Shrieking sexism over every perceived slight is a sure sign it’s the silly season

THERE are always subtle indicators that we have truly entered the realms of the silly season. For starters, we have now had sunshine for an unprecedented two days in a row, which means it’s time for weather warnings and Factor 50.

The smell of barbecues merrily cremating meat into cinders is so pervasive around housing estates that half of Dublin now smells like a charnel house.

We’re greeted by the always lovely sight of middle-aged men bravely embracing that strange bright thing in the sky by wearing cargo shorts and sandals with fresh white socks (fashion hint – no man over 30 should ever be seen in public wearing shorts. Or white socks, for that matter).

But while the shining sun may be a rare treat, the annual silly season is more usually marked by the return of the summer schools, a sort of Feile for fogeys who gather in remote parts of the country to think Deep Thoughts and pretend to be interested in what others say.

One of the better known of these appalling jamborees is the MacGill Summer School, a gathering of worthies that has taken place in Donegal for the past 40 years.

As a symbol of just how boring the establishment can be when it really puts its mind to it – with such compelling speakers as Bertie Ahern, as well as a man who was once ‘the secretary general of the Irish Labour Party’ in the 1960s – these are gatherings that boast more waffle than the frozen foods aisle in Tesco. This year, however, the backlash over the wild gender imbalance in the proceedings has managed the previously unimaginable – it has made people who aren’t going to MacGill, who have never gone to MacGill and who never, ever, under pain of death, want to go to MacGill, actually talk about MacGill.

And they’re doing so in gloriously impudent and disrespectful tones.

MacGill organiser Joe Mulholland flapped wildly when this disparity was pointed out, but by the time he started to splutter out some explanation which would get the sisterhood off his back, the die was cast.

Ultimately, this farcical but hugely entertaining spat boils down to a bunch of boring women who are annoyed they haven’t been invited to join a bunch of boring men and so we saw the usual dire denunciations thrown around, particularly that the panels were “pale, male and stale”. That may well be true, but did any of the accusers realise that, by their very own standards of languagepolicing, ‘pale’ is racist, ‘male’ is sexist and ‘stale’ is ageist?

Similarly, one pale, female and stale columnist – you see? Everyone can play that game – was scathing about the attendees and their “jackets and ties that signal masculinity”. Huh? A bunch of middle-aged (at best) men gather together and people are shocked to see them wearing jackets and ties?

We’ve all heard of body-shaming, slut-shaming and fat-shaming – but tie-shaming is surely a first. At least we should be thankful they weren’t wearing cargo shorts and sandals with white socks.

Of course, you could make the point that MacGill and all the other tedious talking shops are private organisations and are entitled to pick who they want. But these events like to present themselves as providing vital insight into the workings of modern Ireland, so the furore is a lovely reminder that far from having their finger on the pulse of the nation, they don’t even know where that pulse is.

Modern feminism tends to be rather middle class and highly media-driven and it doesn’t come more middle class and mediadriven than MacGill, so this is its home turf, so to speak.

The rest of us, meanwhile, are far more concerned with the much more important events playing out at the World Cup in Russia – and a similar row about gender balance on the pundit panels back home.

Much has been made of the fact that RTÉ ‘only’ have two female pundits on show – at the time of writing, the reliably eccentric former USA goalie Hope Solo remains a mysterious no-show – and this has been bandied about as yet another example of sexism.

For the purposes of clarity – this row isn’t down to sexism at all, it’s actually about elitism. After all, saying that women have no place in football is as stupid and demonstratively incorrect as saying women aren’t funny. In fact, to paraphrase the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, you know you’re a sexist when... you object to a female commentator just because she’s a woman.

GOING back a couple of years, you knew you were a sexist... if you thought Sian MasseyEllis shouldn’t be in her job just because she’s a woman – and if you don’t know who she is, then you’re not qualified to have an opinion anyway.

However, despite the repeated evidence to the contrary from some of the male pundits, the one area that is off limits to all of us is the arena of expert analysis.

The theory behind the concept of the expert pundit is that they are people who have been professional footballers and who have worked in that environment, who know some background and have some relevant expertise and understanding to bring to the table.

That’s where the elitism comes in – unless you have played professional men’s football at a high level, you’re just another person with an opinion and it doesn’t matter what your gender is.

There’s a reason why football writers, of both sexes, frequently pop up on radio and TV, but you won’t see them appear on a panel. Because that is not their forum.

Let’s put it this way, the Women’s World Cup is in France next year. If RTÉ covers it, and it should, then I don’t want to see Richie Sadlier or Didi Hamann as pundits – purely because they don’t have experience of the women’s game.

Shrieking sexism over every perceived slight may feel good, but it’s hardly logical or rational when the evidence clearly points to the contrary. Then again, this is the silly season...

A symbol of how boring the establishment can be when it really puts its mind to it, MacGill has more waffle than the frozen aisle in Tesco