Cougar cops

I have blogged before about why I think the phrase “cougar” is not only boring in it’s predictable misogyny of comparing women to animals, but anti-sex and pro rape culture in it’s poking fun of older women enjoying being sexual when really we’re all supposed to lie back and think of England, right?

So how to read the Police’s latest recruitment campaign?

The Police say they’re trying to get down with the yoof so some cops will be able to keep up with criminals.  Recruitment marketing manager James Whitaker describes it like this:

We’re aiming to attract intelligent, balanced, non-judgmental young people, and using a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour is a sound way to engage people in our target group who are able to read the fine print and find the key point in a message of that nature.”

The fine print here ain’t so fine, in my opinion. 

If you can laugh at older women wanting sex, the Police is the place for you.  And if you can’t, you’re dumb, unbalanced and judgmental.  If the idea of older women coercing younger men to be sexual is funny, come join the cops.  Hell, that stuff about coercion is only in our laws against unwanted sexual acts for a bit of a laugh anyway, right?  Seems to me New Zealand Police might have wanted to be a little more careful about their public image around this kind of stuff given their recent report card was so poor.

That’s two New Zealand institutions now using “cougar” as a publicity stunt.  Anyone would think older women enjoying sex was deeply threatening something about how the world was organised.

Just imagine a world where a Police recruitment strategy went something like this:

“We’ve got a lot in common with feminists.  We like to catch rapists too.”

Maybe next year.