Thread: Mexican anti-harassment campaign features blowup sex dolls

SignOnSanDiego.com News Mexico -- Mexican anti-harassment campaign features blowup sex dolls dressed as secretaries


By Mark Stevenson
ASSOCIATED PRESS

2:07 p.m. March 8, 2006

MEXICO CITY – Mexican television is showing jarring scenes of inflatable sex dolls dressed as office workers – part of a campaign by Mexico's National Women's Institute to dramatize the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace.
The television part of the campaign – which also includes billboards and radio ads – shows the wide-mouthed sex dolls dressed as secretaries, sitting at desks or photocopiers as men leer at them or try to grope them.

“No woman should be treated like an object,” a somber-voiced narrator says in the background. “Sexual harassment is not just demeaning, it's a crime.”

Launched on International Women's Day, the campaign will run through mid-April, said Patricia Espinosa, head of the institute.

Recently, the institute also sponsored a series of controversial ads against domestic violence in which prominent female writers, actresses and academics appeared on billboards, made up to appear as if they had been severely beaten.

The slogan of that campaign was “He who hits one of us, hits all of us.”

Mexican officials acknowledged on Wednesday that the country still has a problem with machismo, discrimination, harassment and violence against women.

“Our society still has a long way to go in overcoming holdovers from the past, eradicating prejudice and changing habits,” President Vicente Fox said.

Fox himself drew criticism from anti-discrimination groups and legislators when he joked that “75 percent of the homes in Mexico have a washing machine, and not the kind with two hands or two legs.”

“Apart from whether it was intentional ... there are certain forms of expression that stereotype and create prejudices toward women, and that translates into a sexist language,” Gilberto Rincon, president of the National Committee to Prevent Discrimination, wrote in a letter to Fox made public Tuesday.

On Wednesday, front-running leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador promised to give at least half the posts in his cabinet to women, should he win the July 2 election.

Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca noted that “violence against women is present in all classes of society, regardless of education levels, and is also present in the workplace and in the family.”

In neighboring Guatemala – which has experienced a three-year spike in the killings of women, often involving gang or domestic violence – the government acknowledged the country is one of the most dangerous in the world for women.

About 625 women were killed in Guatemala in 2005 – more than triple the 2002 death toll of 184. Guatemala has a population of 14 million.

“The most recent data show a murder rate of 9.02 per 100,000 women in Guatemala, a rate that is second only behind Russia,” said Sergio Morales, the country's human rights prosecutor.

Yes, they are all so respectful of women that the most likely crime to be committed wherever they are is domestic violence. Surre, they are interested in stopping sexual harassment in the work place.

JuniusJnr,
This is to me the most telling quote in the article.

"Mexican officials acknowledged on Wednesday that the country still has a problem with machismo, discrimination, harassment and violence against women".

Women in this country are now becoming the targets of their behavior.

NewMexican, if you are actually in NM, you are probably as acutely aware as I am of the astronomical number of people who have killed their own children by the most violent of means. Baby Brianna? the little boy whose step father made his sister beat him to death with a bat for wetting the bed? Dozens of other cases.

You know that there are at least 300 young women who were murdered and left in the chihuahuan desert just south of the border and nobody seems to give a tinkers damn about them. For the Mexican gov't to say they want to help women's rights is ludicrous!

I was surprised to see that they are doing a TV campaign. I don't think I've every seen that anywhere I've lived. Yes there are workplace posters in the breakrooms and harassement classes. But to warrent a TV campaign, must be a huge problem and not just in the workplace.

Hey! I guess we will need a copy of those ads to run here in the US soon when the next several million Mexicans enter illegally.

I'm sure American women will love seeing blow up dolls used to try and enlighten the illegals culture.

This is your future if we don't secure our borders and enforce our existing immigration laws ladies.

W

ROFLMAO! I can see it all now. Blow up dolls and puppets. What a combination.

Pictures of the ads can be found here.

https://www.alipac.us/ftopicp-87934.html#87934

Originally Posted by Newmexican

SignOnSanDiego.com News Mexico -- Mexican anti-harassment campaign features blowup sex dolls dressed as secretaries

Fox himself drew criticism from anti-discrimination groups and legislators when he joked that “75 percent of the homes in Mexico have a washing machine, and not the kind with two hands or two legs.”

“Apart from whether it was intentional ... there are certain forms of expression that stereotype and create prejudices toward women, and that translates into a sexist language,” Gilberto Rincon, president of the National Committee to Prevent Discrimination, wrote in a letter to Fox made public Tuesday.

I read the article here as well as the one Brian provided in the link with pictures of the inflatable dolls. I'm speechless! Especially after seeing the pictures!

I was also speechless last time I went into Spencer's gag shop at a mall. I like their funny and insulting greeting cards and some other stuff. But I thought it was going over the edge in tastelessness to see an inflatable sheep wearing some bridal lace and pink.

Now, wouldn't this be a lovely present to send to Vicente Fox? A thoughtful message to include could go something like this, "For those probably frequent nights when your wife says 'Not Tonight, Dear'".

http://www.alipac.us/article1097.html

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