Monday, September 18, 2006

Metaphorical Cats and Roosters

This morning, my husband showed me an article in which a political contest between 2 women was described as a "catfight". I think the description illuminates more about the reporter (and his editor(s)) than anything else.

We searched for news articles that use beast-adjectives to describe acrimonious political contests involving 2 men, but didn't find anything easily. I can think of one good one, but it would never be printed.

3 comments:

ScienceWoman said...

I'm sure you thought of the same one I did: cock-fight.

Frank said...

I thought "cockfight," as well as "pissing contest" or a line I heard from a movie or TV or something years ago, "Let's just get our cocks out on the table and see who's bigger!"

Anonymous said...

My "favourite" is when a woman achieves something and happens also to be a mother. "Mother killed on Mount Everest" was a headline when a woman mountaineer died. Can you imagine "Father killed...." etc?
It always seems incumbent on the media to state the parental status of a female person, but how often is one told this information in a news story about a man?

"Bullpen" is one for your list. There is a blog called "bibliophile bullpen", not sure of the gender of its author, though.