Well, whaddya know:
from the Toronto Star:
“T-shirts emblazoned with the words ‘No means have aNOther drink’ are no longer being sold in Bluenotes stores nationwide.
The shirts, a play on the ‘No Means No’ slogan that the Canadian Federation of Students uses in its campaign against date rape, set off a flurry of complaints from anti-violence agencies.
The letters N and O in the word ‘another’ appear larger than the other letters.
The St. John’s, Nfld.,-based Avalon East Coalition Against Violence had said Bluenotes was ‘marketing a myth’ that endangers young people, particularly women.
Toronto-based Bluenotes announced Monday that all T-shirts carrying the slogan have been removed from their stores, adding that the slogan was not in line with its family-friendly values.
Company president Michael Roden said in a statement that Bluenotes is ‘deeply apologetic that the T-shirts caused insult and offence’ and that they should not have sold them.
The retailer is proposing to create a line of T-shirts in collaboration with the Canadian Federation of Students and donate a portion of the proceeds to the federation.”
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nine comments
This is great news, but I find Bluenotes' apology disturbing. They pulled the shirts because they weren't in line with the corp's "family-friendly values"?! How about acknowledging their encouragement of violence towards women? If violence was more explicitly discussed without being couched in vague, meaningless euphemisms that dilute the seriousness of the problem, we wouldn't see horrible shirts like these produced in the first place. Arg!
Posted by Nicole
February 26, 2007, 6:56 PM
That money should be going to women's organizations, not the federation!
They already have tons of money from students and are not suffering from the same sorts of federal funding cuts as women's organizations.
Posted by kate
February 27, 2007, 1:25 AM
I thought it was interesting that the CFS was identified a)as the source of the "no means no" phrase and b)the most wounded party. It's odd to think that a phrase like "no means no" belongs to any one organisation.
The whole "family-values" thing didn't even really set off any alarm bells with me (does this mean I'm desensitised???) but it's true, that phrasing is totally unsettling.
This makes me sound like a whacky feminist (which is fine, thank you very much), but when people see things like that line of Bluenotes t-shirts, or the KFC ad, or offensive beer ads, or misogynist porn, and say that they're obscene, shocking and antithetical to family values - I can't help but think the opposite; that they're obscene, but not shocking at all, and they're demonstrative of certain family values. When you think about it, demeaning and subordinating women to the detriment of everyone is one of our oldest traditions and values, family or otherwise.
Posted by Thea
February 27, 2007, 10:38 AM
That's the problem with the term "family values." It seems wholesome on the surface, since the notion of family is supposed to be the epitome of safety and love. However, years of feminist writing has proven that this is most definitely not the case, and the family can be violent, restricting and oppressive in many cases (of course feminists are very divided on these issues). These days "family values" usually refers to a particular brand of conservatism; i.e. the nuclear, hetero, middle-class family with a male breadwinner and the wife at home raising the kids. I'd even throw in religious, anti-sex, anti-abortion, neo-liberal. I usually hear the term used in discourse around American politics so it was a bit jarring to hear it used in Bluenotes' apology.
Posted by Nicole
February 27, 2007, 11:38 AM
The thing that disturbs me most about the apology is the fact that he felt sorry that people were offended by the shirt, not for the shirt itself.
Posted by Valerie F
February 27, 2007, 8:03 PM
I am wondering why, for a "family-values' oriented store, was a shirt like that put out on the shelves in the first place? If president Michael Roden were true to his word, they (Bluenotes) would never even be doing business with a company that puts out this kind of material
Posted by Eileen
February 28, 2007, 2:17 AM
Just a note: the money is going to women's organizations c/o the federation, not the federation itself (that would be super sketchy).
Also, the CFS was mentioned because they ran a week-long national campaign against the T-Shirts, calling for a boycott of Bluenotes until the company pulled the t-shirts and the company apologized. They've also been running a No Means No campaign for a decade and were the ones who brought the original story to the Globe and Mail.
I agree that the apology is frustrating because it focuses on "family values" and not the violence, but I'm hopeful about the new t-shirt line they've committed to designing.
Also, an American company, David & Goliath has a similar shirt! UGH!
Posted by Kaley
February 28, 2007, 6:53 PM
On the other hand, there's an upside to having these shirts for sale: it makes jerkwads that much easier to identify, thus saving us the trouble of having to interact with them. Very handy really.
Posted by Anna
March 2, 2007, 6:14 PM
In my opinion, those shirts shouldn't be sold in stores, because too many people go into stores who would take that seriously, or even be influenced to take it like real advice.
But I'm fine about them being sold online.
Because these tshirts are made to be shocking and controversial, they are not made to be taken seriously. They are not made to make a statement that you should -actualy- do that. It's a shoking joke, and the more shocking the more funny, in many cases.
It's sarcasm, not seriousness. If someone actually believed that that was right, then they'd be a horrible person. But wearing the shirt or buying it -does not- make you a horrible person. Because most people I know who buy those shirts buy them because they're funny sick jokes. And I wonder, who actually takes a sick joke to heart and means them? They're told to disgust each other, to laugh at. So understand, the company and the people who buy them are not supporting abuse. They're supporting controversial tshirts, and insulting people who take it too seriously.
Posted by Tanya
May 2, 2007, 5:05 PM
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