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Press a button and a woman’s boobs will grow and she’ll fetch you a beer. Yes, such a product exists!
It’s called a Control A Woman remote control and can be purchased from Borders, Amazon and other assorted gift and novelty stores across Australia. And as lawyer Katie Robertson discovered this week, creating a little media storm can be at your fingertips with just the touch of a button.
Last Friday, Katie sent an email around her Melbourne law firm office:
From: Katie Robertson
Sent: Fri 12/03/2010 2:52 PM
To:
Subject: Control a Woman for $13.95 inc GST
Dear all,
As some of you are aware, I have been troubled this week by an item I saw for sale at Borders in my lunch break on Wednesday.
Following a fantastic morning tea put on at my workplace in honour of International Women’s Day, I popped into Borders Melbourne Central to buy a book.
While I was paying at the counter I noticed the following ‘gift’ for sale:
CONTROL A WOMAN
I asked the salesman why Borders were selling it, particularly just after International Women’s Day. He shrugged and appeared embarrassed.
Some of you may believe that the ‘Control a Woman’ Remote control is intended to be funny. Maybe it was the range of statistics relating to domestic violence and gender inequality I had in my head following the fantastic presentation I had just listened to at morning tea, but I found it downright distasteful.
Many of you I have chatted to since Wednesday (female and male) have also found it so.
I have written a letter to Borders to express my disappointment at their choice of marketable gift.
I attach a generic letter that you too may like to send.
- If you would like to send a message to Borders, simply edit in your details (name and address) then print and send.
- Alternatively, you may also like to write your own letter, this is just to get you going.
Please forward this on to anyone you think may be interested.
As one impressive woman commented to me this week, ‘It will take more than $13.95 to control this woman.’ Damn right.
Katie Robertson | Trainee Lawyer
Maurice Blackburn Pty Limited
The email quickly went viral, particularly in Melbourne’s NGO sector, with others quick to jump on board to pen angry letters to Borders:
Posted To: Borders Customer Care AU
I’m writing to you to voice my concern and disappointment at the lassez faire attitude taken by Borders marketing staff in regards to objections over the Control a Woman Remote Control novelty product available in stores.
I understand that a number of people have written, called or emailed in with their feedback and I wish to add my name to the growing list of people who think that it is inappropriate, eye-rollingly un-funny and just plain daft that this product is on shelves.
Aside from the anachronistic attempt at humour, the message and values behind such a product (which Borders is implicitly endorsing in sourcing and carrying such a product) are clearly sexist, condescending and patronising. I would hazard a guess that a majority of Borders staff and customers are women, and it seems foolishly self-harming that Borders would consider it wise marketing practice to alienate and belittle a significant swathe of its customers and staff.
I have no doubt that Borders exercises significant discretion over the values that the company projects as part of its corporate and marketing image and brand, and would also assume that this flows into purchasing choices that Borders makes on a daily basis. I would strongly suggest that Borders re-evaluate its casual disregard for respect for women (and men) and take this opportunity to inject its product range with the same levels of respect for women that is most certainly the norm across modern, cosmopolitan Australia.
I would hope that Borders management takes enough personal affront at this product to remove it by their own volition, however failing that seemingly unlikely scenario, I would hope that the swelling opposition to this boringly un-amusing and misogynistic product would provide sufficient motivation to rethink your position
Regards,
To which Borders replied:
Subject: RE: Customer Enquiry
From: CustCareAU@borders.com.au
Dear
Thank you for your email and for alerting us to this problem. There was certainly never any intention to discriminate against women with this product and we apologise for any offence this may have caused.
Borders view this product as a light hearted and humorous gift, like many other books and products we stock.
Please understand though that we are taking your concerns very seriously and as such are currently reviewing this product.
Kind regards,
Kate Herford
Borders Customer Care
Followed by the reply:
Dear Kate,
Thank you for your prompt response - I appreciate you taking the time and consideration to reply quickly and update me on your current review with this product.
I understand the argument that these items are not intended to offend and are considered light hearted, however I would advise whomever is involved in the stocking decisions around these items to consider the thresholds of taste that they would consider it appropriate to cross or not. Would an item humorously purporting to control people with disabilities, gay people, immigrants and so forth be considered by Borders to be light hearted and harmless? If the item was a ‘leash’ for out of control women, would Borders similarly find it charming and unproblematic?
As someone who has worked in customer care management for a long time, I hope that all feedback is making its way to the appropriate Borders staff, so that they can take as much responsibility as your team does for hearing customer concerns. I certainly would like the review of this product’s status with Borders to result in you and your colleagues no longer having to defend Borders’ poor decision-making in product purchasing.
