There\’s been that \”my god aren\’t comment sections awful\” thing over the last few days. You know the stuff, women writers on the net get shouted at, insulted, threatened, in a manner that men don\’t?
I\’m afraid that I have to admit to be a dreadful sexist on this matter. It\’s true, I do hurl the epithets around, quite delight in insulting, using Anglo-Saxon.
But the insults direct are almost always reserved for men. Where they are aimed at women they are much more gentle (no problem with calling Huhne a twat but Polly is going to be a trout).
So, there we have it, I\’m a sexist I\’m afraid. I insult women less and more gently just because they\’re women.
Pretty much standard Anglospheric Pedestalisation.
Can I persuade you to use this useful disparagement? “Your argument is femicircular.”
P.S. Wot have you got against trout?
You sweet old-fashioned thing, you…
🙂
Zoe Williams said…
It is, however, as Penny and others have pointed out in the past week, specific to the internet age that “trolls” roam around, hunting out women with a point of view, better still if it’s on a “women’s” issue – abortion, families, feminism – in order to threaten her with sexual violence and/or call her an idiot.
See, this is where I worry about this stuff. No, not the threats of sexual violence, but being called an idiot. I’m not saying there aren’t better arguments than “you’re an idiot”, but I don’t think it needs to be policed.
What really concerns me is that there’s a more sinister thing behind this discussion, that criticism of the half-baked thinking of Graun women like Penny and Williams can be easily shut down if it gets a bit robust. They want polite discussion that agrees with them.
As Peter Cook might have said “What have you got against twat?”
You have to remember that these women are basically Victorian matrons. They expect to be treated a certain way.
Golly, he’s right.
I searched the site for “Polly” and “twat”, and thought it had found one, but it turned out the “twat” was in the middle of “wristwatch”.
So that’s two trivial but fascinating facts in one search result.
And feminists are always cordial nd diplomatic?
And don’t feminsits think we’re all just rapists..
shurely it’s just Arnald….
Isn’t calling Polly Toynbee “Polly Toynbee” a sufficiently damning criticism by now?