Feministing or Fox News?
Time to play everyone’s favorite game show!
Here’s excerpt one.
Imagine being in a totally sexually fixated state. Only instead of a person, your irresistible attraction involves an object or behavior.
Known as fetishes, people are often incredibly amused by their unconventional nature. But having a fetish can be emotionally and erotically gratifying in many respects, turning any judgment into a case of “who’s laughing now?”
So well-known is the foot fetish that it’s gone from laughable to a wholesome kink of sorts. Still an exploration of what it entails and why it exists can cause discomfort, which is why it’s remained so cryptic. Few are brave enough to unlock the mysteries of the foot fetish. Are you?
So is it Fox News or Feministing?
And excerpt two:
I am a Muslim woman and I do not wear the burqa or the headscarf. The constant reference in liberal media to those women who choose to wear it has made it increasingly difficult for the countless Muslim women, such as myself, to express our discomfort with it. This is because any outright criticism of the garment comes across as an intolerant attack on the religion of Islam as well as the Muslim women wearing it.
The reality is that many women have reason to dislike the burqa even when they do not harbor any Islamophobic sentiments. The fact is that the burqa is often imposed on women by hardline states or religious groups. The Saudi Arabian government forces women to wear the burqa in all public places. It also prohibits women from driving or travelling without a male relative. The Taliban imposed the burqa on women when it controlled Afghanistan before 2001. Today, it forces women to wear it in areas it controls in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In societies in which women are punished severely for not wearing it, the burqa is a part of a range of laws and policies designed to suppress women. It is not hard to see why many women in these societies associate the burqa with a highly repressive patriarchal structure that subjugates and confines women in the name of Islam.
Fox News or Feministing?
I’m not sure what the program is here. In one corner we have some linkbait written to trick googlers to the Fox News extravawebganza.
In another corner we have a woman considering how Western feminists’ approach toward Islamic women, how woman should see themselves within Islam and other issues feminists have long been concerned with.
— talboito · Jun 30, 04:15 PM · #
Conor: I think that FoxNews has proven my adage that conservatives will eat up any plate of sh*t served to them so long as it is called “conservative”. If you can get past the lens of ideology, it is pretty easy to see that FoxNews provides poor journalism.
— Will Hinton · Jun 30, 04:32 PM · #
Yeah, not really a difficult game. On one hand, a sexual subculture is lasciviously described to titillate and amuse; on the other, a woman describes her own experiences and the coercion and pressure she feels from a highly misogynistic culture.
What about this did you think was going to be hard? Were we supposed to think that Feministing is about sex and Fox News is about Islamo-bashing?
— Chet · Jun 30, 04:43 PM · #
Agreed… this was pretty easy. The only really disappointing thing, I suppose, is yet another demonstration of how divorced “conservative” media is from actual social conservatives.
— JS Bangs · Jun 30, 04:57 PM · #
Well, okay, you guys all win then! Chet, I’d say that Feministing often has “sex positive” posts, and seldom has lines like “the liberal media” and preemptive defenses against Islamophobia… whereas on FOX News, you don’t expect foot fetishes and you do expect lines about the liberal media and preemptive defenses against Islamophobia.
Anyone, it’s pretty clear that in this round of the game show Fox News comes out looking pretty silly, and Feministing not so much.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 30, 05:18 PM · #
What the hell? Conor, you need to get out more. This is one nerdy post. Straight out of wonksville. Maybe the American Scene should get Joe the Plumber to break something newsworthy.
Fox News or Feministing? I can see it now. Your next exciting post will be something like:
ABC or (Some Other Site No One’s Ever Heard Of). Geez.
Does it ever bother you that the left-wingers are all warm and fuzzy for your posts, while us right-wingers are not so much?
— jd · Jun 30, 09:58 PM · #
Fox News comes out looking silly? For presenting information on sexuality written in what I’d call pretty plain style with a reassuring tone by a credible educator? I don’t get it.
Titillation is in the pants of the beholder.
— ell · Jul 1, 12:23 PM · #