On “Save Second Base”: Your slogan/joke is an insult to survivors.
Throughout this argument you guys are having, I’ve tried to consider how sexualizing an illness could possibly help educate people about the illness itself rather than idealize the people who haven’t suffered the illness. It can’t.
I can’t think of one reason it would actually encourage participation via donations. I can’t think of anyone who’d want to wear that T-shirt. Well, hipster wannabes who aren’t survivors, sure. But there’s not much they won’t sexualize for profit. Can you imagine a teacher showing up to school in a shirt with that slogan in effort to encourage boys to learn about breast cancer? Who’d want that as a bumper sticker? If you like to cop a good feel, then support breast cancer research. Really?
In addition, the slogan caters to a sort of scopophilia that resists healthy sex and sexuality. Our language often lies about our feelings about an event, an occurrence, an emotion, an illness, a line even, say in a punchline. I mention punchline because that’s what the second-base slogan is all about. It’s a joke about men (and women, I suppose, but it’s a rather heterosexist cliche,) groping breasts as a mark of achievement on a date. You know, on their way to a home run, which is ultimate bragging rights. I suppose the joke about saving second base implies that a good second base grope is necessary for a successful home run, which is nonsense. Unfortunately, the joke is all about male sexual pleasure.
But let’s take this joke to its logical extreme. Let’s test just how funny the premise is. Rather than inserting the ideal image of sexualized breasts, let’s insert the image that we’re really addressing—precisely, the image of a woman’s body post-mastectomy. And since the image of the idealized woman’s body is the favorable image, then we immediately see that, in this joke about second-base, we are actively denegrating the surgically altered body. The joke is at the expense of women who have undergone mastectomies.
The slogan about second base actually insults women who have had mastectomies by devaluing their bodies. Why not just post a photo of a survivor’s chest with text something like, “Isn’t this a shame?”
An extended perspective on what I posted earlier. Very important here… because anything that promotes “breast cancer awareness” while making survivors feel ashamed and excluded is disgusting.
(Source: feminist-tips, via thisgingersnapsback)
