OPINION ASKING FOR BEST ISN’T SUCH A BAD IDEA
LOOK guys, I get it. I have suffered enough mansplaining to know how infuriating it can be to be patronised.
For years, adverts have told women they are a tampon away from the empowerment of roller skating in tiny shorts.
Of course the new “Believe” Gillette advert is a cynical cry for sales and attention.
But when it comes to the level of backlash, I suggest you keep your beard on. Boycotts have been threatened and the ad has been accused of stereotyping men as sex pests and aggressors.
“It’s feminist propaganda,” declared one critic, as if feminism was some global force of darkness about to invade. Can anything, even an advert, really be so bad if it’s instilling a message for a man to be the best he can be?
The set-up is negative, the man speaking over a female colleague, the guy sexually harassing a pretty girl on a street, the dads watching kids tussling on a lawn, chanting, “Boys will be boys”.
Critics say those scenarios are offensive but they can’t deny they are based on reality.
But the ad also reinforces positive behaviour, men holding each other accountable, speaking out and refusing to be the passive bystander.
Gillette have hitched the advert to the #MeToo movement, thereby guaranteeing an onslaught of criticism.
There are men who just don’t get it, that #MeToo isn’t a declaration of a gender war but a call for solidarity of the sexes.
There are so many men, happy to declare themselves feminists, who want an end to toxic masculinity as much women.
They won’t be getting their boxers in a twist over an advert, urging men to be better role models for the next generation.
Buy Gillette or don’t but being the “best men can be” is the tagline of a better future worth buying in to.
I HOPE the feminist slogan “well-behaved women seldom make history” doesn’t apply to Nicola Sturgeon right now.
Sturgeon has referred herself to the ministerial ethics body over the Alex Salmond case and, fingers crossed, her conduct has been impeccable, or history she may be.
The First Minister has already admitted she was briefed by Salmond on the inquiry into sexual harassment claims against him and that they had subsequent phone calls.
If an ethics panel can answer anything, hopefully it will be – what the hell was Sturgeon thinking?
The handling of the Salmond case has been an omnishambles, with the women who made allegations of sexual harassment forgotten in the melee.
Would it be any less bitter a pill to swallow had they been let down by a boys’ club instead of a group of smart women who should know better?
It shouldn’t be relevant but of course it is, because if this debacle had been presided over by men, we would rightly be tearing at their grey suits.
We expected better, not more of the same.
Four central players in the saga are women.
Chief of staff Liz Lloyd met with a Salmond adviser and discussed allegations of sexual harassment a month before Sturgeon’s fateful meeting.
The Scottish Government’s most senior civil servant Leslie Evans, an ex-theatre director, presided over the farce of the internal investigation into the former first minister.
The balls-up, ruled “unlawful” by a judge, will likely cost Evans her job and £500,000 in costs to the public purse.
Then there is the female investigating officer who had “prior involvement” in the case, leading to the inquiry being judged to be tainted. She “acted in good faith” but should never have been involved.
Had they followed the bluffer’s guide to due process, there could not have been more buffoonery.
Finally, there is Sturgeon. I, for one, will be gutted if what does for this flag-bearer for women is to have failed them.
Sturgeon didn’t need to be briefed by Salmond and as soon as she knew of the inquiry, she also knew all contact must cease. But it didn’t. Even if nothing incriminating was said between the two, the optics are dismal and Sturgeon knows how much optics count.
Salmond’s camp were desperate to smear her and she handed them the mud.
Her conduct, at best naive, is another distraction from the women at the centre of the sexual harassment complaints, another morsel for the feeding frenzy of trolls who have feasted on them relentlessly.
Sturgeon is no Ruth Davidson or Theresa May, who are happy to smash through the glass ceiling and shower the women below with shards.
She is the woman that young girls want a selfie with. She led a Pride march rather than take tea with Donald Trump and she has built her reputation on integrity.
Sturgeon is a role model for feminists, both men and women and for a Scotland tied to the Tory yoke, she is the face of a more humane politics.
At the UN, the First Minister spoke of giving girls hope and aspiration. But central to that is meeting the expectations of women making claims of sexual harassment.
In this era of MeToo, this was a defining moment and it would be tragic if Sturgeon is defined by this.
It is precisely because she is so much better that this all feels so much worse.