The New York Times reports that Fox News keeps headlining stories of women teachers having sex with teen age boys.
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| The on-air Fox look |
I wrote about it two months ago.
It is a favorite story line for them. Their reporting of incidents of woman-teacher-with high-school-boy is so relentless it must have purpose.
What's going on?
Back in January I wrote that every few days the Fox News website would have yet another story about some kind of sexual misbehavior between a teacher and a student. She was sometimes a church leader or mother of a friend, but most often a school teacher..
Back in January I wrote that every few days the Fox News website would have yet another story about some kind of sexual misbehavior between a teacher and a student. She was sometimes a church leader or mother of a friend, but most often a school teacher..
I start with a premise that Fox was doing what Fox does: feed the assumptions and biases of its audience exactly the world view they want and already believe. Fox knew that story resonated. What part of the story resonated so deeply with their audience of older, traditional, conservative men and women?
Some of it was just prurience, I thought, tabloid trash, but the type of trash had meaning. My conclusion at the time was that Fox was using the reiterated story of teacher misbehavior as a complement to the wordless message of their on-air staging and costuming. They were trying to undermine the notion of the de-sexualized workplace, I speculated, as part of an attack on the equality of women in work.
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| Click Here for my January 7 Post. |
Some of it was just prurience, I thought, tabloid trash, but the type of trash had meaning. My conclusion at the time was that Fox was using the reiterated story of teacher misbehavior as a complement to the wordless message of their on-air staging and costuming. They were trying to undermine the notion of the de-sexualized workplace, I speculated, as part of an attack on the equality of women in work.
Fox masculinizes men and feminizes women. (Men wear suits and the women are young, attractive, heavily made up, and are dressed for a cocktail party, bare legged and facing the camera.) By showing women as hyper-feminine sex objects on the air and sexual predators in their website, I said, they feed their audience's notion that men are men and women are women and that sex tension in the workplace is inevitable, no matter what those crazy feminists try to claim.
They were attempting to document that the current work environment that puts men and women together with equality in status and pay in professional environments is un-natural. They were quietly advocating for a Japanese type system where men did serious work and women employees served tea.
They were attempting to document that the current work environment that puts men and women together with equality in status and pay in professional environments is un-natural. They were quietly advocating for a Japanese type system where men did serious work and women employees served tea.
There may be a simpler explanation.
It may just be "slut shaming", which reinforces the traditional patriarchal order of the world and presumptions about male and female sexuality. Men do serious work. Women are good and virtuous in the home, but are sexed-up and dangerous outside the home. In their website we learn repeatedly they prey on young men. Its audience of older men get the story that women are so insatiable that schoolteachers cannot keep their hands off 16 year old boys. Shameful-but-hot. Older women read of other women behaving badly, and feel superior in comparison. Either way, women's sexuality is dangerous.
Overall, men voted for Trump. Democrats were dismayed to learn a majority of white women ended up voting for Trump, too. Women judged Hillary harshly. Crooked Hillary. Trump was considered more honest and trustworthy than Hillary.
Democrats think this is the Year of the Woman. It is women's turn. Maybe they can clean up government. In the Democratic presumption, men are the more-likely wrong-doer.
Fox has its counter-story, that women are untrustworthy and dangerous, temptresses and predators, dangerous to put into power. After all, Hillary was crooked and women are slutty. Women are no better than men. They are worse, maybe. They are sneaky and people don't suspect them, but they should.
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| Click: NY Times story |
It may just be "slut shaming", which reinforces the traditional patriarchal order of the world and presumptions about male and female sexuality. Men do serious work. Women are good and virtuous in the home, but are sexed-up and dangerous outside the home. In their website we learn repeatedly they prey on young men. Its audience of older men get the story that women are so insatiable that schoolteachers cannot keep their hands off 16 year old boys. Shameful-but-hot. Older women read of other women behaving badly, and feel superior in comparison. Either way, women's sexuality is dangerous.
Overall, men voted for Trump. Democrats were dismayed to learn a majority of white women ended up voting for Trump, too. Women judged Hillary harshly. Crooked Hillary. Trump was considered more honest and trustworthy than Hillary.
Democrats think this is the Year of the Woman. It is women's turn. Maybe they can clean up government. In the Democratic presumption, men are the more-likely wrong-doer.
Fox has its counter-story, that women are untrustworthy and dangerous, temptresses and predators, dangerous to put into power. After all, Hillary was crooked and women are slutty. Women are no better than men. They are worse, maybe. They are sneaky and people don't suspect them, but they should.
1 comment:
I have often thought the majority audience for FOX was adolescent males...wouldn't that explain it?
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