I'm talking about my reaction to this story, in which the radio football commentator Richard Keys has been pressurised into leaving over sexist remarks he made about a female linesman (lineswoman?). He said something about women not being sufficiently aware of the offside rule when he thought his mike was off. Unfortunately, it wasn't off, official people heard, and chaos ensued. After considerable build-up of anti-Keys-fever, he has now handed in his resignation form.
My thoughts on the whole fiasco are simply "the pot called the kettle sexist..."
The thing is, pretty much everyone who exists in the world has made some remark about how men are different from women in some way. Women allegedly not knowing the offside rule happens to one of the favourite "running gags", as I'm sure you all know. The Official Overlords who criticised Keys will most likely have made many similar comments during their lifetimes, and may well have made the selfsame joke about the selfsame lineswoman.
This doesn't automatically make casual gender-segregation right, necessarily. You are free to decide whether it's morally acceptable or not on your own. BUT, if we decide that such comments are not acceptable, then the course of action we must take is to educate society in it's entirety to steer away from such views, not to pick out individual people making (arguably) sexist remarks for, well, no real reason at all.
Because if you think about it, what actually does distinguish Keys' situation from any other? None that I can think of, even in practical rather than moral terms. The record of what he said would have remained within the BBC, they could have just deleted it and acted like it never happened, if they thought there might have been damage done.
The aforementioned Overlords want to look like they're making a stand against sexism, but really it would be a lot more useful for them to make a stand against hypocrisy. Because right now, the latter is probably doing more damage.
SO THERE.
It's also worth noting that no-one appears to have actually asked the lineswoman whether or not she gives a damn. I'm pretty sure the answer would be "no".
Happy websurfing!
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