Two Crazy, Totally Unrelated Things

Ok, so we're getting on towards Christmas and of course the ads start rolling in in order to convince you that the power bill can wait and that you really need those shoes.  Great.  But I did just see a first in an ad...deaf love in a diamond commercial?!?  A white heterosexual couple is sitting by the Christmas tree exchanging gifts and signing to each other while subtitles tell you what they're saying at the bottom of the screen.  This blew my mind..I just wouldn't have thought of it.  So I was very happy to see a very marginalized group get some air time. I think it was a Jared commercial or one of those mainstream diamond retailers if anyone wants to try and find it.

Also, I was just amazingly disgusted to read the motto "we tame our women with the banana," tossed out flippantly and with a tongue to the cheek.  This little gem was spoken in reference to one cultures practice of gang raping any woman who goes against her gender role.  While the man who said this was part of a tiny subculture in New Guinea, it is too easy to dismiss those cultures as backward and determine that to be the root of this evil approach to life.  Look at what this idea really says.  This is a view that gender role is law and that any breach of that law is punishable and the punishment is always gang rape in order to return to the status quo.  You think we don't have that here?  The sad thing is that I have to say that we do this in the United States as well.  While it seems that the culture in New Guinea doesn't have the same kind of conflict between the "whore/virgin" aspect to their culture, it seems as though many men unconsciously rape because they are trying to enforce the "laws" of manhood and gender role that we are conditioned to abide by.  I absolutely hate that someone could say something like that and have a cavalier attitude about it.  But this asshole's comment actually helped further my thinking for my paper so I guess I can be happy about that.  Any thoughts peeps?