Gender-based stereotypes

Octavo

Illuminator
Octavo
Joined
Jun 19, 2007
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3,485
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South Africa
Good day fellow forumites, potato-dixers and hello to the great unwashed masses of the lurkers too...

I post today in utter bewilderment and hope that someone can explain to me why this seems to frustrate me so much.

I avoid feminist debates because I don't care much for them. I think women are great and would prefer to leave it at that, rather than get involved in endless discussions about "privilege".

News24 is a South African news media site which carries a section called Women24 or W24 which is devoted to the fairer sex. Awesome I say - women get their own special space on the site to discuss and highlight women's issues, right? I mean, surely that's what that should be for?

Yet, day after day, the only headlines I see in this section are the most incredibly superficial, vapid headlines which appear to me to concentrate everything feminists have been saying about gender-stereotyping for years.

Image below for context. Please educate me: Is Women24 sexist or are women generally attracted to these stories and actually the answer is that gender-stereotypes by and large are accurate? I don't get it. Please help.



Sample of headlines:
Intermittent fasting: going 16 hours without eating can help you lose weight
The most popular plastic surgery procedures in SA
This is what Melania Trump will wear to the inauguration

Really? Women are only interested in fashion, celebrities, diets and sex? FFS people.
 
We catagorize the world around us for utility that grouping a load of entities will bring us. A goodly slice of people who self identify as women are interested in those things enough to click on links and clicking on links makes money.
 
Could it be that W24, like many other sites, is set up to discredit feminism?
Or maybe they are just clickbait.
 
Sideroxylon said:
We catagorize the world around us for utility that grouping a load of entities will bring us. A goodly slice of people who self identify as women are interested in those things enough to click on links and clicking on links makes money.
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Yes, of course - I think part of why this upsets me is that it appears blatantly sexist to me. Why not have those headlines under "Lifestyle" or "Entertainment". They have a "Gaming" section too, but it's not titled "Men24" despite the claim that men make up the majority of gamers.

My point is, why is the Women specific section filled with such vapid nonsense which could quite easily and justifibly be rendered in a non-gendered news section like "Entertainment".

The Great Zaganza said:
Could it be that W24, like many other sites, is set up to discredit feminism?
Or maybe they are just clickbait.
Click to expand...

I kind of doubt that.* News24 is, I would say, fairly well respected locally. They appear to cover the news fairly - it's just this section which baffles me.

* I realise that this is not a counter-argument. I suppose you could be right, but how would you go about finding out?
 
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Octavo said:
I kind of doubt that.* News24 is, I would say, fairly well respected locally. They appear to cover the news fairly - it's just this section which baffles me.
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Just don't ever read the comments section. Particularly on political issues.

I highly doubt that W24 is set up to discredit feminism. In SA we have quite a strong feminist movement and W24 often has a very feminist bent, which is a bit hypocritical given the other inane articles you've pointed out that they also regularly publish.
 
TofuFighter said:
Just don't ever read the comments section. Particularly on political issues.

I highly doubt that W24 is set up to discredit feminism. In SA we have quite a strong feminist movement and W24 often has a very feminist bent, which is a bit hypocritical given the other inane articles you've pointed out that they also regularly publish.
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Yes, disabling comments was a good thing I think. The comments section were generally a cesspool of racist ********
 
My laymen's guess, with no experience in writing or journalism or even marketing:

I would suggest that the "women's" section is made up of stories that would most likely appeal to women, and less likely to appeal to men. So they make it clear that romantic comedies, fashion, etc. are posted in that area. Men can be interested in this stuff, and women might not be, but overall - women are more likely to read those stories. And men that do like them know where to find them because of branding.

Stories of a more general interest "politics, current events, etc." would not benefit from this branding because they have a broader appeal. You risk losing male readership if you "hide" these stories in the women's perspective.

Now, in terms of "politics from a women's viewpoint" - that, to me, would be more sexist. "Here you go ladies! This are the political issues you should care about. We'll let the menfolk read about the other stuff."
 
Octavo said:
Please educate me: Is Women24 sexist or are women generally attracted to these stories and actually the answer is that gender-stereotypes by and large are accurate? I don't get it. Please help.
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Why not both? They're kind of a nested cultural stereotype: stories written to be the kind of thing that stories written for women are thought of as being. They can be largely written for women without being exclusively written for women, and largely consumed by women without being universally so.

As a comparison, consider the following classic example of male-centric media, "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" from Man's Life magazine:
ManAgainstWeasel.jpg


Is it sexist? Oh yeah. Are guys still much more likely to find it entertaining? That too.
 
Not only are a lot of stereotypes about women true, many stereotypes about other groups are true as well. That's why they're stereotypes. But they only apply to groups.

Octavo said:
Really? Women are only interested in fashion, celebrities, diets and sex? FFS people.
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Not at all. Women are free to explore the rest of the site as well. But, yes, women as a group are particularly interested in these things - look at women's magazines.
 
marplots said:
Recipes are great for attracting women.
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As long as you know how to make the recipe. And don't be thinking that they won't be keeping a tally of just how many pots and pans you've carelessly blown through to make your seduction feast. They'll notice. Oh, yeah! One pot, one pan, clean and rinse as you go. Otherwise, no dessert. Know what I mean?
 
Outside of the obvious exception of (but like all obvious exceptions you still have to state it to preemptively cutoff pedantic twits) purely object statements of definition any absolute statement like "Woman always" or "Women are" are generally speaking stereotypical. Women as a demographic are too broad and varied to make such statements.

Certain general statement in certain contexts such as "Women tend to" or "Women as a group are more likely" (and a reminder that such modifiers can be implied) sometime aren't.
 
As long as women aren't restricted to that part of the site, or men are excluded, I don't see the problem with it. If we are told that women must only read about fashion, etc., and men can't read those topics, then it is clearly sexist.
 
It's sexist clickbait.

I don't think we need to look any further into it.

Go to Men's Health magazine or similar to see sexist clickbait directed at the male stereotype.
 
Hokulele said:
As long as women aren't restricted to that part of the site, or men are excluded, I don't see the problem with it. If we are told that women must only read about fashion, etc., and men can't read those topics, then it is clearly sexist.
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I'm not sure whether forcing people to read about certain things is relevant. It's more about the editorial assumption that these are the subjects that women should be reading about. Sure, there's a reactive element too - these are the subjects that women are reading about, but it's a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Women read certain subjects because magazines targeted to women have articles about those subjects, and magazines targeted to women have articles about those subjects because women read them. Where's the first cause?

Regardless, the stereotype does exist, and it's likely that we'd be better off without it, though I don't think it's going away soon.
 
Just goes to show you much money we've wasted teaching women how to read. I'd break down the numbers, but women suck even more at math.
 
Octavo said:
Please educate me: Is Women24 sexist or are women generally attracted to these stories and actually the answer is that gender-stereotypes by and large are accurate? I don't get it. Please help.
Click to expand...

I consider myself a liberal and pro-feminism (up to a point; obviously I don't agree with everything that some people who call themselves feminists say) but yes, I believe that "gender-stereotypes by and large are accurate". Not all of them, but you just have to look at women's magazines to see that (many but not all of them) tend to be interested in topics that are different from those which interest men. Likewise, the gender stereotypes about men tend to be true. There are always exceptions.
 
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