I grew up in an era when girls did have to pretend to be boys to get on. I don't have any complaints; a bloke who disliked girls with hairy pins when I was first at University could resign himself to three years of celibacy, and Serve The Rude Baskets Right.
However, I can't pretend it wasn't a bit of a relief when we could start being a bit saucy again and the Lesbian Contingent were allowed out of their hideous handknits. And all the time the pay gap was closing ... or well, it wasn't really, was it?
I look at the BBC these days and wonder WTF they're up to. Oggling the old goggle box, I often wonder where are the women on telly? And the answer is, in the newsroom. The number of women newsreaders is very striking and nowadays you even occasionally see TWO WOMEN (in trouser suits, usually) reading the main news on the main channels. Oooh.
Strangely, women have largely disappeared from light entertainment; panels for Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Mock the Week and Have I Got News For You are often entirely male, which puts me off programmes I would otherwise watch. Anne Widdecombe enlivened the latter considerably on Friday, and should be hired permanently. Fat chance; having more balls than most of the male room she was presenting, she still lacks the main hiring criterion.
ROBIN HOOD AND HIS INDISTINGUISHABLE MEN
Finally the Great Leap Backward - because this is the kind of serial I grew up with, where there was one woman, with whom all the guest men fell hopelessly in love each week, and met with Quite Inexplicable Rejection, for the Hero never gave the Heroine so much as a chocolate kiss, let alone any commitment. Were life to resemble these serials in its sexual behaviour, humanity would have died out hundreds of years ago. Or at least shrunk to the population of the Isle of Wight.
All the regular men are quite indistinguishable from each other. I have watched this show regular-like from the start, and can barely tell the Treacherous Bastard member of the gang from the loyal 4th in command, or either from Robin. They are as monozygotic a selection as ever despatched from central casting, which may explain why the guards in Nottingham never recognise them as they stroll merrily in and out of the castle with the odd change of headwear, but always in a Large Gang. Last week, indeed, the gang managed to get all the way from Sherwood Forest, on foot, before any among them noticed that the forbidden-by-Robin Maid Marion had accompanied them. Is it mildly offensive that Robin does nothing but tie Marion up and order her about, and she has to apologise to him for disobedience, while he never does? You decide.
The chief indication of sexism, though, is that there are hardly any women in the cast. Why is Gisbourne hopelessly in love with Marion? Because there are No Options, the whole of Nottingham being empty of women. For those of you who remember your reading of The Dialectic of Sex, Ms Firestone's idea was that women's lower sex-class means that to justify partnership with them, men must believe that the One they love is Special. If Robin Hood's treatment of Marian doesn't furnish a glaring example of this, while "Jak", also a woman, is like George in the Famous Five, or a Serbian Sworn Virgin, a woman who accesses the privileges of the higher caste sex by denying her own, further illustrates it, it's hard to know what does. Though the constant belittling of Much might be a further example.
Though technically male, Much is Robin's faithful servant, and does the cooking. The others treat him like a skivvy, and upon occasion throw his cooking at him. Because there are no women, Much is treated as one, and not in the way any woman would be pleased by.
A show often stands or falls by its portrayal of same sex relationships. I stopped watching Smallville after an episode where all the "goodies" were so appalled and repulsed by a lesbian that she was deemed to be wicked solely on that premise. (This is a series shown on Channel 4. How very politically correct is that?) The fact that she was also wicked in terms of storyline helped to confirm that the programme-makers' political views really were as nasty as those of the characters.
Compare with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a show which had one of its principal characters develop into a lesbian with no ill effects on her character whatsoever - almost as though sexuality is not any kind of moral barometer. Buffy was a radically different show, with real sophistication and depth, reflected in its character development, and it was the maturity and possibly real life experience of its makers that allowed it to be so.
In an era when in real life most half-way sensible blokes marry high-income-generating women - lawyers, doctors, architects, business-women - is this a programme which shows women or men in a way we really aspire to be? Hell no. A lack of imagination and awareness makes this a pretty poor piece in terms of politics or reflection of society. Escapism? After watching this, how I long for some.
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