(Repost) Gillette, Piers Morgan, and Steve from Hull.

AN: This is a repost of a piece I uploaded to other social media platforms, but realised I never posted here. It is from early January.

Gillette have just released an advert calling for people to stop dismissing toxic masculinity and abusive, bullying or harassing behaviours as 'boys being boys'. The advert shows children being bullied, women being touched inappropriately and without consent, cyberbullying occurring through texts, and men stopping themselves from crying or showing emotion when looking in the mirror.
Piers Morgan, embarking on one of his regular tirades, has taken to national television and the medium of Twitter to slate the advert and threaten to boycott the entire company of Gillette. (I'm sure they're shaking in their boots, Piers. Just absolutely quaking.)
Piers Morgan is well known for taking issue with companies attempting to promote basic human decency and equality, as his most recent issue with the Greggs vegan sausage roll provides a good example - a large food chain creates a product for the vegans among us, the dairy-allergic vegetarians, those with egg allergies, or consumers who simply wish to try something new. Morgan took it upon himself to slate the company, accuse Greggs supporters of bullying him (a really poor joke aimed at bullying sufferers and survivors), and even bite into one of the new products and 'vomit' on national television to show how disgusting he thinks the idea of food without carcasses in is. I mean, who would ever eat a vegetable?
Having scanned through Piers' tweets briefly and the replies to them, it's come as an absolute shock to me that there are a number of people actually supporting his latest tirade and boycotting Gillette for their advert. Whilst I'm sure Gillette aren't going to cry themselves to sleep at night over Steven, 47 from Hull refusing to buy their razorblades anymore, it just baffled me enough to make me want to write a post addressing those supporters and Morgan himself.

By boycotting a company as a result of such an advert, I hope you realise that you are taking a direct issue with that company calling for an end to abuse, bullying, sexual assault and rape, and the method of brushing it under the rug that is referring to the actions as 'boys being boys'. I personally saw nothing in the advert that struck me as 'PC gone mad', 'man hating' or any of the other phrases you are all throwing at the campaign. The images shown include a young boy being chased down by other children, made to cry in his mother's arms, a group of men with tears pricking their eyes forcing themselves to hold them back when looking in the mirror, and an audience of men watching and laughing at an actor pretending to 'grope' a woman's body when her back is turned for the sake of  entertainment. I had hoped that anybody with an ounce of humanity in their body would be opposed to such things and would support any attempts to stop them and reduce the excuses made for them on the grounds of them being 'kids being kids', 'natural' and 'masculine traits', yet Piers Morgan and the Twitter Brigade have surprised me once again. I can only pose this question to you, as you are clearly incapable of assessing issues unless they are directly related to you; what if it was your mother? Your sister? Your daughter? Your grandmother? Or your father? Your son? Your brother? Your grandfather?

If we start showing our children, our friends, our parents and siblings that it is okay to cry, it is never okay to touch somebody without their consent, and that bullying destroys lives then perhaps in the future we will actually live in the civilised world we should realistically be in by now, in this day and age. However, as long as blindly following media 'stars' because of their lack of a filter and the edge they apply to debates continues, we are never going to get anywhere and men are going to continuously think that campaigning for basic human rights to be adhered to is absurd and the result of a 'generation of snowflakes'; Morgan's evident favourite term.

Bravo, Gillette. Thank you for creating such a poignant advertising campaign and for addressing very serious issues in an understanding, respectful way.

And for everybody who takes an issue with the campaign, shame on you.
Shame on you for opposing to a male-targeted company campaigning for an end to the same toxic masculinity and abuse-excusing behaviour that kills people.