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Education > Parent Involvement > Teen Unprotected Sex and Peta Sex Talk
 

Teen Unprotected Sex and Peta Sex Talk


Teen Unprotected Sex and Unneutered Animals

Tana Ganeva, Alternet
PETA has always caught flak for its publicity campaigns, which often seem to
elevate the wellbeing of animals above the wellbeing of women. In the eighties
the organization got tons of media attention by flinging blood at women in fur
coats; they also earned criticisms from feminist groups for not dishing out the
same treatment to men wearing leather. More recently PETA has earned the ire of
feminists for using pornographic images of women to
push their agenda as well as for their recurrent and ever-tasteful campaigns
comparing women to livestock.
The animal rights group is certain to grab headlines with their new ad, which calls attention to
the importance of neutering pets by parodying the parental sex talk. The ad
opens with a surly teen girl sighing loudly as her parents plant themselves on
her bed wearing "We need to talk about sex" expressions.
Mom: Honey, we need to talk ...
Dad: ... about sex. We think you should be having it sweetie.
Mom: A lot of it.
Dad: Get out there and nail everything you can!
[ ... ]
Teen girl: What if I get pregnant?"
Dad: So what? You should pop out all the kids you want! We can leave them in
the shelter, dump them out in the street ... it's really not important.
The ad closes with, "Parents shouldn't act this way. Neither should
people with dogs and cats."
The ad is really well-made and funny; it also does a great job
skewering our weird, schizophrenic discomfort with teen sexuality. Another plus
is that at no point is the girl entrapped, naked,
in a cage
, a la previous PETA efforts to shed light on animal cruelty. All
in all it is not as offensive as it could be: way to go PETA, for
putting out an ad that doesn't involve the symbolic slaughter of women.
So I don't think the ad is blatantly or egregiously
misogynistic.
But in light of PETA's history and the feminist criticisms leveled at the
organization, is it really necessary for them to equate teen girls with
animals, even though they do it in a tongue-in-cheek way? The joke still works
with a boy, so why did they opt to use a girl?
It's also pretty clear that PETA is capitalizing on the recent media frenzy
over teen pregnancy (see Jamie Lynn Spears/Gloucester pregnancy "pact"/
etc.) And part of the reason the ad is funny and effective, is because
the sexuality of teen girls is the object of societal freak-outs in a way that
male sexuality is not. (In the Gloucester
teen pregnancy story, there wasn't too much media discussion about all those
boys dumb and fucked-up enough to have unprotected sex with girls who weren't
on birth control).
The figure of the pregnant teen elicits all sorts of screwed-up reactions
(paternalism, derision, moralizing, to name a few) that are rooted in larger
messed-up assumptions about female sexuality. And the PETA ad certainly doesn't
contribute much to the very difficult and complex topic of teen pregnancy.
Here's a small but telling case-in-point: The top result for the ad on YouTube
is titled "PETA sex talk -- For girls like Jamie Lynn Spears." What
kind of girls? Slutty girls?
What do you think? Is the ad another example of PETA trafficking in sexist
assumptions to push their agenda? Or is it a funny, harmless way to get an
important point across?

 

posted on July 24, 2008 11:21 AM ()

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