So a new advertising campaign has been released for testicular cancer awareness clearly aimed at cis female-attracted men. It features Rhian Sugden, a cis female model, posing sexily for the camera, running her hands over her body, then pulling a scrotum out of her underwear and examining it.
Watch the YouTube video here, because embedding it isn’t working for me for some reason.
Transcript: Rhian, shot in black and white from mid-thigh up, poses for the camera. She is blonde and fits mainstream standards of very attractive. She is wearing a black bra, black underwear and black suspenders. Music plays. There are a series of fades into shots of her posing and various close ups of bits of her body.
She says: “Now… do you want to see me touch myself? You’re gonna like this.”
The camera pans down her body, flashes back to her face, then back to her crotch. She reaches into her underwear and pulls out a scrotum, then caresses it.
She says “Actually, this might be easier.” and removes the scrotum, lifting it into the air on her left side.
She says “OK, fellas, get your finger and your thumb, check around your balls. Not too hard, mind. Your balls should feel smooth, without any lumps. If you come across a lump or a swelling, you need to get yourself to the doctor’s as soon as possible. The sooner it’s sorted, the better.
The MCAC logo shows on screen, then camera cuts back to Rhian. She says “Now let me see you touch yours.”
I’m uncomfortable with the ad. I feel that, while done sexily, the “scrotum reveal” is played for humour, the “you weren’t expecting that!” moment. Putting aside the fact that it would have been censored, I doubt the ad would have been as well received as it has been if it had featured a trans woman demonstrating how to examine her scrotum. The punchline is basically that attractive women are not expected to have scrotums… but some of them do. I feel the ad uses imagery associated with trans female bodies for shock value from an audience that marginalise them.
But then, I’m not a trans woman. What do you all think of the ad?
Incidentally, there’s another version of the “using attractive member of one gender to raise awareness of cancer in another” advertisement floating around, this time being male models used to demonstrate breast cancer checking techniques to male-attracted female viewers, although I’m guessing they didn’t have a queer audience in mind.
You wrote: “But then, I’m not a trans woman. What do you all think of the ad?”
You don’t have to be a trans woman to write coherently about this subject. I am a trans woman, though, and I agree with your assessment. The ad reinforces the idea that a woman with a scrotum is shocking. Compared to most of the negative depictions of trans women in mainstream media, though, this actually seems relatively benign.
Not to mention that both trans and cis men get breast cancer too, although it’s rare in cis men. Gendering cancers is disturbing.
As a comparison, there’s a prostate cancer PSA for trans women floating around: http://www.birdofparadox.net/blog/?p=8156 I don’t have a transcript for that, sorry.
That’s pretty cool! Didn’t Buck Angel do one for pap smears, too?
Apparently, yes! He called it a Public Cervix Announcement, which is brilliant. I love that guy.
It’s called “Buck Angel’s Trans Women Prostate PSA” and it kind of pisses me off that a (trans) man has to be there to make space for a (trans) woman. Like, why couldn’t he have just helped out without being in the actual video and naming it after himself? Why isn’t it called “Drew Devaux’s Trans Women Prostate PSA”?
Good call!
I just leapt to the conclusion it was because of their relative profiles, because I’ve heard of Buck Angel and I haven’t heard of Drew Devaux. But then, that’s probably because I’m not a porn consumer. Is Drew Devaux quite high profile?
To be fair, my understanding is that prior to waves of feminist activism around breast cancer, at least some of the research on breast cancer was actually based on work done only on cis men, and then generalized to (cis) women. Getting the medical community to acknowledge that hey, the needs and experiences of (cis) women facing the disease just might be different was a huge deal (of course, during this time, it was very difficult to get funding for breast cancer at all: in 1990 a report found that the NIH used only 13% of its research funds for research on (cis) women at all). That’s changed, obviously, which is all to the good, and needs to change more. Getting the medical community to acknowledge that the medical needs of cis men do not actually stand in for the medical needs of all human beings everywhere remains a major battle.
