My Day of Misogyny

A little backstory - after returning from a lengthy stint abroad, I haven't yet fallen into a regular work pattern. So I've been at home a lot with only daytime TV to entertain me (there's only so much time one can spend on Facebook). Having cable at my disposal that shouldn't be so bad (although Diagnosis Murder on BBC1 remains unmatched so far as shows involving crime-fighting physicians go) but I discovered a large part of what's on offer is a veritable visual feast of sexism.

I like comedy, so these last few days I settled on Comedy Central to soundtrack my post-morning paper day:

9am - 10am Frasier

I like Frasier. I used to watch it when it was originally shown in the nineties/noughties. However, revisiting it with more mature, feminist eyes, does diminish its legend somewhat.

The main female characters are Daphne, a live-in carer come housemaid, and Roz, Fraiser's radio show producer. Daphne is a Benny Hill type female cliche (ironically the actress, Jane Leeves, made her name as a Benny Hill girl, so that's possibly why she didn't flinch at taking on such a sexist role) - dizzy and distinctly unintelligent, she is continually mocked for being too talkative and her supposedly terrible cooking - not generally in a physical therapist's remit, so far as I'm aware - is a running joke. Her main part in the show is to serve as the love interest for Frasier's brother. Unrelatedly, her Mancunian accent is the worst I've heard this side Peru.

Roz is a more impressive character in that she has a successful career in radio. There the feminist glories end. The running gag with Roz is that she's promiscuous. Needless to say this is not presented as a liberated, modern choice, but rather makes her the subject of regular lewd jokes about her sex life. This is, somewhat confusingly, paired with the decision to gradually turn her into a Bridget Jones type. She is also desperate to find a husband and often frets about her age (she has passed that golden threshold of 30). She eventually finds redemption in motherhood.

The more peripheral female characters come in the form of girlfriends for our protagonist, Frasier, and his father, Martin. Frasier in his mid forties, is also on the lookout for romance; I have a theory that his failure to find a long term partner is based on the fact that he rarely dates women out of their late twenties to early thirties. Confusingly there are lots of women in their forties around - they are the love interests of his 60-something-year-old father. In the course of the series he is engaged twice to women two decades his junior. Only Niles, the younger brother, ends up with a woman closeish to his own age when he eventually marries Daphne.

Special mention also to Lillith, Frasier's ex-wife. She is the typical bitch ex wife, and stereotypical frigid "ice queen" type. Niles' estranged first wife, Maris is never seen on camera, but jokes are made about her obsession with food and her weight; she is constantly on the most ridiculous of diets and is so insecure about her appearance that she often refuses to be seen in public. As a psychiatrist you'd think her husband would recognise probable body dismorphic disorder and a large dose of agoraphobia, but instead the character is just written off a high maintenance, nagging harridan.

10-am - 11am Everybody Loves Raymond

I've also been aware of this long-running American sitcom for quite some time; I remember watching it in the mornings when I was at university.

It's a family set-up, our protagonist Raymond, along with his wife and children, parents and brother. His wife, Deborah, is again stereotype wife. Her terrible cooking is again a running gag, her housekeeping is poor, she denies her hapless husband sex and not an episode goes past where she isn't shown nagging him (not surprising when they have three children and he makes no contribution to the chores). The other main female character is Raymond's mother, a shrill harpy who constantly nags her husband (to be fair, he is also portrayed as a fairly unpleasant character) and exists mainly to fill the snooty mother in law cliche and make her daughter in law's life hell. The only other recurring character is Amy, Raymond's brother Robert's on-off girlfriend. A wet dishcloth of a girl, her main goal in life is to get married and her main function in the show is to quietly wait for Robert to propose, despite him cheating on her more than one and dumping her several times before eventually committing.

11am-12pm King of Queens:

King of Queens employs a device beloved of US comedy - pairing an overweight, under-achieving, slobby, "loveable rogue" character with a somewhat unrealistically beautiful, slim, successful and intelligent wife (see also Family Guy and any film involving Seth Rowland). Not so much of a problem in itself, you may say, but imagine the scenario the other way around - doesn't happen, does it?

