Harmful Headlines: How Mainstream Media Normalizes Male Entitlement and Violence Against Women

Post date: Apr 18, 2017 8:53:19 PM

Written by Rebekah Clapham at Wednesday, April 5, 2017 9:23:37 PM

Each morning, as I scroll through Snapchat's news feed, I am bombarded by sexist headlines such as “Kim Kardashian Bears it All,” or “Ariel Winters gets Boob Job.” Daily Mail is a news source featured on Snapchat that is particularly notorious for displaying articles that ridicule and demean women. Like many other faithful Snapchat users, I have gotten used to glossing over daily sexist headlines without giving them much thought. However, one morning I was especially stunned to read, “Friendzone turns Fatal” as the attention-grabbing Daily Mail news headline of the day. The short article attached described the murder of 21-year-old Brooke Preston, who was killed by her ex-roommate, 24-year-old Randy Herman. According to one BBC news article, Herman stabbed Preston while she was leaving their shared apartment to move in with a boyfriend.

Although disgusted and disturbed by the headline “Friendzone turns Fatal,” I was, sadly, not completely surprised. The concept of the Friendzone is still popular and widely used amongst teens and young adults today. Specifically, the Friendzone encapsulates a situation where one person (typically a man) wants to pursue a romantic or sexual relationship with someone (typically a woman) who just wants to be friends. Consequently, the rejected man feels “trapped” in the Friendzone. The Friendzone is largely viewed as insulting and punishing because it prohibits men from getting what they are “entitled to” (e.g. sex and/or control over a woman’s body). As a result, the concept of the Friendzone is an extremely detrimental and degrading term used often in derogatory contexts toward women. However, the term Friendzone is not largely seen as problematic, and instead is commonly used in normal discourse, such as in the Snapchat headline “Friendzone turns Fatal.” This headline, and all the other discourse that normalizes the concept of the Friendzone, exemplify the ways dominant discourse preserves and reinforces male entitlement. As Donna Haraway might argue, the term “Friendzone” is an example of how dominant discourse attempts to create a “godlike” universal truth. In this case, the concept of the “Friendzone” perpetuates a false “universal truth” that men are entitled to women’s bodies and entitled to sex from women.

This dominant discourse becomes even more dangerous when it is normalized in media, such as in Snapchat, particularly because Snapchat’s audience is largely young impressionable boys and girls, who will be extremely receptive to its messages. Snapchat headlines that normalize male entitlement teach young boys that they need to dominate and control women in order to prove their masculinity. Specifically, the headline “Friendzone Turns Fatal” normalizes killing a woman because she rejects you. The concept of the “Friendzone” also teaches impressionable girls that they don’t have a right to say no, and that their wants and needs will not be respected. The term also perpetuates victim blaming by communicating that if girls/women don't fulfill boys/men expectations, they deserve to be abused, raped, or killed. Because, under this victim-blaming logic, if Preston had not “Friendzoned” Herman, and had just given him the sex, affection, or whatever it was he felt he deserved, she would not have been killed. Therefore, discourse like this not only reinforces male entitlement but also exists as another form of rape culture and way of promoting violence.

Utilizing and normalizing discourse like “Friendzone,” “tease,” and “nice guys finish last,” in addition to linking masculinity to power over women and sex, results in the rape, assault, and murder of thousands of women every year. A simple Google search can illuminate the consequences of male entitlement, such as in the news story of the boy who stabbed a 16-year-old girl to death for rejecting his prom-ask, or in the report of the man who murdered a young woman for ignoring his advances. Countless other incidences of violence pop up as well, including ones that involve throwing acid on women, brutally assaulting and raping women, and/or publicly embarrassing women by sending out their nude pictures. As the number of cases continues to grow each day, many of the news headlines center the women, while putting the men-- the perpetrators--off to the side. These stories often involve passive language. For example, the headline “High School Girl Stabbed to Death,” fails to mention the boy who stabbed her. If the headlines do mention the perpetrator, they tend to highlight the perpetrator’s positive aspects (particularly if he’s white), such as in the headline “All-American Swimmer Found Guilty of Sexually Assaulting Unconscious Woman on Stanford Campus.” These types of headlines blame the victim, de-center the perpetrator and his actions, and normalize male violence and male entitlement. Headlines are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the way media normalizes violence against women, but they are extremely influential, and an important place to start when tackling the vast, complex issue.