Vibrators Are the New Guns. Or Something
Yesterday the activist group Evolve, which aims to be a bipartisan voice in the gun debate, released a 30-second spot on YouTube reminding gun-owners to lock up their weapons. The video, which has over 1.3 million views on its second day, culminates in a bit of sword play between two little boys who have gotten their hands on mom’s vibrators. The ad ends with the reminder: “If they find it, they’ll play with it, so always lock up your guns.”
The public service announcement was made by the advertising agency McCann Erickson, and was released on the heels of news that an estimated one hundred minors die from gun-related causes in the United States every year, with some 73 percent of these deaths being accidental — occurring while a child under 14 plays with a gun.
“Parents need to take ownership of safety in the house,” Evolve co-founder Rebecca Bond said in a statement. “We’re using humor to cut through political correctness and deliver a simple message. Americans can have a serious conversation about firearm safety that doesn’t devolve into a political abyss.”
From the sexual education aspect, this video is more than simply amusing. It’s interesting. For starters, we live in a sex-negative culture that is highly prone to hysteria about the exposure of people under 18 to sexual information — including information and tools that would empower them to make good decisions about their lives and improve their sense of well-being. Despite the number of sexual educators that encourage parents to educate their kids about pleasure (including buying their daughters sex toys), we’ve yet to see a pleasure-empowered teen in media that isn’t the butt of some adult comedy’s joke. Shame continues to feature prominently when it comes to masturbation, across genders (though gender constructs impact these differently).
Additionally, it’s troubling that something as wonderful as pleasure is so often lumped together with violence, as we see in this video where sex toys have effectively become a vehicle for a conversation about gun safety. Sex and violence are thrown into the same basket of evil all the time — and often, sex falls just a little bit further on the evil spectrum than violence does. A video game can get a “teen” rating even if it features violence, but sexual content takes that rating up to “mature.” In films, a movie can be PG-13 despite violence, but sex takes it up to an R rating, possibly even NC-17.
Enjoy your chuckle. It is a funny video. But question this society that puts sex and pleasure on the same level as violence and death. There is something deeply flawed in that.