Cheers,
After sending the email on Friday, Katie was called by Jon Faine’s producers on Monday after they received the original email via multiple forwards.
Jon Faine: This a kind of novelty, supposedly humorous item?
Katie Robertson: Sure, and I have no doubt that it’s intended to be a joke. For me, it’s actually about respect and it’s about what’s appropriate to sell. I’m troubled by this item mainly because it encourages a stereotype of women as submissive, who are to be controlled. But equally Jon, it encourages a stereotype of men as dominant and men as disrespectable to women. And I’m aware of a number of men, colleagues and friends of mine, who are equally as uncomfortable with this as women. But more importantly, it trivialises important issues of gender violence and gender inequality in society.
Lauren Thompson from Borders was offered right of reply:
Jon Faine: I don’t think I lack a sense of humour, but has this gone too far?
Lauren Thompson: Yeah, look, I’ve got to honest with you, we’ve actually been retailing Control A Woman, alongside Control A Man. I don’t feel that it’s necessarily specific to any particular gender, there’s almost no one who’s been off limits in this gag.
Jon Faine: Is either of them funny?
Lauren Thompson: Look, I think they are quite funny. They are meant to be humourous, they are meant to be based on gender stereotypes. These are time honoured jokes between men and women about the differences between men and women. The Control A Man remote, for example, allows you to force your partner to put the toilet seat down, to stop them snoring and farting, to make them buy you flowers, buy you chocolates. All I can say in its defence is that it’s base level humour, but it’s meant to be a bit funny, a bit of a gimmick, something that you might buy for your best mate before a stag night or a hen’s night.
Faine: That would be stocked in a different shop to yours wouldn’t it?
Thompson: not necessarily… but the majority of our content is books and i think if you take a view that we should pull off shelves anything that could be offensive, which may vary from person to person, it may differ. But if you take that view in a large bookstore like Borders, you’re dealing with potentially censorship issues and having to remove a lot of things from the shelves.
Thompson then proceeded to say that Borders had sold out of Control A Man remotes. However, according to several Borders staff, both current and former, that Crikey spoke to, Borders have long stocked the Control A Woman remote. It was one of the biggest sellers for Christmas 2008. But no staff have ever spotted the elusive Control A Man remote and no Borders store in Australia has it in stock.
When contacted by Crikey, Thompson said “We’ve had trouble getting repeat stock (of Control a Man).We could never get as much stock of it as Control a Woman. We just stock Control a Man and Control a Woman, but there is Control a Child, Control a Dog, Control a Cat. The head office says they did stock Control A Man in all stores at least in the 18 months. The Control A Man was sold at Borders Melbourne Central and it is listed as an active line in our stock. There is no stock currently, but they’ve had requests for it and have it on order and are trying to get back in stock across all stores”.
Thompson said there had been increased requests for Control A Woman in the last week and despite the media coverage, they had no intention of not stocking the product.
Even The Oz’s Greg Sheridan decided to weigh in on it when he went on Jon Faine directly after Katie to talk about “foreign affairs and international relations”.
Sheridan: I must say, I’m with Katie on this matter, i think that’s a pretty tacky thing for Borders to be selling altogether.
Jon Faine: It’s the sort of thing I’d expect you’d find in a s-x shop, in which case you’d have gone there looking for it rather than stumbling across it in a bookshop.
Sheridan: Yeah, you don’t go to Borders to buy a Control-A-Woman gizmos. I must just say Katie’s 100% right on this score and I’m a bit astonished that Borders took the attitude it did.
By the following day the story had made it on to The 7pm Project and Kerri-Anne and into the Herald Sun, The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. Katie was turning down offers from various news stations to appear.
“It just started out as I’m writing a letter to Borders to complain and it just spiralled. But it’s been pretty personal, people, mainly men have been saying some pretty nasty things. If a women gets annoyed about something, she’s hysterical,” says Katie.
And that’s the key word here, for all your media content production needs — hit the h button for hysterical.
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22 Comments
Wow - someone really needs to get some perspective. Its a mildly sexist joke item - big deal!
If men are so easily induced to attack women, Borders should also be ridding their shelves of thousands of books and DVDs depicting domestic violence. The fact is that those most likely to buy the gadget are wives/ girlfriends buying it for their men as a joke. This is yet another example of how fundamentalist feminists exploit playing the helpless little victim in their favourite power game: suppressing anything they find offensive. The price of living in a free society is that at times we will offend and be offended. Get used to it!
