Which one of the following is something that a company actually thought was a great name for a product, event or service?
- Market to Kids Like an Internet Pedophile! Reach Any Kid With Your Message!
- Women’s Shelter Wife Beater T-shirts (fundraiser!)
- Pimp My Cause: Marketing a Better World
- Nonprofit Marketing: How to Sell Yourself Like a Whore (but not get screwed over!)
- Effective Volunteer Management: Learn Best Practices from Southern Slave Owners
- Pole Dancing for Foster Kids (fundraising event)
- Learn to Screw the Competition and Get That Foundation Grant!
The for real idea is #3, Pimp My Cause: Marketing a Better World.
Yes, some genius thought that naming an online volunteering service after people who enslave women and children and force them to have sex for money would be a great idea for a product name marketed to nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations and others – including NGOs working against human trafficking.
In addition to the makers of this service thinking it was a great name, the United Nations Volunteers program did too, tweeting about it to their followers via its @volunteerplus10 account. And i-volunteer, in the UK, wrote about it and never once mentioned anything in their article about the wildly-inappropriate name (but you can, in the comments section of the story, as I have).*
The last time a nonprofit, NGO or volunteerism-focused organization did this that got my attention was back in 2008, when NetSquared and OneWorld – both of whom should have known better – thought “OneWorld.net Gets ‘Pimped’ at NetSquared DC Meetup” was a splendid headline. When I called them on it, their defense was:
We’re really just trying to be a little lighthearted…we use it in the most recent mainstream definition of the word.
Were I to use a racial slur in a little lighthearted way, because in the most recent mainstream definition of the word, it just means friend or man of a particular ethnicity, I have a feeling use of that word would cause quite a bit of outrage. Or what if I’d greeted a female UN Volunteer in an equally lighthearted and mainstream way, calling her bitch or ho or the dreaded “c” word? After all, those terms are used just as freely as pimp these days, and all the singers and actors and comedians interviewed about their use of these words swear they aren’t being derogatory to women.
In the world in which I work — and in the world that nonprofits, NGOs, UN agencies and UN Volunteers work — the word pimp means a person who engages in human enslavement, trafficking and sexual exploitation, and a show on MTV and use by techno hipsters and rap stars doesn’t change that. And in this world, there are millions of people enslaved by pimps. For real.
This is wrong on every level. Shame on everyone who doesn’t think so.
For more information about the sex trafficking of enslaved women and girls, and to understand why there is NOTHING cool or hip about slave traders, also known as “pimps”, please see:
- Coalition Against Trafficking in Women-International (CATW)
- Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE)*
- United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT)
- Polaris Project
- Against Our Will*
Be sure to let UN Volunteers, the comments section of the i-volunteer article and the makers of this outrageously-named service just how wrong this is. Or, if you don’t feel that way, then feel free to choose any of those name ideas at the start of your article yourself, so I can blog about it.
Update: See the followup to this blog: It’s About Respect – a lesson for all social entrepreneurs, corporations and other for-profit sector folks who want to help nonprofits, NGOs and other mission-based organizations.
* May 5, 2017 update:
I challenge you to go to Twitter and type in this phrase, pimp my cause, into the search function. Not only will the Twitter account for this reprehensibly-named organization come up, but look at the tweets and profiles that also come up. This is what any potential client would also see if they went looking. It shows all-too-well why the word pimp should not be used in a nonprofit’s name.
UNV’s @volunteerplus10 Twitter account has been discontinued, as have the IVO, i-volunteer, sagesf.org and againstourwill.org web sites , and the Against Our Will video, What is a Pimp, is no longer available online – at least that I can find. I managed to find the IVO/i-volunteer page originally referred to at archive.org, via this URL:
http://www.i-volunteer.org.uk:80/newshound/marketing-a-better-world-pimp-my-cause/
pimp nouna man who controls prostitutes and arranges clients for them, taking part of their earnings in return.verb [ intrans. ] [often as n. ] ( pimping)act as a pimp.??? [ trans. ] provide (someone) as a prostitute.Dictionary, version 2.0.3 (51.5) ?? Copyright 2005-2007 Apple Inc., All rights reserved.
