Welcome, class. Please take out your textbooks and turn to the chapter on Media, Society and Politics. As you’ll see, today’s lesson focuses on the cultural intersection between two seemingly disparate topics: The new series of VW television ads, and South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds’s recent signing of a bill that bans nearly all abortions in his state. “What on God’s green earth is the connection?” You might be asking. Well, dear students—I’ll tell you. The latest television adverts for VW, which introduce the redesigned GTI, attempt to reinstate the sports car’s long lost cult following. And how do they attempt this feat? Why, they do it in large part by tapping in to the inherent misogyny of America’s fine young men, of course!

The spots are driven (so to speak) by an evil-looking totem: a little black monster called simply "Fast." The icon serves as the intended personification of young American men’s insatiable desire for speed (velocity, not meth) and freedom. We’ll call it speedom. In any case, the formula is this: a young buck, itching for speedom at the wheel of his shiny new GTI, treats his girlfriend like crap. For example, in one ad, a young woman—her hair flapping about her face as her boyfriend races down his own private Autobahn—asks sweetly if they might roll the windows up a tad. At the frightening behest of his “Fast,” he tells her no, ultimately shutting her up with the statement, “It’s really hard to enjoy the sound of the engine with all that yakking.” Another ad features a young man who locks his girlfriend out of the car as he prepares to leave on an errand, telling her that he’d “rather not carry the extra weight.”

It’s one thing to appeal to men under the age of 25—it’s another thing to do it by encouraging misogyny. And how does this have anything to do with Monday’s signing of a bill that denies women the right to their own bodies (even bodies that have been assaulted by rape or incest); a bill that aims to ultimately chip away at Roe V. Wade? Simple. The VW ads present and promote a society in which women are second-class citizens. VW holds up a mirror, and it reflects a country in which treating women with disrespect is considered acceptable and even amusing. Misogyny becomes a sales pitch, a marketing tactic. And it shows us why legislation like the bill signed this week in South Dakota needs to be regarded as a direct and very serious attack on the rights of every woman in this country. In a country that still hasn’t passed the Equal Rights Amendment, and in a country where women are increasingly denied the right to choose, there can be no room for complacency, passivity, or patience. American women have to act, and they have to act “Fast.”