Fox News Amplifies Hateful Responses to Geena Rocero’s Recognition by Glamour
Under the guise of covering the “controversy” over Rocero, a mean-spirited, low-effort article from Fox collected a handful of bigoted tweets, including one by an AI advertising account that apparently posts about politics to increase its engagement.
by Evan Urquhart
pov: you are a Fox News reporter
Nearly a week ago (on Wednesday, November 1, 2023) Glamour Magazine announced the last five of seven total women they decided to honor with their Women of the Year spotlight (the two global Women of the Year, America Ferrera and Millie Bobby Brown, were already announced in October). This morning, a full six days later, Fox News published an article purporting to be about the “controversy” over the inclusion of Geena Rocero, a model and author who is trans. Evidence for a controversy provided by Fox consisted of a few nasty social media responses.
screenshot from Fox News
Written by Taylor Penley, the bulk of the article consists of quotes from the nasty tweets. It does not include evidence of wider controversy, other quotes, or anything else of substance.
The Fox News story neglected to even include names, handles, links, or any other information about the tweets they collected… so we looked for them. Every single one of the tweets highlighted by Fox was made in reply to a single post by Glamour announcing Rocero’s selection. This announcement tweet was the fourth of a five-tweet thread announcing the five women of the year who had not previously been announced. The first three tweets announced Mary J. Blige, Brooke Shields, and Quinta Brunson, and the fifth named Selma Blair, all of whom are cis women. (Two additional honorees, America Ferrera and Millie Bobby Brown, were announced in October. Both are cis women).
User @FerchLlandona, whose bio references anti-trans activism, wrote, “How regressive, excluding women from a woman's award in favour of a man. Almost like the Women's Liberation Movement never happened.”
screenshot from twitter.com
Blue-check user @Feral_Fawcett, replying to the same post, wrote, “Glamour Magazine reduces womanhood to wearing a dress and makeup. Shallow, vapid, liars. That man will never be a woman.”
Another tweeter whose bio includes anti-trans activist slogans, @LadyMusicGeek, who was partially quoted by Fox wrote in full, “What? Confused here, thought you said woman of the year? What's the definition of a woman? Any one who says they're a woman? In which case what's the point?”
screenshot from twitter.com
The final account referenced by Fox, @periankalon, seems to use tweets about current events to drive views for retweets advertising AI money-making schemes and other shady advertisements. In the tweet Fox referenced the user wrote, “Glamour thinks they are advancing a cause.. but really, disrespecting women in order to promote trans women ultimately causes resentment and does the Trans movement no good.” A typical advertisement retweeted by the account reads, “You can make $5,000/mo with AI Art. No degree. No Payment.”
This low-effort, tissue-thin story is quite representative of the quality and character of anti-trans content in the right wing media who have been incessantly pushing a moral panic over the existence of trans people. In fact, Fox even had a previous tissue-thin story about Geena Rocero!