The mainstream media hates women

34 thoughts on The mainstream media hates women

1. I seriously think that it’s in part because people link to these articles to rant about them that they become the Most Emailed and Most Popular on their page, and thus they continue to run them.

   From now on, I’m going to quote them but not link to them if I feel the need to point out the stupidity/wrongness/anti-feminist nature of a mainstream media article.

2. With such blatant evidence of sexism in mainstream media i still have people say to me, “why in the world are you a feminist?! sexism is SO last decade…” HA

3. It’s not “just” the mainstream media. It’s everyone. Our neighbors. The U.S. government. Rape apologists. Employers. The vitriolic misogyny we’re seeing is astonishing only for its very public presentation. It’s always here. Somehow, it’s just really in fashion these days to display it proudly. Probably doesn’t have a thing to do with “How do we beat the bitch?” though, does it.

   Why am I a feminist, indeed.

4. Can you imagine the fear of those that can’t ever compete without the soft bigotry of privilege? It’s one thing to hold to meritocracy. It’s quite another to actually practice it.

5. Thank you for the link to Correntewire.

   Perhaps some of your readers would be interested in weighing in on this question: what should we make of the twentysomethings’ seeming general acceptance of “chick” and “girl” to describe women?

   As a Boomer-era male, I’ve grown up thinking of these terms — outside of friendly, ironic contexts — as diminishing of women. Now, I’m finding that younger men use them routinely… and are quite puzzled when I suggest that they might be offensive. Am I out of step, and these words needn’t be considered problematical any more, or what?

   Also, as a lifelong progressive, I’m deeply disappointed and distressed by the pervasive misogyny that Hillary Clinton has encountered during this campaign. While some are “finally proud” of America because of Obama’s campaign, I’m feeling a lot less proud of it, especially of the many in my party who have embraced sexism to diminish and even demonize HRC, and the news media (if it’s possible to feel less-proud of them), which started pouring it on literally the second the campaign season began.

6. Echoing Sarah… to these media outlets, justified outrage at their insipid columns is the new brier patch. “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

7. Wow. I don’t think there is a single paragraph in that Dowd column that doesn’t have some kind of sexist dig in it. Which it makes it especially ridiculous when, apparently deciding her shrill shoot-at-everything tirade needed some kind of moral, she ends by calling for “cerebral” as opposed to “visceral” attacks… “cerebral” as in “Hillary wears a pantsuit under her pantsuit?”

   As a side note, Dowd’s cultural references are incredibly strained. Nuke war serious = Tina Fey? With boxy Buddy Holly frames? And I can’t remember ever thinking of Philip Roth as especially wonkish….

8. Echoing Sarah… to these media outlets, justified outrage at their insipid columns is the new brier patch. “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

   And yet, if the same thing were written about, say, race, complaints would be taken quite a bit more seriously. That the editors see the response as encouragement says quite a bit about how pervasive and tolerated misogyny is, and how little regard is given to criticism of it.

   Misogyny gets a cute little rom-com spin. The battle of the sexes! Isn’t it charming? You know how those women are. Race, not so much.

9. Zuzu, thanks for putting them all in a line like that. It helps to remind me that I’m not crazy; there really is a huge amount of mainstream, virulent sexism that is accepted by our country. But while seeing it laid out like that helps to remind me I’m not crazy, it also makes me feel like I’m swimming against a riptide. It’s very discouraging. I tell myself it’s a backlash that is in response to some real feminist successes, but I only believe myself some of the time.

10. I am extremely feminist and can be extra sensitive to gender bias, but your post confirmed everything I have been thinking lately about male media writers or hosts that are supposedly for liberal equality. I guess it includes everyone in the world except women.

    I usually love Real Time with Bill Maher, but have stopped watching it and even went so far as emailing HBO about my boycott. He has been so nasty to women, particulary Clinton, on his show to the point that he gets angry at the audience for not laughing at his mysoginistic jokes. He is not one for a female dominated panel, but this season has alot of women missing or women who have little to say or are edited out. And don’t get me started on Matt Tabbei, or as I like to call him ‘Frat Boy.’ He covered some of the Clinton rally two weeks ago and videotaped heavyset, older women dancing and made nasty comments.

