Analysis Of Abernethy's Male Bashing On Television

In Abernethy’s “Male Bashing on TV”, the way that the author revealed the trend of males depicted as bumbling, lazy, and incompetent on commercials and modern TV shows irritated me Abernethy revealed in this article that the trend of men that are depicted as a minority on TV is getting worse. He shows that men in the media nowadays are shown making a fool out of themselves, doing ridiculous stunts, and overall showing idiotic characteristics unlike many men today. He blames primarily the media for depicting men as “bumbling husbands, and inept, uninvolved fathers”, in which he describes as the “comic image of men on TV” (Abernethy 351). Additionally, he states that since this has become a common theme on modern television, young boys can

For instance, in a study done by Dr. Katherine Young and Paul Nathanson, they concluded that men are additionally derided, rejected, and even abused in media in addition to being unintelligent, and that these same actions would never be done in the media with female characters in our culture (Abernethy 351). This is a prime example of gender inequality in our TV media nowadays, which shows the lack of television programs with intelligent men and women combined nowadays. This also shows that if a show featured an unintelligent woman and an intelligent man (its vice versa for many shows nowadays), it would be either be heavily criticized by feminist groups or receive no positive support in modern America culture. Astonishingly, even many men would be not in favor for that idea of a show, since it would ridicule a woman the same way the media ridicules men on modern television programs. This is irritating to many men because the modern media allows programs that depict men negatively to air on a regular basis, resulting in gender inequality in the media. This does not mean to depict more unintelligent women to “even the playing field”, but if more shows depicted intelligent men in addition to intelligent women, then it will be a good step for reducing gender inequality and the risk of

Abernethy, to test his point, uses three different exchanges that would be offensive to blacks, women, and Hispanics, and if the words “blacks”, “women”, and “Hispanics” were replaced by “men” or “man”, they are not deemed offensive in today’s media, but actually considered humorous and comic relief (Abernethy 352). This highlights how male inequality in the media is bypassed as humor to everyone, including males alike. This is common in shows that portray men as unintelligent, that frequently receive good ratings for their humor yet show actions or words that men say or do, that would be offensive if anyone else would say or do. Furthermore, this regular stereotyping of males in the media contradicts the core feminist belief that everyone should be deemed equal. It is true that women back then on television were stereotyped as housewives and displayed as mindless and inferior to their male counterparts. However, if feminists allow this male stereotyping to happen, then it goes against their core belief in their cause. This is irritating to many men alike, in which the media allows themselves to be ridiculed and humorized on a regular