Tramps, Sluts, Whores and Andy Gray
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The public reaction and media circus surrounding Andy Gray’s dismissal from Sky Sports has reignited wider debates about sexism. Sexism had previously fallen into disuse, rarely employed in public debate. However, Gray's prejudiced misdemeanour has re-established sexism as a contemporary problem worthy of discussion.
This week Andy Gray was sacked from Sky Sports after having made lewd suggestions to his female co presenter and making disparaging comments about a female assistant referee with his colleague Richard Keyes. Gray’s actions were deemed “unacceptable and offensive behaviour” by Sky and as a consequence he lost his £1.7 million a year position.
Richard Keys has since apologized saying: 'Our prehistoric banter is not acceptable in a modern world'. He may be right, but toxic talk like this is nothing new to our ears. The day following the comments, Keys dismissed the sexist comments he and Gray made off-air as simple "lads' mag banter". This attitude of breezily dismissing comments made about women is far more prevalent in today’s society.
Women may not be tied to the kitchen sink or barred from the corridors of The Commons; but this not to say that women are free from social constraints. Picture the scene outside Oceana last Monday. A group of sporty looking male students are chatting. They're discussing the pros and cons of their course mates. One is laughing so hard he can barely spit his words out:
"That Rachel, she is the fucking ugliest girl I have ever seen in my life!".
Although we might not like to admit it, it is hard to be shocked by this hardly unique observation. Later that night on the bus two young men can be heard having a similar conversation about various conquests:
"It was good. But I knew she was a bit of a slag, I didn't touch the sides."
His buddy nods and lets out an immediately recognizable snort of disgust. Surely, If Tinie Tempah can get away with lyrics like this – ‘I'm on a mission I don't even wanna kiss her
Honey I won't even miss ya when I'm done with ya’. Then surely Andy Gray’s comments are just another example of your standard, routine, bread-and-butter misogyny?
Cue to any night out in Leeds and you will hear the euphemisms and digs. Think ice queen, nag, minger, slut. While Andy Gray is publically deplored for his obviously unacceptable remarks, derogatory language toward women is nothing new. It doesn’t matter what group you inhabit, age, sex or creed, a joke at a woman's expense can always be relied upon to revive the atmosphere.
Remember the bombshell when Katherine Bigalowe managed to pick up her Oscar last year, beating her ex husband James Cameron? People were beside themselves in shock and horror: ‘Katherine Bigalowe won Best Director AND she’s a woman!’ And women are often just as guilty as men. ‘Yeah, I love Frank Lampard but what is he doing with Christine Bleakley? I bet she’s a massive bitch’. Not to mention the jokes. There are the jokes about women, about wives, about mothers, about women drivers, about female bosses.
Tramps, sluts, whores, bitches, feminazi. Bitching about women, slagging off women – even the words used to describe the insults derive from misogyny. Words created by men to describe women. How many words can you think of to call a man? Calling someone a Paki in the street, and you can face prosecution. Get called a slag and rarely will the woman be taken seriously. For many men and women alike, casual misogyny is shameless and routine. But still the question will persist – ‘Why do you have to take this stuff so personally?’
Gender-based violence causes more deaths among women worldwide than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war. Three million women across the UK experience rape, domestic violence, trafficking, forced marriage or other violence each year. While women may have positions in politics, only 19% of the world’s parliamentary seats are held by women and men still make up nearly 80% of the House of Commons.
Women do two-thirds of the world’s work, yet receive 10% of the world’s income. Women are still being paid considerably less than men. The UK’s equal-pay ranking is 81st out of 130 countries, with research suggesting equal pay for women is not likely until 2067. The average UK salary for a male manager is currently £10,031 more than that of a female manager. In Saudi Arabia, women aren’t allowed to drive, or even ride bikes. In many areas of Afghanistan, girls are often taken out of school when they hit puberty.
When a professional photographer recently became pregnant she was told by her boss: "You can't be a photographer and a mother”. A lecturer here in Leeds recently remarked on the number of female authors in the reading list.
Women are clinging to tenuous positions to retain the privilege of ‘equality’. ‘Casual’ sexism is nothing less than an integral part of modern society. So what can you do?
Annie Lennox, Barclays Woman of the Year, has brought together a coalition of charities that champion women’s rights to ensure that International Women’s Day, on 8th March, is a vehicle for celebration and positive change.