    Oddly, what I have been preaching to my family, friends and anyone who would listen all these years is finally sinking in to them. I am finding subliminal sexism makes people more aware of it than direct objectification (Playboy, etc.). I think it makes it more real – like women are actually marginized in everyday life.

11. What is the worst thing is seeing women reporters join in on the sexist dialogue, almost validating the male media viewpoint.

12. You know…February in general has been a bad month for women. Everything from cracked in the head doctors refusing paps smears to the constant shit storm of misogyny aimed at Clinton. I theorize that it has something to do with Clinton’s rise potential rise to power – it makes sense to me that when the privileged feel their privilege slipping away they may become even more caustic. But in any event it makes me want to go home, take a bubble bath and hide from the outside world for a few days. I can’t take all this hate.

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14. Vastleft: For some of the younger 20 somethings, it can be that we still think of ourselves as “girls” rather then “women.” Woman has a connotation of married, house, kids, settled, etc. whereas girl assumes you’re still dependent on your parents (as many of us are, thanks to this shitty economy). Of course, the fact that we think of ourselves as “girls” probably has something to do with infantilization in the media and all that.

15. Gawd, that trackback totally misrepresents what Zuzu posted in order to admonish Zuzu and Jessica for not responding to the Allen article in the way he thinks is appropriate.

    I’ve got to remember to not follow trackback links.

16. What’s funny about the trackback is that I linked Jill’s point-by-point takedown of Allen rather than the column itself, yet he’s complaining that feminists aren’t engaging her arguments.

17. This hatred of women explains why they are on the Obamawagon.

18. What’s funny about the trackback is that I linked Jill’s point-by-point takedown of Allen rather than the column itself, yet he’s complaining that feminists aren’t engaging her arguments.

    That’s faux irony almost as bad as the original subject. What arguments does Allen make that are not transparently terrible, hopefully requiring no rebuttal to a thinking human being?

19. Perhaps some of your readers would be interested in weighing in on this question: what should we make of the twentysomethings’ seeming general acceptance of “chick” and “girl” to describe women?

    One guy’s usage:

    “Girl”: One of my majors in college was at J-school, so I’m very Associated Press Style-specific…under 18, you’re a girl; over, you’re a woman. Same goes for the males with “boy” and “man.”

    “Chick”: …and yet, I’m also fairly casual, so I use chick, as well as dude or hombre or chap or gal or holmes or, or, or.

20. What arguments does Allen make that are not transparently terrible, hopefully requiring no rebuttal to a thinking human being?

    Well, you’re assuming that the criticism of Zuzu’s and Jessica’s rebuttals are honest criticisms.

    I’m not so sure. It seems like the feminsts are being held to a higher standard – when the criticizer apparently didn’t even read the responses.

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22. Vastleft, I am 25 and I dislike being called a ‘girl’ unless it’s by close friends or people who’ve known me all my life. I particularly dislike it in professional settings. Me and my 28-year-old female colleague are often referred to as ‘the girls’, e.g. ‘ask one of the girls to do it’ and it seriously pisses me off. There’s no way we would be referred to as ‘the boys’ in the same situation if we were male.

    I’ve spoken to people of my age about the use of ‘girl’ and ‘chick’ and although they don’t tend to feel as strongly about it as I do, they do agree that my views are legitimate.

    Thanks for challenging people on their use of the words.

23. My personal opinion on the “girl/chick vs. woman” question:

    My friends and I call each other girls all the time (we’re all in our mid-twenties). We’ll call our male friends guys or boys, as well. I don’t mind it at all when it’s used casually among close friends, but otherwise it definitely drives me crazy. Chick I just don’t like much at all in any situation, but I have friends who use the word to refer to themselves, so I guess your mileage may vary. Professionally and with people I don’t know well, I hate it.

24. Thanks to all for your thoughts on the resurgent use of “girl” and “chick” to refer to women.

    “Millennials” are living in a different context from mine, so it’s hard for me to know when young men toss those words around how it falls on the ears of their female counterparts. So far, it sounds like a mixed bag. Some don’t mind — especially among friends — and some feel the same way that many (or most) women of my generation do, especially when it’s done in the workplace.

