Attention Townspeople: One Of Our Favorite Memes Is Sexist

Last week, we talked a bit about my generation’s obsession with memes. It was in a post about #SaltBae. You can catch up on all of that here, but here’s a quick reminder.

We live in a world of memes. We live in a culture of instant gratification and instant laughs, and memes do the trick. I know this is going to sound so “millennial,” but some memes can actually drive political points home in a quick and easy way. For example:

You get the idea. Oh. By the way. That last meme is sexist. It’s called the “distracted boyfriend” meme, which has been used multiple ways:

It’s not just feminists calling this sexist. Nope. A Swedish advertising body actually ruled this sexist, because it suggests that women are interchangeable sex objects.

In April, the Swedish internet services provider Bahnhof used the image in a recruitment advert, in which the girlfriend is captioned ‘your current workplace’ and the attractive passerby ‘Bahnhof’. The distracted boyfriend is labelled ‘you’.

The ombudsman said the Stockholm-based company’s advertising was gender-discriminatory, owing to its stereotypical presentation of women as ‘interchangeable’ and ‘sex objects’, The Local reported.

In a unanimous decision, the ombudsman wrote that the post ‘portrays women as interchangeable objects, and that only their appearance is interesting.’

It also noted that image had no relevance to the services offered by Bahnhof.

Imagine how much it must suck to live such a humorless existence.

‘According to the committee, the objectification is reinforced by the fact that women are designated as workplace representatives while the man, as the recipient of the advertisement, is being produced as an individual,’ the judgment said.

‘It gives the impression that men might change female partners in the same way they change jobs. One notifier pointed out that Bahnhof may put off female applicants with the advertisement,’ it continued.

This is what feminism is doing to the world. We can’t even use funny memes anymore without perpetually offended weirdos losing their minds.

h/t Daily Mail