I think sexifying cancer is insulting. And it’s done much more to breast cancer in women than anything else. Save the boobies- who cares about women’s lives! Hot chicks amirite! The fact that this hottie is positioned as possibly trans for laughs doesn’t improve matters. What would be really fair would be to have hot skimpily dressed cis men posing for women’s pleasure, but we’ll never have that. Women are the sex class, and don’t you forget it. Ugh.
Yes! Last year I participated in a breast cancer walk, and saw sp many shirts that blew my mind, including one guy wearing a shirt that said something like “Do a self breast exam, or I’ll do it for you.”
I’m fine with Buck Angel taking the initiative on this one. He’s got the name recognition in the community and why shouldn’t he use it? I’m not sure how useful it is to make a division between transmen and transwomen in general as far as community advocacy. In my personal experience I have gotten so much support from transmen, transmasculine people, and FAAB genderqueer folk. I love my trans* brothers (as well as all my trans* siblings) and would never hesitate to come to their aid or advocate for them, and I trust the feeling is mutual.
I feel that making this a choice between transmen and transwomen not only just erases the variety and overlap of trans* experiences, but buys into cissexist culture which relies on a twisted idea of an immutable gender binary. I’d agree that there would be a problem if it was a privileged community advocating on the part of (speaking for) a marginalized community. However, the oppression and erasure all trans* people experience is at hand.
I do agree/think that there is a definite power imbalance as far as to how much autonomy over their image transmen porn starts have compared to transwomen. There are major issues with the mainstream commodification of trans women’s bodies for the pleasure of a cismale audience which need to be addressed. I think that Buck’s freedom to advocate like this, and provide a space for transwomen, is related to his autonomy within the industry. This is not to say there are not transwomen in the queer porn scene that have autonomy over their own image (Tobi Hill-Meyer and Maya Mayhem are examples), but it’s hardly equal. This may be changing but I think for it to do so all trans* people have to help each other out, especially those in positions to do so like Buck.
Also, on the note that the joke in OP’s ad is founded on the idea that conventionally attractive women can’t be trans*: My first thought was to have the same ad with Lea T. Although transwomen get enough body issues based on passing as it is. Perhaps the whole idea of using sex to raise awareness about bodies is, well…, fucked to begin with.
I can’t imagine that there are too many trans women who would want to do an ad like that, calling attention to the fact that they still possess so-called “male” anatomy, and thereby potentially reinforcing the conviction so much of the world already has that they’re “really” men. And to have it out there on the Internet forever and ever. Plus the fact that if a trans woman has genital dysphoria, as many obviously do, the last thing she would likely want is to call her own attention (never mind anyone else’s) to her genitals. I certainly wouldn’t have, back before I had GRS, even after I’d had an orchiectomy some years earlier. Just stepping out of the shower and seeing myself in a mirror was an unpleasant reminder that not everything was the way it should be. (I was never one for self-examination, even though I probably should have been, because I was at an exponentially higher than usual risk of testicular cancer given the fact that I was born with cryptorchidism that — God knows why — wasn’t surgically repaired until I was almost 11, and one of them remained its original size and was never functional at all. Getting rid of it was an immense relief wholly apart from my gender issues; I tried to use it as an excuse to get the orchiectomy covered by insurance, but no dice.)
I should also point out — because it’s one of those things that tends never to occur to cis people — that any trans woman who’s been using estrogen and anti-androgens for any length of time (certainly a necessity to look anything like I imagine the model in the video must look, not that I plan to watch it) is not going to have anything much resembling the typical scrotum (by the way, I hate that word and find it unspeakably ugly, but maybe that’s just me!) of a cis man. Along with its contents, it tends to shrink — a lot — and draw closer to the body the longer one has been on hormones, so the utility for cis men of such an ad with an actual trans woman would probably be minimal.
