Journalist suffers PMS, writes stupid shit

On the front page of Digg just now there was a story called "Mother Told She Doesn't Have Real Job By Phone Company" - which seemed dumb enough to warrant a click.

The story tells the plight of a stay-at-home mother who tried to buy a Smart phone from Vodafone, only to be rejected on the grounds that she didn't have a "real" job. What's noteworthy about this story is that it was penned by a woman. Quite a stupid woman, I'd wager - one who can't be bothered to appear impartial.

Ewww - they should've sprung for a hand model

If you'd indulge me for a moment, I'm going to pick holes in this story for the purpose of asserting intellectual superiority over a paid-journalist, and balancing some transparently feminist-fuelled moral-outrage with some good old fashioned rationality.

Lyndal Fair, 36, a mother of three, said she was shocked and embarrassed when staff at a Vodafone store told her they didn't sell phones to full-time mums.

Didn't sell "phones" to full-time mums? Not quite. Didn't sell a particular phone to full-time Mums - the BlackBerry Storm - which is a business phone, and only available to customers on certain (business, possibly) plans.

Staff instead suggested she ask her husband to buy the phone for her under his own name

...[Because he has a sodding business!]

"I really felt like a second-class citizen for the first time since becoming a mum," Ms Fair said. "I couldn't believe it. It was like being back in the '50s.

Oh boy - they're playing that card. Never mind the fact that there weren't commercially-available mobile-telecommunications devices back in the 50s, let's just focus on the logical fallacy of framing an inconvenience (having to upgrade your plan) as proof that sexual discrimination hasn't changed in almost sixty years! But the outrage doesn't end there - let's drag in the reluctant husband who has to overcompensate for his lack of giving a shite with some overly-dramatic effusions:

"Being a mum is a full-time job and it's a very hard job - the hardest job you can have - because if you get it wrong, the ramifications for everyone are enormous," Ms Fair said.

'Ramifications for everyone'? Sweet Christ. It's all gone a bit The Day After Tomorrow, hasn't it?

"It's just terrible. You cop it as a mum if you work because you're not at home with your children, and if you do stay home you get hit with nonsense like this."

Poooooooooooooooor women. Will they ever escape this catch-22? Normally I'd muster up a bit of sympathy for such predicaments, but the following splutterance from the author of this piece demands that I ramp up the misogyny for a bit:

Vodafone spokesman Greg Spears yesterday confirmed the no-housewives rule and said getting a man to buy the phone instead was the quickest fix.

BULLSHIT!

Ahem... Now that I’ve got that out of my system, might I propose what the author meant to say?

Vodafone spokesman Greg Spears yesterday confirmed that the handset is only available to customers on certain Vodafone plans and said that getting a family member who was currently employed and on one of these plans to buy the phone instead was the quickest way around it.

"No-housewives rule"? "A man"? The woman who wrote this needs to step away from the keyboard for a bit, lest they underscore any more innocuous tales with egregious shades of sexual-discrimination. To further drive home the utter disregard for any illusion of balanced reporting, the final word is given to “Eva Cox, of the Women's Electoral Lobby”.

What’s that? She wasn’t impressed? Big surprise. What else? Crikey:

She called on women to boycott Vodafone until it changed the policy.

"SECKSIZM!"

Seriously now? I’m sure that I’ve established that women are not being ‘slighted’ here, stay-at-home-mothers are. Wouldn’t a much more effective tactic be to ask all stay-at-home-mothers-and-fathers to petition Vodafone to lower the lofty bar for entry to the exclusive club of BlackBerry Storm owners? Asking ‘all women’ is dumb – as it is based on the assumption that all women would be upset by an unemployed (albeit hardworking) woman being denied a phone, which I doubt many would be. (Manipulating the facts to create controversy where there is none might gain sympathy for the cause, however).

Okay, I haven’t been entirely fair here – I should let this bastion of moral guidance continue with what she was saying, please Ms Cox[hater], continue!

"They need to be careful that Vodafone don't get a black ban after this, or a pink ban, if you want to call it that," Ms Cox said.

"... OH - I GEDDIT!! WIMMINZ LIKE THE COLLAR PINK!!!"

Christ.

Dear reader, please forgive this rather scattered entry, as every time I gather my thoughts, they force their way out in a rather undignified Tourettic flurry of capslock and swearing. I’m probably ripping on a publication that’s not exactly high-brow, but the waves of disgust I felt from seeing it second from the top on Digg has carried me thus far, so why turn back now?

Sexism isn’t cool. But claiming sexism when there is none is less cool, and really only serves the cause of the sexists. So you feminists need to shut the fuck up.