Don’t get me wrong, the vile displays of mysogynistic machismo by Gray and Keys were unforgiveable.

They were out of order certainly, and I think Gray deserved to be sacked but unforgiveable – Get a grip, that to my mind makes you an unforgiving, unreasonable, proud and arrogant cretin.

But I forgive you.

That Perry Groves piece is a stunner (or should that be ‘stunna’). Good grief.

Does that men Sky Sports needs to be banned from having attractive young female presenters then?

@3 – I think it means that Sky ought to make more of an effort to disregard attractiveness when they hire women.

@3 Nope, but lets hope we can get slurdoch and it’s cronies relocated to something more productive. Cleaning cesspit’s should be a good use their talents, don’t you think?

4 – But what if that impacts the viewing figures? Sky don’t hire pretty women for the sake of it.

What is prceless is the woman got the off side rule right.

And then Gray had to get his girlfriend to go out and talk to the media for him.

I think it means that Sky ought to make more of an effort to disregard attractiveness when they hire women.

Yes, lets recreate the world as it should be rather than suffer this unfair parallel universe we are doomed to inhabit.

And if men insist on preferring to look at attractive women rather than the ugly ones, there’s always the threat of compulsory castration to bring them in line.

That one article aside, your accusation that the Sun is hypocritical only works on the assumption that featuring pictures of attractive and scantily-clad women is inherently sexist. I’ve yet to hear a good argument for that one, although the lack of scantily-clad men in the paper speaks volumes.

Now, stating without irony that someone will be incapable of doing their job properly simply because of their gender IS sexist. In Gray’s case, you could make a case that people are overreacting to banter (and, to reiterate a point being made everywhere ATM, a woman making a similar claim about “man flu” probably wouldn’t have got in trouble). Personally, I’m more concerned about comments along the lines of “go on love, help me get it down my trousers”.

” . . a bit like George Osborne complaining that his weekly food shopping bill has increased – they both only have themselves to blame”

I’m not one to rush to defend George Osborne but rising food prices are not his fault:

Global food prices rose to a fresh high in December, according to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

Its Food Price Index went above the previous record of 2008 that saw prices spark riots in several countries.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12119539

Re Socrettes and sexism in the work place.

I don’t really think you can equate the employing of young women to voluntary do a stint posing in football shirts on an early morning football show with the sexism suffered by women in some work places.

Can we really put the Socerettes alongside things such as lower pay or sexual harrasment?

It seems pretty obvious to me that the sacking of Andy Gray is more to do with the fact that he was suing the News of the World for hacking his phone messages than it is to do with the fact that he made a few sexist remarks.

For Chrissakes Murdoch is quoted on page 6 of today’s Grauniad saying precisely that:

“this country has lost its sense of humour…[anything he said] was not worse than what women say about other women…There are other reasons for sacking Andy Gray”

Yet the whole media and blogosphere circus goes chasing off after a good old battle of the sexes ding dong. Does anybody else think LibCon and all the rest have been sold a dummy?

@ 12

” Does anybody else think LibCon and all the rest have been sold a dummy?”

I certainly have, if that’s what he said. Jesus, that changes the whole issue. Into something much darker.

@ 12 Well it’s on page 6 of Thursday’s Guardian, and I’d give a link if the Guardian website’s own search engine was any better.

Highly amusingly (hat tip: the geniuses who run & post on the Blood & Treasure website who provided this link), alongside Andy Gray on the list of those being hacked by the News of the World was no less than Rebekah Wade herself, which puts a new spin on what Andy Coulson was up to – bugging his own boss!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/sep/10/phone-hacking-victims-list

@13 The Indie reported the same in Wednesdays edition too. I have to admit to being surprised when I first saw this post because I was under the impression that everyone already knew that Murdoch was clearing house.

@9. Chaise Guevara
I’m suggesting that objectification of women is at the root of sexism. I don’t think you can separate these threads. Gray stating that Massey lacked necesasary intelligence and understanding to be a linesman because she is a woman can be traced back to a culture in which women are paraded in newspapers as simple sex objects, present only to satisfy lust desires of the male readership.

@ 16 MediaInsider

I don’t buy that theory. The fact that men find women attractive – and that this is evident in many industries – is undeniable. What I don’t follow is the assumption that men finding a woman attractive must mean that they assume she has no other attributes whatsoever. It’s not a logic that’s applied anywhere else: a witty columnist is described as being paraded in newspapers as a simple humour object, devoid of any other personality traits or sexuality.