    Some twentysomething commenters on my site took umbrage at the topic being brought up, but methinks it deserves a little more exploration, and I welcome any further comments here or at my home base.

25. Sorry I disappointed you. I just think, when you start with 48-49% negatives in most polling, you’re not a viable candidate in the general election. And the “experience” claim is ludicrous on its face: she’s had three, four more years in the Senate than Obama. We all know why she’s in a position to run for President, and it’s not a feminist position.
    PS: I’m not an Obama fan, either. If you watched the “OVertime” segment on the web, I outlined my disdain for all the Presidential candidates, of both parties, for their failure to discuss forthrightly the greatest man-made engineering disaster in this country’s history (to quote one of those who investigated it), the failure of the levees in New Orleans and the subsequent flooding of the city. But I do see Hillary Clinton as a seriously flawed candidate, choosing “experience” in a “change” year–almost as disastrous a choice as Dukakis’ opting for “competence” as his theme. And I don’t think criticizing her is, in itself, sexist, any more than criticizing Obama, per se, is racist.

26. Harry,

    Big fan, btw, and I appreciate that you’ve challenged Senator Obama to put his money where his mouth is.

    That aside, I don’t grant a lot of respect to “negatives” ginned up by Gingrich and Starr, and I’ve lost respect for the many Obama supporters who have gleefully refueled those infernal fires, including Democratic Underground users who are convinced that Hillary used Vince Foster’s corpse to bring down the twin towers.

    I started watching this campaign with low approval for Hillary myself, but she’s won me over with her resilience and her choice to tack left, as Obama has generally tacked right.

    That there were longstanding prejudices against Hillary before she got to take her case to the public doesn’t impress me much. Bush, it seemed, felt that poor black people in New Orleans didn’t have a high-enough approval rating to warrant taking action before or after Katrina hit. That didn’t impress me much, either.

27. Also, Harry…

    I think running on “competence” in a change year is far, far better than running on post-partisanship in a year when we finally have the chance to repudiate the Reagan Revolution.

28. “Far, far better” from the point of view of satisfying a left-Dem, or “far, far better” from the point of view of winnning a general election against a war hero in the midst of, I’m sorry to say, a war?

29. “Far, far better” from the point of view of satisfying a left-Dem, or “far, far better” from the point of view of winnning a general election against a war hero in the midst of, I’m sorry to say, a war?

    Running against a war hero didn’t make a bit of difference in 2004.

    And while the sockpuppeting is charming, you’re not Harry Shearer.

30. I don’t think criticizing her is, in itself, sexist, any more than criticizing Obama, per se, is racist.

    Thanks, Captain Obvious. Nobody claimed such a thing. If you can’t disgtinguish attacking Clinton’s policies from attacking Clinton’s sex, you’ve got some more learning to do.

31. Far, far better in galvanizing a general public that resoundingly dislikes this war and the Bush legacy overall, and far, far better at making 1600 Penn. Ave. into a progressive pulpit, the cure for what ails us.

    By our more-charismatic candidate’s choice of “unity” as the theme, he makes two enormous unforced errors:

    1. Pissing away the public’s proven — and oh so hard won — recognition that the Republican status-quo is debased
    2. Accepting the frame (post-partisanship) that is Mr. Maverick’s home field

    Further, Obama — just as Bill Clinton did — takes the coward’s way out in by failing to repudiate Reagan, who, as Obama seems to completely miss, was “transformative” by convincing people outside his natural base to head his way, rather than by being magnanimous toward the competing ideology.

    The Man from Hope (not to be confused with Obama or Huckabee) had somewhat more of an excuse — the country wasn’t near as disaffected with Bush I as it is with Bush II. This is a sea-change year, or it would have been, if Obama hadn’t built a centrist breakwater than only Sam Waterston and Michael Bloomberg should love.

    The prospect of the GOP winning by losing, as it did in 1992, which begat 1994, which begat Monicagate, which begat beerbuddy-beats-statesman, is vastly increased, IMHO, by Obama’s gratuitiously accommodationist rhetoric, sympathy for a devil that is — or nearly was — on its last hooves.

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