Yet More #FirstWorldProblems…

…and this one’s great, even by ‘Guardian’ standards. Apparently, Bear Grylls isn’t featuring women on his survivalist show.

I know, I know. I was shocked and appalled* too…

So why is he in the news now? Has he been accused of exaggerating the hardships he faces in his TV shows? Not this time. This time he has been accused of peddling sexist twaddle. For his new Channel 4 series, The Island with Bear Grylls, a dozen volunteers are dumped on a Pacific island for a month and left to feed and house themselves. What's so controversial about that? They're all men.

*gasp* Say it ain’t so?

Are survival skills really a guy thing? Not according to bushcraft instructor Lisa Fenton, who called the idea "fantastical and ridiculous", or explorer Sarah Outen, who denounced the "male-oriented bias" of adventure TV, or Ruth England, from the Discovery Channel series Man, Woman, Wild, who pointed out: "The basic tenets of survival are the same, regardless of your genitals."

Ah. And of course, it’s clearly not the case that they are simply jealous of his success and feel that they should be given their own TV show, why, perish the thought!

And what does "Bear" have to say for himself? "It's nothing to do with who's the stronger sex," apparently, and he'd "really love to do a study of modern women. What does it mean in the modern world to be a woman today? How can you be a strong, empowered, go-getter woman with all of the womanly qualities that are important?"

In other words? It's all a silly misunderstanding, and you girls will get a go eventually.

I thought this was 2014 – do women have to ‘wait their turn’? Why can’t they do what he did and get cracking on developing their own TV shows?

*totally nonplussed