I Get Letters

After my missive to Method yesterday morning, I received the following reply yesterday evening:

Dear Melissa,

Thank you for contacting us and for sharing your story. I assure you that we are, in fact, reading your e-mails. I also spent a good deal of time on your blog today reading your posting as well as the subsequent comments.

I want to apologize for any distress you have experienced due to our video. We have received a number of comments mirroring your sentiments, and we are taking them very seriously.

As a company that makes eco-friendly soap and cleaning products, we believe people have the right to know what is inside the cleaning products they use, and our goal with this video was to connect people to their local representatives and Congress people to affect change.

We are sorry if we have lost your business, and more importantly, your respect.

In no way does Method tolerate harassment, assault or violence against women, nor do we feel that our video encourages these behaviors.

As with all media messages, people will interpret our video in different ways. In no way are we undermining your experience with the video. We understand you feel our choices were unacceptable. We currently do not plan to remove the video, as we stand by the goal of this campaign: to raise awareness about the dirty chemicals often found in traditional cleaning products.

We are truly sorry for any offense or pain the video has caused you.


anna
president of the method fan club:: people against dirty
phone: 866.9.method

I don't believe I've ever received such a condescending and dismissive reply from any corporate entity (which is really saying something). "I want to apologize for any distress you have experienced due to our video." As if my letter had reported that the video sent me to the fucking fainting couch clutching my pearls. Jesus.

And more of this garbage: "In no way does Method tolerate harassment, assault or violence against women, nor do we feel that our video encourages these behaviors."

Maybe on some other planet in another dimension that makes sense, but here, on this planet and in this dimension, where we have logic, claiming that you don't "tolerate harassment, assault, or violence against women," in the same breath as you defend an ad which uses imagery of a woman being harassed and assaulted to sell your product, is what is generally called manifest horseshit.

Method may "feel" that their video doesn't encourage those behaviors, but, as several commenters who received the same boilerplate language in their replies have pointed out, a glance at the comments associated with this video at other sites showed that to be patently false, as commenters whoop and holler about how awesome and hilarious the video is and launch into chants of "Loofah! Loofah!" recreating exactly the objectionable behavior in the video.

Comments at YouTube so blatantly discredited Method's line of bullshit about how their video doesn't encourage those behaviors that they simply closed comments, but keep telling the same lie.

The reality is that the video diminishes the gravity of sexual assault and harassment by equating it with the much less serious issue of having chemical residue in one's bathtub. And in the sense that diminishing the gravity of sexual assault and harassment feeds the rape culture in which they're tolerated, the video does indeed obliquely encourage these behaviors—because spaces in which criminality is tolerated, criminality is tacitly encouraged.

Hence: "Loofah! Loofah!" in comments threads.

Finally, there is this: "We currently do not plan to remove the video, as we stand by the goal of this campaign: to raise awareness about the dirty chemicals often found in traditional cleaning products." Which is effectively an admission that they know the content is heinous, but it's getting them so much free publicity that they don't give a fuck.

I refer you back to their simultaneous claim that they don't "tolerate harassment, assault, or violence against women." Even as they trade on it.

Even as they use sexual assault survivors and anti-rape advocates to give them free publicity.

Because that passage is also a thank-you to me. Thanks for the free publicity, chump. Good thing there are people like you in the world who care so fervently about survivors that you'll blog about our advert and save us a marketing budget. We're not pulling the ad—so what are you going to do about it?

That's Method's position. That's their principled stance on sexual harassment and assault: The survivors are a pretty damn useful resource to make awful videos go viral.

And my choice was to participate in that exploitation, or be silent.

Tell me again, Anna, how Method doesn't "tolerate harassment, assault, or violence against women." Tell me with a straight face, even as Method revictimizes survivors of sexual assault by forcing them to give time and attention to a video that promotes it, or keep silent about a video that promotes it.

Tell me again how "truly sorry" you are "for any offense or pain the video has caused" me, but how profoundly grateful you are for my exploitable contempt, how very useful is my willingness to spend my days teaspooning the rape culture so no woman ever has to suffer the same fate as I did, how helpful my having been raped has ultimately been to your goal of raising awareness about chemicals.

Tell me again. I'd love to hear more about how principled and sorry you are.