Celebrity UK chef Gordon Ramsay has been
making headlines recently with the claim that "women can't
cook." Deliberately stirring controversy just prior to the launch of a new tv
series is no doubt a well tested marketing ploy. And, about the controversy
itself, there's not much to say. While Ramsay and his crew filmed around the
UK, a survey of cooking habits was commissioned for the series which showed
that "75% of women asked admitted they could not cook."
From this and from his experiences on the
road, Ramsay was then able to extrapolate, saying women "can't cook to save
their lives."
A BBC 'Talking Point' page which has gauged reaction to his
comments shows that the ensuing debate has been enjoyed by both men and women
in a number of countries (Canada, US, Netherlands and UK), with both genders
taking it in turns to score points off each other. Nearly 40 people have
commented on Ramsay's statement with opinion ranging from full support to
dismissive ridicule.
Whilst opinion seems to vary a great deal,
everything gets said without reference to a small but important piece of
information. All contributers, as well as Ramsay himself, take it for granted
that statements about 'women', and without qualification that implies _all_
women, can be made with reference only to the very narrow bandwidth of western
female experience.
While earnest, comic, self-righteous,
concilliatory, intellectual and glib comment jostles for pixel room at the BBC,
it's beyond the ken of any of these people to see that the whole debate is
meaningless in a context which excludes 3 billion women from consciousness.
"Women can't cook"… is this true of women in the
middle east,
south and
central america,
south east asia,
india,
africa or the
caribbean?
Ramsay and his debaters make assumptions from
an incredibly narrow-minded, indeed crassly self-obsessed point of view but
it's a viewpoint which perfectly demonstrates how british / western culture
often talks to itself about itself and about the outside world: it's
self-flattery through total eclipse.
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