Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

How will Hoseasons enforce its ban on ‘homophobes’?

Gillette has learned the hard way that if you annoy your customer base, your business will suffer. Ever since it released its woke men-bashing ad earlier this year, its sales have slumped. Who’d have thought it? Telling men they’re disgusting bullies and sexual harassers — as Gillette’s ad did — will not endear you to men! Blokes walked away from Gillette. They stopped buying its razors. Turns out that calling your customers scum isn’t a good idea.

The ad was a transparent and nauseating attempt to win brownie points with the Twitterati and other woke folk in the #MeToo era. Out went the square-jawed studs of Gillette’s 1980s adverts, stroking their hairless chins as the jingle said ‘The best a man can get’, and in came troubled and abusive blokes behaving very badly. The ad’s narrator drones on about toxic masculinity and sexism as men are shown bullying each other and speaking over women.

Brendan O’Neill
Written by
Brendan O’Neill

Brendan O’Neill is Spiked's chief politics writer. His new book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation, is out now.

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