So, lest they be left out in the general trend of pitting the sexes against one another with revolting sexism, Victoria’s Secret has launched a website called puppyordog.com.

It seems to be mainly about rating college guys’ desirability on a scale from 1 to 10: a cheap (and badly flash-based) ripoff of hotornot.com but with appeal to only half the population.

There’s a section of the site, though, called ‘Pink Puppy Training Tips: Teaching the male of the species to be a good boy’, that consists of the kind of idiocy I’ve come to expect. Clicking on these little pictures pops up bigger versions:

Obeying:

“Dogs slip free of their leases whenever your back is turned. A Puppy is content to sit and stay by your side.” While you shop, because you’re a woman and that’s what women do: shop. This one is insulting to everyone.

Straying:

“A Puppy doesn’t chase after passing females. For Dogs, try verbal command, ‘Heel.’ If that fails, try actual heel on Dog’s toes.” Ah, domestic violence! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Fetching:

“A little positive reinforcement goes a long way toward getting him to go out of his way to please you.” — though the woman in both pictures is exactly the same, so I suppose that ‘positive reinforcement’ really means ‘manipulation’.

If you did the same thing with the sexes reversed — say, ads for light beer or power tools with a “Bitch or Kitten” theme that advocated violence against women unless they were docile and subservient, you’d (rightly) have loud calls for boycotts. There would be stories on the evening news, and you’d wind up with Task Forces on the Promotion of Violence Against Women In Advertising. The company behind the ads would have to make big, well-publicized donations to Women’s Shelters, among other gestures of public breast-beating.

Denigrate men qua men, though, and you’re hip and clever.

This trend is mainly annoying, but I worry about what will happen should particularly stupid women take this kind of thing to heart. Will we wind up with more and more rude, pushy, sexist women?

The chief irony of this particular message coming from Victoria’s Secret is that a large part of Victoria’s Secret’s, uh, secret is that their products not only protect that from chafing and hold these in place and so forth, but that they also, erm, enhance relations between the sexes. I understand from Nicole that Victoria’s Secret’s underwear is quite comfortable, practical, and well-made: they’re not Frederick’s of Hollywood. But they’re also not Sears: sex-appeal is part of the value they’re selling.

And here they’re undermining this: a company that makes a lot of money selling push-up bras and thong underwear and ‘shaping panties’ and so forth advises that its customers use violence against men who look at women wearing things like push-up bras etc. What — if I may be allowed to ask — the fuck?

What the fuck indeed. It’s all meant in good fun, of course, and I’m sure that the good Ohioans of Victoria’s Secret don’t actually expect that appreciation of their products in exactly the way they’re meant to be appreciated should result in violence against men. So why do they suggest such a thing at all?