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Dodai of Jezebel dug up a “women’s” cigarette ad from the 1970s that illustrates a pretty critical episode in the history of outsider’s conceptions of feminism.

Image from Jezebel – click to see in context.

The text says “We make Virginia Slims especially for women because they are biologically superior.”

In the 1970s things were both peculiarly hierarchical and simultaneously binary. It was a bad combination, at least in the states. For instance not only was there only “white” and “minority” people, either one or the other had to be better. Not only were there only males and females, but if one wasn’t superior the other had to be.

And so, especially in ad copy trying to “catch the groovy wave” of “women’s lib” it was inevitable that the idea of, you know, equality wasn’t going to come up.

Oh, it gets worse. The idea at the time was that if women weren’t going to do the washing, cleaning, and ironing then they’d go to work and men would have to stay home and be the “Mr. Mom.“ In other words somebody always had to be the “girl” and do all the “women’s work.” Oh, either that or we had to dress like Devo and pee in the dreaded “unisex” bathrooms. But one way or another a strictly zero-sum competition. Instead of, you know, maybe an increase in diversity, of options, of more hands to share the work, of more opportunities for people to rise to their full potential, and for people to de-stress about a great deal of artificial nonsense.

There are still people who don’t just remember those days but still believe it. Not a lot. But there are enough left, I guess, to be totally panicked about the possibility of tolerance, justice, or coexistence. Let alone equality.

Anyway, if it sometimes seems like people, older men in particular (since in critical awareness terms we’re a lot further behind the curve), seem unreasonably attached to the idea of gender equality, crap like that ad is a good reminder why. But… y’know, the 70s were a very long time ago. Time to get over it.