Do we even have to argue about the right to equal pay?
Suzanne Moore has thoughts on BBC blokeyness. She doesn’t enjoy being a guest on the Today show so that she can have John Humphrys barking at her about abortion.
Surely no one was surprised by the audio that leaked last week, revealing Humphrys’ fossilised attitude to the concept of equal pay. The programme has long been an old boys’ club, absolutely Westminster- and London-centric, and it ventures into many areas – science, culture, the internet, the north and, er, women – with a supercilious attitude.
But it’s more than that, it’s also Both Sides bollocks.
Meanwhile, Humphrys continues to “banter” away in the studio. This is 2018. Do we even have to argue about the right to equal pay? Apparently so.
But, for a long time, the BBC has been hampered on gender issues in terms of content, too, thanks to its now-quaint notion of impartiality. Its editorial guidelines say: “Due impartiality is often more than a simple matter of ‘balance’ between opposing viewpoints. Equally, it does not require absolute neutrality on every issue or detachment from fundamental democratic principles.” Female licence-fee payers are part of these democratic principles. Yet, as the Weinstein and #MeToo issues broke, I was asked – as were many writers – to debate whether the sexual harassment being discussed had even happened, or whether the response was going “too far”. Obviously, I refused, because I did not want to be pitted against idiotic misogynists, be they male or the go-to female mercenaries adored by radio and TV bookers. Is this balance? Sexual abuse: for or against?
I wrote a column last week about exactly that question – whether or not we get to see rules against sexual harassment as just that, basic social rules like the ones we learn in kindergarten, or as “ideology.”
The BBC literally has to get with the programme. There cannot be neutrality around unequal pay and sexual harassment. These cannot be presented as subjects for an entitled and defensive establishment to debate. And no, I do not want to have a heated discussion about it when I can simply switch it off.
But Balance! Both sides! The best argument will win! Truth always prevails!
And yet, many people here think that James Damore is just trying to open up a discussion, trying to discuss issues openly that are not being talked about (hah! Like they’re not! Everywhere I go, sooner or later someone trots out Stephen Pinker or some other study purporting to show women as “separate but equal” – and I don’t believe they even believe that equal; they just think it sounds better – and who are inherently nurturing, kind, and caring, and have a biological clock driving them to have baby after baby after baby). Sorry, I’ve known very few, if any, nurturing women in my life, and while I have known kind and caring women (and try to be that way myself), I have no evidence to show that’s somehow instinctual.
This idea that women’s rights get to be endlessly debated is bogus. Especially since it’s almost always men doing the debating. What if we started debating whether men had the right to enter into female only spaces? Oh, we’re doing that, right? And the answer seems to be that men get to go basically where they want, because…well, because otherwise, that person might actually be a trans-woman and you might be committing genocide by not allowing men in women’s rooms, or wherever. And besides, they are men, so they make the rules.
Men get to go through the day without being groped or grabbed or fondled; should we debate their right to move through the world unmolested? Men get to show up for work and go to it without having to make coffee or clean up someone else’s mess; should we debate their right to be picked up after? (I’ll take the side of no, they have no inalienable right to be picked up after). Men get to go through college without having to dodge horny frat boys, horny jocks, and horny instructors. Can we debate their right to that?
My parents would have (and did) pay for my brother’s to go to college as long as they chose to drift through life, not declare a major, and not finish anything, because they just knew the boys were brilliant. (My brothers are smart enough, but hardly brilliant, and neither one of them ever finished much they started). My parents cut off my college money at a pre-ordained time, because there is really no need for girls to have this sort of advanced education just to have babies (which was not my plan, though I did eventually choose to have one). My entire childhood was spent in training on washing the dishes, cooking, cleaning, and sewing, often for the benefit of my lazy brothers. Can we debate men’s right to have all this work done for them free of charge?
God, I could go on for ever. I am sick of all this bullshit. Most of the women I have known have been smart, capable, and content to let men get all the credit for their work. I will not be that woman.
Men like Humphrys don’t care about the truth or ideas when it comes to topics like this, it seems. It’s an emotional/tribal topic for them because they feel threatened, and they’ll defend the status quo with disingenuous “arguments” until the cows come home.
Such a pity. The BBC was supposed to have stopped with the “both sides” bullshit over three years ago:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/10944629/BBC-staff-told-to-stop-inviting-cranks-on-to-science-programmes.html
Or is the notion that women should be paid less than men and just have to deal with constant sexual harassment in the workplace not yet “marginal” or “non-contentious”? Sure, MRA fuckwits make a honking lot of noise, but so do the climate and vaccine deniers. That doesn’t make them credible interviewees.
@Karellen
Yes, the BBC was supposed to do lots of things it never did, such as including links, where possible to academic papers whenever they wrote a story about the research. TUMBLEWEED’D.
But the both sides business is especially horrible and certainly continues to this day. One of the worst offenses was the business with Andrew Wakefield and the vaccine bullshit. Other news agencies were also complicit but the BBC dragged that dangerous charlatan out for years to provide the ‘opposing’ view that vaccines caused autism. That contributed a great deal to other countries being infected with that ludicrous idea, especially the US. The US media lapped it up almost as eagerly as the UK media did. The BBC was more complicit than most in that. We know that quite a lot of people have died because of it.
But FOR FUCKS SAKE this equal pay thing. Traditionally, the BBC fields this by saying that the women named aren’t as experienced as the named men or that the men do more stuff than the women or require more skills. This is demonstrably untrue. The only other ‘alternative view’ is that women just aren’t as good as men, which is obviously even more demonstrably untrue.
The both sides argument only and almost always fuels some idiotic or actually harmful response. Nuance is what we need. Understanding from perspectives other than ours. Challenges to our assumptions, yes, but challenges fit for the job. The day creationists credibly explain historical and current evidence, I’ll…. well, I’ll still call it bullshit, but I might agree there’s something in the neighbourhood of an alternative theory.
Perhaps one day we’ll mature enough to pay people equally for doing the same things. Until then, let’s do what Humphrys suggests. Let’s pay women extra for the extra crap they have to put up with,