As for having one’s prostate checked, I guess it’s something trans women should be aware of, since the prostate remains even after GRS (too much risk of urinary incontinence and other inadvertent results from trying to remove it). But I’ve never actually heard of a long term post-hormones/anti-androgens trans woman ending up with prostate cancer; it shrinks to about the size of a pea. So at least for me, it isn’t a particular concern; especially at my age, breast self-examination and regular mammograms are far more important.
Others have made excellent points. Both videos also made me uncomfortable, and in a way that made me squirm. I’m not sure the intent works, because I tried to immediately block out the images. This was to the detriment of whatever grander issue was being made regarding self-screening for a disease.
I disagree. Certain diseases and cancers are simply more likely to take place in people with certain hormonal/genetic configurations, and this breaks down in sexes, genders, races, and ethnicities. Sickle cell anemia overwhelming affects people of black African descent, this isn’t racialization diseases, it’s trying to help diagnose high-risk populations.
I don’t like some of the leering and nastiness that’s become especially associated with breast cancer, but I REALLY don’t like the fact no one bothered to do a study on heart attacks in women and therefore assumed women were at less of a risk, and therefore information was not spread about how women DO have heart attacks (which is, actually different from men’s heart attacks).
I don’t disagree that certain disorders are more likely to occur among certain subsections of a population and that this is important to consider. What I object to is when a disorder becomes constructed in a way that limits our ability to detect it in people who don’t happen to fall into that category or alienates people who do but object to the way they’ve been essentialized. I detest the “pinkification” of breast cancer and I find a lot of supposed breast cancer awareness campaigns to be demeaning (not to mention exploitative). Why do we have to gender cancer the same way that we gender children’s toys?
I feel like this is my point-when diseases are gendered or otherwise associated with a particular group to the exclusion of other groups, then a whole portion of potential sufferers get overlooked. I’ve heard so many incidents of doctors telling people things like, “You can’t have arthritis, you’re too young!”, “You can’t have a nutrition disorder, you’re too fat!”, etc. In fact, I think by essentializing some disorders as exclusively “women’s problems”, it probably contributes to the idea of everything else being “men’s problems”.
Have you read the essay “Welcome to Cancerland,” by Barbara Ehrenreich? It’s wonderful, and she later expanded and reworked it into the first chapter of her great book, Bright-Sided. She wrote it about her experiences after being diagnosed with breast cancer, and how much she hated not only the pinkification and infantilization that went along with the experience, but also the intense pressure on her to maintain a positive attitude, and the stigma associated with expressing any anger or frustration or fear. I believe that at one point she writes something like “If I have to go into that long last good night, I will not be going with a pink teddy bear under my arm.”
anna:
The second ad, and the app that goes with it, do attempt to achieve that, to an extent.
as a woman with testes, fuck you.
you have no idea how many myths are floating about in the community that going on hormones makes us immune to some cancer, when the (more likely) truth is that nobody fucken knows because nobody gives enough of a fuck about us to study our health.
now if you want to talk about a high-risk population for this, you are talking about people with testes, NOT men, women, genderqueers, or anybody else. There is absolutely NO need to gender.
More likely =/= immune.
karak said the former, not the latter.
I agree that the problem comes when clinicians and patients conflate the two. I’m not sure how common that is because I don’t deal with patients.
Gotta agree with carvinelcy about lack of understanding of trans health issues. My MTF transitioning uncle”?” (he hadn’t asked to be referred to as a feminine, so I guess he was still my uncle) had been taking hormones that caused a blood clot that led to a fatal stroke. I was 13 when this happened and only found many years later that the clot was a result of his hormonal treatments. Always wondered why contact kind of dwindled a couple years before he died.
Seems there’s an easy dissertation in Medical Anthropology or Public Health to be found in studying the health problems of trans people. I say “easy” only because a dissertation has to make an original contribution, and that’s easier to do in an area where so little has been studied.
