Sharp to KAK: Brandishing a vagina like a forcefield does not make you immune from the truth
Daily Telegraph columnist Annette Sharp has hit back at suggestions she is anti-women after TV presenter Kerri-Anne Kennerley told today’s Women’s Weekly she was still smarting after being included in an article about women over 50 showing off their cleavage at the Logies.
In her response, Sharp claims Kennerley lashed out after being in television wilderness and did not like to read the truth that she was out of contract.
“Now she may not like those words, but they are true. And speaking the truth, I would suggest, does not make one “anti-women”,” she wrote.
“Having a vagina should not make one immune to the truth. One should not brandish a vagina like a force field and expect a torrent of fawning, hyper-ventilating flattery in return.”
To do so, she writes, would be prejudicial and sexist.
Her original article about women over 50 who flashed ample cleavage at the Logies in a bid to get noticed by their bosses and the cameras was “hurtful, ill-informed and unresearched”, Kennerley told Ingrid Pyne at Women’s Weekly.
“It was just a dirty free kick,” Kennerley said.
“She wanted to imply that we hadn’t had children because we’d been too focused on our careers, but it was cleverly worded so that she had a get-out-of-jail free card.”
Sharp says she included Kennerley in the article because because she “had to move heaven and earth to get to the 2013 Logies – without a partner, without a network-supplied gown, and, for the first time in decades, without a TV contract.”
Liz Hayes of 60 Minutes, Susie Elelman, now on 2GB radio, and Network Ten’s Sandra Sully were also mentioned.
The topic of women in the media industry will be debated at next week’s Mumbrella360 conference.
Never heard of Sharp before… but she sounds like a nasty, repressed, puritanical piece of work… and clearly not getting laid enough (or well enough).
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yawn
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“The topic of women in the media industry will be debated at next week’s Mumbrella360 conference.”
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sorry for the un PC response, but I’m not sure my experience bears this comment out as I’ve met a few women who do feel/act this way:
“Having a vagina should not make one immune to the truth. One should not brandish a vagina like a force field and expect a torrent of fawning, hyper-ventilating flattery in return.”
apologies no offence meant
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What’s with the * in vagina on the front page? Is a medical term for female genitalia a swear word now?
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Hi Liz,
I’m glad you asked that. We use asterixes on certain words in our daily email to avoid hitting people’s spam filters. On the website, I’m entirely comfortable with in context, adult conversation.
Cheers,
Tim – MUmbrella
There’s a solution to this problem. Don’t hire women. But I suppose that would be (yawn) discrimination, or (double yawn) misogyny.
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@Tim
Sorry, but I notice you have confused Goscinny and Uderzo’s little character with the little star glyph.*
I know, you are certainly not the first to confuse these things, and I definitely have some GAUL pointing this out.
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Thanks Tim! Interesting that vagina = spam. Sad times!
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I only brandish my vagina for good, not evil.
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“Having a vagina should not make one immune to the truth. One should not brandish a vagina like a force field and expect a torrent of fawning, hyper-ventilating flattery in return.”
Has anyone told Julia Gillard?
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All this talk about “brandishing the vagina” has set me thinking of Thesmophoria, an ancient Greek fertility festival from which men were lawfully excluded, and where women promoted fertility by sexual abstinence and ritual bathing.
This festival and its rites ( which included the killing of many pigs) are associated both directly and indirectly with perhaps the world’s most famous example of the brandishing of the vagina, that of Lysistrata in Aristophanes’ enduring comedy of 411BC.
I have always delighted in the real power of women, and especially in the power of women to, if not eradicate, at least temper the madness of war.
Unfortunately, the various shifts in the power base seem to have given rise to another kind of war; instead of human beings working together to make a more balanced world, we seem to be doing the usual human thing of running around in circles.
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I’m still laughing at the image of someone brandishing a vagina!!
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Have we really got nothing better to do than read this? It’s not even news. So what a bunch of old biddies are trying to hang onto their youth by wearing push-up bras and showing off their assets. If it makes them feel young then good on them. This is a case of the media eating it’s own.
Youth and thinness is worshiped in our society. This is a broken record.
Violet ivy
Lucky Girl – How I Survived the Sex Industry
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