate that way, although unfortunately it’s a common plot in some horror films. Most horror films, that aren’t attempting to attract a 20-something audience, don’t do that.

I saw a film called Martyrs recently that was very good, but there’s a woman tortured in it. It’s not graphic like Hostel, and you can tell pretty well it’s faked. The great thing about this film is there are so many twists to it, and it’s all about the main character being a strong caring woman. It’s French-Canadian, so it’s in French subtitled in English.

posted on July 2nd, 2009 at 1:01 pm

18 On July 2nd, 2009, Rachel said:

There was a 2005 horror film that was surprisingly feminist — “The Descent.” The entire cast, well, besides the monsters, is made up of strong women. It wasn’t on par with the likes of Guillermo del Toro, but it managed to scare me in places and didn’t include any the torture-porn found in most horror flicks these days.

posted on July 2nd, 2009 at 1:41 pm

19 On July 4th, 2009, Emmy said:

Wow.

That was horribly disturbing.

posted on July 4th, 2009 at 9:00 pm

20 On July 8th, 2009, My Body Is Not Yours To Exploit, No Matter How Progressive Your Cause | Change Happens: The SAFER Blog said:

[...] Rachel at the F-Word has more on this topic, in reference to a Dutch animal rights group who uses a video of a stripper being skinned alive to [...]

posted on July 8th, 2009 at 2:47 pm

21 On July 25th, 2009, Sky said:

It’s obvious that someone in power in Peta has a job to do, in terms of shaping society. Things like this aren’t done out of ignorance or sexism. Someone is being TOLD how to run this ad campaign. Managing society takes a lot of work, the the politically involved aren’t stupid people. Imagine the changes that would occur if people stopped eating meat suddenly. It must be done slowly to keep our systems from crashing. This has to do with economy and the fights between big businesses. Here is a related idea/example. Think about the fact that lesbianism {slowly) has become portrayed as sexy- when I was little it was marketed as revolting. I believe this change is to lead people into accepting equality, very slowly over several generations. Most people have to get used to the idea in parts, a little at a time. The equality issue is rolling a bit faster now, and Im glad. It does suck that women are exploited to change things. It should be different in the near future if things keep going the way they are- I hope. When men are no longer the primary decision makers, as we are leaving this kind of society behind now, women won’t be used for manipulation of society as often or in the same ways as now. And men will most likely be relieved not to be shoved into a stereotypical role themselves. Men have much less freedom in society then women, and women often unknowingly work to promote this. I’m not saying that men don’t force this role on each other as well. It just seems like women are more oblivious to the plight of men, and feminists often frustrate me because many are very focused on female rights instead of human rights. Someone please respond and let me know what you think. Do you think the ad encourages people to think about all creatures rights, human as well? Some people will see it topically, and it takes a lot of shock to get their attention. Also a symbol is needed, such as a female.

posted on July 25th, 2009 at 2:53 pm

22 On July 26th, 2009, Sky said: