It’s not sexist neither against men or against women. There are tons of cases of both men and woman having extra marital affairs or cheating. Depicting a situation which is realistic to occur does not have to imply that all woman or all men are anything. If I take a picture of my SO making a sandwich I’m not somehow trying to make implicit assertions about the maternal patriarchy. If that was the case every single picture of overweight men or overweight woman would be “sexist” because they somehow imply everyone of that gender is overweight.
People get upset about relatively unimportant things. I'm pretty sure sexism exists and is bad, but this is just... not it. It's a dumb meme, that's all.
Watchdog groups should only exist for a short period of time and for a specific purpose. If it is open ended, it will inevitable arrive at an extreme.<p>In a sexist society, if I was paying you to find sexism against women, you'd be able to find obvious examples of it. But as society changes and societal sexism against women disappears, what are you left to do? You still have to find examples of sexism to justify your job. Imagine in your quarterly report, you tell your boss there is no more sexism. Well then, your boss might think, well why is your position need any more? But you like your job and the easy paycheck. So you are now incentivized to see sexism where none exists.
The meme may or may not be sexist on it's own, there are good arguments on both side.<p>When used as part of a job ad? Very different consideration.
I'm pleased to see that what the people are really concerned about, as defined by this page's popular articles section, is: Swedish road covered in herring after elk accident
Why am I not surprised that they somehow managed to turn it around to be sexist towards women? I'm honestly surprised that it was even considered to also be sexist towards men. Either way, this seems like an overreaction. I don't know anybody who I believe would be offended by that meme, so I don't see a need to make a big deal out of that.<p>EDIT: I wrote the above after reading just the first paragraph. After reading just two more, I have to correct myself: I am disgusted at what the article paints as the most common reaction, that the meme is mostly sexist towards women.<p>B<i></i><i></i><i></i>t! There's so many ways in which that's just a grotesque misrepresentation, most importantly that the man is clearly the "bad guy" in the situation.<p>EDIT 2:<p>The article quotes the company in question:<p>"Everyone who follows the internet and meme culture knows how the meme is used and interpreted. [Whether someone is a] man, woman or neutral gender is often irrelevant in this context. We are an internet company and are conversant in this, as are those who would look for a job with us, so we turned to that target group [...] If we should be punished for anything, it's for using an old and tired meme."<p>It's interesting to see their perspective on things. The sentiment that in the internet it gender is "irrelevant" is ironically the less sexist view of the two, and the fact that they used the chance to state that they are interested in employing people who share that idea was probably a really good idea. It seems like they are showing a giant middle finger to both those who attack them for made up reasons and actual sexists. Brilliant. (Though arguable, the accusations that the meme is sexist towards women is also rather sexist, in that it completely ignores/accepts the image that men are dumb and only act based on their sex drive, have no respect at all for their partners and are the gender that is more likely to cheat)