Liquid Plumr Porn Spoof: Making Female Degradation "Cute" and Normalized

Check out this new ad for “Liquid Plumr Double Impact.” As you will quickly recognize it is a spoof on a cliché in porn: the plumber shows up and really the housewife wants nothing more than to be sexually ravaged by him and all his muscular, musky masculinity. Further, this ad includes “double penetration,” (get it, “double impact”?). That is, the woman gets penetrated by two men at once (and indeed, two plumbers show up at her door promising to “snake your drain” and to “flush your pipe.”) During all this, the narrator (in the cliché porn voice) brags about how this “double impact” includes “a long snake to grab deep clogs... and a powerful gel to finish off the rest, baby.”

What is wrong with this ad?

It is further normalizing, and making “cute,” the notion that “everyone is into porn.” In fact, a lot of people are deeply offended by porn – and more people ought to be. It is very damaging to the way that all of society is trained to view the female half of the human race – as well as how people are coarsened and trained to view sex as conquest and domination. But this ad further alienates and silences those who might raise a critique of porn; already many are afraid to do so because they will be called “uptight” or lacking in a sense of humor.

It is portraying this “fantasy” of being “double penetrated” as being the secret fantasy of women. In reality, this is a “fantasy” that was almost wholly created by the porn industry itself. Further, this “fantasy” has nothing to do with actual human intimacy or mutual respect or closeness and pleasure (and I guarantee this is NOT the “fantasy” that is occurring to most women when they are stuck with a backed up sewage system!) – instead, this “fantasy” is all about sexualizing the impersonal ganging up on and overpowering by multiple men of a woman who is reduced to a thing.

All this reinforces the notion – which is the dominant message in pornography as a whole as well as the broader cultural portrayal of women in general – that all women at all times exist to be (and long to be) sexually available to all men. When a woman calls a plumber, she doesn't really need help with her plumbing, she is really harboring a secret fantasy to be sexually ravaged. When a woman walks down the street, she is not really just trying to go from “place a” to “place b,” nor is she enjoying the sun or the atmosphere of the city, she is really seeking to be hit on and objectified by men. All this feeds the notion that any woman who rejects the sexual advances of men is really denying him something he is entitled to, thereby justifying his rage or violence in the service of reclaiming what is “rightfully his.”

Finally, a word to all those who are thinking, “Lighten up, its just a spoof.” Don't be stupid. I don't accept that you can possibly be that dense. The only reason this ad “works” is because it is very closely playing off the typical forms of porn that are very well known and has very broad meaning and impact in the world. I am not “stretching” to link this ad up up with the meaning – and the broad impact – of the very industry (porn) which it is closely mimicking and playing off of.

And let there be no unclarity here: that industry, pornography, is becoming more and more violent, more and more degrading, even as it is becoming more and more mainstream. The normalization of “double penetration” (and even “triple penetration” and more) as well as the mainstreaming of this into the broader public culture (which is exactly what this ad does) is very much a part of this. In the real world, this is having devastating and long-lasting impact on the lives of real women (as well as men). It has created and contributes to reinforcing and bolstering the fact that women cannot go through the world without being constantly reminded that they are viewed – by a very large percentage of men as well as other women and their own views of themselves – as nothing more than a physical object, valued and valuable only so long as it is sexually attractive to and available to men. That is a fucked up and enslaving culture. Rather the opposite of a funny, hah-hah, joke.