Never enough room in the headline

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Soraya points out yet another “women don’t count.”

In the actual story, misogyny is cited in the first paragraph:

Student activists at Swarthmore College are demanding the school permanently shut down campus fraternities in the aftermath of leaked documents showing racist, misogynist and homophobic comments as well as jokes about sexual assault allegedly from fraternity members.

Misogyny and sexual assault – you’d think that would put misogyny first in the headline, but instead it’s dropped altogether, as if it just doesn’t count quite as much, even with the violence. Women…you know…they’re probably just privileged white sorority girls, or rich lawyers, or boring mommies, or hags, or [shudder] feminists. They don’t belong in the headline. They just don’t matter that much. Sorry.

Comments

2 responses to “Never enough room in the headline”

  1. Holms Avatar
    Holms

    “Misogyny? That’s one of those SJW words. Fuck it, it’s gone.”

  2. tiggerthewing Avatar
    tiggerthewing

    It is usual, isn’t it, to rank goods or ills in order of their benefits or harms. So sexism/misogyny should always be at the head of any list, because sexism is the foundational -ism. As well as causing the greatest harm to the greatest number of people, a society which supports the underlying assumption that a class of people is necessarily lower in importance and rights than another class of people raises its members to apply that principal to people of different races, different sexual orientations, and different physical and mental abilities.

    So members of the class which has put itself at the top have a vested interest in ignoring sexism, because drawing attention to it risks them losing the idea that their dominance is a matter of evolution or a gift from the gods, and not an optional situation which is maintained artificially.

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