Oxford English Dictionary editor at large Jesse Sheidlower:"This is not a word where its original sexual meaning has largely been forgotten," said Sheidlower. "Pimp still has that main meaning, and there is no question what it’s supposed to imply."http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4274500&page=1
Demi Moore Chastises Kim Kardashian for Saying "Pimpin’" http://www.usmagazine.com/celebritynews/news/demi-moore-chastises-kim-kardashian-for-saying-pimpin-2010293
Go to Google.com and type inpimp victimsRead the stories generated. What’s "hip" or benign about ANY of the stories generated?
Great to see you speaking out about this, Jayne. I shudder whenever I see this word on the internet, and it seems to be everywhere. I often think they mean to say primp and the ‘r’ has got lost somewhere.
Have you seen the urban dictionary definitions of pimp? (be warned adult language): http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pimp'eg
Jack: I know what a pimp is! Billy: Okay then, Jack, tell me. Jack: It’s A man who beats up women and owns over a thousand sex slaves.ORA man who makes a profession out of reducing women to commodities and convincing them to sell their bodies to clients. An oppressor of women. One of the lowest forms of humanoid scum.That rather changes the name: "lowest form of scum my cause"!ORA man who acts as a prostitute’s manager. They often claim much of the money that the prostitutes earn, saying that it’s legitimate since they "protect the prostitutes from harm." The "protection" is a lie, since pimps are known to be physically and/or mentally abusive to the prostitute(s) and often encourage them to take up drugs, so that addiction will keep them dependant on their pimp. One of the definitions says: 3. Something that’s cool, fashionable, or hip. Interestingly a lot of people have voted that definition down.Is it wrong to admit I was bemused the wifebeater t shirts idea? …terrified that it was a real fundraising situation.
Thanks, Martin. I so appreciate these comments – even the urban dictionary agrees with me! I remain astounded that there are people that don’t get this! I hope you will share these thoughts over on i-volunteer, where the general consensus is I’m out-of-step with "hip" culture. The wife beater t-shirt, and all the other ideas, EXCEPT "Pimp my nonprofit", are fake, thought up by me. Feel free to add more ideas for poorly-named nonprofits!
I do agree that it’s a bad slogan for any business, for a different reason however. My reason is purely pragmatic, as I think clients will react to it and therefore cost the business. Part of the fun and evolution of language is to take words and apply them into new circumstances. When I talk up my hockey playing son to a friend who is the coach of a team that my son is trying out for, and my wife, with a smile, accuses me of "pimping by son’s hockey career" there is no harm there. When subjects are emotionally charged is easy to lash out at anything that triggers those emotions, but words themselves are neutral, they don’t contain the baggage of the actions that are associated with them… imho.
"Checker", if anyone ever said I was pimping my child, that persons’ face would get to meet my beloved Louisville Slugger baseball bat. Joking about someone having sex with a child is never funny and never "neutral" – if you think, good luck with that. There’s nothing about sex trafficking – particularly child sex trafficking. I’m sure you would see nothing wrong with a company selling "wife beater" t-shirts as a fundraiser for a women’s shelter either. This isn’t about being politically correct, this isn’t about finding some old definition of a word – this is about here and now. A pimp is a human trafficker, and to pimp something is to prostitute it (to sell it for sex) or to make it like something a pimp would have (such as a car or a walk). The attitude of the people behind "Pimp My Cause" both in giving their service that name AND in defending it speaks *volumes* about how they feel about women, human trafficking and nonprofits and NGOs. It speaks louder than anything I could say, actually.
