When is an action sexist? It appears to be when a national newspaper decides it’s worth bigging a non story up. At first reading the article you’d be lulled into a false supposition that someone somewhere had decided that gifts for success had been deliberately targeted to ensure that women had not got the best of the deal. Though a little further digging of course reveals an altogether different story.
A row over sexism has broken out after Britain’s female rowing gold medallists said a dozen male colleagues were given BMW cars while none were awarded to the women in the squad.
Anna Watkins, who took gold in the women’s double sculls with Katherine Grainger, was asked on BBC Newsnight whether winning members of the men’s team received BMWs, while women did not.
Well shock horror, call in the equalities commission, clearly women are being done down by the ‘patriarchy’ in place to keep them subjugated, barefoot and pregnant.
Except it isn’t like that at all…
Under the car sponsorship deals, more than 150 Olympic athletes and Paralympic hopefuls and retired athletes were given a two-year lease of a BMW or Mini.
The company said that in most cases the selection of athletes was made by local dealerships. Not all of those awarded the cars made the final team, and provision did not relate to performance in the 2012 games.
A spokesman for BMW said almost 70 women received cars, including three who have achieved medals this summer: the track cyclist Laura Trott, the boxer Nicola Adams and swimmer Rebecca Adlington.
So, women were actually getting a free lease on BMW cars just not the women rowers, whilst the men rowers did. So it isn’t quite as discriminatory as the headline made out and there’s a reason why the women didn’t get offered the cars either, they didn’t live near a local dealership and it wasn’t a deal subject to Olympic success…
Still why let the facts get in the way of a good MSM rant on the injustice of the system.
The debate caused a storm on the social media website Twitter with BMW accused of misogyny, and calls for the female rowers to be awarded sponsorship deals.
Why do I have an almost overwhelming urge to remove the term social media website and replace it with socialist media website? Certainly seems to be the media of choice for the hard of thinking a lot of socialists and left leaning idiots, perhaps the word limit suits their vocabulary better (yes I know not all by a long shot) and does seem to generate a storm of abuse whenever something doesn’t fit in with a progressive world view.
Yet at the end of the article the answer is writ large…
Miss Watkins later tweeted: “To be fair to BMW plenty of female athletes got cars, it was just within the rowing team that it ended up wonky .”
Well quite, no story, just a storm in a teacup that had the femonazi’s and the socialists up in arms over nothing.
As ever.
Twitter: the social network for twats!
WTF!?
I don’t want to see women driving themselves around in cars, when they should be at home preparing my bloody dinner!
What the HEL has the world come to???