Ads Earn Praise, Scorn From Men’s Rights Inc.

SACRAMENTO —  Most Sadistic . . . Most Insulting . . . Worst Sexual Cruelty . . . Most Despicable . . . Worst Dehumanization --scanning this list of awards issued by a Sacramento anti-sexist organization, you’d think the porn police were at it again, ferreting out images that degrade women.

The offenders in this case, however, are not skin flicks and magazines, but ads put out by mainstream companies such as Life Savers Candy and Magnavox. And the victims of the degradation are not women but men--men being led on, then cruelly rejected by women; and men being punched and battered to sell products.

‘We Prefer Not to Be Insulted’

“Advertisers are trying to appeal to female consumers by saying, ‘We’re on your side. We think men are jerks, too,’ ” said Fredric Hayward, a Sacramento men’s rights activist.

“We’re just trying to say (to the advertisers): There are more male consumers than you think and we’d prefer not to be insulted.”

Hayward, 40, dreamed up the Best and Worst of Advertising Awards “to protest inaccurate and negative stereotyping of men and commend positive portrayals.”

Most of the companies cited for anti-male bias said they had never heard of Men’s Rights Inc. And those who had, for the most part, are not about to change their ways just because they’ve been called names by Hayward and his band of 1,000 activists across the nation.

So it’s an uphill struggle for Hayward. Some of the companies, nevertheless, have seen the light. Scott Paper Co., for instance, agreed with the activists that there was no reason to offend male consumers by excluding fathers in the wording of ads such as, “Mothers say Baby Fresh cleans baby better.”

Company spokesman Mike Kilpatrick said the company changed the ad to read “parents” instead of “mothers,” thus acknowledging that fathers might wield Baby Fresh pre-moistened towelettes, too.

The victories, overall, have not been earthshaking, but small successes are all one comes to expect in the world of men’s rights. Hayward is used to being misunderstood by talk-show hosts, attacked by women (“If you’re for men’s rights, you must be part of the backlash against feminism”) and ignored by men, the very group he has dedicated himself to helping.

Half of his mail is from women. They usually write on behalf of a husband or boyfriend, and usually they have a custody beef.

Hayward is sympathetic to the custody issue (“We can’t keep telling men, ‘This is more her child than yours’ and expect men to develop some sort of responsibility for children,”) but he wants to accomplish more with his work than simply assuring men have equal access to the children after a divorce.

Sexism in Schools

Hayward’s awakening to sexism goes back to his school days when he first noticed that girls were coddled and protected by teachers, while the same teachers seemed to think boys were sacrificial beasts meant to suffer bloody noses and torn shirts in playground brawls.

From his earliest years Hayward knew, “I hated the male sex role. It just always seemed so violent. History seemed to be basically the story of men dying for one thing or another, and entertainment was watching men kill each other.”

All those injustices appeared unchangeable, so Hayward put his discontent aside for a while. He attended Boston’s Brandeis University, then the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he earned a master’s degree in international relations.

When feminism came along, Hayward started to realize that the wrongs he rebelled against as a child could be righted. He founded Men’s Rights Inc. 10 years ago in Boston, moving operations to Sacramento three years ago.

“The tone of the women’s movement has been that men and women are at odds, so men’s rights must be opposed to women’s rights,” he said. “I don’t look at men and women as competitors, but as interdependent. No one should have to carry out traditional sex roles if they don’t want to. We all deserve equal access to all the roles that people find rewarding.”

Judges for the 1986 Best and Worst of Advertising Awards included representatives from three men’s rights groups, as well as members of the broadcast and print media. The judges were particularly attuned to ads that showed men taking active part in family life. When it’s a product that pertains to children, mothers are almost always the ones targeted in advertising, Hayward said.

“There is a conflict in our society between our need for healthier family relationships (closer father-child contact) and our contempt for men, particularly our fear of male contact with children,” Hayward wrote in a news release.

Back in 1984 when his group began monitoring advertisements, Hayward said it would have had a tough time coming up with a single ad showing a man in a nurturing role within a family. The situation has improved somewhat.

A Kodak ad, winner of a Best Award for ‘86, shows a muscular male protectively cradling a baby. These sorts of ads make Hayward almost weak with good will toward the featured company.

He also raves about a CNA insurance series showing men as attentive fathers, and a Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Shampoo ad in which a father shows remorse for bringing home the wrong kind of shampoo, which stings the baby’s eyes.

It was not a concern for men’s rights that inspired that ad, however. Johnson & Johnson spokesman Ed Watson said that the ad was directed at adults who use baby shampoo. Men as well as women may have used the product as children, the company reasoned, and could be induced to buy it again.

Casualty Report

The Worst in News Award went to NBC-TV. On at least two occasions when Men’s Rights Inc. watchdogs were monitoring their televisions, NBC Nightly News reporters tacked onto a casualty report the phrase “including women and children.”

The emphasis on women and children as victims suggested to Hayward that the lives of the men who had died were somehow less valued.

Other companies also disregarded the suffering of males, according to the judges. Winner of the Worst Physical Cruelty Award was Magnavox for an ad that showed a man being punched in the face to illustrate the concept of impact. “In what context could you show a woman being punched in the jaw in an ad?” Hayward asked.

Michael Keel, spokesman for Magnavox’ parent company, North American Philips, said that the slap on the wrist is misplaced. His company didn’t set up a shot of a man being punched, he said, it simply used a still from a boxing match. “If there’s a complaint, it should be against the boxing industry,” he said.

There was a tie for Worst Charity, with two organizations sharing the honors for emphasizing pictures of girls in their adopt-a-foreign-child campaigns. Hayward’s comment: “Society generally focuses its sympathy on females.”

Companies that won in the sadism, sexual cruelty and related categories are guilty in Hayward’s mind of encouraging women to “mislead, mistreat and confuse” the men they date.

Life Savers Candy, made by Nabisco Brands Inc., won Worst Campaign for ads “portraying the insulting and rejecting of men as something cute.”

When asked for a response to the charges, Nabisco spokeswoman Caroline Fee said that the company does make every effort not to offend consumers. The fact that the ad Hayward objects to made it through their censors suggests to her “it was apparently not a universal feeling that this was a bad ad. You can’t please everybody, anyway.”