EMOTION CENTRAL

What a laugh. Since the beginning of networks they have all been for and about men. It took an act of Congress, a Constitutional Amendment and the Woman's Movement for Equality to even dent them.

Even now, most of the programming is for men but women are allowed in to exhibit their bodies, announce, to supervise programming and, in general, make things run smoothly and at a minimum of cost due to lower women's wages.

There are stations and channels that purport to be for women. "Oxygen" comes to mind as does "Family." They are mostly a mishmash of conditioning films where the societal role for women can be enforced. They serve to marginalize women even more.

They also have programs such as "Xena, Warrior Princess" that is NOT put forth as a role model for women but to attract males. Like other programs that feature nude or mostly nude women, men watch entranced.

Also many women watch Spike tv especially for the "Star Trek" programs. So these gender labeled stations turn out to be hardly distinguishable from most of the crap available on the older networks.

Expensive cable channels pimp for the male but women also watch it. "The Soprano's" murder for his ego and "Sex in the City"feeds his lust. "Sexy" commercials of "Victoria's Secret" or "penile enhancement" rule the broadcast bands.

So despite the gender specific station labels, TV is still lopsidedly skewed toward the male. The boob tube is emotion central. It is there to control us with limbic promises of pleasures and keep us from thinking.

Television provides little to stimulate our neo-cortex since it is aimed mostly at our limbic system. The genders are urged to be sexual predators instead of partners. Women are supposed to yearn for men with huge peni capable of holding an erection for several days.

Heaven forbid any woman might actually think that such an unnatural state would render it a lethal tool for rape, and even better -- there would be no surviving victim. http://www.epub.org.br/cm/n05/mente/limbic_i.htm

News channels have turned into entertainment. They instruct as to the proper gender roles. They spout the propaganda of the Bush administration but they do not inform. They feed the beasties of the limbic system to control us.

Take this week, PLEASE! It is a 24/7 deification of "a man's man" where all his warts are made invisible and a country is seen to kneel at his feet. Women are portrayed as mindless imbeciles who worship a heartthrob movie star.

The media uses so many subtleties directed at our limbic system in their news reports. One seen frequently on CNN is when they put pictures of Senator Kerry and Bush side by side, Bush is made to look taller than Kerry.

So much of the media propaganda is outrageous but it seems that women put up with it either by choice or ignorance. It is depressing that so many seem to enjoy being made to look vacuous and silly.

Karl Rove depends on women being "agreeable," ie, no trouble, and tells us that "W stands for women." It should have been laughed off the screens the first time he floated that canard but some women still buy it.

It's only one of Rove's many attack ads that are hilarious if only for their outrageous lies and misrepresentations. Who can doubt that along with his "endearing leer," Bush's record is overwhelmingly geared toward women?

Bush hasn't quite managed to get rid of Roe v Wade but he's working on it. He just needs another four years and more handpicked Supremes. He has already made his mark on many outreach programs for third world women by depriving them of funding.

And how can anyone ever forget his attacks on the environment of this and other countries. Environments are what women raise their children in and should be sensitive to.

We can only hope that the laughter will stop before November and that many more women and men will discover that kisses are not all sexy. There are those that kill. .

twanda@sover.net

2004-024

Copyright 2004 Renee T. Louise and Ruth M. Sprague, Ph.D. These articles may be republished for noncommercial use only, provided that they are copied intact, and that this copyright notice is attached. Address all queries to: twanda@sover.net.