IMO, the value in pointing out stuff like this is not to advance the idea that men are oppressed and reviled, but to rebut the idea that misogyny pervades American culture. As Peter points out, women are a protected class, and ads that played to negative stereotypes about women would not be tolerated.

Unfortunately, this sort of ambiguity gives a lot of men the wrong idea that sexual harassment is a myth or something simply used as a bludgeon against men in the office environment.

Sexual-harassment laws are simply a way for women to keep guys like me in our place. (Mr. Right can do whatever he wants. Me, not so much.)

And honestly, your cavalier attitude towards sexual-harassment laws and those commercials makes me think you’re a gigantic sellout.

Apparently, when a guy is successful with women, he sells all other men down the river. Thanks. When a woman sues me simply because I ask her out, it’s because of guys like you being so eager to please your wives that you will allow atrocities like this to happen.

We gave them the right to vote. We make up over 95% of workplace fatalties. For every woman who gets killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, 40 men get killed.

Yet they ridicule us. They also insist that we be the ones to ask them out, then they sue us if we’re not their type.

To me, it’s just absolutely unbelievable that you can’t see how women are stabbing men in the back. I guess love does make men stupid.

I’m really not convinced that’s true. It might cause an outcry among staunch feminists the same way that they did As Good As It Gets… but really, who’s paying attention? Are feminists being inconsistent only caring about women that are slighted and not men? Yeah, but point me to an article in AskMen lamenting the objectification of women in beer ads or just about anything. These are two sides of the same coin, in my view.

Women have their problems in commercials, too. They’re frequently depicted as having the primary mission as the steward and hostess of the household and whose primary roll in life is that as a homemaker. They’re depicted as having to clean up the mess of the lazy men that we’re complaining about. Their value is tied most directly to their beauty and their homemaking skills. These are problems that women have in commercials that men do not. They are not problems that keep me up at night, but I don’t agree that women are portrayed in advertisements in ways that are necessarily favorable to them.

ads that played to negative stereotypes about women would not be tolerated.

Again, not convinced that is true. I’ve been watching a television show in which nearly every female character is an atrocious stereotype of some sort or another and most are without any redeeming characteristics at all. If you’d have told me that a sitcom would last more than five season in which the five principal female characters are a wise-ass maid, a psychotic stalker, a narcissistic manipulator without a conscience, a maniplative and neurotic witch, and a would-be actress that is dumb as a load of bricks, I’d have been skeptical. Yet Two and a Half Men has been going strong for five seasons now.

How many times have sitcoms used the plot of women racking up credit card debt because they buy too many shoes or cute dresses or whatever? None of this is to suggest that doofus dads are not a problem… but the notion that it only goes one way is not supported, in my view.

I’m pretty open-minded as far as gender goes. I don’t have a problem with private clubs that exclude women. This is an area where I am in disagreement with a lot of feminists.

Sexual-harassment laws are simply a way for women to keep guys like me in our place. (Mr. Right can do whatever he wants. Me, not so much.)

First off, insofar as attractive men broadly get to do things that unattractive men don’t, I don’t see why that is so controversial. If a woman chooses to have sex with a man that’s okay and if a man has sex with her without her consent that’s not okay, right. Do you consider that discriminatory?

Second of all, sexual harassment does happen. I’ve seen it happen (though notably in cases where I’ve seen it happen it wasn’t officially reported). Are sexual harassment laws abused? Sure. Do they address a real problem, though? Absolutely.

Thirdly, even as sexual harassment laws are abused, they’re not being abused as a way to target undesirable men. It’s more likely to be abused by a woman that is about to be or already has been fired as a way to threaten the company and create leverage.

Yet they ridicule us. They also insist that we be the ones to ask them out, then they sue us if we’re not their type.

I hear this complaint quite a bit, but every sexual harassment seminar I have ever, ever been to has explicitly said that it’s okay for a man to ask a woman out in the office place, so long as he accepts “No” as an answer if that’s what she gives. Further, I’ve seen a lot of guys ask girls out in the workplace. Sometimes the answer is yes and sometimes it is no. I’ve not once seen anyone sued over it. I’ve seen cases where a guy was chicken to ask her out so he leared, engaged in inappropriate physical contact, and made inappropriate jokes in flirtation… no lawsuits. The vast majority of the time women don’t have any reason to launch a lawsuit unless he’s making her work time virtually unbearable. There isn’t much incentive for them to step forward if they can avoid it. They gain little, become unapproachable by men that they might actually want to date, and become known as trouble-seekers within the company.

To me, it’s just absolutely unbelievable that you can’t see how women are stabbing men in the back.

Women stab men in the back all the time. I also believe that men give an approximately equivalent amount of good as they get. There are a lot of issues that are somewhat zero sum where there has to be a tug-of-war. I get a little agitated when one side tries to declare the moral high ground and proclaims the other side as having no valid points worthy of respect and consideration. It’s very frequent that feminists do this and I don’t like it when they do. But I don’t like it when men do it, either.

Sometimes they should accept alternative explanations. Sometimes these alternative explanations are legitimate. Sometimes - maybe often - they’re legitimate but are still part of the problem. I have alternative explanations for all of these advertisements, and yet at the same time I do agree that there is a problem with the way that men are very frequently depicted on advertisements. There are alternative explanations for a whole lot of things that feminists bring up… but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some valid complaints in there.

Surely there is some merit to discussing the frequent portrayal of men as clueless boobs beyond a club with which to whap feminists, isn’t it? Men are disadvantaged by American culture in a whole lot of ways. Even if we grant this to be true, it does not therefore follow that men are not privileged in other ways and that women aren’t disadvantaged as well.

I reject the hypothesis that society is one big game the purpose of which is to disadvantage women. Unfortunately, treating every claim of women being disadvantaged as support for that hypothesis that must be shot down, it makes communication difficult with members of the opposite sex who don’t even share the more extreme assumptions of some of its members.

One of the subjects that has been on my mind (courtesy Half Sigma) has been child support law and the belief of some that any attempt to allow people to avoid having to pay child support (even if the child is not demonstrably his or even is demonstrably not his) is an effort for the cause of allowing all men to avoid paying child support. That attitude makes it difficult to address very real concerns and makes an enemy out of anyone that wants these concerns (about false paternity, etc).

Similarly, it seems to me that sometimes we need to separate the arguments from the most extreme people making the arguments.

I’ve heard that at those seminars too. I can only wonder where they get that from. From what I’ve read, sexual harassment is defined by the “victim” and only after the fact. Therefore it can be anything, or nothing.

Perhaps management puts out these seminars just to keep men and women working together?

The most recent seminar was actually taught by sexual harassment lawyers. I assume that they know what the law does and does not cover. If they say that the simply asking out of a woman is not sexual harassment, I don’t have a whole lot of reason to disbelieve them. Though I hear complaints that men can be fired for sexual harassment for simply for asking a girl out (and not engaging in additional inappropriate behavior), I don’t know of cases where it’s actually happened.

So, sorry.