When misogyny ruled okay

Jenny Mccartney Unherd.com

The #Metoo movement has sparked much needed debate about the way men treat women, says Jenny Mccartney. It has shone a light on those forms of male behaviour that escape the remit of the law. But the trouble with this new form of shaming is “how selective it can be”. The journalist Toby Young, for example, has had to resign from two education boards after crude comments he’d made in the past regarding women, such as expressing his enthusiasm for “big breasts”, were brought to light. In The Guardian he was monstered as a right-wing bigot. Yet compared with the comedian Frankie Boyle, soon to talk at a Guardian Live event, Young was a non-starter on the misogyny front. Just six years ago, Boyle did a routine which majored in fantasies of violent sexual abuse. He wasn’t alone. As “porn chic” seeped into the culture in the noughties, the “rape joke” became a staple on the comedy circuit. The new sexism was edgy, it was cool, and many feminists, “wary of not seeming ‘sex-positive’”, gave it a free pass. So before rushing to revile the likes of Young, we’d do well to “recall the full picture of how sexism and violent misogyny got comfortable at the cultural table, and who allowed them in”.