Carrie, and I feel wearied typing the same words again, is a stereotype wife - she constantly nags her husband, doesn't like him spending time with his friends, doesn't want sex as often as he feels is appropriate. There are mercifully no jokes about her cooking, though needless to say she does all of it, along with the shopping; but there was an extra dose of misogyny in one episode I saw where the husband, Doug, bullied the beautiful, slim Carrie into going on a diet because he thought she was getting plump, all the while making no reference to the fact that he himself is grossly obese, despite the fact that the disparity between he and his wife's weights and general physical attractiveness is something he is shown to be aware of.

12pm-1pm Scrubs:

A shining light in my day. Maybe it's because it doesn't revolve around a traditional family/household set up, but there's no sexism that I can see in this programme. And it's very funny. YAY.

1pm-3pm Frasier and King of Queens repeated.

3pm - 4pm Two and a Half Men:

The misogyny of this inexplicably popular contemporary US sitcom is so legendary I barely need to revisit it. The set up sees two middle aged brothers living together, one having occasional custody of his young son. The elder brother, Charlie (played by Charlie Sheen - not himself known for showing a great deal of respect for women) is a notorious womaniser. the male equivalent of Roz in Fraiser, if you like, but instead of censure, his almost heroic promiscuity is rewarded with praise, luckless younger brother Alan referring to him once as an episode as a "lucky, lucky bastard" as he's seen ascending the stairs accompanied by two giggling pneumatic blondes.

Charlie is in his forties but shamelessly dates women two decades his junior. He has rules about not dating women over the age of 25 and devotes a large portion of one episode I saw this week to explaining why he could never date a woman of 40 (still significantly younger than him, by this point) - because they all have big ears, apparently. He treats the women he briefly knows with nothing short of contempt - the running "joke" in this series is that he pretends to be romantically interested in women to convince them to sleep with him, then sends them away with a fake phone number. Women who attempt to pursue a relationship with him are portrayed as pathetic, clingy, boderline stalkers. One early recurring character who disappears in later series, Rose, actually IS a stalker.

Younger brother Alan is a loser in love, and clearly supposed to be a sympathetic character, with more open minded views on women than his brother. He dates women in his own age group, and generally more bookish types than the stereotyped "bimbos" his brother brings home, but his ultimate goal is also casual sex, and through his eyes women are shown as little more than receptacles to fit this purpose. One episode focussed on the absolutely "hilarious" consequences of both brothers openly lusting after a 17-year-old child. It's ok though, it is made known several times, that she is, in fact "asking for it". From two paunchy middle-aged men. Obviously.

Alan is also the link to one of the shows female leads - his ex-wife Judith. Judith is clearly modelled on Lillith from Frasier; a frigid "ice queen", who never wanted sex with her husband when they were married, continues to nag him despite their divorce, and is a "ball breaker" who continually harasses and emasculates her ex-husband. She "screwed" him in their divorce settlement and Alan always being broke because he has to pay Judith alimony - presumably to finance raising their child - is a regular joke. Alan also has a second ex-wife after a brief failed married to a 22-year-old woman so deficient in intelligence that in real life sleeping with her would probably be regarded as abuse. She also somehow "made" him pay for everything during their courtship and marriage, including her cosmetic surgery and car (despite being so thick that realistically she would have choked to death brushing her teeth before the age of 16) and he has to pay her alimony after their divorce; she too is subsequently shown as a millstone around Alan's neck.

The other recurring female character is the mens' mother. She is - wait for it - a shrill, nagging harridan who the pair do their best to avoid at all costs. They make jokes about the number of sexual partners she had in their youth (their own mother!).

Berta, Charlie's housekeeper, is butch, bullish and rude.

One storyline saw Charlie break the habit of a lifetime and fall for one of his throwaway dates. They become engaged, but when she, eminently sensibly, has misgivings about marrying him, she becomes the evil bitch who ruined his life.

There is literally not one, single female character on that show, whoever brief her appearance, who comes out of it looking good.

And so concludes my day of sexist "comedy". The evening gives way to more highbrow legal dramas such as Law and Order; even this franchise, one of my favourites, is guilty of sticking to the senior partner = male, junior partner = female set up. If I didn't watch anything that was sexist I'd probably spend a lot more time doing things more constructive than watching television. Like writing blogs about television, for example.

Thank goodness I'm working tomorrow.

Love all?

