Skip to main content

The Archers and the objectification of men

I'm sure the title of this post would make an excellent PhD thesis. I was listening to the Archers omnibus on Sunday and struck by the remarkable sexism that was going apparently totally unnoticed. The cricket club has a very attractive new coach and we were hearing how women were attending practice just to watch him, and the gay characters were commenting on his attractiveness and how the women had turned up because they wanted to see him in his cricket whites (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

If a load of men turned up to see a new female hockey coach in her kit they would be rightly accused of being a load of perverts. So why the double standards?

It's the same on TV shows judged by a panel. It seems absolutely fine for female and gay judges to keep making suggestive remarks about the men, but it would rightly be frowned on if similar comments were made about the women.

I appreciate the 'You've done it to us for so long, now it's time to get our own back' argument, but I don't agree with it. Two wrongs don't make a right. We might not be perfect at it, but it is broadly accepted in the mainstream media that the objectification of women is wrong. Surely it's time there was parity for the men?


Image from Wikipedia
Labels:

Comments

  1. Adonis Devereux2 May 2012 at 11:00

    Preach!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous2 May 2012 at 14:57

    What an interesting comment "........ rightly accused of being a load of perverts".

    Is this fair? I understand that it is natural for opposite sexes (generally speaking)to be attracted to one another. The form that attraction takes varies with species and no doubt varies and develops under prevailing conditions.
    Maybe this is a topic for a book (it may have been written) about how society imposes itself on the natural world and if society is, maybe, a form of eugenics!!!

    Vic (at 64 I guess I am now a pervert!! and I would hate to think what some may say about me cuddling and playing with my grandson????)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Brian Clegg2 May 2012 at 16:40

    No one is being accused of being a pervert for being attracted to the opposite sex, but it isn't really considered the done thing to turn up at a training session purely for the purpose of seeing a woman in her sports gear.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...
118 comments
Read more

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...
25 comments
Read more

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...
6 comments
Read more