Leftists’ hypocritical misogyny
IF YOU’RE a sadomasochist or have some other reason for frequenting feminist news sites, you would have noticed sexism hasn’t been blamed for the British election result.
Unlike Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard, it seems conservative women are immune to sexism and their failures aren’t attributed to misogyny.
The sisters of perpetual outrage, who see sexism in every facet of life, haven’t flooded websites and newspapers with feminist feel-pieces decrying unconscious discrimination, gender bias, entrenched misogyny and other associated societal ills for a female candidate’s mediocre performance.
Strange given British Prime Minister Theresa May has copped far worse abuse and media scrutiny than Clinton or Gillard. The Daily Mail critiqued her legs while Leftist publication The Guardian had a cartoon of May being rogered or sodomised by US President Donald Trump.
Like other conservative women, May has copped a deluge of sexist abuse on social media and elsewhere.
May is far more qualified than Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and yet she won fewer seats than predecessor David Cameron and will now govern in a coalition with the ultraconservative Democratic Unionist Party.
How can a woman with May’s credentials lose seats to the clownish Corbyn, an economically illiterate Marxist with a sordid history of cosying up to terrorists and failing to combat anti-Semitism in Labour ranks?
Corbyn managed to make May look like a fool for rushing to an early election and losing her majority.
There is now serious conjecture that May will be forced to step down.
What a contrast to mid-April when May called the snap election and polls predicted she’d win with a landslide.
Though no one is blaming misogyny for her plight, it is notable that one famous progressive came forward to defend the PM against sexist abuse.
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling caused a massive stir at the weekend by calling out “liberal” men who indulge in sexist language to criticise May and other high-profile women.
In the 14-tweet storm, Rowling said: “Just unfollowed a man whom I thought was smart and funny because he called Theresa May a whore. If you can’t disagree with a woman without reaching for all those filthy old insults, screw you and your politics.
“I’m sick of ‘liberal’ men whose mask slips every time a woman displeases them, who reach for crude and humiliating words associated with femaleness, act like old-school misogynists and then preen themselves as though they’ve been brave.
“When you do this, Mr Liberal Cool Guy, you ally yourself … with the men who send women violent pornographic images and rape threats, who try by every means possible to intimidate women out of politics and public spaces, both real and digital.
“Every woman I know who has dared express an opinion publicly has endured this kind of abuse at least once, rooted in an apparent determination to humiliate or intimidate her on the basis she is female ...”
Rowling’s Twitter manifesto was both principled and naive.
Her belief that guys “hiding behind a cartoon frog” are more likely to be sexist pigs than “liberal” men is simplistic but she should still be applauded for condemning the hypocrisy of those who supposedly champion women’s rights using misogynistic language to attack women who don’t subscribe to their views.
It shouldn’t be remarkable for a staunch feminist like Rowling to call out blatantly chauvinistic abuse and yet it was, for it happens so rarely. In Australia, we have seen women who are normally hypersensitive to gendered language turn a blind eye to sexist abuse and bullying of female conservatives. The reality is that many progressives, in politics, the media and academia, consider conservative women fair game for abuse.
There were no howls of protest when Labor’s Doug Cameron called Minister for Employment and Women Michaelia Cash a “silly schoolgirl” who needed a male colleague to “chaperone her”.
There was no frenzy from feminists when another Labor senator, Glenn Sterle, made jokes about Cash’s appearance when she rose to speak to the Senate on White Ribbon Day about the importance of respect for women.
Conservative women are loath to play the victim but that doesn’t give their political opponents the right to subject them to vile abuse.