I think most MRAs are in denial about the extent to which whiny women play a major part in the feminist onslaught on society. Men will do anything to stop women whining. “All-women shortlists, Harriet? Of course. What could possibly go wrong?”
A few years ago we set up a blog, The Alternative Sexism Project. Sadly, we haven’t had the time to keep it updated as we’d have liked. But the article in The Times today (below) brought a couple of posts to mind:
How to deal with the whiny women in your life.
Will someone change Laura Bates’s diaper?
A piece in today’s Times by Matthew Moore, Media Correspondent:
Television dramas dominated by women risk undermining the fight for equality by making viewers think that sexism is a thing of the past, according to the producer of Victoria.
Daisy Goodwin said that “wishful thinking” by casting directors could hamper the campaign for diversity. [J4MB: So let’s get this right. Feminists have long claiming that putting more powerful women in highly visible roles – e.g. actresses in TV dramas, company directors – would assist the “campaign for diversity”. Now a woman says it could hamper it. Women will whine, whatever is done. Best not to respond to their whining.]
Some viewers of Bodyguard, BBC One’s political thriller, complained that the number of leading female characters in powerful roles was unrealistic. The home secretary, the head of the Metropolitan Police’s counterterrorism command and a chief superintendent were all played by women: Keeley Hawes, Gina McKee and Pippa Haywood respectively.
Jodie Whittaker is the first woman to play the Doctor in Doctor Who and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s spy drama Killing Eve, which features an almost exclusively female secret service, is attracting large audiences on Saturday nights.
Ms Goodwin, the screenwriter and producer of Victoria, which stars Jenna Coleman, said that gender-balanced series may soothe younger viewers into thinking that the battle against sexism had been won.
“Splendid as the notion is that women are now seamlessly integrated into every aspect of authority, it is at best wishful thinking and at worst undermines the fight for equality,” she wrote in Radio Times.
“I completely understand the impulse of Bodyguard’s writer, Jed Mercurio, to make the world more equal than it really is. I fully admit that when I write about Queen Victoria I’m always looking for ways to make her sympathetic to a modern audience. But the problem with wishful thinking is that it lulls us all into a false sense of equality.”
She said that the real-life poster girl for armed policing, PC Carol Howard, left the Metropolitan Police after successfully suing the force for sexual and racial discrimination.
A photo of Ms Howard posing with a Heckler & Koch rifle was used to promote the force during the 2012 Olympics. The Met was ordered to pay Ms Howard more than £37,000 in compensation after a ruling said that she was “singled out and targeted” for almost a year by her boss in the diplomatic protection group. She said that no amount of compensation would make up for the “hurt and upset” of being bullied.
“If the people who watched Bodyguard think a world without gender friction is real, it makes the plight of women like Carol Howard much harder,” Ms Goodwin says. “Where are the dramas reflecting the world of #MeToo? Surely somewhere in the drama universe we should reflect the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.”
Mercurio has defended Bodyguard’s casting, describing the view that women cannot hold positions of authority as “silly and out of date”.
“It puzzles me that something I’m doing, which comes so naturally to me, seems so odd to other people,” he said last month. “I think they’re wrong and I’m right.”
You can subscribe to The Times here.
If everyone who read this gave us just £1.00 – or even better, £1.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. Click here to make a difference. Thanks.
Justice for Men & Boys 