To expect women in the UK to be treated with the same level of respect as men by the media?

[speedymama]

I have just been reading the thread about Sally Clarke and it is breaking my heart. What appals me is the way she was portrayed by the media during the trial as a career obsessed freak who waited until she was in her 30s to have children and then blithely went on to terminate them.

Her treatment by the media, the medical profession and the government advocates was atrocious.

Women in this country cannot win. If we are more than a size 14, we are invisible unless you are really high profile like Vanessa Feltz.
If we pursue careers, we are seen as unnatural and fighting mother natures urge to become obsequious wives & mothers.
If we have children and continue to work, we are damaging our children.
If we have children out of wedlock and split with the father, we are sponging of society and rearing the next generation of ASBO deliquents.
If we decide to stay at home to rear our children whilst DH/DP provides for family, we are not contributing economically to the country.

The media do not treat men this way. So why is this misogeny allowed to manifest as inviduous polemic? It is disgusting. That's why I don't buy newspapers.

There seems to be a general attitude (dating back hundreds of years) that men are allowed to simply be individuals, and to take the consequences of their actions (good, bad or neutral), while women 'belong' to society as a whole, and our actions, bodies etc. are thus somehow public property.

So - you're not being unreasonable, but your expectations are probably unrealistic!

That is what I find really sad. In 2007, those expectations are deemed to be unrealistic.

The 1999(?) BBC article about Sally Clarke made my blood run cold as it seemed to be taking characteristics that could be true of almost any one of us on MN (having drunk heavily, waiting till her 30s to have children, moaning a little about her baby not sleeping) and putting them together to make her look like a babykiller. I agree with you absolutely about the horrible misogyny behind that, Speedy.

Mumsnet is one of the few places where women seem to actually still be aware of/bothered by this kind of misogyny. Most of the people I know in RL probably wouldn't know what I was on about if I tried to discuss it.

Whenever there is a report in the news about women, they always use negative language, describing someone as, say, aggressive instead of assertive, or demanding rather than requesting.

Thing is that there are loads more women journalists these days, so why does this still happen?

I wonder how many woman editors there are though?
Rebekah Wade at The Sun, of course....

In Saturday's Times
Headline: 'I was betrayed by the White House,says CIA blonde spy'
It then goes on to describe this very intelligent woman as 'a blonde bombshell.'
Why does the colour of her hair have any relevance?'

PMSL at that as a headline!