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Sequence of Letters to the Broadcasting Standards Authority on Feminist Linguistic Sexism -- Letter No. 3 © Peter Zohrab 2012

 

(address)

21.2.1993.

Phillipa Ballard,
Complaints Executive,
Broadcasting Standards Authority,
P.O.Box 9213,
Wellington.

 

Dear Phillipa Ballard,

Thank you for your letter of 17 February 1993.

TV3's Chris de Bazin writes that he thinks there was no "significant" slight or denigration/discrimination resultant from the use of "gunman". My point is, and has always been, that people like Chris de Bazin seem to operate a sexist double standard on such issues -- he considers the slight or denigration or discrimination in question to be insignificant, for the sole reason that the people who suffer it are ³men±. If the word involved were "actress", which some people (wrongly, to my mind) think involves a slight on ³women±, then I think Chris de Bazin would consider that the slight was indeed significant.

In my original letter to TV3, I suggested that they were just bowing to Feminist pressure. Chris de Bazin replied that this was not true -- that they were following their editorial policy. I asked them to tell me what their policy was -- particularly with repect to plural words, such as "gunmen/gunpeople", "chairmen/chairpeople", etc., but he avoided doing so. Either he has no policy, or he knows that it won't stand up to scrutiny.

The word "gunman" is singular, of course, but TV3's policy as regards plural words is relevant, because their main defence against my accusation appears to be that they think you should be "gender-responsible" -- i.e. assign the proper gender to someone in the news. I don't know where they got this unusual notion from, but -- given that Chris de Bazin says he thinks "gender-responsibility" is important -- I asked him for his policy on plural words that referred to groups that might contain both males and females. This is the question he did not answer.

Lots of things are factual (such as the fact, for example, that Sir Edmund Hillary has a head, shoulders, legs, lungs, and millions of cells, etc. in his body), but most of them are not worth mentioning on TV news programmes. There has to be at least one other reason why and how something gets mentioned on TV news. Conscious or unconscious political bias obviously plays a part here.

My letters never mentioned "politically active women". I don't know why Chris de Bazin mentions them, unless this is supposed to be a euphemism for "Feminists". Lots of women are politically active on issues that have nothing to do with Feminism -- and good on them ! However, I do feel that the question of balance between the sexes must be addressed.

I hope this comment of mine has been brief enough. I have been as brief as I could, while still dealing with what I thought were the implications of Chris de Bazin's rather terse (not to say cryptic) letter of 12 February 1993.

 

Yours sincerely,

Peter D. Zohrab

 

See BSA's decision: http://www.bsa.govt.nz/assets/PDF-Decisions/1993/40-9315041993Peter-Zohrab.pdf

 

Letter No. 4

 

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