It’s not over by a long shot, but it’s good to know that the question is being raised.

Author Seth Godin has an interesting post in which he speculates that the time is coming where people may be less willing to accept public gender discrimination.

“It’s sort of astonishing… in my lifetime, we’ve seen the end of public (but certainly not private) attacks on people because of race or mainstream religion (fringe beliefs and sexual orientation are still fair game, apparently)… but trying to humiliate half the population because of their gender seems just fine. That may be changing. There’s a significant backlash about John McCain’s handling of a question earlier in the week. If the questioner had used a similar epithet about a black person or someone from Poland, they would have been shown the door. At least I hope so.”

I agree. But I don’t think that means that objectifying women is going anywhere because a lot of people don’t see it as a problem. If you look at some of the comments on this blog when I post about degrading ads you’ll see a range of opinions from “that’s disgusting” to “get over it, it’s just an ad.” I’d be willing to bet that a lot of the public is on the “get over it” side because once you see something over, and over, and over it becomes normal and that’s where the desensitization comes in.

But maybe Seth is right, at least I sure hope so.

“As Hugh Hefner demonstrated with Playboy fifty years ago, objectifying women was a shortcut to cash. And all you have to do is visit Las Vegas to see it happening in every hallway, on every billboard. What is now becoming clear is that many of the people in your market won’t stand for it any longer. One more shortcut, gone.”

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