|
To me, comedy is a whole different issue from how women are portrayed in general on TV. I honestly don't think that by the numbers it's any different from other careers women typically haven't had a large foothold in, like computer programming, it's just that comedy is one of the few places that people still feel free to openly declare women aren't as good at it or don't belong.
But even then, I don't honestly know if those numbers are so far off from, say, the open hostility a woman carpenter would receive if she showed up on a construction site. It's just that our stereotypes of lug-headed socially-conservative blue collar men make it easier to write off the sexism in those kinds of careers as to be expected, while we want to believe that savvy media figures are more progressive simply by the nature of their jobs, so the betrayal hurts more when they say stupid things.
If Joe the Plumber says something offensive, well, he's a fucking plumber what do I care? But when a creative professional says something offensive, we instantly look back on the things that person has created that we liked, and feel dirty by association in a way that doesn't happen when all we did was pay the guy to fix our pipes. It's the fact that we tend to self-identify with the things that bring us joy, and can't just see a media personality as another guy doing a job for money, that makes it harder to hear "women don't belong in comedy" than "women don't belong in a steel mill."
|