Washington Post Announces Women’s March with Male Symbol

A minor typo is one thing, but it must have taken considerable effort to create the cover for the Washington Post Express magazine, which shows a throng of demonstrators standing in the shape of… the traditional male symbol, the sign of the war god Mars.

It wasn’t just a web image, either – the Express has a print edition. An apology and corrected cover image were soon forthcoming:

We made a mistake on our cover this morning and we’re very embarrassed. We erroneously used a male symbol instead of a female symbol.

— Express (@WaPoExpress) January 5, 2017

This is how the cover should have looked. We apologize for the mistake. pic.twitter.com/MKKOkHPV8T

— Express (@WaPoExpress) January 5, 2017

Not even the corrected image was good enough for some readers:

@WaPoExpress@dckath Please don’t use pink. That’s more obnoxious than the error.

— Rekha Murthy (@rekha6) January 5, 2017

Someone ought to alert the producers of the new “Power Rangers” movie immediately, before they unleash the highly problematic Pink Ranger upon a new generation of American womynhood.

USA Today found people on Twitter slamming the Express cover for sexism, even though it was clearly a mistake, not some coded message of male supremacy from the Evil Patriarchy.

“Listen, everybody makes mistakes, but perhaps this is a sign that the Washington Post Express needs to hire more women in the art department,” tweeted UK Guardian feminist Jessica Valenti. Isn’t it stereotyping to assert that only women would instinctively know what the female Venus symbol looks like? How do we know a woman didn’t make this mistake? (Indeed, one reader of Valenti’s Tweet pointed out that most of the editors at the Express are women.)

Newsbusters said that the text of the cover is also a point of contention. It reads, “THE MODEST START OF A MASSIVE MARCH: More than 150,000 people supporting women’s rights have signed up for a rally in Washington the day after the inauguration. It all began with a Facebook post.”

“It should be noted that while this Washington Post branded paper is quick to promote a pro-abortion march, the media routinely ignore the annual March for Life, which is also held in D.C.,” Newsbusters notes. “In 2015, an estimated 200,000 attended the March for Life in January, and were awarded with just 15 seconds of network coverage. In 2016, tens of thousands braved a blizzard to show their support for the pro-life cause, and were still largely ignored. According to The Washington Post, 150,000 people have said they plan to be part of the Women’s March on Facebook, but it’s unclear how many of those will actually be in attendance.”