I don't know where to start...

Good idea LRD but, although I am not middleclass, I am most certainly middle-aged - so as long as there's no giggling involved!

I'm sure it were irony or summat, rosa. No doubt all will be revealed in time.

Let's go off and swoon over Stephen Hawking while we wait.

Oh silly of me! I thought manechangeguy was being personally rude to me. Then, in his following post, on a feminist disussion board, I noticed he used the words "giggly middle-aged women" and realised he is just a rude aggravating man IN GENERAL! Oh, goodness, I feel much better now

namechange - I did realize what you were accusing her of. I was wondering why you think she should be perfect, exactly?

Could you have done better?

I hope it's ok to post this here (it's from shakesville.com) but reading your OP made me think of this terrible bargain

I luffs Shakesville, I've learnt so much there (although I'm still too green to actually post on there as I know I've got much more learning to do first).

namechange - how do you know she doesn't talk to him? I didn't get that from the article.

Oh, and of course, women couldn't possibly be interested in academics ... especially not middle-aged women.

Did you mean to sound quite so patronizing in the cause of getting some more 'attention' for poor middle-aged male physicists everywhere?

I was accusing Ms Woolf of middle-class angst and melodramatics, as she wrote it.

Oh, crikey, not this again.

Yes, let's all pile in to have a go at Virginia Woolf, why on earth didn't she just sort everything out single-handed, I mean, was she lazy or something?!

It's an interesting article, thanks Casey.

Two things stand out. The first one is her husband's lack of awareness of how she is treated in business meetings. Perhaps she could be talking to him, rather than pouring it out to the press. The second one is people's - mostly women in this case - obsession with celebrity, rather than achievement. Do any of these giggly middle-aged women know or care about the academic side of his life? Or do they just like the idea of fame for it's own sake? Because I imagine there are plenty of beardy, sandalled, baldy physicists in student bars around the country who would love some gushing female attention.

Well how rude! I came on here, agreed with lots of things people were saying and mentioned an amusing aside in which the subject is mentioned in a book I once read. The author, book and particular passaged mentioned are now being criticised and analysed by someone who has clearly never read it and, on top of that, feels qualified to accuse me of middle class angst! As I am not middle class, I am free to assure the poster that such a social function is required of working class women too. Facilitating social chit-chat is another feature of the main idea on this thread that women are there to facilitate male opinion which leads ultimately to more male voices in the media. However, dismiss it as middle-class, spiritual angst if you wish, but many on here seem to find it very annoying and depressing indeed.

Here it is... The Lady Vanishes

One thing that I do wonder, is how good a scientist is Brian Cox? Is he just a pretty poster-boy, or has he done some serious work? Are there any physicists on here that have an inside view?

Dara O'Briain's wife is a surgeon, so I doubt you'll find him underestimating women within the science community. Wasn't he considering an academic career in maths prior to going all showbiz?

I know it's a slightly facetious point, but couldn't Ms Woolf have chosen a slightly more serious example than a tedious dinner guest? But don't let me burst the balloon of middle-class melodramatics and angst...'dying spiritually'...

Dara O Briain's Science Club features a lot of scientists who are female (possibly even the majority of its scientists?).

Brian Cox's wife is a TV producer and I think that's a big part of why he got the exposure early on. She actually wrote an interesting piece a couple of years back on how his success has negatively impacted her own career and social standing - I'll see if I can find it.

Or dying spiritually, every time you have to perform such a social function every day of your life.........so, on the ship option, it would be over and done with in 10 mins, you say?

Hmm, sitting next to a boring bloke whilst eating dinner, or dying inside 10 minutes in the freezing ocean........can I come back to you on that one?

I'd like to add that I've really enjoyed finding this section of Mumsnet, being able to talk/discuss things. Also, whoever posted earlier about the whole "female priviledge" of being saved first on the Titanic - this argument is beautifully referred to by Virgina Woolf in To the Lighthouse. It's years since I've read it (so someone may have to come on and correct this comment!) but, essentially, there is a dinner party and a young female character is having a dull time as she tries to help a more awkward male guest out with social chit-chat, and she acknowledges to herself that this is the price she must pay for the tacit understanding that should they ever be in a sinking ship together he will let her into the lifeboat first! Woolf leaves the reader to decide whether the price is worth it!

Sorry, messed up the links.

TV Tropes
Yale study

Stephen Fry is a man with a posh voice and a more than averagely large vocabulary. Because of this he is lionised as some sort of great public intellectual. This isn't true even of women TV broadcasters who genuinely are intellectuals, like Mary Beard. And look at the contrast between how, say, Mary Beard and Brian Cox, who are both academics, engage with and are treated by the media. Brian Cox is all over the place - on panel shows, chat shows, being voted world's sexiest man etc. - while Mary is only heard of outside her programmes and blog when AA Gill says that she is too ugly to be on TV. Now there is a generational difference and it might be that Mary has better things to do than go on Graham Norton anyway, but this must in part be a reflection of them being viewed, and treated differently.

I have only ever seen one celeb panel type show which didn't have a horrendous bias towards male participants. It was called The Bubble, and was presented by David Mitchell. It had dead on 50:50 male: female participants, which I don't think can have been an accident. Someone in the production team put a lot of thought and effort into getting a real balance. Sadly it only ran for one series.

And it's not just factual programmes that this applies to: the bias is all over drama, sitcom, etc. Tropes tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSmurfettePrinciple has a nice page on it, which includes panel shows. Even when you think there are a lot of women in a cast, it usually turns out that there aren't actually that many. The Simpsons is notoriously one of the worst offenders, as are children's TV and films, which almost always have male leads.

then this kind of thing filters into real life, with real economic consequences for women. www.smh.com.au/executive-style/management/want-to-get-ahead-in-business-shut-your-mouth-20120607-1zxjy.html There's an often quoted statistic that whenever women speak for more than about one third of the time in a male/female setting, they are perceived as talking too much.

I think you won that one.

LRD I posted the New Statesman's 'Year in Sexism' article. In response she posted 'Down with feminism it is wrong and distructive' (spelling errors entirely her own).

We are polar opposites and I don't think she likes me. I don't like her overmuch.

I went to this End of the World thing hosted by Robert Ince and Brian Cox. It was mostly about science and scepticism and so on and it was really funny and informative.

However: there was a real dearth of women on stage. There was, I think, one female scientist and two musicians but there must have been at least 18 men. That really disappointed me.