Pinkwashing Turns on Itself with Breast Cancer Awareness Gun

Smith & Wesson Breast Cancer Awareness PistolOctober was Breast Cancer Awareness month, and the group Breast Cancer Action seized on the opportunity to promote its Think Before you Pink campaign to raise awareness of how companies are increasingly exploiting breast cancer as a marketing device to sell products -- some of which are actually harmful to women's health. Pink ribbon campaigns are offering up some bizarre, albeit benign products like a breast cancer awareness toaster and a breast cancer awareness floating Beer Pong table. But the most bizarre item yet to have a pink ribbon slapped on it must be Smith & Wesson's Pink Breast Cancer Awareness 9 mm Pistol, promoted by a woman named Julie Goloski, Smith and Wesson's Consumer Program Manager and a sharpshooter herself. Goloski is promoting S&W's breast cancer awareness pistol on her Facebook page, saying "October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Breast Cancer Awareness M&P’s are shipping to dealers. I am thrilled to have my name associated with such a worthy cause and one of my favorite firearms." According to a 2008 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, firearms are the second most common cause of violent deaths of women, accounting for 29.2% of all violent deaths among females in the U.S. in 2008.

Comments

Now that we've seen what Susan G. Komen Foundation is really up to (read: political effort to attack Planned Parenthood), maybe we'll finally see some waning of all this pink-product nonsense.

...No mention of guns, but...

http://www.thenation.com/blog/166111/evil-brilliance-komens-karen-handel

Bottom line: sweets to the sweet.

This is pinkwashing at its creepiest. Disgusting! Thanks Anne for highlighting this.

The thrust of the article is that a symbol of breast cancer awareness on a firearm is inappropriate because firearms are a common cause of violent deaths of women. A lot of the comments suggest that there are significant numbers of women who defend themselves from violent crime with handguns. It seems to me that pro-gun people should know the numbers, not be asking for them. I'm not against guns. I'm just interested in learning the number of women who successfully defend themselves from violent crime by wielding a gun. Who keeps such statistics? It would be enlightening to know which is higher, the number of women who die by firearms or the number of women who live by firearms? It would also be interesting to know, since so many violent crimes against women are committed by people they know, how gun action by women is treated by law enforcement and the courts.

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