Uh oh Fender... Instagram accusations of being misogynistic

[AztecGold]

You honestly think this forum is full of people who don’t know what they’re talking about? The Brazilian reference was supposed read as innuendo, and that’s how it was taken. It isn’t about finding things to get angry about, it’s about calling things out in the hopes we can change attitudes. If you haven’t already, please read my post earlier in the thread. I don’t know how else to explain why this is wrong.

Reading this thread (last post withstanding), I’m heartened to see so many people on the right side of this issue.

In reference to the social media furore not this one

[Maggieo]

I saw that post and never thought anything about it. "Brazillian" to guitarists obviously means Brazillian rosewood and guitars hang round your neck or sit in your lap. I would guess the people who flew into a rage probably don't know about brazillian rosewood and misunderstood what they were enraged about. But I suppose on social media that's kind of how it goes. Everybody loves to get angry about something they know little about

Yeah, I don't know shit about guitars or misogyny.

[Maggieo]

FTR, most of my guitars have male names.

I mean, guitars are phallic as all get-out. Hehehehe, get out.

[Telliot]

Somehow it doesn’t feel the same; I don’t think men are the typically oppressed gender, nor are they in constant fear of being sexually assaulted (generally speaking).

[Larry Mal]

I saw that post and never thought anything about it. "Brazillian" to guitarists obviously means Brazillian rosewood and guitars hang round your neck or sit in your lap. I would guess the people who flew into a rage probably don't know about brazillian rosewood and misunderstood what they were enraged about. But I suppose on social media that's kind of how it goes. Everybody loves to get angry about something they know little about

I mean, I don't know who Camilla Charlesworth, bassist of the Veronicas, is, but it seems like she is a professional musician and I imagine that she had understanding of the concept of Brazilian rosewood as well as how a guitar can be placed around one's neck on or a lap.

Is your point that she was on the internet and didn't understand what she was looking at but her incredible sensitivity caused her to be upset about it anyway?

[Telliot]

I can only imagine all the uninformed non-musicians who follow Fender on social media lying in wait for a misstep to get angry about.

[Larry Mal]

I can only imagine all the uninformed non-musicians who follow Fender on social media lying in wait for a misstep to get angry about.

Cancel culture never sleeps, Todd.

[Telliot]

[Embenny]

I agree the post was weird and awkward and creepy and unnecessarily sexual, just like a good chunk of all things "guitar culture"/rock-related.

It reminds me of how all the grade 6 students in my class had a good laugh in band class because of the phrases like tonguing, fingering, overblowing, etc. It's grade 6 humour. I wouldn't expect a Yamaha saxophone ad to say, "Come finger me all night long and discover the greatest sax you've ever had."

Now let me play devil's advocate and ask an honest question - was the ad primarily misogynistic?

To me, it was racist and sexualized and all sorts of other unnecessary and undesirable things, fetishizing a nationality (and to an extent, race, since the racial diversity of Brazilians is often ignored and homogenized in American portrayals of them). Brazilian men can be as overtly objectified and sexualized in popular culture as Brazilian women. Bronzed, waxed, passionate and sexual men with a proclivity for speedos is a common Western media portrayal of Brazilian men.

I understand completely that, statistically speaking, the ad was probably written by straight men and intended to appeal to straight men, and therefore was likely intended to refer to Brazilian women specifically.

I'm also not claiming that people are viewing the statement with a gendered lens and reading something into it that wasn't there - it did employ phrases with implied traditional gender roles. Women aren't usually described as wearing men around their necks, nor are men usually referred to doing the same with other men. Same with "sitting on your knee" - that either refers to children or to the fucked up sexualized daddy/baby dynamic that is most prevalent in a cis/straight context (but is also super prevalent in gay culture and media FWIW).

Feel free to tell me I'm wrong, but it seems that the misogyny here is secondary to racism and sexualization/objectification of nationality and race, which I find more overt and offensive than the arguably secondary misogyny.

I held back commenting on this for a little while because I wasn't quite sure how I wanted to express my reaction to the reaction to this. Basically, I think this should be called out for being racist and misogynistic, in that order.

To be clear, Camilla Charlesworth's criticism very clearly explains that it's both racist and sexist, but I'm seeing a lot of people online picking up and running with the story of misogyny, and not of the racism, both in media coverage and individual comments.

Women of colour experience more than simple misogyny, and sexualization of race harms men, too. I think it's important that we acknowledge that. I mean, the fact that people could feel safe in assuming "a Brazilian" in this ad referred to a Brazilian woman's core appeal being her nationality/race (a different flavour of sexy!) shows how central racism was to their message. Their statement overtly objectified a race, with a gender context implied.

Both problematic, and both needing to be addressed. I just wish I was seeing the racism decried as or more loudly than the misogyny.

[Maggieo]

To me, it was racist and sexualized and all sorts of other unnecessary and undesirable things, fetishizing a nationality (and to an extent, race, since the racial diversity of Brazilians is often ignored and homogenized in American portrayals of them). Brazilian men can be as overtly objectified and sexualized in popular culture as Brazilian women. Bronzed, waxed, passionate and sexual men with a proclivity for speedos is a common Western media portrayal of Brazilian men.

I understand completely that, statistically speaking, the ad was probably written by straight men and intended to appeal to straight men, and therefore was likely intended to refer to Brazilian women specifically.

Man, that is so on-point. And yeah, it reeked a creepy racist vibe, that is just as bad.

[andy_tchp]

I saw that post and never thought anything about it. "Brazillian" to guitarists obviously means Brazillian rosewood and guitars hang round your neck or sit in your lap. I would guess the people who flew into a rage probably don't know about brazillian rosewood and misunderstood what they were enraged about. But I suppose on social media that's kind of how it goes. Everybody loves to get angry about something they know little about

Nah.

[Larry Mal]

I mean, it is what it is. Fender took it down. They put up a tone deaf post on social media, they were called out on it, they pulled it down. The people that are capable of learning from this, including people like me who quite possibly would have just glossed right over something like this like I have so many times before*, learned from it and the people that can't learn clearly didn't.

Social media is hard for people and it's hard for companies. Probably no one should ever use it.

[mediocreplayer]

I agree with the general sentiment in the thread, and will add that there are very few things less cringey than referring to a guitar as a "she".

It drives me nuts when I see For Sale posts (mostly on acoustic guitar forums) that go "She plays well and has a sweet voice", "I will miss her", etc. Fuck off.

[burpgun]

I mean, it is what it is. Fender took it down. They put up a tone deaf post on social media, they were called out on it, they pulled it down. The people that are capable of learning from this, including people like me who quite possibly would have just glossed right over something like this like I have so many times before*, learned from it and the people that can't learn clearly didn't.

Social media is hard for people and it's hard for companies. Probably no one should ever use it.

I work in an industry where social is a massive part of how the work gets received and am quite active on that front. I’ve learned you only make any progress by bringing something unique or edgy to the game, yet our employer pushes us to be as cautious as possible and reminds us any post could cost us our job. I’m never surprised when I see some social thing go sideways like the Fender post did. I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often.

[mackerelmint]

OK, as a latin american myself, who is also white, I'm honestly more disturbed by people imagining or assuming a fetishization of brown people and mewling about that than I am the stupid nature of the original post.

We. Come. In. Every. Color.

And more of us are white than people (especially Americans) are willing to realize. This sometimes results in white people being brownwashed for the sake of complaining about brown people being whitewashed when the people portrayed were white in the first place. Other latines aren't really guilty of this, but man, that erasure hurts.