Battle of the Sexes

New contributor Stevie chooses Man v Woman as the subject for her first article for CV.

Bravo BBC Two! Finally, an important TV programme that gets the audience on the sofa thinking and questioning! I am of course talking about Blurred Lines: The New Battle of the Sexes.

Presented by Kirsty Wark, we saw a documentary exploring how media and the internet have given the ongoing problem a new platform and thus a much louder voice. If a statement appears in the media and gets tweeted about, then the media pick up on the Twitter coverage and the cycle continues.

 

The programme explored trolling on twitter, sexually explicit pop videos and the Brit Pop culture of ‘laddism’. All the while the focus was on the portrayal of women and how often disgusting and degrading the image was. I am right there with Germaine Greer on equal rights for women and found most of the documentary, as a woman, too alarming to watch but a thought that kept coming back to me was: What about the portrayal of men? Surely they’re not all sex driven, aggressive idiots.

As a teacher, I battle daily with trying to engage boys and progress their learning so that they are up to speed with the girls (sorry boys, that’s one area where girls still rule!); all the while ensuring that everyone in my class is treated fairly and with equal opportunities. I often wonder why young boys/men have this desire to be strong, alpha and in some cases a ‘player’ with a harem of girls around them.

 

Part of the reason might be because of male figures they see in the media; in music videos and computer games. Should we not be challenging the portrayal of men as much as we do women? Take the computer game Grand Theft Auto (GTA): The New Battle of the Sexes showed horrific footage of male characters beating and raping female prostitutes and yes, this is extremely debasing and unsettling but let’s be honest it’s not painting the male figure in a particularly great light either. Where is the media’s responsibility towards the portrayal of men?

Are our boys faced with too many ghastly male role models that make them feel, from a young age that in order to be a man you have to be powerful and in charge? I’m not suggesting that all boys that play GTA will go out and rape and beat women but if we are going to be concerned with the portrayal of the female roles in such arenas then we need to be equally concerned with the portrayal of the males’. This whole battle is about equal opportunities after all.

 

In today’s modern society we should of course be striving for equality: gender, race, religion, age, sexuality, disability, the list goes on. What needs to happen first is acceptance itself. If our differences (and we are all different) are recognised, understood and accepted then we will begin to create a more harmonious environment. Then we can begin to give women, and men, and everyone else the level of respect they deserve.