French’s “Deformed” Generation

by Laura Cude

1978 paperback edition

“You think I hate men. I guess I do, although some of my best friends…I don’t like this position. I mistrust generalised hatred.”

This is what Marilyn French says in one of the most formidable parts of The Women’s Room (yes, I’m still going on about that book), and it strikes me, because as a feminist (and sometimes if you‘re just a woman), you’re often asked if you hate men. French’s uncertainty to the answer of that question reminds me of my own undecided response. Sometimes I think I do. I really think I do, but as French almost says, some of her best friends are men, similarly with me, and generalised hatred is not the way to go. Her way of putting it, towards the end of section eighteen in chapter four, is that she hates her experience of men. And I guess that is what I hate, too.

Last week, two of the UK’s leading football pundits, Andy Grey and Richard Keys, lost and relinquished their roles respectively after some sexist remarks the pair had made off-air were leaked. Thinking their microphones were switched off, Grey and Keys joked about lineswoman Sian Massey not knowing the offside rule—which is a stereotypical joke in the UK about said rule being incomprehensible to women. Further comments were leaked, including Andy Grey asking a female colleague to help him tuck his mic pack into the front of his trousers (classic) and Keys referring to an ex girlfriend of footballer turned commentator Jamie Redknapp as “it.” Lovely.

This ignited a media frenzy over sexism in the workplace and in the male dominated world of football. Keys’ and Grey’s apologies served better as defences, and it soon came to light that the footage wasn’t leaked by some concerned-for-women’s-rights colleague of theirs, rather by someone who was out to get them and thus started a witch hunt.

The most frequent defence on these comments, even by Keys himself, is that the two were simply engaging in lad’s banter, which is no different to what is taking place between men down at the pub, at work, and wherever, up and down the country as we speak. By pointing out that obvious fact, all that is really being admitted is that we have a nation full of sexist prats. Hurrah. And that these sexist prats aren’t comfortable when a woman is doing “a man’s job,” especially when there are perfectly adequate gender roles which they have imposed on her, which she would be better off fulfilling.

Some have called the behaviour and comments “prehistoric.” They’re not. They’re just as much a sign of our times as what the internet is, and they form as much of our cultural Western lifestyles as what ipods do. This is illustrated in no small way by the UK’s biggest tabloid, The Sun. They presented this news story on the front page with a picture of Sian Massey, the lineswoman who inspired the original leaked comment, dancing on a night out, dressed in a short skirt and revealing top next to the headline “Get ‘em Off.” It’s as though, by picturing Massey dressed to impress in her social time, they’re saying that despite her job in a male dominated environment, she is just like other women: a cheap little slut who just wants to be fucked. So in other words, women as a gender deserve the discrimination and the lewd comments, because behind any positions of power they may have, behind any credibility or success, whether that be in a male environment or not, they’re sex objects underneath it, and boy do The Sun have the pictures to prove it. I’m surprised the tabloids didn’t just come and say the uproar was “political correctness gone mad,” because that’s what they’re all thinking: Women aren’t really equal, it’s just politically correct to pretend that we think they are.

When debating how to “overthrow” women’s oppressors, French says you can’t defy the laws “passed by the oppressors to keep the oppressed in line” without coming close to advocating oppression itself, thus concluding that that is not the answer. “Well, answers I leave to others, to a newer generation perhaps, lacking the deformities mine suffered.”
My generation seem to be just as deformed, but can we really afford to pass the buck of acquiring answers onto yet another?

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