By Chloe Angyal • @chloeangyal • 12 years ago

Because your intelligence hasn’t been insulted enough already in this campaign

I am obviously voting for Paul Ryan’s ticket, because the guy is totally dreamy. Sure, his fiscal policies are mathematically nonsensical at best and socially unjust at worst, and he thinks I should be left die in the ER if I need a life saving abortion but the doctors don’t believe in the procedure. But have you seen his biceps? Guy is smokin’!

And the folks at the Republican group the Young Guns know that that’s how all the other lady voters make their decisions. They’re running this radio ad in Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional district.

Transcript below the jump.
Snark aside, this is insulting not only because it assumes that women actually think and talk like this, that they choose a political candidate the same way they choose their coffee, and that the most salient fact about their candidate for them is his appearance. It’s insulting because it assumes that ANYONE of ANY GENDER votes this way. This ad, with the genders reversed, would be just as sexist, and just as degrading to our political discourse.

EMMA: Hey, Olivia. What’s it gonna be?
OLIVIA: Hi Emma. Hmmm. Latte, cappuccino? I can’t make up my mind.
EMMA: That’s how I felt about this election… until I took a good look at the candidates.
OLIVIA: And?
EMMA: I’m for Sean Duffy. He’s pretty cool, actually. He’s part of this new generation of leaders, the kind we need in Washington. He’s a good husband and father and he fights for small businesses, like mine. So I can keep the doors open and even hire more people.
OLIVIA: He’s the cute one, right?

New York, NY

Chloe Angyal is a journalist and scholar of popular culture from Sydney, Australia. She joined the Feministing team in 2009. Her writing about politics and popular culture has been published in The Atlantic, The Guardian, New York magazine, Reuters, The LA Times and many other outlets in the US, Australia, UK, and France. She makes regular appearances on radio and television in the US and Australia. She has an AB in Sociology from Princeton University and a PhD in Arts and Media from the University of New South Wales. Her academic work focuses on Hollywood romantic comedies; her doctoral thesis was about how the genre depicts gender, sex, and power, and grew out of a series she wrote for Feministing, the Feministing Rom Com Review. Chloe is a Senior Facilitator at The OpEd Project and a Senior Advisor to The Harry Potter Alliance. You can read more of her writing at chloesangyal.com

Chloe Angyal is a journalist and scholar of popular culture from Sydney, Australia.

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