Got to admit I find the ‘guy control’ stereotypes funny. Learn to laugh at yourself
@Suzanne: Right on. 99% of ppl are not affected by these books and DVDs and video games - it’s losers like SA’s AG Michael Atkinson that are, and believe others are.
Perhaps funny from an adolescent viewpoint, but the aggro is simply not worth the effort. Live and let live, get off your high horse, and many other cliches exist to deal with this type of response.
Build a bridge and get over it.
Obviously in the minority here, but I agree with Katie Robertson. It bothers me that the majority of Australians - women and men - think that this is acceptable, light-hearted humour.
So we can’t make jokes based on race, gender, religion, height, culture, mentally or physically disabled stereotypes - got some suggestions for what is left in the ‘acceptable’ category?? How about we just ban humour?
@LIXVH: can you clarify - are you bothered because it isn’t a universal remote?
I guess that bothers me too.
For me: it’s not that it’s a novelty and supposed to be funny (although I stopped finding that sort of thing funny when I left high school, but I understand some adults still buy whoopee cushions, so there’s no accounting for humour), it’s the fact that it’s sold in a mainstream BOOK STORE.
This is not a book- it’s a bad taste joke thingy that should be sold in one of those stores that sells other bad taste joke thingys- like p*nis shaped straws and key rings and other tasteful merchandise that you see all the drunk 22 year old girls wearing at the irish pub on friday night as they farewell Sharon’s life as a single girl.
And for Borders to come out with the “we can’t sell it, that would be censorship” is just too rich for words. IT’S NOT A BOOK. It wasn’t written by DH Lawrence. It’s just a bad taste joke thingy- that I’m sure is sold in other stores. No-one’s rights are getting trampled here- Sharon’s friends can still go to the bad taste joke store to buy her one, I’m sure.
I’m not sure what humour is contained in the idea of completely controlling - to the extent of distorting their physique - another person.
OH, for god’s sake can we all lighten up. It’s low level but it is a joke. “No women were injured in the production of this joke. Some did however misplace their sense of humor. “
We have some indiginous complaining about “Bega” cheese, mothers of 9 year olds about the Lady Gaga concert, the uptight seeing “sex” in every painting - more fig leaves they cry. Australia is becoming a land of wingers. My pet hate - let us be free of oversensetive, female trainee lawers. No wait a tick, just make that ALL lawyers, trainee or otherwise!
Hang on, How much does it cost?
Does it actually do anything?…….noises, flashing lights, open the garage door?
I think the greater problem for society is that there are still people out there stupid enough to purchase something like this.
I’ll be sticking to good old fashioned cosmetic surgery and re-education for my missus.
p.s. get ‘em Katie!
During their lifetimes ;
57% of women report at least one incident of sexual or physical violence,
34% experience this violence from a former or current partner.
12% 0f women report sexual violence, including rape, from an intimate partner,
73% of women who experience this sexual violence will also have been physically abused by their partner.
18% of women report being sexually assaulted before the age of 16,
2% identify their father as the perpetrator.
Domestic violence revolves around the need to “control a woman” and to “make her do what you want”. I don’t see much humour in that.
(The statistics are from the Australian component of the”International Violence Against Women Survey” I saw it at the Australian Bureau of Statistics.)
That’s right, “get ‘em Katie”. Another parasitic legal eagle encouraged to embark on a litigious career where in, do doubt, she will bring before the courts cases demanding hugh settlements for those who have suffered terrible mental anguish from the very sight of a “Control a Woman” on the shopkeepers shelf.
On a serious note, I acknowledge women can be badly treated. As a small child I witnessed my mother being bashed by a drunken father. But, then, would the removel from the shelves, if it had been on sale then, of this sillysimple toy have made one ounce of difference to my mother’s plight. Of course not.
So if you are comcerned about this type of violence look to the real causes. Excessive drink, police attitudes, too clever by half lawyers and a judiciary out of touch with mainstream Australia. Each of these, in it’s own way, lets that drunken father go on to bash that mother again and again.
You may find that women will still get beaten by sober men - men who are sadists, control freaks and generally miserable examples of humanity: drink is not the sole cause. I’m also not quite sure how the police have caused men to beat women up?
Sometimes I find men will look to blame anything and anybody for violence, rather than look at themselves.
As for this nasty piece of junk - it is the sort of thing that pathetic, mediocre women-bashers would no doubt love.
