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Fox News Has No Idea What Women Want
What do you want for Valentine’s Day, other than for everybody around you to shut up about Valentine’s Day? Well, let’s see here. Browsing through the #WhatWomenWant hashtag on Twitter, we’ve got “the Paycheck Fairness Act,” “access to safe & legal abortion,” “chocolate,” and what looks like a picture of a very big sandwich.
Regardless of what you think you may have in mind, though, Fox News knows what you really want: To be a good, subservient housewife who respects her husband’s dominance, spits out a kid every once in a while, and doesn’t care if she’s paid less than her male counterparts. See? They’ve got it all figured out for you! No independent thought required!
In reality, Fox — in its capacity as the Republican Party’s propaganda wing — hasn’t the slightest clue what women want. That hasn’t stopped the network from insisting that it does, though. Here are its worst attempts at Foxsplaining gender to its largely brain-dead viewership.
WOMEN DON’T WANT EQUAL PAY
In a discussion on the pay gap, Fox host Martha MacCullum addressed the preposterous notion that women might want to get paid as much as men. Hogwash, MacCullum insisted! Demanding equal pay would amount to “a little special handout,” and women don’t want to be “treated as a sort of a special class of citizen.” (Around 6:30 in the clip.)
Alan Colmes, one of Fox’s token liberals, shot back that equal pay for equal work isn’t a “special handout.” MacCullum’s response?
“Women get paid exactly what they’re worth.”
Well, then, case-closed!
WOMEN WANT TO CHOP FOOD AND HAVE KIDS
We’ve written before about Suzanne Venker, an anti-feminist who runs a group called Women For Men that basically aims to undo every iota of progress women have made over the last fifty years or so. Unsurprisingly, she’s a favorite of Fox News.
Here she is making a tortured argument as to why the existence of careerism in America therefore means that women should get married, have kids, and stay out of the workplace.
WOMEN WANT TO BE SUBSERVIENT
Fox recently had a ridiculous conversation about a poll that showed conservative women reporting higher levels of happiness than their liberal counterparts. In discussing why this might be, Scottie Nell Hughes theorized that it might have something to do with conservative womens’ respect for — wait for it — traditional gender roles.
“[Conservative women] respect that the man is the head of the household,” Hughes said. “Most liberal marriages, they’re kind of battling. Who’s the big dog in the marriage? And you have that tension, and tension does not equal happiness.”
“Conservative women are just happy with the role that we get to play that we love to do,” Hughes concluded, settling the case once and for all.
WOMEN DON’T EVEN WANT TO WORK
In an all-male panel discussion about women in society, conservative commentator and general pig-man Erick Erickson bemoaned the downfall of the nuclear family.
“We as a people in a smart society have lost the ability to have complimentary relationships in nuclear families, and it’s tearing us apart.”
The cause of this non-existent problem? Women who defy their biological roles by getting jobs!
“When you look at biology, look at the natural world, the roles of a male and a female in society and other animals, the male typically is the dominant role,” Erickson said. “Three quarters of the people surveyed recognize that having moms as the primary breadwinner is bad for kids and bad for marriages, and reality shows us that’s the truth.”
You see, Erickson doesn’t need to provide any substantive examples, because “reality shows us” that he’s right.
WOMEN WANT GUYS LIKE THIS
If there’s any prima facie reason to discount everything Fox has to say about women, it’s the fact that they had this cartoonish blowhard on air not once, not twice, but three times. The video speaks for itself, as does host Sean Hannity’s nonchalant acquiescence to everything he says.
Image: Getty Images
