Abstract
Donald Trump may no longer be president, but the misogyny that he amplified will take far more than an election cycle to dispel. Or, as the 19 chapters in Misogyny and Media in the Age of Trump explain, again and again, misogyny is entrenched in our past, charged in our present, and distributed widely across media channels and platforms. This is not a hopeful book.
The book’s four sections include “Misogyny in the Twenty-first Century,” “Misogyny and #MeToo,” “Misogyny, Media, and Religion,” and “Misogyny and Media: The U.S. Perspective.” Most, but not all chapters, consider misogyny through a media lens, but few delve into President Trump’s effects on misogyny or media as much as one might expect from the title. As editor Maria B. Marron, a professor of journalism at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, writes in her introduction: “Some essays and research articles are stronger than others” (p. 1).
Some standout chapters will prove helpful to scholars who will study this president, and this period, for years to come. Miglena Sternadori’s “Situating the Fourth Wave of Feminism in Popular Media Discourses” argues that journalists’ poor understanding of the history of feminism perpetuates media sexism. Lauren Wilks observes in “From #YesAllWomen to #MeToo” that journalists now engage in hashtag activism themselves, not simply report on it. Several chapters discussed #MeToo in some capacity and acknowledged the movement’s origins with Black activist Tarana Burke years before the hashtag trended its way into the media mainstream in 2017.
The chapter that most directly deals with Donald Trump and the media is Jennifer A. Jackson and James Carivou’s “#MeToo and Civic Debate,” which discusses the president’s social media discourse surrounding the accusations of sexual assault made in 2018 against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford. Jackson and Carivou conclude that Twitter serves as a platform for opinion leaders such as President Trump to cultivate Mean World Syndrome and bolsters the confidence of everyday users to spread toxic discourse “because they see that they are not alone in highly controversial opinions” (p. 143). This discourse erects a “platform of affirmation” (p. 143) for followers of Trump and other opinion leaders, a characterization of social media made even more apt following the attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Trump on January 6, 2021.
Although she is not a media scholar, political scientist Ellen A. Ahlness offers great insight into the power of publications that truly know their audiences. Her case study about Indigenous publication Rematriation rightfully highlights the importance of “ethnic-cultural groups to own justice narratives” (p. 168). Ahlness, however, remonstrates her field of social sciences for considering Rematriation—an Indigenous magazine targeted at Native women and providing a platform for them to share their experiences—as gray literature and, therefore, not accepted by scholars as a valid form of knowledge. Media studies scholars, however, would recognize Indigenous publications—like other magazines—as a rich source of learning.
All of the chapters in the book were written in academic year 2018–2019, and many have a strong sense of urgency. The chapters in Part IV, “Misogyny and the Media: The U.S. Perspective,” in particular, possess a currency, and even a fervor, not always associated with academic literature. In “News Media, Female Journalists Address Misogyny,” Pamela J. Creedon and Yulia S. Medvedeva describe the ways three different female journalism advocacy organizations—founded by different generations of journalists—wrestle with issues of equity and inclusion. In “Silencing Sexual Assault,” Skye de Saint Felix argues that media coverage too often perpetuates rape myths in ways that cast doubt on women’s experiences, dismiss allegations against perpetrators, and retraumatize survivors of sexual assault. Alison Novak, in her examination of executive Les Moonves’s ouster at CBS following charges of sexual harassment, writes that an ethical resolution to Moonves’s departure, or any other leadership crisis, would prompt change in workplace organization and culture. Chapters on television shows Saturday Night Live and Jessica Jones also consider the way #MeToo and rape culture are addressed in popular culture.
The varied research methods and fields that utilize different modes of inquiry are a highlight of this volume. Beyond journalism and media scholars, political scientists, philosophers, and feminist and cultural scholars also contributed chapters. A few authors are still in graduate school while others continue to write after achieving emeritus status. This diversity of thought, approaches, and experiences in Misogyny and Media in the Age of Trump bring forth a range of ideas, but also contribute to the book’s unevenness.
Finally, this book is clearly a powerful personal project for editor Marron. In the preface she describes her own experiences with misogyny in both journalism and academe and writes that she seeks to “spearhead through this book an effort to limit misogyny in the academic workplace” (p. xiv). She makes 10 recommendations for universities such as regular trainings on misogyny and policies that ensure discipline against “hegemonic faculty who abuse their rank and positions” (p. xvi). Her proposals, and the scholarship she has amplified in this book, are calls for change to a long-normalized misogynist culture.