Female-derogative language on TV is a Weapon Against Women

Women Being Called Whores and Bitches on TV IS Misogyny

            Today I was watching an episode of UnSung Hollywood, featuring the actor Joe Morton.  It turns out he is a legendary African American actor who slowly built his body of work and reputation over 30-plus years as a professional actor, although at the time I tuned into this show, I was unaware of this actor’s name.

            Joe Morton is known on television today as the actor who portrays Eli Pope, Olivia Pope’s father on the Shonda Rhimes hit series, Scandal.  On the show I was watching, UnSung Hollywood, they showed some clips of Joe Morton and Kerry Washington in scenes from Scandal.

            The very first scene they showed had Joe Morton’s character dressing down his daughter with very disrespectful, misogynistic language. Now, at the time I saw this scene, I had only seen one or two other scenes on Scandal with this actor speaking to his daughter.  And the very first time on the show itself that I ever saw a scene with them, I was shocked and appalled at the misogynistic language he spewed at her, very graphic and sexually demeaning, and disrespectful of women in general. Now, in only the second or third time I had seen this actor speaking to this actress, again it was in language that was patently offensive to me as a woman viewer just trying to enjoy a Sunday morning TV show.

            After those clips were done, the show I was watching on Joe Morton had an interview segment with Kerry Washington, the actress who plays Morton’s daughter on Scandal.  She was raving about what a wonderful, sweet man Morton is in real life, and how, in real life, he never ever talks to her "like she’s a whore," Kerry's exact quote.

            That is what I would like to point out here.  There are so many TV shows that have language between characters that calls women bitches and whores and sluts right to their face, and that’s all considered ‘just the character talking,’ or just part of the plot line. And yet, just as Kerry Washington stated that Joe Morton never talks to her in real life like that, that is because that is not acceptable to speak to, or about, your co-workers in that way, or women in general, in respectable life.

            Women are not a bunch of bitches and whores and it is not OK, in real life, to go around calling women that to their face. So we really should ask ourselves, then why is it OK to talk to women this way on TV?  Sure the characters are make-believe, but all the people watching are still actual people, including those large demographics of women viewers with whom advertisers would like to appeal.

            Sure, some men do think of women that way and do use that type of language,  and some women do actually work in the sex trades, but neither is the norm in a society where most people work hard at regular jobs and who try to be civilized and respectful people. Women willing to put up with this on television should really re-think their own self worth and get the heck away from the influence of woman-hating losers who refer to women like that.  There are enough women watching television to influence things--like ratings, product boycotts, show boycotts--that we do not need to tolerate being called these derogatory names every day on television, just for story-lines and entertainment value. Especially on shows that millions of female viewers are watching. It’s insulting to the women viewers, and it is ‘normalizing’ this type of language as a 'common understanding' in society about women and girls.

            Usually it is male writers and executive producers that produce the countless TV shows and films that depict male characters calling women whores, sluts and bitches.  And more and more, women characters have been included as the people we see calling women and girls these derogatory names in our entertainment media, not just male characters.  Perhaps these misogyny-promoting writers feel that when they can show women calling each other words like that, it validates the legitimacy that it’s OK for men to think of females in those terms. But typically, it is still usually the males who are coming up with the plot lines and dialog that talks to—and about—women in this way.

            Yet Chandra Rhimes is a woman, a successful show creator and writer, responsible for Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, along with many other accomplishments.  The fact that a misogynistic patriarch calls his daughter a whore on television every chance he gets, with very colorful and descriptive language, is coming from a show producer who is a woman.  This is deeply troubling. It’s almost like women are agreeing that, “if you can’t beat them, join them.”  That maybe the only way women can succeed in the business is to contribute the same crap the men do. Or, maybe it’s a fact that this is how many black men talk to their wives and daughters, so maybe that’s where it comes from for Shonda.

            All I know is that television is a teaching medium.  We watch it everyday and we see repeated imagery and repeated propaganda every day.  One big lesson that kids and women are “taught” everyday, and males get to be reminded of regularly, is that females are ‘less than.’  How does TV transmit this apparent “fact”?  By repeatedly calling women bitches on TV.  By repeatedly having male characters, even fathers, talking to women and daughters as if we are nothing but dirty whores.  By having countless plots that involve hookers, strippers and men who beat their women.

            The fact that this is repeated on television over and over again is problematic for women because it validates in the minds of people (including developing young people) the notion that lots and lots of women are strippers and whores and bitches. Logic dictates that it must be true, since we see young women depicted that way so frequently. At least that is how the mind works. These types of depictions of women and words that speak of how we are bitches and whores who spread our legs and lie all the time (no pun intended) does, in fact,  color the overall perceptions and attitudes people have about women.

            And yet, as Kerry Washington said in her interview clip, Joe Morton never is like that in real life. Exactly. Real life isn’t like that.  In real life, the vast majority of women are not whores, strippers and bitches.  We are amazing human beings with lovely spirits, who happen to be called “the fairer sex” for a reason.  It’s not just that we are pretty.  Women strive to be good. And most women are wonderfully good.  It is insulting to be constantly called a whore and a bitch on basically every single TV show, practically. Women should stop tolerating this and let it be known that we are not bitches; we are not all a bunch of whores just because we are female, and we are not going to watch shows that continue to use language like that against women characters and female viewers.

            And women writers and producers in particular should be taking it upon themselves to improve the situation, not contribute more patriarchal misogyny to the already heavily-laced TV environment.