Culture Jam Assignment (GRSJ 300)
June 3rd, 2020
The Original Advertisement
This billboard ad in Liverpool was taken down after the realization of its degrading and ignorant statement. By defining the word “woman” as “adult female” it advertises limitations for womanhood that are problematic for many different reasons. Firstly, we need to understand this issue by defining and distinguishing sex and gender as two completely different terms. Sex refers to the biological makeup of someone, usually distinguished as either male or female by the identification of their genitals at birth. Gender however, is different than sex, as it is a socially constructed concept that represents a person’s identity based on their preference.
Therefore, gender and sex are different concepts and not always interchangeable. In other words, someone may identify as a different gender than the sex that they were assigned at birth. The prominent issue with the billboard is that it is reiterating that if someone identifies as a woman, it automatically translates to them being female. If someone identifies as a woman, that is be enough to be their decision on their identify. Consequently, being female as a sex should not be a requirement or deciding factor to represent someone’s gender identity. By making this defining statement on the ad, it favours cisgender women and eliminates, degrades and debatably discriminates against transwomen or gender fluid people, or people that identify as a woman but may not be female or have not always been female. Thus, sex does not define gender, because gender is a choice. Advertising this kind of statement discriminates against people who have decided to be a woman even though their biological nature or those around them have said otherwise. Furthermore, as the ad favours cisgender women, it is not applying intersectionality while allowing sexist, patriarchal ideals to remain present instead of promoting change.
The Advertisement with subversions, 2020
The jamming of this advertisement is meant to highlight the misconceived and limiting ideologies of sex and gender, and the social expectations of genders, specifically targeting women. The ad defines the word woman as someone who is an adult female. I have made changes and added texts and slogans on the ad to accentuate the ridiculous statement, which unfortunately has been a misconception for many decades. By adding the hashtags and slogans, viewers automatically begin to understand the absurdness of the billboard’s message, firstly calling attention to the idea that gender identity can be completely different than sex at birth. To illustrate this, the largest piece of text on the jamming of the ad is #sex=gender. This is a simple yet effective statement that demonstrates the misconception that ties these two terms together. Similarly, the hashtag #woman=female represents the similar concept, while pointing out that women in particular are thought to be strictly females, which is not true.
Women have faced many kinds of oppression, especially women of colour, and also particularly queer women, non-cisgender women or non-binary people who may have identified as women at one time or another. This is where I added the slogan “the restrictions of womanhood” to call attention to the social expectations that women constantly face, repeatedly centered around cisgender, heterosexual women. Whether it be as small as beauty standards that women face, racial preferences, or issues as large as gender discriminations that transwomen experience, there are countless expectations and restrictions that society has placed on the label of a woman. I have chosen intentionally to use pink text for my alterations in the subverted ad, to highlight these restricting stereotypes around femininity.
The aim for these subversions is to help society recognize the misconception of sex and gender as the same concept, while emphasizing the social constructs that women are expected to follow and fit into. Furthermore, while drawing attention to the fact that any person of any biological sex can choose their own gender and degree of womanhood, this will hopefully educate viewers about specifically accepting transwomen as women, and avoid centralising ideologies of womanhood in society around cisgender women.
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/09/26/liverpool-anti-trans-billboard-removed/