They'd love "Family Guy" over there.

Men in the US are routinely portrayed as animals, but Broadsheet's never noticed that. For that matter, neither has Salon.com.

There's the Careerbuilder.com commercials in which everyone in the office is a chimpanzee and they're all males. What a surprise! And there's the Miller Lite commercial where the chimp in the zoo cage outwits the man, steals his beer and the guy starts acting like a chimp.

So why doesn't Broadsheet complain about those ads and other depictions of men as animals? After all, I have it on the best authority that Broadsheet is a feminist publication and that feminists are all for equality of the sexes. So Broadsheet must oppose these flagrantly misandric comparisons/depictions. Why pick a piece from an Indian book instead of something closer to home?

It couldn't be that feminism isn't so all-fired egalitarian after all could it?

On the other hand, IMO, the compositors of this Indian textbook might have a point. If the qualities one looks for in a wife (like willingness to bear up uncomplainingly under insults, willingness to do lots of work without hope of remuneration of any sort, unwillingness under any circumstances to leave the dwelling-place to which one has become accustomed, unwillingness or inability to criticize the man to whom one is bound; in fact, unwillingness or inability to evaluate that man in any manner whatsoever) are such qualities as happen incidentally to be found much more easily in a beasts of burden than in human women, why shouldn't the average wallah simply bow to his fate, go ahead and buy a donkey, and remain content therewith?

And why criticize the Indian textbook-makers for implying as much?

Yeah, it's so funny I forgot to laugh.

Oh, lighten up.

It's just a bloody joke, for God's sake. I'm a feminist and I thought it was funny. It's not as if women don't make equally snarky jokes about men!

And Robert Franklin, please don't make the mistake of tarring all feminists with the same brush. Some of us actually have senses of humor about ourselves, and can take jokes with a laugh and a shrug.

...and they wonder why so many Rajasthanis are aborting female fetuses.

Once again the ugly white affluent privilege of Broadsheet raises it's ugly Aryan blonde head.

Racist pigs all!

When are you going to pull your head out of your ass and realize that it is men making fun of themselves! Men head the ad agencies, men head every important hollywood and TV studio. You know that show Everybody Loves Raymond where he looks like a complete buffon a lot of the time, HE writes it along with a bunch of other MALE writers. Just like they pair these plain or fat men with thin beautiful wives. Who wrote Seinfeld, where everyone looked like a juvenille ass? Larry David and he's quite comfortable making himself look like an ass on his HBO show, his best friend's wife is no peach either. Perhaps what you don't realize is that because men still hold the majority of the cards when it comes to power, they are in the comfortable posistion of making fun of themselves because they know people don't think most men are morons. When you are in a posistion of comfort it is safe to laugh at yourself or compare yourselves to chimps. Try comparing a black man to a chimp and you will see a totally different reaction. The difference is that there are still plenty of men who think women are morons, that we are only here to fufill their sexual desires and pop out their kids, so portraying us that way in the media is a precarious position. Plus there are plenty of soaps and dramas that portray womens'negative attributes like gold digging, chasing after attached men and using their seductive powers for manipulation.

Why should women fight against what men are doing to themselves? We still have to fight to hang onto control over our reproductive organs and not being viewed as male property, when those severe problems are rectified then maybe women can ask why men feel like making fun of themselves in the media. Of course something like this matters in India, women abort their potential children simply because they are female. Women are traded like beasts of burden, when they shouldn't be, of course people should be offended by comparing a wife to a donkey in India.

There's no reason to be insulting. Yes, men act in these shows and commercials, write some of them, etc. So that makes it OK? Some of the short stories Betty Friedan complained about were written by women and the movies had women playing the lead roles. So that made it OK to depict women who worked as always coming to grief while those who stayed home with the kids found eternal bliss? No, it didn't. The reason it didn't is because popular culture has an impact on the way we see ourselves and what we expect of ourselves. It delineates the range of acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

I could take this as a joke a lot more easily if men were not also so widely depicted as stupid in other ways. It is one of the most common views of men in popular culture of which the animal references are just a subcategory.

And since you think it's OK to depict men as animals, why aren't women depicted that way? In another Careerbuilder.com ad, all the office workers are donkeys (actually "jackasses" as stated in the ad) and of course they're all male. There's also a worker in another office who's female, but she's just a plain old ordinary human being. Funny how that happened. So if it's just a harmless joke, why aren't women portrayed as stupid animals? Would that be OK with you?

Honestly, Lestat, if the last 30 years of popular culture had been devoted to depictions of women as stupid, wouldn't you think enough was enough? I used to laugh at this stuff too. I no longer do.

And Exasperated, I do not tar all feminists with the same brush. I dont know where you got the idea that I did. I just said that feminism is supposed to be about equality of the sexes, but Broadsheet never gets around to decrying the pervasive misandry in popular culture. That is an objectively true statement and nothing but.