No Clever Moniker wrote:
While the board was down I received a tweet from a
female journalist who's work I have respected over many years. Thanks to her, I learned a whole lot about a true issue that social media facilitates. Suffice to say, our girl Julie's game is weak and has an odor.
From this tweeted link came a whole lot of information and insight.
http://alldigitocracy.org/women-journal ... uch-worse/A woman reporter was told she “gained too much weight” and that sent the message that she “is not able to discipline herself in a visual medium.” Another woman journalist was called a “stupid blonde sorority chick” and a woman anchor was told to “keep shoving food down that pie hole of yours… it shuts up that annoying donkey braying noise you make when you talk.”
Last week some of those women and their men colleagues at WGN Chicago addressed negative emails and tweets they received from viewers. The video shows how women news anchors bear the brunt of nasty viewer commentary, and that criticism normally centers on the woman news anchor’s appearance.
Women with years of reporting experience and journalism expertise often find their skills eclipsed by criticism about their appearance and negative perceptions about their intellect. But journalists who are women of color face criticism that is a unique blend of sexualized insults and racial slurs combined with violence, according to leading experts.
No research looks specifically at women journalists of color, but there is a double burden that women of color face in terms of harassment, according to Jennifer L. Pozner, founder and executive director of Women in Media and News, which provides media analysis, education and advocacy group on behalf of women journalists..
Watching this video and the number one commonality is their experience as professionals and the reactions they get.
https://youtu.be/oDYo6jQBHU4.
That's interesting, but one thing I've never seen accounted for is the arbitrary element of the viciousness of some of the things hurled at females. What I mean by that is that there
has to be a component of these attacks that is simply someone saying the thing they think will most hurt the recipient, regardless of whether that thing is factual or a legitimate representation of what they think or expect.
In all of the hateful things I've seen hurled at JDC, for instance, not once have I seen an "attacker"'s larger point being "you're a woman and thus your opinions, particularly on sports, are invalid or at least less-than." That's never been the impetus for hate on her. Rather, it's largely been disagreement driving the hate bus, with people on Twitter being angry at something JDC says or does, and immediately going for the jugular (we won't count the times legitimate disagreement has been labeled as an "attack" by her). In that sense, these "attacks" seem more like childishness cloaked in anonymity than overt sexism and misogyny.
Men receive vitriol from the more childish and brutish of the internet's rank-and-file anonymous idiots as well, the attacks only being dissimilar in that they appear more generalized than specific. Is "go die burrito" really any better or worse than "stop tweeting and eat more cake you cow"? Now, is
that difference in attacking MO sexism? The idea that women are more likely to be hurt by personal attacks on their looks/body, while men are susceptible to other ad hominems? Eh...maybe, I guess, but it's a far cry from every single negative thing said to a female in media being indicative of a sexist worldview and society that condones it.
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