‘Puritanical’ views on sex pests may be a fad says female Tory MP
A FEMALE Tory vicechairman has compared ‘puritanical’ attitudes to sexual harassment with passing ‘ fads’ such as fashionable wristbands.
Kemi Badenoch, who was appointed last week, said there had been a generational change in what is seen as appropriate behaviour.
Her comments come after Westminster has been rocked by the sexual harassment scandal that saw Sir Michael Fallon and Damian Green forced out of their Cabinet jobs.
Mrs Badenoch, 38, elected as MP for Saffron Walden last year, said: ‘Attitudes that we thought were quite conservative are now seen as being liberal. When I look at a lot of the stuff that you see on social media about how – I think it’s a generational thing as well – younger people look at appropriate behaviours and what is a sexual advance, what is sexual harassment and so on. To me, it’s becoming a lot more puritanical than anything I ever saw in my 20s or in my teens.’
In the interview with The House magazine, she added: ‘I don’t know whether it’s just a fad where people are saying these things and then they’ll move on to something else.’
Brexit-supporting Mrs Badenoch said: ‘When I first got into politics, this is 2005, there was Live Aid… and that was what everybody was talking about.
‘It was fashionable, they wore the bracelets, they went to the concert.’ Mrs Badenoch, who was born in London but raised in Nigeria, wowed the Tory faithful when she introduced Theresa May at last year’s party conference.
But in remarks that contrast with Mrs Badenoch’s, a former Tory researcher yesterday said she was nicknamed ‘big t**s’ by an MP as she hit out at the ‘sleaze and casual sexism’ rife in Westminster.
Teresa Fitzherbert said politicians harassed and bullied female aides – making sexual jokes and reducing women starting out their careers to tears. She said one woman lost her hair through stress, while another female staffer was told by an MP to take the stairs everywhere ‘because he thought she was overweight’.
Writing in Harper’s Bazaar, where she now works, Miss Fitzherbert said Parliament’s subsidised bars were frequently the setting for ‘drunken punchups’ and illicit affairs.