Well, the new year began with lads behaving badly. Cricketer Chris Gayle was fined $10,000 for making inappropriate comments to sport reporter Mel McLaughlin during an interview, basically chatting her up on camera. Jamie Briggs lost his ministerial position for what sound like a drunken pass at a consulate employee in Hong Kong. Lots more, but let's stay with that for a minute.
Let's pick this all apart. Firstly, what is striking is the size of the punishment for these misdemeanours. I am not for one second saying that these actions were not deserving of some degree of opprobrium, but I'm not sure that the punishments fit the crimes. So one can chew on that for a bit.
Then, nothing terrible happened really, and if Gayle had made his offer for a drink AFTER the interview was over, or if Briggs had behaved with a bit more decorum, then really, who cares. Private lives. So it's all a storm in a teacup, or is it?
But what also disappointed me was the attitude of Brendan O'Neill, whose columns usually have me nodding in agreement. He is a pretty common-sense sort of fellow, but in this case, I part company from him.
His take is that 'flirtation' has been crushed by the grim, joy-sucking PC people who are acting like a) the nuns who taught him in school, and who are 'schoolmarmish feminists', and b) grim advocates of the perennial victim status of women, thus ironically disempowering women who should be, and usually are, perfectly able to handle unsolicited 'flirtation' themselves.
He goes on to pull more examples of the PC destruction of all that is fun in life, e.g., how campus activists in the University of Wyoming inform students that 'sex that occurs while a partner is intoxicated...is sexual assault'. Says Brendan, 'This would mean that I and absolutely everyone I know has committed sexual assault. Who didn't have drunk sex at uni?'
Well, I for one didn't. Ditto almost everyone I knew. And it was then that I had this insight: You know when people talk about bullying in school? At school reunions or whatever. There are often people who say how they were bullied and how difficult their school lives were and how they managed to overcome their trauma, etc etc; and then there is always someone who denies that there was any bullying. And that's the way you know who the bully was; the one who denies that bullying took place. It was just fun! It was kids mucking around! What bullying? Don't be so sensitive.
So Brendan, your statement reminds me strongly of this, and therefore I think it is actually quite likely that you did commit sexual assault in some way. Oh, just a bit of fun, a bit of drunken sex at uni, hahaha, and I wonder if your erstwhile partner would reflect in a similar way on those good old days. Maybe. Probably with great embarrassment.
So I guess what I am saying is, that if you think it's OK for men to say 'flirtatious' things to women, and I don't mean while on a date or in a romantic situation, but while at work or otherwise 'inappropriately', then you bloody well don't get it, do you?
Men who think that it's perfectly OK to stare at women or to make comments to passing women about their looks or whatever, or who stand about in groups whistling and cat-calling women, or who think it's OK to pinch or pat or grope women, or who think it's fine to pat a female employee on the bottom or make suggestive comments, all the way through to the further end of the spectrum of what went on in Cologne on New Year's Eve, which was indeed violent sexual assault, all have two things in common.
1 A sense of male entitlement, and
2 Profound disrespect for women.
You may think that I am being a bit extreme in comparing a bit of sleazy chat to rape, and I am not saying that they are of equal evil, or even of equal intent. But I see it as a spectrum of behaviour.
Firstly, what gives men the right to even stare at pretty women? And just for the record, I understand that 'men like to look'. So look! Take a quick admiring glance at the beautiful young woman. But anything more than 3 seconds is not a look, it's a stare or an ogle, and it makes the recipient uncomfortable, and that is often deliberate. And any - ANY- accompanying sound made, whether a whistle or a 'phwoar!' or a comment- makes it into a leer, or even a verbal assault, and can either frighten a young girl or truly piss off an older woman. And please don't insult me by saying ' but it is just an appreciation of beauty!'. Yes, I'm sure that everyone who goes to Florence to look at Michelangelo's David is whistling and commenting on his butt. Not. They are usually reverentially silent out of RESPECT.
But women are strong enough to deal with this themselves! They don't need to be told that they are victims! Friends, by the time a woman is old enough to deal with this shit, it's pretty certain that she doesn't have to deal with it any more because she has become invisible to the male gaze, which only bothers ogling/patting/harrassing young pretty things who ARE often bothered by it. Because there is an imbalance of power. So young unempowered women do in fact need a level of protection and advocacy even if only to learn their rights and how to respond to these behaviours. (Mel Mclaughlin laughed it all off and good for her; but an 18 year old apprentice in a bakery or workshop might just need someone to talk to about inappropriate workplace behaviour, just maybe?)
Oh, another thing is the older woman who says, 'I wish someone would whistle at me or chat ME up!' No you don't. What you wish for is to be young again, or prettier than you think you are. You actually do want to be respected, unless you have some sort of personality disorder or have been so inured to disrespect and male entitlement that you think it's normal and acceptable, oh, boys will be boys.
Men who respect women do not ogle or leer or grope them. Ergo, all this 'laddish' behaviour all the way to violence and rape can only exist in the toxic atmosphere of disrespect, male privilege and entitlement. Notice I have not actually said 'misogyny' because that term has been bandied about a bit too freely, but that's there too, at the further end of that spectrum. That was there, in Cologne, and it's there in Sweden, which has become the rape capital of the Western world in the last 10 years, corresponding with an influx of Muslim migrants, and in plenty of other places where male entitlement and disrespect for women exist. And I'm not saying that this is solely Arab Muslim men attacking western women, because it isn't. But that toxic brew of entitlement and disrespect/misogyny certainly was a feature of what happened on New Year's Eve.
And where there has been perhaps an over-reaction to sleazy cricketers and drunken ministerial behaviours, there has been a shocking under-reaction by the authorities in Cologne and in other places in Europe where similar events have occurred, and the police seem to be paralysed. Let's hope that they are actually working on something to prevent such outrages and to identify and punish perpetrators.
Grim PC, nunnish, schoolmarm feminist, signing off.
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