Verifying masculinities: stages of undermining women professionals in the Greek news during a campaign period

The paper addresses the ways in which women presenters of TV news / journalists are publicly undermined by the behavior of men in their midst, who are usually of a higher (or just nominally higher) position than them, during the 2024 Elections campaign period. It examines the unresolved issue: does highlighting misogyny work, or does it lead to protest masculinity? Laura Caponetto (2021) distinguishes four different types of silencing a. essential silencing, failing to recognize that someone is trying to communicate, b. authority silencing, where a speaker’s authority is not recognized, c. sincerity silencing, when the speaker’s utterance is inaccurately taken as insincere, and d. seriousness silencing, when the speaker’s words are not seen as appropriately serious (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: hate speech, 2022) Oscillating between essential silencing and authority silencing, the masculine behaviour examined by the paper does not get scrutinized. Misogynistic masculinity during the examined period takes two forms: 1. Women journalists / news presenters making the effort to be pleasant to the men, by stressing their own comments – and the men ignoring them 2. Women journalists / news presenters making the effort to be professional – and the men in question disagreeing aggressively / undermining their input The reasons could fluctuate between the prevalence of patriarchal culture and the fact that there is no real interaction between women and men after the behaviour (as the women presenters are taught to not draw attention to the misogyny / the behavior of their male intelocutors, or they are numbed by the rudeness) (cf. Tranchese and Sigiura 2021: 2712). In what ways is the political identity of women formed within the norms of patriarchy, or not at all? In what ways are the responses (or lack thereof) of women publicly undermined by misogynistic masculinity one of the factors of further silencing? Should women protest, and how does that take away the attention from their work, to cultural ‘prototypes’ / stereotypes of ‘bitches’? Is there a democratic political identity allowed for either of the genders in those exchanges? As democratic discussion is undermined, does any of the tactics of women pay off?