There’s nothing more infuriating and creepy than early media propaganda that dictates gender roles. There are a bunch of these over youtube, so I wanted to feature a few of them and talk about them.

• Girls Beware

The reason I wanted to feature this video is because since the 50s, the fear mongering about woman’s safety has not released. Now, this video is rather extreme because it ends in the deaths of young girls for “wrongly trusting”. I went to a domestic abuse performance a few months ago, and they handed out information about sexual assault and domestic abuse. There were “tips” for staying safe in the pamphlet. For example – stay in brightly list areas, check the back of the car seat, don’t talk to strangers, etc. Now, this is from a center that helps victimized women, but should the approach always be one of fear? The point is that in this video (and even today) – women should be fearful around every corner and men are killers. If we lock ourselves into these roles, then there will always be a culture of fear surrounding the safety of women. I am not suggesting we lose our cautious minds because these are very real occurances, but I think the approach is seldom one that women aren’t responsible for.

• Boys Beware

The happy part about this film is that I feel we have come somewhere since this anti-gay propaganda was created. I think hitchhiking in general is a horrible idea regardless of who you are. In many ways there have and have not been changes. The pieces I think have changed (thankfully) are the comments about homosexuality as a sickness. Now, I think a lot of people will agree that homosexuality is not a “sickness” – minus radicals of religious faith. A fear around homosexuals and teenagers still persists in our culture. We see this all of the time, but I think over the last decade, a lot of that fear has subsided. Hopefully, we can get to the day where everyone would see how ridiculous this video is. Some of the “best” parts are : “when never knows when the homosexual is about” , “sickness that was not visible like small pox but no less dangerous and contagious. sickness of the mind. Rob was a homosexual – a person who DEMANDS a relationship with the same sex…”. I just love how homosexuals DEMAND relationships.

I found this parody of the 50s style propaganda and sums up how ridiculous these videos were

• Catching The Gay

It’s interesting to see how the media has and has not changed over the last 4 or 5 decades. I will agree 100% that there have been a lot of changes, but there is still a lot of fear mongering as well, and until we can get past that, I think there is still a lot to be done.