Channelling the sisterhood
"Is it because I 'af ladybits?"

In the past I might have - erroneously, I assure you - given the impression that I am not exactly Germaine Greer when it comes to my reaction to this sort of thing; but the unedited thoughts of The Public(TM) can sometimes do strange things to a chap.

Recap: Sue Turton (C4 news reporter) got her arse pinched by some bloke whilst she was reporting live on the floods last week. Subsequently, Knacker has taken an interest, the fuzz have got involved and are planning to serve a fixed penalty notice on the "gentleman" who decided to get his jollies from humiliating a woman, which has elicited a number of responses at the bottom of this related article on Comment is Free ranging from:

- "Damn right. Why is casual sexual assault acceptable? Are we still living in the Middle Ages?"

- "The bloke was a d*ckhead but let's not get too bothered about it. Worse things are happening in Darfur." *

- "I am a bloke and I get my arse pinched sometimes by WOMEN! I think it's immensely flattering and she should stop moaning." **

- "She's a rough old minger and should be grateful for the attention, the silly b*tch."

For a real treat, have a look at some of the comments below the YouTube posting:

- "the woman is damn ugly it's proly the first time somthg like that happens to her, she 'd better be happy won't happen again lol... look at her...and that is supposed to be an assault LoL"

- "Woman like such. It gives her the feel her ass is worth something. but in these days of feminism and emancipation every cheap bitch is a wondergirl with the personal rights of a queen and she has to show that. i want back the good old times, sigh."

- "That was so cool. She loved it!" (ah! That old classic)

- "Hah, nice. It's great that she doesn't even react but of all people why would he want to pinch HER ass?"

Beautiful.

Anyway, I was thinking about women in this new meedja thang on the back of a survey Iain Dale did a couple of weeks ago on his readership demographic which turned up that only 14% of his hits came from the female of the species.

A significant percentage of his commentators think that this is due to the fact that "most women aren't interested in politics", but perhaps the real reason is that whenever one of them pokes their head above the parapet, they get subjected to a barrage of "friendly fire" low level sexual harrassment which can be handily dismissed as "just a joke"?

Remember the Melissa Kite Affair of Insufferable Tedium, where Dale fisked an admittedly piss-poor article by Kite? She hit back with this. Whilst Dale was, in time, proved right on the substance of Kite's initial musings what was unacceptable were the comments about what various commentators would like to see a "real man" do to her. Nice.

I probably wouldn't want to be a woman in politics or the media either if everybody assumed that, just because I was in possession of a vagina, I was simultaneously fair sexual game and automatically wrong on every issue I chose to expound on.

Just a thought.


Occasional political dictionary

* "Why should we bother with X when Y is happening and it's so much worse?": This is the "why should I tidy my bedroom when the world's such a MESS?!" approach to political discourse.

This theory holds that no one should attempt to do anything about anything at all, because there might well be something worse going on in the world that we need to address instead. Whatever this might be, however, I won't, because my philosophy doesn't extend beyond my armchair and I can't be bothered.

Still, it's a good way of deligitimising an argument without addressing it.

** This happened to me and I wasn't bothered: My opinions, unlike yours, are universal in their scope and encompass ALL human experience.