Masculinity In Public Service Announcements

Advertisements can both reflect and challenge social norms and ideologies depending on the ad. Public service announcements especially tend to highlight issues in a society by challenging the norms and spreading awareness to a certain issue. However, in the public service announcement created by No More, an umbrella organization working to combat domestic violence and sexual assault, the dominant ideologies regarding masculinity, and femininity are perpetuated but also challenged. Through placing a recording of a 911 call over images of a damaged and unkempt house, the ad promotes the idea that women are passive, weak, and vulnerable, while men can be logical, public, and powerful. In contrast, it also promotes the negative power of men that

Although it is never explicitly acknowledged, it is implied by both the visuals and the voice recording that the perpetrator is male. Contrasting with the active and logical 911 male operator, the perpetrator is aggressive, dominant, and dangerous. Although these are not feminine qualities, they do not show the male in a favorable light. With this view of masculinity as “dependent upon violence to maintain power, domination or control, is to treat both the domination and the use of violence to maintain it,” (Dominelli, 2016 p.92), it indicates that this view is the norm and shows men in a damaging light. Overall, the portrayal of the abusive male partner challenges the ideology of gender because it shows male masculinity as negative, which challenges the patriarchal view as men being

In fact, feminists often analyze domestic abuse from both a male and female abuse perspective and from a LGBTQ+ perspective, so it is fair to believe the abuser might be female. On the contrary, whether the abuser is male or female, they stay are exhibiting overly masculine qualities that are damaging to his/her loved ones. In fact, “a new ideology of violence took hold as something that men did to women, violence between lesbians became a private issue. […] Of course, this dominant cultural view does not see lesbian relationships as Utopian, but rather sees “the fight” as trivial” (Ristock, 2002 p. 19-20). By this quote, it is clear that in mainstream culture, domestic abuse in LGBTQ+ narratives especially lesbians are not prominent because violence is seen as a manly or masculine trait. Therefore, by creating a negative view of masculinity, it does not matter whether the abuser is male or female but rather that the abuser is portrayed as masculine in a negative