Today, if a male journalist isn’t a feminist himself, he probably often rubs elbows with one in his office. He may “feel the feminist heat” when it comes to reporting on gender issues – the heat being the pressure to report or opine on the issues only from a feminist perspective.
So maybe it’s understandable why many newspapers, especially liberal papers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, and USA Today, as well as the liberal Sawyer/Pelley/Williams axis that is the network evening news, generally reflect a feminist view on gender issues.
But if you ask a male journalist why gender issues seem rarely if ever discussed from a man’s non-feminist view, he isn’t likely to reply, “Because I feel the heat to go with the feminist flow.” He knows that such a brazenly honest ‘fessing-up might paint the office feminists as being as oppressive as they say men are, and might put him in hot water. So just as the feminist heat influences him to report on gender issues only from a feminist perspective, it influences his explanation of why he reports only from a feminist perspective. Thus, he is far more apt to say he wants to give only women a voice on gender issues because:
- The U.S. president is a man.
- The Congress is virtually all men.
- So are politicians, CEOs, managers…
- In the news it’s all men all the time.
- Clearly it’s men who run things and have the power.
- Men use their power to oppress women.
- We hear only a male perspective on political issues, so just who do you think should be getting most of the air time on gender issues?
Never mind that gender issues affect both sexes, just as political issues do, and that women are in fact being given almost as much voice in political issues as men are, while men are still rarely given a voice in gender issues.
And never mind that millions of men don’t fit into any of the above categories, that few men have political power, and that most men have less “gender power” than women — which is why as women gain in the productive sphere, men still lag behind women with rights in the reproductive sphere.
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For the balance always omitted by the media, see:
