Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: Nothing New Here, Just Fox Being Fox

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Nothing New Here, Just Fox Being Fox

Media Matters has an article about how Fox distorts the facts about trans people. It is nothing new but it is interesting to see their distortion in print.

How Fox News Turns Transgender People Into Villains
By Rachel Percelay
September 22, 2015

But over the past few years, Fox News has cast the transgender community as one of its favorite villians, peddling bogus horror stories, touting fake medical "experts," and actively mocking trans people to suggest that they deserve to be mistreated.

The primary way Fox News has demonized the trans community is by depicting the fight for trans equality as dangerous, threatening, and unnecessary. Whether it be local non-discrimination ordinances or trans-inclusive school policies, Fox News uses scare tactics to attack even basic protections for trans people while ignoring or downplaying the reality of anti-trans discrimination.
[…]
But Fox's fearmongering goes beyond lying about legal protections for trans people -- the network has attacked transgender television characters (kids will experiment with homosexuality!), school lessons on gender diversity (we're falling behind in math and science!), and even the decision by Macy's department store to welcome transgender customers (a threat to religious freedom!). All the while, Fox personalities insist that these protections aren't necessary because discrimination and bullying against trans people "is not a big problem."

These scare tactics aren't just silly, they're strategic -- aimed at pulling the public's focus away from the very real discrimination experienced by transgender people. One study found that 70 percent of transgender people had been denied access to, verbally harassed, or physically assaulted in public restrooms. Similarly, another study found that 78 percent of transgender or gender non-conforming kids grades K-12 have experienced harassment at school, with 15 percent experiencing such severe harassment in K-12 or higher education that they dropped out.

What is amazing is that the local Fox affiliate is so trans friendly, they have covered the Transgender Day of Remembrance and they have covered the legislative bills and never once referred to them in a derogatory way. I guess all foxes are not the same.

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Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Nothing New Here, Just Fox Being Fox

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