So Wimbledon is finally over, and I'm breathing a sigh of relief for two different reasons. First of all, I don't enjoy tennis; it's dull as anything and so far as I can tell, designed exclusively for the upper classes. Who else would pay £12 for strawberries? However, for the week Wimbledon was on, I happened to be working in an office full of people who think tennis is the sport of kings, or possibly Gods, and as such the big screen in the reception area where I worked was duly switched to the BBC for all day coverage, leading to there constantly being a gaggle of suited bankers hanging around my desk all day chatting almonst themselves (or worse, to me) about the tennis. This, in case you were wondering when I was going to get to it, leads me to the second reason I'm glad Wimbledon is over: it brought out amongst these men and women such misogyny that I had to spend seven hours a day restraining myself from reaching over the desk and smacking them in the mouth.

I speak, of course, about Venus And Serena Williams. Now I never heard anyone once comment on Andy Murray's physique (a bit weedy looking, if you ask me) or ponder if the male player who was 6'7 had an unfair advantage. But when it came to the Williams sisters, two dedicated atheletes who are famously known for having the muscular physiques of, um, a dedicated athelete, the bile poured.

"Oh, I hope she doesn't win - look at her, she looks like a man", "yuck, I hope she gets knocked out, she's revolting, so manly", "it's unfair for them to get this far, they look like men", "I prefer Venus to Serena, at least she's a bit more feminine looking..." - yep, my charming colleagues, male and female, were rooting against two talented players because they don't have the most feminine of physiques (I'd also ask whoever wrote the book saying muscles were a masculine attribute, but I fear that's a different topic for a different day).

It just goes to show how thin the veneer of equality we have these days truly is. Yes, we can have female atheletes but heaven forbid they actually *look* like atheletes. Women players now get equal prize money to men, but we only really approve if they remain slim and delicate, and you know, non-threatening. Because that's what it's about, isn't it? We, men and women, don't like strong women, still. Women should be fragile, delicate, submissive, or so the Patriarchy would have us believe, so we freak out when someone comes along who challenges that ideal.

Add to that the fact that Wimbledon officials have admitted to putting the most attractive female players on centre court, regardless of ranking, or the importance of the match (hence Serena Williams, 2nd in the world found herself playing an important match on court number 2, which attracts virtually no tv coverage while two unknown but nubile blonde beauties battled it out for the cameras on the centre stage) and the constant lingering close-ups of whichever women in the audience that day had made the sartorial mis-step of wearing a low-cut top in the sweltering heat, and I think we can all agree tennis is a strong contender for the prestigious title of Most Sexist Sport Ever.

Horny Hernu vs. The Front Page Campaign

What is it with the name “Piers”? The first that springs to mind is of course Mr. Morgan, but lately it’s been his equally slimy, paunched namesake getting (he wishes) on my tits; Piers Hernu, sometime Daily Mail contributor and, as I have had to hear twice on the radio this week, former editor of Front magazine and contributor to FHM. Journalism is of course the world’s second oldest profession – but no more so than in Mr. Hernu’s case does one suspect it was only an excuse to sidle a little closer to the oldest.

The reason for the BBC’s infliction of his dulcet tones is the Front Page Campaign, which, having recently won lottery funding, is now also receiving some media attention, leading to on-air debate between its founder (Amy King) and Piers Hernu. The campaign’s stated aim is “to protect children from offensive media and restore choice for adults”, particularly regarding “sexually explicit photographs and language”. In practical terms, this is a demand that such material be age-restricted and placed on the top shelf, out of sight and reach of children, but still perfectly accessible to adults. So what’s all the fuss about? Horny Hernu’s ego, apparently.

The first broadcast took place on 5live on Monday. I wondered at first if he's got real live friends to go out with at the weekends, because Hernu still sounded drunk; judging from his second performance on Radio Ulster on Wednesday, he’s either an inept alcoholic or has mugged one for their baseless bravado. When he wasn’t busy sniggering or talking over Ms. King (a tactic most of us leave behind with ill-judged haircuts and notes home from the teacher) Hernu repeated a couple of MENSAesque points over both interviews.

Firstly, lads’ mags are “clearly not sexually explicit” because “um, you know, I think that there’s a, a big, ermmm” – *wheezy silence* – “problem here with, with, with mistaking, erm, toplessness with pornography”. Well, quite. After all, the term definitely wasn’t “sexually explicit” rather than “pornography”, and anyway tits and ass have absolutely nothing to do with male heterosexual arousal – it’s really all just an NHS-sponsored biology campaign. Everybody else can tell that lads' mags are sexually explicit – why doesn't one of their own contributors have the Nuts to admit it?

