Editorials

Burn the Feminist!

20 July 2017

By Lois

The BBC has published a list of its 96 highest earners, only a third of which are female. There has been, surprisingly, a great deal of surprise about the content of the list, which revealed the top seven highest earners were all male, and only two of the top 14 earners were female. It’s almost as though people expected a well-trusted, publicly funded organisation to treat women as though they are equal to men! A ridiculous notion in a world in which 32% of MPs are women (which is a record high reached in the last election) and only 21 of the 500 most powerful companies in the US have female CEOs.

Gender equality needs to be accepted as an archaic notion. Who needs it anyway? I’ve never in my life come across a sensible, non-man-hating woman with ambitions to be anything other than a housewife and mother. It’s our biological destiny! Those moaning about the gender pay gap are clearly yet to discover the cordless vacuum, the most revolutionary step forward for real feminism since the invention of the dishwasher. You can now vacuum one handed, leaving the other one free for dusting etc. This enables you to clean in half the time and leaves the rest of the day for hair and nails appointments, so you never look a day over 30 and your man doesn’t leave you for Sarah the receptionist.

I’ve seen The Handmaid’s Tale, I know what happens if women get above their station. Our grandmothers may well have fought for our right to workplace equality and the right to do what we want with the bodies men have so graciously allowed us to take up space with, but they probably voted for Brexit too, so what do they know? No one should be surprised by the BBC pay list. I mean, who could deny that Gary Lineker’s work for the past few years has been groundbreaking. He has proved himself to be a true fount of all knowledge, with an expertise ranging from football to popular brands of crisps. If that doesn’t earn him his £1.75 million salary, then what would? Although the fact Clare Balding seems to know about not only tennis but also horses and people that run and still only receives about a tenth of Lineker’s salary would be slightly odd if you forgot that Gary did once strip off on telly. Good old Gary. It’s almost like he used his body to gain attention and notoriety in a way most women are forced to do to survive in a male dominated environment which views the female body as only being valuable when it’s paraded for public consumption. It was so funny though, remember? Haha.

The BBC’s Director General Tony Hall has said the corporation needs to do more for equality. On the contrary, I propose it does significantly less. Bring back BBC Three instead so I can watch Don’t Tell the Bride and Snog, Marry, Avoid: that’s what women really want. We want to mindlessly consume media which degrades and misrepresents us. We crave it. End feminism, BBC! Give the TV licence payer what they want. Call off Women’s Hour, replace it with a new BBC Radio Four weekly segment entitled ‘Burn the Feminist!’. Sack Fiona Bruce, double Chris Evans’s already excessive salary at the cost of the pay of every single female member of production. C’mon Tony, kill it dead like you know you want to.

Like this article? Please share!