Admittedly, Proverbs 29: 7 talks about the poor, not the women. But we all know that the outdated Bible should be modernised to agree with our infinitely more progressive times.
Anyway, it’s January, which means that the first Grand Slam on the tennis tour, the Australian Open, is upon us. It also means that my unwavering commitment to political correctness is reeling from yet another blow. Or is it?
As a self-declared champion of equality, I must believe in equal pay for equal work with religious fervour. My daily prayer therefore includes the words ‘…send us this day our daily bread and make sure everyone, regardless of their trespasses, or verily their gender, gets an equal slice…’
In the sinful misapprehension that ‘gender’ is only a grammatical category, I used to say ‘sex’ instead, but, following a Damascene experience, it has been revealed to me that this in itself constitutes a trespass. So gender it is.
Also Satan, in his serpentine way, tempted me in the past to insist on the notion that, in proper usage, a singular antecedent, such as ‘everyone’, ought to be followed by an equally singular personal pronoun ‘his’. ‘Man embraces woman,’ I used to say in my wickedness before I saw the PC light. But Our Father of Political Correctness pointed out the error of my ways, and I’ve since replaced the wicked ‘his’ with the saintly ‘their’.
Hence, every tennis player should receive equal pay for their equal work [sick]. But never mind the wording – to my everlasting horror I’ve received yet another confirmation that this commandment is null and void at Grand Slam events.
That is, the equal pay bit still applies: a man or a woman who loses their first round gets the same amount: $27,600AUS, about £18,000. So far so good, my brethren and sistern in the God of PC.
But, unless my sums are hopelessly awry, the second part of the mantra, ‘equal work’, has gone to hell. Judge for yourself.
In the first round of the 2013 Australian Open, the women played a combined 149 sets. Of these, 27 sets – a whopping 18 percent, brethren and sistern! – ended with a one-sided score of either 6-0 or 6-1. Such routs seldom last more than 20 minutes apiece.
The men, on the other hand, played 235 sets, of which only nine percent ended at 6-0 or 6-1. That means, and I’m being generous in the spirit of PC charity, the men worked at least twice as many hours. Thus their pay was less than half that of the women, and verily I say unto you, brethren and sistern, fair it is not.
If only this were the end of injustice! But my, now indignant, eye couldn’t help noticing that women routinely double-faulted on break points, at least twice per set. Their counterparts of the male gender do so about once every other season, only to repent and beg their coaches for forgiveness. To a tennis player, this is God giving us the sign that the men spend infinitely more time working on their serves and, by inference, their other strokes also.
They also, unless I miss the point, work much harder in the gym and on the running track. Every male competitor’s body is lean and rippling with muscles. By most unfortunate contrast, half the women ripple with fat. Obviously, they have better things to do, and to eat, during the pre-season, and not all desserts they consume are just.
Add all this up, and it wouldn’t be far-fetched to suggest that a racquet-wielding woman is paid three times as much for their work than a man is for theirs. There must be much wailing and gnashing of teeth in PC heaven.
Except that there isn’t, and for a good reason. For, as we know, women constitute a minority. Well, they really don’t if one wishes to insist on arithmetical rectitude. But that doesn’t matter, for ‘minority’ isn’t so much a matter of maths as one of faith. If Our Lord of PC says women are a minority, then so, by Jove, they are.
Moreover, they are an oppressed minority, and have been for at least 5,000 years that we know of. Actually, any PC coreligionist of mine will be certain that said oppression goes back even further. But, in the absence of reliable records, we have to settle on 5,000 years, still an irredeemably long time.
Actually, this outrage can indeed be redeemed – by making appropriate restitution. By compensating our sistern in the way to which our American brethren refer as ‘affirmative action.’ And the organisers of the Grand Slam tennis tournaments have taken it upon themselves to correct more than five millennia of egregious oppression.
Hence, women getting paid three times as much is an injustice not done but repaired. Our Lord of Political Correctness is athirst, but His thirst has been partly quenched. Halleluiah!