Let this be a watershed in driving smut and sexism out of society
AFRIEND’S teenage daughter was strolling along a Dublin street one morning recently when a passing man made a crude comment about her breasts. Being a feisty young woman, she tartly told him where to go, and here was his response: ‘Well, if you don’t want people commenting, then put them away!’ For the record, she was wearing a T-shirt and a hoodie.
In his world, though, this woman and her body were public property, his to ogle, perv over, comment on, compliment or criticise as he wished. How dare she go around making men like him feel inadequate, the cheek of her to be an attractive woman who was clearly out of his league? Surely she realised that the whole point of her existence was to appeal to men, or not, as the case may be. If she didn’t want losers like him slobbering over her, then what was she doing out in public at all?
That’s the mindset that informs much of the abuse and comment that women, especially those who put their heads above the parapet in politics, entertainment or the media, get online.
No matter how serious, mundane or innocent the subject that brought you to their attention, some man will always want to remind you that your only real value lies in your sexual utility.
Either you are fat or ugly or old, and should therefore hide yourself away rather than affronting male eyes, or else you are just dying to be told how attractive you are, and should be duly grateful.
Women of all ages will definitely recognise the tenor of the messages that Fine Gael TD Jennifer Carroll MacNeill received from the man convicted this week of harassing her; even if the medium might be modern, the meaning certainly was not. Never mind that she was a politician in the middle of an election campaign, all Gerard Culhane saw was a good-looking woman who would surely appreciate his most appreciative attentions.
So he bombarded her with messages, including three sexually explicit porn vidor eos. Alongside the hardcore fare there were winks, kisses and heart emojis. He complimented her campaign poster because ‘you look stunning in it’. ‘Stay warm, gorgeous,’ went one message, and another read: ‘Hi Jen, you will be the best-looking TD in the Dáil in a few weeks.’
There’ll be some who’ll wonder why Ms Carroll MacNeill felt sufficiently alarmed by these messages that she went to the gardaí and had Culhane tracked down and prosecuted for harassment. It’s not as if they were threatening, and even if the porn clips were foul, other politicians have had worse for sure, and doesn’t the mad stuff come with the territory when you run for public office?
The difference, however, is that this sort of harassment and intrusion has nothing to do with politics, or with Ms Carroll MacNeill’s campaign, the stance she’s taken on a particular subject. In fact, it discounts her as a politician, dehumanises her as a mother and a professional person and addresses her only as a sexual commodity.
It assumes the liberty of intruding, as she put it, into her life and her peace of mind and left her worrying about how far that intrusion might reach: ‘Was this a precursor to something else? Was this person far away, or were they crossing the road towards me? Was I going to
be hurt, was I going to be attacked, was my failure to respond a tacit invitation to send more?’ Even without an explicit threat, that sort of cloying, creepy flattery is disturbing, because, as she suggests, of the fear that it can turn nasty if it is ignored or rebuffed – look at my friend’s teenage daughter, verbally assailed for not being flattered by a smutty remark. There was a time, perhaps, when a woman in public life would have been expected to take the abuse or the sexualised comments as part of her lot. I suspect female politicians of all ages could tell stories of similar attentions to those that so distressed Ms Carroll McNeill. And in times past, there would have been little they could have done about them.
The prosecution and conviction of Gerard Culhane should mark a watershed and signal to those who would harass women, when they’re doing their jobs or simply walking down the street on a sunny morning, that they can no longer rely on their victims’ docility and their own anonymity.
When these men can be tracked down, named and shamed, there’s an onus on public women to help do so. Because that might just make other men of this type, the sort who fling casual slurs at passing teens, think again.
WE’RE spoilt for choice, lately, with celebrities mauling each other to shreds in courtrooms, exposing both their extraordinary privilege and their weapons-grade self-absorption. The Wagatha Christie pair, Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy, have been likened to passengers on a train speeding towards a cliff with both refusing to disembark, and the same is true of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Neither of the ex-spouses can seriously expect to win this latest bout, so the objective seems to be to inflict maximum damage on the other. As for the WAGs, this is a school-gate spat elevated to a multi-million-pound court battle by two vain, silly women squandering their husbands’ earnings on a fit of pique. There’s a delicious irony in that the row is basically about an invasion of privacy, yet both Coleen and Rebekah are busily invading their own privacy, offering up their lives and relationships for public consumption with juicy details revealed on a daily basis – and no tip-off fees involved. You could say all four have more money than sense but, given how little sense they’ve shown, that wouldn’t require much money at all.