'Foxy' ladies

The award for 2005-06 school year's most misogynistic network has been announced. Without further ado, it is ... Fox. Big surprise, I'm sure.\nActually, there's really no such award (that I know of), but if there were, Fox would unquestionably receive it. \nPerhaps the worst of Fox's offenders is "Geraldo at Large." I accidentally had it on the accursed channel a couple of weeks ago while I was getting ready to go out, when Geraldo and his gigantic moustache caught my attention.\nHis first big story was about Mary Winkler, the woman who murdered her pastor husband. However, he did not simply report the story, but proceeded with an in-depth story presuming to answer the question: "How could a woman, a 'supporting wife and doting mother no less,' do such a thing?" The coverage fell to a manifesto on how "good women go bad." \nI am by no means condoning Winkler's action, but simply proposing that the extensive exposure this story received seemed unnecessary. On average, more than three women are murdered by their intimate partners every day. Additionally, 33.5 percent of female homicide victims are murdered by their intimate partners, compared with less than 4 percent of male homicide victims. \nThis story alone might not seem like much more than a story being blown out of proportion, but juxtaposed with this story was one about a kidnapping perpetrated by a male-to-female transgender babysitter who supposedly "duped" the family she worked for by "disguising" herself as a woman. Again, what she did was wrong, but that wasn't what mattered to Geraldo. \nInstead, the story focused on the babysitter's "dishonesty" about her gender (despite the fact that she had her birth certificate legally changed to "female," that she lived full-time as a woman and that she had even had breast implants). Overall, the story had absolutely nothing to do with the crime committed, but rather simply was a thinly veiled attempt to police the gender of the offender. \nAlso on Fox is, of course, "The Swan." Do I even need to explain why a show whose premise is taking "ugly duckling" women, operating on them until they look like automaton Barbie dolls and then congratulating them on risking their life to have a more socially acceptable body is misogynistic? I didn't think so.\nThen, there's "Nanny 911," where the family's dysfunction is almost always directly attributed to the mother. And when the woman's overweight, the nannies decide (before even meeting her) that it's symptomatic of her laziness as a parent.\nOr "Trading Spouses," where wives are interchangeable?\nAnd finally, "24," where sexual harassment is presented as a nonexistent crime alleged by hysterical and oversensitive women. Are they still embarrassed about good old O'Reilly over there at FoxNews?\nI could name more examples, but there's not enough space in a semester. I'm not naive enough to think that misogyny is limited to Fox, but it does seem to be more prevalent on Fox than any other station.\nIt's time for a boycott (or rather, girlcott), but first I just need to wean myself off "The Simpsons"