”Get away from her, you bitch!”

Dear, dear Yasmin has Sigourney Weaver in her sights:

I would gladly wring her long neck, but that would be to punish idiocy.

Meh. I think she could take you, Yazza…

Sigourney Weaver reckons that James Cameron didn't get his richly deserved Oscar for Avatar because he doesn't have breasts. Obvious innit? It's boob discrimination, the only explanation for why this year, unlike every other since 1929, a man had to concede the big prize to his female better and piquantly, his ex-wife.

Hey, Yazza, she’s only using the same excuse – in reverse – that you tend to use for women in every single column. Why so upset?

Maybe Aliens shrivelled Weaver's brain. The spoiler really doesn't get it. Or maybe she still feels she has to flatter men to get coveted roles. Shame.

Ouch! Claws in, sweetie…

Our feminist hearts soared like blithe starlings when the awesome Kathryn Bigelow went up to collect her Oscars for The Hurt Locker.

‘Soared like blithe starlings’..?

Nurse! The screens!

Her win mattered, but as the euphoria subsides, so too the optimism that cinema has entered a new era of gender equality.

Female film-makers carry on fighting for parity. Professor Martha Lauzen of San Diego State University found in 1998 that only 9% of directors in Hollywood were female. In 2008 the figure was unchanged. Why should that matter?

Why indeed?

Because it does…

Oh. Right.

Good point, well argued, Yazza…

… and because as Jane Campion, who made The Piano and Bright Star, said in Cannes last year: "We represent half the population and give birth to the whole world. Without [female directors] the world is not getting to know the whole story. They must put on their coats of armour and get going." Men are not born to rule. They just believe they are.

Watch out, chaps! Here come the girls!

And it’s not just Hollywood:

… smart, witty Claudia Winkleman is to replace Jonathan Ross on the BBC's Film 2010. Hurray! Macho punters are furious, which is even more pleasing.

What’s more important then, Yazza? Some vague concept of ‘equality’ or sticking it to those horrid men?

Yeah, I know. Rhetorical question…

Gurinder Chadha, whose new film It's a Wonderful Afterlife is released this week, is another director with huge box-office appeal…."It's very hard to make films for everybody. But undeniably the industry is run by men. They respect box office and awards. If a woman makes money, that gives us power. But too few of us get there. I now think there is such a thing as female aesthetic and understanding. The way we look at the world, what we find funny, moving, touching is different. My female characters are always three dimensional. We multitask – incredibly important for directors. Of course some men can do that too, but there is a difference."

Now who’s generalising..?

Talking to the journalist Kate Kellaway in 2007, Bird cut to the chase: "We are still living in a very sexist society ... there are so few of us for the same reason there are so few women in parliament and the City of London. [The guys] want to keep power for themselves. The business side of directing – raising money – is hindered by being female."

Whine, whine, whine…

There is the real business of making and rearing children, too. All the directors I talked to agreed that the demands of the job make it hellishly difficult for mums. Men never feel the same guilt or pressures.

It’s a choice. Family, or filmmaking.

Listening to the people who tell you that you should be able to have both, without sacrifice, is madness. You can’t…