Monday, November 4, 2013

The British Bullshitting Corporation

BBC Radio 4 has an hourly program every morning called “Woman’s Hour” - during the hour in the day (from 10am to 11 am) when women can leisurely tune in to listen to a show that invites studio guests (mostly women) to talk about everything .  

But, of course, they don’t.  

Mostly the talk is about the arts, being famous, cookery and other pleasantries including the inevitable radio play sequel.  To be fair, topics including violence against women, arranged marriage, the double day and occasionally even the pay-gap do come up every once in a while, but they are never put in a broader context.  

The question why women world wide continue to be victims of sexual violence, why being a women still carries the risk of poverty, violence and the lack of access to resources and self-determination or, differently put, the blatant fact that sexual discrimination continues to be systemic across countries, religions, cultures and families is never raised.  

Too hot for the BBC?  Undoubtedly.  After all, we now know that even in public broadcasting a few guys determine what is aired.


I always had a feeling that “public” was a euphemism.

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