A sensible view…First and foremost in the words of Voltaire???Whilst I may not agree with what you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it. This is in respect of all of the previous comments, and those which may follow my posting.Free speech after all, is something Men and Women have fought and died for; and by enlarge the ability to speak freely and voice an opinion, is a mark of a civilised society.And so???my comment/observation is this.As any linguist would tell you, English is and always has been a living language, and what words are offensive today will not be tomorrow. Equally, the meaning and inference of words change, probably the most obvious of which to most is the word ???gay???, which in English/UK culture, according to dictionaries of the time, and historic context/use meant happy, bright and jolly, and ???Gay??? had no connection whatsoever, in respect of a persons sexuality.So when someone says you are ???gay???; an older person i.e. Octogenarian, may still mean you seem happy, joyful, etc. So we need to be mindful of our own bias, based on for example our age, and what we understand and deem a word to mean.Or do we say to older people who may use the word to mean joyous, that they are wrong, and homophobic!? The word pimp seems to be undergoing a similar linguistic change in respect of its common use, (such changes take time), and certainly in England/UK; pimp is now often seen to mean and represent making something better, improving, enhancing; as such we now see on mainstream TV, programs such as, as been mentioned, ???Pimp my Ride???, again referring to the customisation/improvement of vehicles, and not darker things. Of course ???Pimp my ride??? could quite easily be read and seen in a different way, as such as with much of English language, it???s often more about context than the word itself.Examples of the importance of context can be found all over the place, no more so than interactions between people, often close friends, where words often seen as being generally negative are used in a positive friendly way, i.e. upon meeting a friend in the UK, one might say, ???How you doing you old xxx???, or in the main Women rather than Men, may refer to each other, or indeed themselves as a ???Silly Cow???, (accompanied buy laughter). Equally, gay Men may call each other an old Queen, etc; and all said in a friendly way; again, one of the strange but endearing qualities of the rich English language. I could if I was so inclined be offended by jccravens use of the word freakin; ???You have got to freakin’ be kidding me!??? Why, because the word ???freakin???, is a derivative of Friggin/ing, which in England/UK is historically not a word one would use; as it means to Masturbate. This again not only demonstrates context, but also highlights that what words/phrases that are deemed acceptable in one part of the world, are not always acceptable and or appropriate in other parts, and as a result an American may feel perfectly fine in using freakin, and not give it a second thought, but this is not a word I would use, another example may be Butt/ArseSo am I to be offended at jccravens use of the word ???feakin???, na??? friggin!?NO! Why? Well firstly, because of the context in respect of its use, and secondly that fact that unfortunatley we always seem to be accommodating people who are ???offended???, about everything, and at every opportunity, The so called ???professionally offended???, PC brigade, and who if they were not offended at one thing they would look until they found something to offend them.However, I am more likely to be offended at the fact that jccraven only mentions females in the context of pimp/ing, harm, abuse etc, and makes no specific reference or mention of similar in respect of Boys and Men, and/or the fact that Women are also perpetrators of ???pimping??? etc, in the sense she means; which of course, is equally abhorrent! To that end, unfortunatley, jccravens words come across more as an increasingly hostile, anti Male feminist, rant, rather than an objective considered balanced argument, and one which takes into consideration linguistics, context, environment and culture in respect of the written word; as such I think the argument and message, however valid, has been lost as a result of this stance/approach.
Anyone who would post those kinds of comments – meant only to insult, not to enlighten – anonymously is, of course, a coward. Unlike this person, I will not hide when it’s time to take on a slickly-produced but horrifically-named organization, no matter how high-profile the organizers. One has to wonder why the poster would not say who he (or she) was – and why he (or she) couldn’t get my name right (jccravens? That’s a new one).Interesting to talk about the word "gay." Right now, in the USA, it’s become fashionable for teens, 20 somethings and 30 somethings to call anything that they feel is weird or stupid as "gay." It’s meant as an insult. And, thankfully, the gay community and its allies (people like me), are fighting back, saying, "No, you don’t get to redefine the word in a negative context." Here is the excellent, award-winning PSA about it:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWS0GVOQPs0The word "pimp" has NOT been redefined to mean, "Making something look shiny." It has, indeed, been redefined – in addition to its mainstream meaning of "a trafficker in human beings, primarily women, who forces them to have sex for money," it now also means, "Making something look shiny like a car or outfit driven by a PIMP, a trafficker in human beings, primarily women, who forces them to have sex for money." That’s the reality. Anonymous hasn’t changed that, MTV hasn’t changed that, lots and lots of teenagers and 20 somethings haven’t changed that. Quit making excuses, quit trying to make this a free speech issue (it’s NOT), and either say, "Yes, it’s called Pimp my Cause, because we think there is much to be learned and admired from sex traffickers – and our next effort will be for refugee women and we’re calling it ‘Bitches Need Homes, Yo’", or say "Wow, we goofed. We’ll change the name to something more appropriate, to show we understand both the nonprofit sector and human dignity. Lesson learned! We’re donating $1000 to an anti-trafficking organization to show that we understand now." And if they’ll do the latter, I’ll praise them and promote them.