Sports expert Valenti
Newsbusters: Feminists never stop being demanding to the point of amusement or exasperation. CBS Sports Network is planning a prime-time all-female talk show called “We Need to Talk,” and the feminists complain of being ghettoized.
Feministing.com founder Jessica Valenti took to The Guardian newspaper to complain! The show “will feature solely women commentators and be produced and directed by a female team. But this feels more like giving up on women viewers – and sportscasters – than ‘girl power’.”
The headline was “Is CBS Sports’ new ladies’ talk show really an excuse to push women aside? Giving women separate shows while failing to address gender disparities in existing programming just provides the illusion of equality.”
Valenti began: “We need more women in sports and more female-anchored television news shows – the current lineups on most of them are mostly pale, all-male and correspondingly stale. But creating separate spaces for women’s ideas and commentary isn’t equity: it’s table scraps.”
She added: “By creating ‘women’s programs’, what we’re saying is that the male perspective is the normal one. The real one.”
She wanted to wish the women on the show well, but she won’t settle for anything less than 50 percent representation on every show:
I wish the women behind We Need to Talk all the best – and I’m sure it will have loyal viewers that appreciate hearing from an all-female panel. But until we have the same number of women and people of color creating all media – as commentators, producers, writers, photographers, editors and sources – gender-specific ghettos will be a band-aid, not a solution. And that’s something we really need to talk about.
I’m going to take a wild guess but I bet the majority of those into the sports shows are men.
And she sure is demanding a lot – the same number of women and people of all color, etc. What about hiring someone based on the content of their character and capabilities rather than their color or sex?
Sucks to be perpetually demanding and never satisfied.
DCG