Captain Axe Body Spray of the Gender Wars
In the words of Jon Lovett, WHAT A WEEK. Since I spent two of the days at a conference, I feel like I’m looking back at the end of June craziness like a dog seeing itself on FaceTime for the first time.
So a bunch o’ stuff went down, shall we go through some of the insanity?
Friend of the Missive Sarah points out that Canada has a Prime Minister who wore Eid rainbow socks at Pride (#sockplomacy.) Colin points out that Canada has glow-in-the-dark twoonies. Meanwhile, south of the 49th, the President of the United States of America shames women from his twitter account.
Speaking of garbage members of a certain gender, a venture capital firm all but shuttered this week due to a meticulously-sourced story by the GUY WHO BROUGHT DOWN LANCE ARMSTRONG which exposed rampant sexual harassment by said firm’s founder. And to all of the folks who’ve sent it to me aghast that this behavior happens, I say “Welcome to Silicon Valley,” where a very small group control the pursestrings to an entire industry - the power imbalance has always been there for founders, so throw a soupçon of sexism and harassment in the mix and you start to see how perilous it can be for women in the industry. And while the story was published last week, the Valley’s freak-out was late to commence, as Sarah Lacy noted, and only really got going when Reid Hoffman laid out a full WTF FFS GTFO SOBs on LinkedIn. Throughout this week, the other shoes rained down from the sky as alleged victims shared story after stomach-churning story. I encourage you to check out Axios’s coverage of the whole shitshow, as well as read Tracy Chou’s reminder of why even coders need humanities education.
But in this battle against toxic masculinity, we have an utterly unexpected corporate ally: Axe Body Spray. I know. Seriously. The ever-present olfactory assault of your teenage years has debuted an ad combating the negative impact of male media stereotypes on young men and boys by celebrating (quote from Racked) a “guy with a big nose, a man dancing in heels, a fella with a big beard snuggling some kittens, and — gasp — a man pleasuring a woman.” It know it’s an ad, and I’m sure there will be a backlash against it in short order, but anything that encourages young men to celebrate their own uniqueness as opposed to feeling pressured to conform to bullshit machismo is 100 in my book.
And finally, from McSweeney’s: “Take A Ride Into The Danger Zone/Safe Space This Summer!” A Message From The Director Of Overnight Camps For Two Americas.
Toodles, my poodles XOXO.