Several years ago I had a groin problem scare, weird pains and sensations. Went to a Mexican cash doctor as I had no insurance and got those nuts yanked on and stretched every which way after the having a heat lamp shone on them to loosen ‘em up. No conclusive diagnosis, but he did recommend I go to the ultrasound training school. I thought about it, but the pain went away.
Got the pain again, but I had a part-time job working for almost nothing at a large state university but I could go to the campus clinic. Pain and sensations came back. I went to the clinic. Dr suspected what was up almost immediately. Pinched groin nerve. I just needed to get a new desk chair.
But back to the original topic. This video doesn’t really get through to me. Good persuasion requires three steps: 1. Fear, the consequences of the threat must be made real. 2. A suggested course of action to reduce the threat. And most importantly 3. A self-esteem boosting message that one is worthy of escaping the threat and that one is capable of following the course of action suggested in point 2. None of these things are present in this video, though I suppose there’s always a fear factor with testicular cancer.
This video is better. It’s weak on point 1 and does little about point three, but it gets point two across in a general way.:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGaCzIU8Utk
I agree with earlier comments that it’s kind of weird that breast cancer issue has become “sexified”. You’d think fear of dying would be more persuasive than fear of losing a breast. Sure, it would be totally cool if breast cancers could be detected early and there were all kinds of high tech treatments to keep a woman from ever having to lose a breast, and to an extent there has been progress toward this. But seriously, what’s more important? A life or a breast?
@bacopa: Obviously a breast? And I am not even being sarcastic. Just reiterating what Anna said about women being the sex class. We are not human; we’re merely a collection of constantly judged body parts.
Are you arguing that trans men and trans women experience all the same privileges and oppressions, and that there are no ways in which trans men’s experiences are privileged over trans women’s experiences?
Foglet:I’m not sure how useful it is to make a division between transmen and transwomen in general as far as community advocacy. In my personal experience I have gotten so much support from transmen, transmasculine people, and FAAB genderqueer folk. I love my trans* brothers…
oh cool you are, cool
“he hadn’t asked to be referred to as a feminine, so I guess he was still my uncle”
“Always wondered why contact kind of dwindled a couple years before he died.”
Bacopa, I guess it didn’t occur to you that the former had something to do with the latter. Out of respect for your deceased relative, it seems to me that the least you could do is accept that a transitioning trans woman on hormones really shouldn’t have to ask in order to be referred to with the appropriate pronouns. Do you even know what name she used?
And please don’t act as if nobody knows anything about trans health issues. No, there haven’t been long term longitudinal studies over decades — it isn’t as if there are thousands of trans people making themselves readily available for studies like that — but the basic risks are well-known. Including blood clots from estrogen use, a risk that increases the older you are. The greater risk from oral administration of hormones is why many people use patches, gels, injections, etc. Do you know if your relative was taking hormones under a doctor’s care or on a “do it yourself” basis?
As for Carvynelci’s comments, I’m not sure the “fuck you” was necessary. Not only does more or less likely not equal immunity or lack thereof, but I don’t think Karak was even talking about what you’re talking about. Karak didn’t seem to be saying that cis men are at a greater risk of testicular cancer than trans women who still have testes — I don’t think they are; I’ve never heard (through rumor or otherwise) that estrogen/anti-androgen usage lessens the risk of testicular cancer (prostate cancer is different) — but was simply saying that testicular cancer is more likely to occur in men than in women. An obvious statement given that men are more likely than women to have testes, but nonetheless true. In fact, it’s even more true than the equivalent statement would be for breast cancer, since most men (not just trans guys who haven’t had top surgery) do, technically speaking, have “breasts.” Whereas I can’t think of too many cis women who have testes.
