It's the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and my housemates and I, stuffed chock full of pumpkin pie and awkward tales of family dining, sit down to have dinner together. My housemate Arlen brings up a particularly entertaining article she found on the Fox News website. The article, summed up succinctly, is about why "feminists" are ruining the institution of marriage.
This, I tell you, sparks an idea. What if... just what if... we search "feminists" on the Fox News website. What would we find? Well my friends, we found some great, great stuff. From the way that these people describe "feminists," you would think we are a group of Elizabeth Warren-worshiping, contraceptive-hoarding political junkies who eat nothing but Nature Valley bars and occasionally wash our hair in the river with organic soap products. It's fascinating - Fox News has personified "feminists" as a tight-knit and strategically thinking political group, rather than an identification of many people who simply believe in equal rights. It's like they think we're a super PAC - the feminist equivalent to Karl Rove here is obviously Nancy Pelosi who is obviously plotting the ruin of America. Interesting too, only liberal women can be "feminists" in the Fox News world, not conservative women. I'd bet those hippy-liberal-women-feminists think even Michele Bachmann deserves to be a feminist if she wants to - you know how us liberals feel about choice!
So I thought, why not! Lets delve further. Why not peruse the website and really get a good idea of exactly the kind of "feminists" Fox News is talking about. There's got to be some themes going on in there. So, peruse I did. And this is the good stuff that I found.
The first hit is the aforementioned article about how women are ruining marriage. This article is called "The war on men" - an obvious reference to the "War on Women." So clever! I like how they switched around a concept in which lawmakers tried to take away the rights of women over their reproductive health to be a concept about ruining a man's right to find "desirable" women to marry. Captivating stuff! I see what you did there. Many articles mirrored this newsworthy marriage-ruining trend. I call this the "feminists for marriage apocalypse" theme.
Moving on, we've got the elegantly titled "Are Feminists Jealous of Sarah Palin?" article. This is a published transcript from an interview by Laura Ingraham on "The O'Reilly Factor" in 2009, interviewing two others about Sarah Palin. This line from the article was just so incredibly excellent, the best service I could do to it is to quote it in full: "Admit it right now. Palin is hot. She is pro-life. She shoots. She hunts. She has a big family. And all these feminists are like just seething with jealousy about it." Hit the nail on the head with that one, Laura! Just seething with jealousy. The commentators move on to criticize the "spinster, childless columnists" that dislike Palin. I regret - as a spinster, childless columnist - I bear no exception to the rule. I call this the "feminists for Republican apocalypse" theme.
Last, we have a compilation of concepts over one umbrella theme, which more or less recounts what we "feminists" just don't understand. We've got the "feminists don't understand that true self-sufficiency from men means Republican ideals" concept. We've got the "feminists don't understand that Obama is bribing them with contraception" concept. Romney evidently hopped on the bandwagon with this one. Don't forget the "feminists just ruin everything" concept. Pervasive throughout my searches. In total, I call this compilation the "feminists are blind and here comes the apocalypse" theme.
So, my friends, those are just a modest few of the themes I found on my journey. I wish you luck on yours, if you so choose it. Happy Apocalypse!
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Alexa Petersen is a senior majoring in political science and peace and justice studies. She can be reached at Alexa.Petersen@tufts.edu.