Then, on Wednesday, he squawked that “if you were to suggest this to any other country in the whole of Europe, they would laugh you out, you know, th- they would just laugh at you, because the rest of Europe has a much more enlightened attitude towards nudity and sexuality”.

Question: has Hernu ever been to the rest of Europe? I know it’s a funny foreign place all the way across the channel, but had he ever lumbered aboard a Eurostar, he might conceivably be aware that, actually, the rest of Europe wouldn’t need to “laugh… out, you know, laugh at” anyone for starting a Front Page Campaign, because they simply don’t have a comparable lads’ mag “culture” to protest in the first place. Their “enlightened attitude towards nudity and sexuality” would balk as much at Zoo as it does every summer at its escapees’ yearly migration to Eye-beef-fah. (And if we really had a problem with “sexually repressed morality”, we might have less of a problem with teenage pregnancy which – oh look! – is the highest in Europe).

So far, so dense. But he wouldn’t be a proper little sexist without a good bit of cliché thrown in, would he? Never fear, he’s on the case; “it’s usually some embittered old harridan who’s got- who gets on her high horse about this, and, and, you know, nobody actually listens, ’cause this has come up time and time again, you know, various women have fronted these kind of campaigns and, as usual, it, er, it turns out that there aren’t lots of people up in arms about this, there aren’t lots of children traumatised by this, it’s just, it’s just not the case that people are bothered about it”. Well yes, of course; “women” – the word spat out like curdled milk – taking issue with it is entirely different from proper “people” doing so, isn’t it?

Ms. King’s citation of surveys indicating that 98% of the general public agree with the campaign was met with further bluster, and burblings about young men being “slowly broken in, as it were, to the harsh realities” – *snort*– “of the sexual world”. But whose sexual world? Lads’ mags have nothing to do with the delicate flowering of male sexuality and everything to do with the entrenchment of male sexism. An airbrushed, submissive, surgically-enhanced, Aryan model flaunting her knickers and knockers isn’t sex; it’s wank-fodder. Wank-fodder, no less, for the spotty teenager who can’t get a real girl because he doesn’t know how to - and Nuts and Zoo sure as hell aren’t going to teach him.

Well, maybe if he's really lucky he'll grow up to be as “embittered” about “various women” as poor old Piers Hernu himself. Sexual enlightenment, my arse.

The modern man and paternity leave

This article cropped up at the DMHFFH (with thanks to FGF for the link) about how modern man is emasculated. About the achievements of Man “The world is by and large explored: Everest is conquered, the Poles attained, the Moon walked.” About how all that is left is to prove himself as the breadwinner. And how my MP Nick Clegg is the devil.

Now as a yoga stretching, tofu eating, long haired meditating hippie, which according to Liz Jones is like admitting myself to being left wing of Mussolini on Fox News, I guess I am the model emasculated man. I abstain from drinking and consider a quiet night watching a film more entertaining than pub watching this strange ‘foot ball’ that people talk a lot about. So as an emasculated male my future apparently is to become a docile househusband looking after the kids in the way that was enforced for women in the fifties. To which I say: Fuck That.

But going back to the article (though there’s not much point in reading it, the title says everything you need to know about it) at hand, the role of the father has been somewhat decayed other the years for a number of reasons. Job working hours have increased and the lives of people are becoming more caught up in trying to live the ideal lifestyle. So the problem for the role of father is not becoming a docile vegetable, far from it, it is the absence and the loose of identity that goes with actually being a father. Hence paternity leave. I will, if in any future I do become for any number of reasons a father, I would seek out as much paternity leave as I can. I would want any future offspring to know me as the father and not the guy who gets money.

Anyway, the article is defunct in argument regardless of whether you take the emasculated male side or the Man™ side of the debate. The article seems to suggest that men are useless as caring fathers and should be but cash machines for any children and then says something that might reverse this, paternity leave, is going to leave us males going insane. The finishing section on how this is brought about the ‘celeb obsessed’ culture with the closure of steel mills and coal mines (yes I know in a paper that will support Margaret Thatcher to her long awaited grave and to the very gates of hell) and similar bizarre conclusions that really offer no conclusion.

As a side note this is my first official post and get the feeling it is kinda rambly, what do people think?