'It seems anytime anyone mentions sexualisation the outrage committee come out in droves.'

The *misogynist* outrage committee that is.

I think the most telling thing about the piece is the distaste Miranda has with 'male gratification'. Ooh how vulgar and disgusting and depraved. How dare they!

Whenever 'male gratification', or the word 'objectifying', or 'sexualising' is used, the main game is really to portray men's sexual desire is a perversion, and that how dare men be 'gratified' without permission or at least in private by their wife. It's as if women are asexual, and the only dynamic for sale is male predators corrupting the pure females. Even women assertively and happily going along with the prevalent games of flirting, attraction and seduction all are victims, they just don't understand they're being 'used'.

Any time a man is attracted to a woman he doesn't know personally he is objectifying her. He doesn't know any of her other qualities, so if he dares to be attracted first, before getting to know her as a person (if he ever meets her), he is by definition objectifying her and sexualising her.

So getting 'gratification' from a picture or video of a woman is reducing that woman to an object, or a just pair of breasts or a piece of flesh. But it always amuses me that this critique is never applied to female sex aids like dildos and vibes, which by the same logic is reducing a man to just a penis. Or a woman enjoying the fantasy of being taken to Paris for dinner, is that reducing a man to a wallet?

So here we have in this article, that men being portrayed as being attracted to women's breasts is objectification that leads to "insidious forms of physical, structural and mental violence.” "Thousands of violent acts against women, including battery, rape and murder, are committed because the perpetrator views his victim as nothing more than an object created for his pleasure. "

Ipso facto, all men, by their attraction to women before getting to know them personally, are guilty of all this.

[Deleted for profanity.]

Antiseptic has written "can't be bothered with Melinda's puff-pieces. She's a bandwagon-rider and little more".

So your response is to play the "person" and sarcastically attack someone who writes an article you don't agree with.

Briar rose,
“The fact that not one man apparently complained about the ad also goes to show, but exactly what it shows, I'm not sure yet.”

They did complain. Complaints were made to ASB.

I don’t think the Cancer Council will have an ad in the future featuring a man tied by the hands and feet and left in a cupboard so the girls can have a night in.

Cornflower,

“ Where vanna is wrong is that he shouldn't judge all academics, female and male, by the few.”

Well---

I’m not too sure about that.

There have been many instances where obvious injustices or types of discrimination have occurred to men, and not one academic anywhere in Australia has publicly made any comment about it.

Yet, they all seem to say that education helps to reduce injustices.

I tend to think that the media, (both commercial and non-commercial) is getting worse in time, but I find it intriguing if a university academic complains about the media, when so many in the media were originally trained in universities.

Briar Rose I have not seen the ad.

Secondly it speaks volumes, when socalled acedemics and feminists, claim to be wanting things like equality, and to end sexism and domestic violence. Ignore the situation where a male is on the receiving end.

But then one of the guilt trips that is attempted to lay on us blokes, is that if we don't speak out about violence against women, then by default we must be supporting it.

So one can safely assume that if not one single women, protested against this ad, then by default they do not care about men who experience domestic violence, and may in actual fact be supportive of women who do use domestic violence against men.

When Tony Abbott said "No means NO!" didn't some get their knickers in a knot.

To me the idea of equality means men and women being supportive of each other, so to make the assertion that it up to us blokes only to make the noise, shows a significant level of sexism and gender bias on the part of a significant number of women.

Bound and gagged and tied to a lamp post - one man's experience at his bucks party. Oh, he was naked as well. His best mates did it to him.

Nevertheless, if I'd seen those Cancer Council ads, I'm pretty sure I would have sent off an email complaining about them.

My experience of feminist academics is not one that suggests to me that they are the most likely people to take up an issue like this on behalf of men. Which is why I asked Vanna why he expected them to do that.

And I don't think there is anything wrong with suggesting that men take responsibility for initiating action against ads or anything else that discriminates against them. Taking initial responsibility doesn't mean women won't be supportive.

Women had to take the responsibility for getting issues of discrimination on the table in the first place. It was very, very difficult and it isn't over yet.

I don't much like the sexualisation of breast cancer campaigns, but I'm not very taken by the author's article either.