Lennox says:
“EQUALS brings together the expertise of some of the most respected and influential charities that champion women’s rights. A lot has changed since 1911, but there is still a long way to go. Gender inequality continues to permeate all sectors of society, from health and education to politics, employment and culture. The EQUALS partnership aims to step up the call for a more equal world and galvanise a new generation of men and women to work together to make gender parity a lived reality here in the UK and worldwide.”
The hype surrounding Gray's very public dismissal has given sexism a much need limelight. But with condemnation must come action before any progress can be made.
Brody 6 weeks ago
Women complain about how unfair it is that men are called studs when they sleep around, yet women get called sluts for the exact same behavior. It’s actually not a double standard though, because both scenarios are pretty different in terms of circumstances and consequences. I can think of at least four crucial differences:
First, sleeping around is easier for women. Regardless of how you feel about promiscuity, we can all agree that a guy who manages to rack up a lot of sexual partners has to have some skills. It’s challenging for men to rack up partners, even for men with low standards. A man needs social intelligence, interpersonal skills, persistence, thick skin, and plain old dumb luck. For women, though, a vagina and a pulse is often enough. Whenever an accomplishment requires absolutely no challenge, no one respects it. It’s just viewed as a lack of self-discipline. People respect those who accomplish challenging feats, while they consider those who overindulge in easily obtained feats as weak, untrustworthy or flawed.
Second, women have potential to do more harm by sleeping around than men do. Say a man sleeps around with a bunch of different women. He’s definitely doing harm to these women if he pretends to be monogamous while sleeping around. He may cause them emotional pain by his promiscuity. He may cause unwanted pregnancy. He may spread VD. When women sleep around, however, they can cause not only all these same ill effects but one additional crucial ill effect: the risk of unknown parentage.
If one guy sleeps around with five women, each of whom is monogamous to him, and they all get pregnant, it’s a safe bet as to who the father is. If you reverse genders and have one woman who sleeps around with five men who are monogamous to her, and she gets pregnant, the father could be any of the five men. And if one of those men is tricked into raising a baby that isn’t his, he’s investing time, money, estate and property to provide for a child that isn’t carrying his DNA into the next generations, a costly mistake from an evolutionary standpoint.
Our two basic primal drives are to survive and to reproduce, and promiscuous women traditionally make it hard for a man to know for sure whether he is truly reproducing or is secretly raising another man’s child. Men stand a lot more to lose from promiscuous women than the other way around. And it’s no picnic for the child to not know who his real father is either. And it’s a mess for the women carrying on the deception as well. Or just look at any random episode of the Maury show if you don’t believe me.
Since the DNA test and the birth control pill didn’t exist until recently, there were no reliable ways to prevent pregnancy or prove parentage for most of human history. For this reason society developed a vested interest in preventing promiscuity among women, and society accomplished this by creating the slut stigma. And even though the creation of birth control and DNA tests have made this less of a risk than the past, longstanding traditions and customs are not easy for society to break so the slut stigma remains.
Third, men have evolutionary reasons to be programmed to sleep around more. A lot of women roll their eyes when they hear that men are “hard-wired” to sleep around. But from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes total sense. If the two primal drives of humans are to survive and to reproduce, nothing leads to maximum reproduction like one man sleeping with multiple women. If one women sleeps with many men in a nine month period, she can only get pregnant just once. Nine months of rampant promiscuity would give the same result as nine months of highly sexed monogamy: one pregnancy. Now if one man sleeps with many women during a nine month period, you can get many pregnancies during that period. The more women he sleeps with, the more possible pregnancies.
So from an evolutionary standpoint, there are concrete advantages to men being promiscuous compared to women being promiscuous. This doesn’t mean that women have evolved to be strictly monogamous. Women have evolved to be somewhat promiscuous too, something men badly underestimate. However they haven’t evolved to be as rampantly promiscuous as men.
Fourth, promiscuity poses more risk to women than to men. A woman has more to lose from choosing bad sex partners than a man does. She’s the one who gets stuck with going through a pregnancy and taking care of a baby alone if she chooses a deadbeat. For this reason, promiscuous women throughout history have historically been viewed as being a vastly more irresponsible risk takers than promiscuous men, who rightly or wrongly could always run away from the consequences of unwanted pregnancies easier than women could.
These four reasons explain why the longstanding tradition came about of men being rewarded for multiple partners while women get socially punished for similar promiscuity. Of course all this is gradually changing, but we’re up against millenia of evolutionary and cultural conditioning here, so don’t expect any dramatic overnight reversals.
Understand that I’m just explaining why the double standard came into existence and not condoning or condemning it. This is not an attempt to pass judgment or be self-righteous in any way. It’s just an explanation of why the two conditions are treated differently.