People who make the “objectification” argument seem to assume that it’s simply evident that you can’t find someone attractive while thinking of them as a real person. I don’t see any reason to believe that. For me, sexism is more about assumption of personal superiority, profiling, and a misguided belief in the “natural” order of things.

*Bugger. “a witty columnist is NOT described”, obviously.

@17 Chaise Guevara

But the point, as you mentioned, is that women are sexualised in a way that men aren’t. This reinforces male sense of superiority over women (i.e women will take their clothes off to please men). The objectification goes hand in hand with the sense of superiority. If men were sexualised in the same way you’d have a valid argument.

Men ARE sexualised/objectified as much as women.

Look at this: http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2010/04/17/sporno/comment-page-1/#comment-10034

the argument that women are objectified more in/by sport media than men just doesn’t hold water any more.

@20 I’d say that men are well on their way to being sexualised/objectified, but wouldn’t go quite so far as to say that they are sexualised/objectified as much as women. Once older men start being given the heave-ho from presenting shows and replaced with younger men, as reportedly happens to women, then we might be a little closer to that statement being true.

I am partial to pick up a copy of FHM if it’s got a photo shoot with a famous female pop star/actress etc.
I guess that must make me a sexual objectifier of all women and lead me to believe women are not worth listening to or valuing for their opinions, skills, abilities and only judged by their looks.
That’s what the sexual objection lobby seem to be saying.

@ 22 Dan

I don’t think that’s what the OP is saying, but yeah, the attiitude is fairly prevalent. I call it “looking for things to be grumpy about”.

@ 19 MediaInsider

“But the point, as you mentioned, is that women are sexualised in a way that men aren’t. This reinforces male sense of superiority over women (i.e women will take their clothes off to please men). The objectification goes hand in hand with the sense of superiority. If men were sexualised in the same way you’d have a valid argument.”

As QRG points out, this isn’t true. I’ve seen women’s magazines that contain pictures of naked men, purely for sexual reasons. And certain films aimed at women make sure that the sex icon males spend a lot of their time in a state of undress. I may occasionally feel challenged by the unrealistic ideal of male attractiveness set by these images, but they don’t actually offend me.

You haven’t justified the “superiority” thing at all. The fact that men and women try to please each other and that sometimes this involves women taking their kit off does not mean men think they are better than women. It means they like seeing naked women and women are sometimes happy to oblige. You’re turning sex itself into an act of oppression.

Yes, there are far more sexy pictures around aimed at men than women. Why is this? Well, it’s to do with there being a market for that. For whatever reason, men are more prepared to pay for these pictures than women. That could be because men are more obsessed with sex, or because men tend to seek visual gratification whereas women prefer more verbal stimuli (so a man buys FHM and a woman buys one of those novels that include about 200 synonyms for “penis”). Leaping to the conclusion that it means women are being objectified suggests that you WANT to believe that, especially as you haven’t drawn a logical line to get to that conclusion.

For anyone who gives a shit, I’m of the opinion that the overt sexualisation of women, and increasingly sexualisation of men, has more to do with our profit-driven consumer society, than any inherent misogyny or misandry.

Sex sells. Pushing products using sexual images sells them better.

Perhaps exposure to this sexualisation causes an increase in misogyny and misandry in that it reinforces the idea of an “ideal body” and certain behaviours as being desired, but the main animus appears to be toward increased profits/figures/ratings.
In short I believe it is a feature of our economic model, combined with our abandonment of prudery. Not sure what steps would need to be taken to combat it though.

@ 25 Cylux

Insofar as I think it needs to be combated, I reckon that public pressure will probably ameliorate the more negative side effects. The most obvious example being the practice of selecting already extremely beautiful people and then airbrushing them to turn them into something impossible: the backlash against this seems to be growing, and will probably lead to companies changing their habits. We’ve already seen this with Dove’s “real women” campaign (I find it a tad mawkish, but at least they’re on the right side).

I should point out that I have absolutely no problem with sex mags and the like, though, and I think airbrushed models in these probably cause less of a problem than TV shows setting out to ensure that 90% of their cast are uncommonly good-looking. So any misogyny and damage to self-esteemed caused by this sort of thing should be dealt with if reasonably possible, but not by, say, banning anything that people might find sexually gratifying.