HEqual forces complete withdrawal of ISPCC’s banned anti-male advert

Back in 2011 there was a notable victory for equality over in Ireland, with the ISPCC forced to withdraw their “I can’t wait unitl I grow up” adverts due to their disgusting habit of only ever showing males abusing children in such material. The video features a young boy being repeatedly assaulted by a man and the ASAI stated “the portrayal of only male characters as the abusers was in breach of the provisions of the Code”, “marketing communications should respect the principle of the equality of men and women” and “should avoid sex stereotyping and any exploitation or demeaning of men and women”.

Statistics in the UK at least, actually show more abuse by mother than fathers, and whatever the case the ISPCC provided no figures to the Advertising Standard Authority of Ireland in order to justify their constant demonisation of men (and the corresponding cover up of abuse by females).

At HEquals we noticed that although the ISPCC had technically complied with the ASAI ruling, it was very much still defending the advert and continuing to promote it and flouting the spirit of the ruling. This was possible through loopholes in advertising legislation which meant that it could continue to host the video on any servers outside of Ireland (such as Youtube). Furthermore, the ISPCC had promised to appeal the ASAI decision but of course they never did so as they were clearly in the wrong.

Given the ISPCC’s close ties to the UK’s equally misandrist NSPCC, we thought we’d try to tackle this issue. Our campaign last year saw the successful deletion of the video from the ISPCC Youtube channel, quite a coup seeing as it had gained almost 700,000 views. Unfortunately, the material  reappeared again recently.

HEquals contacted the ISPCC pointing out the sexist nature of the material and how it was an insult to fathers and victims of child abuse. To their credit the ISPCC deleted the content quite quickly, though really no such content should have ever been in place following the 2011 ruling and it was rather childish of the ISPCC to simply rely on a technicality to continue the campaign of demonising men.

In order to ensure there is no doubt about the misandirst nature of the video we’ve also gone further this time and contacted a newspaper and ad agencies who were displaying the video too. I’m pleased to report 100% success in achieving our goals so far. Following our intervention the Journal newspaper deleted the copy of the video in this article and the Windmill Lane agency have promised to add a disclaimer to their hosted copies of the material highlighting the key aspects of the ASAI ruling.

Therefore as far as we are aware there isn’t a single copy of the material on an ISPCC website nor is there any site in Ireland in breach of the ASAI ruling.

Note, we aren’t in favour of censorship here at HEquals and have simply forced a number of organisations to comply with the ASAI code. If anything, we actually prefer the actions of Windmill Lane over complete deletion of the video as this helps to increase awareness of discrimination against men by taxpayer-funded groups such as the ISPCC.

Our thanks go out to the organisations who promptly addressed our concerns and in particular to those people who reported the advert to the ASAI in the first place (I believe the excellent Amen organisation may have been involved).

Enclosed below are the previous locations of the videos, now showing the message that now greets visitors today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdHb6I0kSiM