“Excessive drink, police attitudes, too clever by half lawyers and a judiciary out of touch with mainstream Australia” don’t cause this type of violence. Misogynistic attitudes underlie violence towards women. These attitudes are both reflected and reinforced in popular culture. The “Control A Woman” is just one example.
Several studies suggest that domestic violence in Australia is more wide-spread than is commonly perceived. Historically, statistics on domestic violence in Australia were calculated based on report of the incidents. It is now thought that only a small proportion of Domestic Violence in Australia is actually reported. Why dont’t these battered and mistreated women report their pleight to the police. Ms Tedesco seems young. So perhaps she was not around in the 50’s and 60’s when I would ring the local police station to be told “she’ll be right, son” I have no reason to believe matters have improved since the police went from being a “Forse” to a “service”. The male mentality has not chaged. The only improvement is there are more female officers.
As for lawyers and the judiciary, I can recall several rape cases in Sydney in very recent years where the victims were put through a second hell by clever by half lawyers for the defence and an unfeeling judiciary to intent on rpotecting the accused and stuff the victim.
And you get your nickers all knoted up over a damn toy. Get some perspective.
Peter, I’m sorry that you have had such dreadful experiences, but you’re missing the point. I’m not getting my “nickers all knoted up over a damn toy”. The toy is a function, and representation, of the attitudes that give rise to domestic violence. I’m getting my knickers all knotted up over the way the toy denotes those attitudes. I think that indicates “some perspective”.
I stand corrected. Excuse an old man who has watched and wondered just what is happening in our world over nearly seventy years. My point is, and this is my perspective, too much fuss and effort goes into the little, insignificant things. Little and insignificant (ie., the “Controller Woman”) when weighed against the really nasty things happening around me for which the police, government and the judiciary seem to have no answer. Drug use by the young, unprovoked violence on our streets, mayhem on our roads - DUI is on the increase - unchecked and undeclared wars not of our making (and concern?) but to which we send our young men and women. Hugh moral and ethical problems which are not given the input by those who have been appointed or selected to do something concrete and long lasting. As a student of history, I see us repeating the same mistakes over and over. So I am sorry if I caused upset. The goings on about that stupid toy were to my mind an overreaction to something not worth the pen and paper (see, he is old) wasted on it. A concerted effort by concerned citizens to ensure police take domestic violence seriously, charging offenders and not walking away muttering about DVO’s , the courts treating victims with sympathy and respect and, finally, the judiciary handing down real penalties is what is required. Then you might get what you are really looking for.
I agree with you. ” Ethical problems” are often neglected in our society and the justice system is well known to treat victims of domestic violence with scant regard. However, I don’t think that renders items of popular culture, like the “Control A Woman”, as insignificant. The problems around domestic violence that you are concerned about and the attitudes denoted by the “Control A Woman” are two sides of the same coin.
And with that I must disagree. Split evenly down its centre both halves of the coin in your metephor weigh exactly the same. Thus, you say, each is of equal value and require equal input. I see “ethical problems” as the major issue facing society today while the silly toy is simply a mere bagatelle. I certainly concede each is part of the problem. I simply argue too much emphasis has been given to matters at the margin ie., the toy, while the energy, input and political capital would have been better expended on the core of the problem.
So, as to the “remote” I see this as a sympton of the problem and not the problem itself. In society today too much is made of the symptons of a problem ie., bullying. What is needed is to get to the causes of that problem, not its ugly manisfestations.
Thank you BHG for our discussion. I unreservably withdraw all derogatory remarks about lawyers, trainee or otherwise. My daughter in law, a lawyer, has just read all this and threated to tell my wife. See, my aim in life, after near 50 years of wedded bliss, is to avoid domestic strife.
I agree with you that it is important to get to the core of problems. However, it is folly to place aspects of popular culture, like the “Control A Woman”, at the margins. People are exposed to things like misogynistic toys every day. This frequent exposure acts to normalise and repeatedly reinforce the kind of attitudes that give rise to violence against women. That things like the “Control A Woman”are usually dismissed as unimportant and/or jokes makes these attitudes insidious and all the more difficult to address.
Consequently, I think it is artificial and unhelpful to divide the issue of the “Control A Woman” into a “problem” and a “symptom” or a “cause” and a “manifestation”. I see destructive attitudes towards women and things like the “Control A Woman” as acting as part of a feedback loop. I would be pleased to see such a vicious circle broken at any point.
Good Luck, Peter, with avoiding the domestic strife and congratulations on near 50 years of wedded bliss. That is something to be admired!