Virgins
Remember that ridiculous Burger King ad with the "whopper virgins"? I just found this reply on You Tube and felt like sharing with you guys.
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Very thought-provoking. I hope many people see this and act.
While I think this video is well-intentioned and believe me, I am disgusted at the "whopper virgin" ads as much as the people (or person) who made this, I am a bit triggered by its approach.
Showing people in "far away lands like, Africa and stuff" dig through garbage, not have shoes, clothes, clean water, etc. victimizes them and keeps them further from asserting their autonomy as human beings.
Yes, I am aware that there are people suffering from starvation and extreme poverty not just "somewhere really far away" but also here, in the "ever-so promising and civilized United States!" in my own backyard.
Creating this notion of victim ("them") and hero ("us") and only "we" can help "them" does not address the problem. If anything it's quite offensive, and triggering. But then again, we are all so used to seeing people in Africa and other "developing" countries as starving, with no clothes, and oh yes flies around them total total pity, but "US" the generous civilized, fortunate American beings we are can help "them"! Just take out a couple of dollars from my bank account, send me a picture I can put on my fridge to remind myself what a good-hearted amazing activist person I am.
As a woman of color living in the United States, with a WHOLE different perspective on "freedom" and "equality" presented to me by people of various political spectrums with certain privileges that I, in addition to poor people, queer people, and any other "social deviants", cannot enjoy, get VERY triggered by shit like this.
There are better, non-white supremacist, "us"/"them", "west"/"the rest", "hero"/"victim" binaries to address the oppressions of people (even our own). It's called being an ally, and it begins through the realization that our feminist struggle cannot be accomplished if we don't address heterosexism, classism, racism, and all oppressions through recognizing, healing from, and negotiating our privileges and acknowledging intersectionality
Claudzilla, maybe I should have said in the post that I don't think that donating "once a year" is the key solution to help starving people from other countries. I also don't think it's the key solution to solve problems in our own countries as well.
I do have a problem with the discourse "send us some cash and stop worrying about it, while you still live your live with many things you don't need to have, while you still waste"; and (the most important thing) "still feeding the mechanisms that perpetuate the very system that keeps those people in poverty".
I just posted this video cuz I thought it was an interesting response to the Burger Kind Ad. They're not just Whopper virgins. There are many other things that those people portrayed as "others" are "virgins" to, such as human rights. I liked this ad because maybe it can help raise some awareness among the people who just found the burger kind ad "funny".
I gotta stress that it's just as important to tell people that we do have this kind of problems right below our noses as well. But the thing is that this is a response to the burger king ad -- and that ad showed people from the poor countries, not from the poor communities of the U.S.
Besides that, I agree with everything you said.
Marj, that's a good way of looking at it.
I do like the fact that people are responding to BK's offensive ads.
I guess I got a little carried away and forgot that the target audience is, after all, people who are less aware. I am still afraid it might arise pity, but at least it's showing how offensive and unfunny the "whopper virgin" ad is.
A lot of the problems in regions like that are sociological as well as logistical. Attitudes and ideology play a big part. I know a woman from Mexico married to an abusive American man who insists that "the man is the boss" if you tell her otherwise she gets angry. How to you help someone like that? Maby concentrate on educating the younger generation?