Donna
PS: I hope that those of you correctly referring to women as the sex class, and a collection of body parts, have given at least some thought to the fact that a particular subset of women — namely, trans women — are almost never thought of as anything other than a “sex class” and a collection of objectified and fetishized body parts, one in particular. Unless they’ve had GRS, in which case they are, for the most part, no longer of interest to the audience of so-called “admirers.” Which is a way larger audience than most cis people realize. Which is fine with me; I was always highly embarrassed by receiving that kind of attention, especially since I’ve never been particularly attracted to men in the first place. (One example: some years ago, one of the few times I ever went, with a group of friends, to a club for trans women and those who admire them — the late lamented Ina’s place at the Silver Swan down in the East 20′s — a guy walks up to me and greets me as follows: “Hi, I think you’re really beautiful. Can I suck your cock?” Me: “Um, no thank you. I have a partner [which I then did], and anyway I don’t like guys.” Etc., etc.; it took me forever to get him to give up; I think I was way too polite. Anyway, not an atypical encounter. As I said, “sex class” personified.)
^
The other thing I just remembered saying to that guy in an effort to make him go away: “You’d be disappointed anyway; it doesn’t work anymore like you’ve seen in porn.” There are certain common fantasies about trans women that don’t necessarily correspond to reality.
Also: when I said above “Which is fine with me,” I was referring to admirers’ loss of interest in post-GRS trans women. I never liked the idea of being of interest to people for one particular body part, especially one that I wasn’t fond of in the first place, rather than for the same reasons they might be interested in any other woman.
I think you actually completely missed the point of the ad. It’s not aimed at men attracted to cis-women. It is aimed at men who are attracted to women and it uses a well known page 3(topless) model in the UK. It’s a UK ad. It is meant to attract the attention of male viewers, then jar them into awareness when they see a scrotum where they weren’t expecting it. This makes a person pay attention to what they’re seeing, rather than passively viewing. You might not agree with the stereotypes they are in fact playing to, but you managed to completely miss the ones they were using and found some others.
Alie, I agree with your assessment of the intention behind the advertisement. However, I think you’re skimming over some nuance in our discussion of it. The ad builds on a transphobic trope *despite* the fact that it didn’t *intend* to do so. The idea that viewers should be shocked to see a scrotum on a woman is itself problematic.
It was playing to a majority, it’s advertising, while yes some may be offended or offset about it, it is still playing to a majority mind set in order to raise awareness of cancer. This has nothing to do with LGBT, which I fully support the LGBT movement with everything that I can, but when it comes to making sure people are being healthy the average man and woman doesn’t do so as LGBT people tend to be more aware of their bodies than the average person, ESPECIALLY a Trans gender as they have or wish to have a different gender, so their bodies are more prudent in their daily thoughts than the every day Joe and Jane.
If you would like to have LGBT commercials like this, write the cancer association voicing a rational concern and donate a little bit to help the funding for it. Mostly though, do not criticize people who are trying to raise cancer awareness, it’s a problem across every board and no scorn should be shown to it.
Well, DonnaL, I am still not clear on how women are NOT judged by our body parts only, after reading your comment.
That’s because she wasn’t arguing that, tinfoil hattie. She noted that commenters referring to women as the sex class, judged as a bundle of body parts, were doing so correctly. If I understood her comment correctly, she was bringing to our attention the fact that this truth is even more pointed and less disguised among the many men who seek out transwomen who have not (yet if at all) had GRS, because what they’re actually seeking and wanting is a cock attached to a pair of boobs, without understanding that there’s a person with a brain and feelings and a life of her own beyond being a walking sex fantasy.
Tinfoil, EG is right. I never said what you inexplicably seem to think I said. Note the word “correctly.” I don’t think I could possibly have been clearer.
^
Sorry, I somehow forgot to add the “Hattie.” No disrespect intended by addressing you as “Tinfoil”!
Looks like I missed the conversation! I just wanted to acknowledge this post & echo agreement with DonnaL, EG, & Jadey’s very well-stated points.
Hey “That one guy with the opinion,” go fucking hang yourself.