Allison Pearson Middle Class shouldn’t be seen as an insult
It is a slippery slope when the law is used to penalise a state of mind
Roxanne Pallett says she is the most hated woman in Britain. Never heard of her? Let me help you. The former Emmerdale actress entered this year’s Celebrity Big Brother house, where she seemed to be getting on well with Ryan Thomas, an ex-coronation Street star. On Thursday night, the pair had a larky exchange during which Ryan danced around like a boxer, playfully feint-punching Roxanne. Laughing, she skipped off saying: “Woman beater! I was gonna ask you if you wanted your washing doin’…”
And that was that. Except Roxanne then entered the Diary Room and tearfully complained to CBB producers of “something that’s made me feel really uncomfortable. He actually punched me like a boxer… It wasn’t banter, it wasn’t a joke. Can’t believe you’re letting somebody that’s done that stay in here.”
When producers issued Ryan Thomas with a formal warning, he wept with shock. Again, that should have been the end of it. But Roxanne claimed to be afraid of the actor, asking to sleep in a separate room, where she was seen crying and shaking. She then told their fellow housemates that Ryan had “repeatedly hit me in the ribs”, causing them to confront him. Unsurprisingly, the housemates decided they believed Ryan’s version and Roxanne left the show.
But her troubles were only just beginning. Ofcom received more than 11,000 complaints about Roxanne’s claims as footage seemed to prove they were rubbish. Twenty-one of her former co-stars piled in to criticise the actress, with some claiming she had made a “mockery” of real abuse victims. Others alleged that false accusations were part of a pattern of troubling behaviour.
Roxanne then made a careful, strategic apology. “Watching [the clip of what happened] feels like a completely different scenario to how it felt at the time,” she told Jeremy Vine on Channel 5. “How it felt when he did it – it hurt. I can’t prove a feeling … and I convinced myself that he meant it.”
Under stern questioning from CBB presenter Emma
Willis, Roxanne said that things in her past had made her “fragile”. Of the non-assault, she said: “I convinced myself that it was done with malice. It wasn’t – I know it wasn’t now. I believed my own story… It felt genuinely disturbing he had invaded my personal space.”
Sorry, honey, but what is “genuinely disturbing” here is that a 35-year-old fantasist could have ruined Ryan Thomas’s reputation – indeed, his whole life – had her conviction not been contradicted by footage of what was evidently a play fight. I reckon it’s pretty clear Roxanne thought the way to win CBB was to cast herself as a victim, even if that meant “one of the nicest and kindest fellas” was destroyed in the process.
You could argue that Roxanne Pallett is not to blame. The febrile atmosphere occasioned by #Metoo has seen members of the most powerful generation of women in history seek to cast themselves as tremulous flowers in need of protection from horrible, predatory men. Look how Roxanne excused herself using the standard vocabulary of victimhood (“fragile” – female, ergo emotionally doolally and not responsible for her actions) and being made to feel “really uncomfortable” (now roughly on a par with homicide). Even more alarming, her perception that harm was done is somehow equivalent to hard evidence that it wasn’t: “I believed my own story.”
At this tricky, transitional moment for both sexes (or however many sexes there are now, I can’t keep up!), the Labour MP Stella Creasy decided it was a good idea to make misogyny a hate crime. Today, MPS will debate an amendment to the Voyeurism Bill to make hatred of women an aggravating factor in upskirting cases. If it’s passed, courts will take evidence of misogyny into account when sentencing someone found taking sexually intrusive images. Police would be required to record such allegations, interviewing Joe Lurker to try to infer whether he is merely a ghastly creep or a full-blown misogynist. It is a slippery slope when the law is used to penalise a state of mind, rather than an action. Do all bottom-pinchers detest women, or might they like them rather too much? And do all women hate bottompinchers? (This could get tricky…) How do you presume to see inside a man’s head, let alone prove beyond reasonable doubt that he hates femalekind?
Come to that, what is the equivalent for men? We do believe in equality, don’t we, Stella? Might “upkilting” be an issue for Scotsmen? If so, is that misandry? Do women who joke about what is or isn’t under a kilt hate men? Or are they just a wee bit, er, jockular? Is there any such things as a laughing matter any more?
I notice that Stella Creasy was selected as Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Walthamstow from an all-female shortlist. Was that misandry? Or does Ms Creasy believe that positive discrimination is justified if it increases the percentage of women MPS in a male-dominated legislature? As it happens, I tend to agree with her. By contrast, inventing thought crimes that only men can be guilty of is the opposite of equal opportunity.
This week, we saw two small steps forward for womankind. A muchcriticised, all-female panel on BBC’S Politics Live (didn’t notice any complaints when it was just chaps for, like, the past 600 years) and Richard Madden’s bare bottom. Speaking as someone who grew up with gratuitous female nudity in Seventies’ TV drama, I find the gratuitous male variety in Bodyguard oddly satisfying. Everywhere you look, progress is real.
Women don’t need misogyny to be classified as a hate crime. We want good men as our friends, not imaginary enemies. The warped case of Roxanne Pallett proves just how horribly easy it would be to abuse such a law and how quickly the backlash might hit us.
“I convinced myself that he meant it,” she said. But he didn’t, did he?