After my teams latest episode of University Challenge, I idly scrolled through Twitter. It was much as ever: old men telling me to wipe my nose (I have a septum piercing), some praise, and the usual criticism: What a mess, did she get dressed in the dark; She deserved to mess that up after her poncey Kraftwerk pronunciation. So far, so much as wed been warned. But then came the real doozy. A man whose bio proclaimed him to be grandad of six married to my lovely teacher wife, had tweeted: All these knobs on here saying they got [a question on] massive attack along with everyone else, what other question have you answered ? Plus Ill guess Clarke sucks like a fucking Dyson.
I stared at it for a long time, trying to understand the bizarre conjunction of defending me and matter-of-fact sexual objectification.
Women are grossly under-represented on University Challenge: of 28 teams this year, only five were equally gender-balanced, and no team had more than two women. This is no fault of the lovely production team, but down to selection within institutions. After my experience with the social media circus, though, I think theres another big reason: women dont apply because being on the show is horrible.
Female contestants walk an impossible tightrope. Answer more than a couple of questions, or smile after you get an answer right, and you are arrogant: I became showoff and Ol bighead. In 2009, Gail Trimble was smug and cocky because she answered more questions correctly than anyone on the show, ever. Quieter female contestants are useless. This season, Nancy Collinge was targeted: Did they tell Collinge to just sit on the end, be quiet and just try to look pretty? Quiet male contestants rarely face this.
The tiny gap between arrogant and useless is impossible to fit into. Last season Dani Cugini said: I performed basically the same in all my episodes, and the comments veered wildly between me purposely taking up all the attention in the room, and me doing nothing.
Quizzing is so accepted as male that when women take part successfully, there is always a pushback. After wed won an episode, a man tweeted that I ought to be launched into the sun, and that I did nothing in the contest, Cashman [my teammate] smashed it. I was the matchs highest scorer: these people cant conceptualise a woman doing well.
Theres another tiny gap that women can fail to fit into: being perfect sexual objects for watching men. One tweeted me to tell me how ugly I was; another told me that with my teeth I should never laugh again. One bloke spent 24 hours telling me I was getting abuse because of my prattishness and lack of feminine charm. The reason I was so defective? No heteronormal man would want to fuck me.
Indeed, the response to women on University Challenge confirms that women are only ever sexual objects. After we won our playoff, I punched my teammate James on the arm in excitement: in flooded the comments about how I clearly wanted to have sex with him because the only way to interpret female joy is in relation to desiring a man. Every time weve played, a pair of men hiding behind Rainbow character avatars have sent the same tweet about how I must have a genital piercing. The hashtag is filled with men being attracted to female contestants. They dont compliment how talented they are.
Women on the show are scrutinised far more stringently than men are, and castigated in singularly awful terms. When we dont fit into the millimetre increment between useless and arrogant (where were useful but not too clever), or a specific sexual checklist, we must be cut down to size. Shut your mouth, Clarke, Im told. The same man tweets every episode that Clarke thinks shes all edgy and alternative but we all know shell be baking cakes for the W.I. ten years from now. Thats what This treatment of women comes down to: a refusal to accept that there is space for all women. Attractive women, yes. Quiet women who know their place, yes. Ones who doesnt fit into these small boxes? Nope.
And thats why women arent applying: because the social media circus is a closed loop. Confirming that if you are a woman, and have the temerity to be yourself, or clever, you are going to get abuse.
I opened my messages last Wednesday to find a woman my age telling me she could never appear on a show like University Challenge. Despite how much I enjoyed filming the show, I cant say I blame her.
Read the original here:
I loved appearing on University Challenge. Then I looked at Twitter - The Guardian
