A cross post from Be Young and Shut Up

Seriously, this flyer is appalling.

Here is our press release:

Glasgow equality activists angry over club night flyers

A club night at ‘The Garage’ on Sauchiehall Street called ‘Booty Call’ has come under fire after a group of feminists have pointed out that its flyers resemble phone box cards that advertise sex work.

The flyers feature a picture of a naked woman with the text ‘Come see me this Friday’, and ‘Booty call us’ with a mobile phone number.

The night offers free entry to ‘girls’ before midnight, which contravenes sex discrimination laws.

Activists have criticised the sex-industry imagery, sex discrimination in entry prices and objectification of women in the promotion of the club night, which some have said promotes rape culture.

There have been many posts on The Garage’s Facebook wall, from Kate Harris, Callum Leslie and many others. The Garage has been consistently deleting these posts and has made little effort to engage in dialogue with the protesters.

Campaigners have asked The Garage to rethink the theme and promotion of the event.

My email to Garage Glasgow

This is the email I sent to one of Garage Glasgow’s managers – sean@cplweb.com

Dear Sean,

I’m writing to you specifically about the promotion and advertising of Garage Glasgow’s ‘Booty Call’ – not the name.

The image, font and text on the flyer is deliberately designed to mimic the sort of cards that advertise sex work and sex lines.

Here are the problems that I have with the event:

1. The image of the naked woman is objectifying.

2. The text ‘Come see me this Friday’ implies that women are sex objects, there for the taking. It mimics sex industry aesthetic and language.

3. ‘Booty Call us’ followed by a mobile phone number again is copying sex industry standards when this is supposed to be a mainstream club night: this normalises what we see as rape culture and the buying and selling of women.

4. ‘Girls Go Free B4 12’ is sex discrimination which contravenes the law. If women get in free, so should men, as women are not an attraction to lure men into clubs. We are people, not objects.

I do not think it is acceptable that the way staff responded to complaints on Garage Glasgow’s Facebook page, by deleting legitimate concerns and complaints from customers.

I was messaged twice, the second message included this paragraph:

‘We appreciate that you feel strongly about this matter however spamming our page is not appreciated and your posts will be deleted. If you would like to raise your concerns directly with a manager please email Sean@cplweb.com.’

While I am happy to email you, there is no reason for customers and members of the public to respond in the public domain, be that Twitter, Facebook or the press. The advertising of this club night was in the public domain: as a result, so were our complaints.

After this, the admins of the Facebook page posted a message. Under this message there were more than 300 comments. At first, only negative comments were deleted. Now, it seems everything relating to our concerns has been deleted.

It seems that Garage are not willing to respond to our concerns.

We were not asking for much. All we wanted is for the promotion of the event to change. Not even a name change. Just a new flyer. That was all.

As a result of the way Garage has responded, though, we will be calling for a boycott of Garage and its sister venues, as well as taking this story to our press contacts.

We urge you to change the promotion of ‘Booty Call’ and apologise to everyone who has complained.

Best wishes, Kate Harris”

Some things you can do:

1. Tweet your complaints with the hashtag #smashbootycall and link to this blog on your Facebook so all your friends can see it.

2. Use this email as a template, or write your own, and send it to sean@cplweb.com.

3. Email the press release to any contacts you have at newspapers, website, TV or radio stations.

4. Email scotland@equalityhumanrights.com and complain about the sex discrimination in only letting women in free before midnight.

UPDATE

Below is the new flyer. While it’s an improvement, it still objectifies women and somewhat resembles a phone sex call.

From their website it would appear that they’re still doing the ‘Girls Go Free B4 12′ thing.

Come on, Garage, address our concerns properly and stop being offensive and promoting sexism.