‘Real Men Don’t Kill Animals’ Billboard Rejected for Being ‘Offensive to Men’

PETA’s New Anti-Hunting Ad Blocked by Local Advertisers

For Immediate Release:
July 11, 2018

Contact:
Audrey Shircliff 202-483-7382

In advance of the 35^th Annual World Deer Expo in Birmingham, woman-founded and mostly women–led PETA tried to run a billboard near the convention that shows a young man pointing a rifle at a bear above the words “Gotta Be 18 to Buy a Gun. Gotta Be a Real Man Not to Use It. Real Men Don’t Kill Animals.” But local outdoor advertisers are refusing to run the ad, and one sales representative even told PETA that it was “offensive to men.”

“Hunting breeds insensitivity to others’ suffering, disturbs animal populations, damages ecosystems, and teaches young men that compassion is a women’s issue,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “Any man who feels ‘offended’ by PETA’s billboard should take a close look at the inferiority complex that compels him to show that he can shoot and kill an unarmed individual.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—notes that hunters kill millions of animals every year. Many are injured but not immediately killed and escape only to die slowly and painfully from blood loss or starvation, and orphans of parents killed by hunters are left vulnerable to starvation, dehydration, and predators. Hunters have also contributed to the extinction of species all over the world, including the Tasmanian tiger and the great auk.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.