About a week ago when I was in Hawaii, Grania put up a post, “Storm in a jockstrap“, about the new Gillette Razor ad calling out male behavior. This is what Grania said before presenting a bunch of tweets both extolling and opposing the ad.

Gillette has unleashed its latest commercial. Instead of its usual claim that it’s the best a man can get, this time they have opted for some social education and encouraged men to call out other men they see behaving badly. It’s not the worst advice ever given, although I suspect that many in the world are weary of being lectured to, especially by multi-billion dollar corporations; and even more are sick of the call-out culture of social media that may have started in an honest attempt to draw the line against society’s most egregious offenders, but has given way to nasty dog-piling on anyone who may have inadvertently trodden on someone else’s toes.

I have to say that I agree with her. When I first saw the ad, which I’ve put below, I had a two-sided response. First, I agreed with every sentiment that it expressed. Yes, there are stereotypical “male” traits (some of them, like aggression, probably the result of evolution) that are harmful to women and to society as a whole.

At the same time, I resented having to be lectured about this in almost every venue I read. Yes, some men need to absorb the ad’s lessons, but I doubt whether the ad itself would be effective. After all (or so I think), men who behave well toward women tend to hang out with similar men, and that’s true for men who behave badly.

I’d like to think I’m one of those men who has already absorbed the ad’s lessons, but my feeling wasn’t just a #NotAllMen response. I was, as Grania felt, tired of the call-out culture that leads to incessant and pompous moralizing as well as virtue flaunting. While I have no objection to the ad, and agree 100% with its message, I don’t need to hear it all the time, nor do I think that such presentations are more of an honest attempt to reform society than to ride current tides of opinion to publicize a company.

But I’m a man and lack credibility on this issue. If I say the ad didn’t move me, I risk being accused of being toxically masculine, or at least being defensive about being a male (but should I be defensive?). So let’s look at the opinion of science writer Faye Flam, who has experienced this behavior herself (for one thing, she got a physics degree from CalTech, which almost invites incursions of misogyny). Nobody can say that Faye isn’t a feminist, for she’s stuck up for the rights of women consistently through her career.

Here’s Faye’s latest column for Bloomberg Opinion, the venue for which she writes (click on the screenshot):

Why is the ad bad medicine? Here’s Faye’s take:

Reaction to the Gillette ad followed political lines, with commenters on the right seething and those on the left reporting that they cheered, even cried. I tried to watch it a couple of times for research purposes. It was pompous, humorless and weirdly retrograde, with men swooping in to save pretty damsels from thuggish jerks. But then, if Gillette ads depicted the real world, they’d have to switch from selling razors to selling pepper spray.

There are several common types of toxic male behavior. Gillette addresses what I’ll call Type 1, which is street harassment — a problem I’ve experienced since I was 13 (and yes, I looked 13). In the real world, the kinds of adult men who sneak up on women, or teenage girls, to make obscene propositions or harass them with catcalls don’t hang out with the kinds of nice guys who would stop them with a brotherly “not cool.”

Type 2 toxicity goes the other way: Men sometimes attack me online for looking so “ugly/unattractive/hideous” that my viewpoint can’t possibly matter. Why would science columns inspire this? Who knows? The subject matter gives them material; they tell me I’m so ugly a Neanderthal wouldn’t sleep with me. (There is evidence to the contrary when I step outside and several Neanderthals treat me to an uninvited description of how they would go about that very thing.)

The takeaway for me is that some men believe women exist solely for decorative purposes, and if we’re decoratively inadequate, we’re worthless. Donald Trump is a big user of this kind of toxicity. Remember when he accused New York Times columnist Gail Collins of having the face of a pig?

So if many men act in ways the ad portrays, what’s her beef? Mainly that not all stereotypically “male” traits are bad. And while you might think from the following, and especially from the subheadline above, that Faye believes that women are responsible for solving the bad behavior of men, that’s not true. But first read this, which implies otherwise:

Let’s be realistic: I don’t ask men to defend me against this sort of thing, and I can’t get excited about a razor company pretending to care. True defense must come from within — from reserves of stoicism, self-reliance and perseverance.

The American Psychological Association is in a better position than Gillette to figure out what’s wrong with these men. Quoted in that New York Times column, Harvard professor Steven Pinker argues the APA is following false leads. Stoicism, for example, is a good quality, not, as the new guidelines say, harmful. He’s got that right. And he argues that the guidelines should encourage “one side of the masculine virtues — the dignity, responsibility, self-control, and self-reliance.”

Wait — don’t I and other women need those virtues as well? These are the kinds of character traits that separate children from adults, but not men from women. I emailed him for clarification and he said that indeed, these are human virtues but “might be associated with men because they get into more trouble without them.”

To make sure I understood Faye’s message, and to ask if she thought the onus was at least in part on women to de-toxify males, I called her and said, “Look, some people are going to say that your ‘solution’ is akin to blaming rape victims for their rape. Is that what you meant?”

Faye quickly emphasized that no, that wasn’t what she meant; what she meant was that she never had males defending her against the sexism she encountered and still encounters, and therefore, to survive it, she had to cultivate her inner reserves. In other words, when she said “True defense must come from within,” she meant that this was true for her—and not a prescription for all women.  The sub-headline is also misleading in this way, so I’m glad I called her. The article may get tweaked a bit.

Faye also wanted to emphasize that she sees sexism in America as falling largely along political lines: that the misogyny and sexism seem to emanate almost entirely from the Right rather than from the Left.

So, you can weigh in on all these issues: Do women bear any responsibility for detoxifying males?. Does sexism occur largely along political lines? And, of course, what do you think of the Gillette ad?