This lesson comes courtesy of the Courier Mail. Click on the image above to see a larger version of the screen shot, which is of the web version of that newspaper.
Or picture this.
Four political stories about four different federal politicians and all of them use the politician’s last name in the title of the story, except one. Which story was it? The one about the Prime Minister, the one about the previous Prime Minister, the one about the Leader of the Opposition, or the one about the Independent?
The one about the female politican, natch. She happens to also be our country’s Prime Minister but she is the only one casually reduced to her first name.
The articles are as follows…
“How Julia wooed Independents”
“Why Abbott failed to seal PM deal”
“He’s back. Rudd in the spotlight after win”
“Oakeshott not worried about losing seat”
(Another blink blink example of media misogyny here, via Hoyden About Town).
I’m all for fighting and illuminating misogyny, but I fail to see this as a definite action. I remember Kevin this and Kevin that never being called for intentional misandry.
This article as shown, also uses the words “How Gillard wooed the independents”.
Karen, granted it is a one off here but interesting still that she is the only one where they have used the first name. And Kevin of course is among the politicians featured in these articles and he is being referred to here as Rudd too.
And while Kevin was used a bit following the ‘Kevin 07’ campaign tag I still recall ‘Rudd’ and ‘Howard’ and ‘Keating’ and ‘Hawke’ being the norm in the press. Will ‘Gillard’ also be the norm for the Murdoch press?
Plus, the kicker in these instances is that the woman is treated differently to all the men. I have seen similar levels of exclusion in work settings where the men are all ‘mate’ and ‘first name basis’ with one another and the woman was left with the formality of ‘Ms Blah Blah’.
Rudd was definitely referred to by his first name – but given that the ALP made that part of their campaign it only made sense.
I also seriously doubt we’d have had the headline “Rudd wooed [anyone]” nor any innuendo about sexual tension between the PM and Opposition Leader. Not to mention the fashion commentary. Sigh.
The name thing is annoying and indicative of a broader approach to women in politics (and life generally) but the ‘wooing’ thing really gets me, with its innuendos.
Then again, isn’t wooing something that men are supposed do to women? i.e., there’s an active pursuit, that’s usually denied to women in representations of sexual activities.
But then again, romance + women is a common trope.
Could Tony ‘court’ the Independents? I guess not, as that then invokes homosexuality. He had to keep it on a professional footing and seal the deal.
So there’s sexism and homophobia implicit in the collection of headlines.
Ahhhhh this drives me crazy. When we were having our elections in the U.S., everyone insisted on calling Sarah Palin “Sarah” and Hillary Clinton “Hillary,” or worse, “Mrs. Bill.” On top of that, many people said the reason they would not vote for Clinton was because of her husband. Because clearly, as a woman, she would be taking policy direction from her spouse. I mean, DUH. No woman politician could ever set her own policy, right? By contrast, our male candidates were referred to by their last names -Obama and McCain – or full names.
At the time, I could not for the life of me get my (liberal) editorial staff to grok what they were doing wrong in their headline-writing ways. Believe me, I tried. ‘Twas something of an epiphany for me, driving home the reality that liberalism and feminism do not always coexist in people. Shameful, really.
The media are following a literary convention of naming male protagonist with their family names, and female characters (usually *not* the main protagonists, but mere foils for the men) with their first names.
That doesn’t make it any less misogynist.
Ditto what Sarah said, except that Palin had an advantage because Todd was just a fisherman and snowmobiler, while Bill Clinton’s resume was harder to overlook.
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