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Cute idea of what sexism is

The Conservative whips operation has been accused of sexism after a female Tory MP said she was not given permission to miss votes to attend her child’s hospital appointment.

Would a male MP be given such permission? If no then we’ve now got to the point where sexism is described as not treating people differently based upon their sex. Or, if you prefer, now acknowledging gender based roles no doubt imposed by the patriarchy.

Other allegations about the whips include that they nicknamed one female MP a “shagger” and told a woman seeking promotion that she had to prove she could “cut it”.

Was Boris labelled a shagger? And do male MPs have to prove themselves before being considered for ministerial office?

20 thoughts on “Cute idea of what sexism is”

  1. And do male MPs have to prove themselves before being considered for ministerial office?

    Historically yes, but I’m really not sure about the current lot.

  2. I’m with Arthur. None of them seem to be selected on the basis of ‘best candidate for the job’ anymore!

    And that’s across all parties.

  3. Julia

    What’s more terrifying is that – perhaps they are the best available…

    Nobody pays much attention (beyond emotional histrionics) when times are basically pretty good, so the aerosols that get deleted as MPs are in such times a pretty sorry bunch. After all, doesn’t make any difference…

    Now, suppose there were a real crisis, unlike a manufactured covid panic… Things ** might ** change.

    But then, as we said back in ‘high school’ – scum temper surgit

  4. I think “shaggable ” or “potential shaggee” rather than proactive shagger is meant there.

    As Rumpole describes Sir Guthrie Featherstone QC MP. The way to the top is to ” lose at golf to all the right people.”

    My local MP is an utter buffoon. I wouldn’t trust him to push the button on a pelican crossing successfully.

  5. “I think “shaggable ” or “potential shaggee” rather than proactive shagger is meant there.”

    The MP for a consituency not a million miles from mine was outed as an inveterate shagger (at Party events) a few years ago. Her marriage did not survive the revelation.

  6. “Would a male MP be given such permission? If no then we’ve now got to the point where sexism is described as not treating people differently based upon their sex”

    Actually going to disagree here. The argument here isn’t as absurd at that. It’s that it’s a stereotypically male job at which reasonable adjustments have not been made for things that, disproportionately, women are expected to do – childcare responsibilities being one of them. It’s not asking that women MPs should get permission to do something and men MPs shouldn’t, but rather that both men and women MPs should have permission to do things that decades ago would have been seen as “the wife’s job”.

    One counterargument might be that the adjustment isn’t reasonably practicable for this role, and there are obviously jobs where taking time off for a child’s hospital appointment is never going to be a realistic option. Being an MP isn’t like being deployed thousands of miles away to the combat front line; nevertheless voting in Parliament is an important part of the MP’s role and not something the whips would want to see regarded as easily excused from. But I don’t think “why should women get permission to do something that men don’t” is a sensible counterargument since that’s not being asked for.

    If society had two types of jobs, let’s say Type M and Type F, and the M jobs had been stereotypically done by men and were (largely unnecessarily) structured in a way that did not fit with the family responsibilities that disproportionately are carried out by women, while the F jobs were the other way around. Then you could make a decent case that this society’s work structure is sexist even before getting onto the issue of whether M jobs have more pay, prestige or power than F jobs. The fact that someone working in an M job gets treated the same way whether they are a man or a woman is a step towards equality but it doesn’t mean that you’re there yet.

  7. I wonder if a male as stupid and tunnel visioned as Diane Abbott, if Labour could find one, would be made Shadow Home Secretary based on their skin colour and the ability to destroy the rear suspension of the Party leader’s motor cycle.on a trip through Europe?

  8. If labour could find one as stupid and tunnel visioned

    The words “spoilt” and “choice” spring readily to mind.

  9. Parliament is now in recess so she can take the nipper whenever she wants.
    MPs have pairing arrangements, go on junkets where they fact find that the Caribbean can be hot, have days of debate with very little voting, about trivialities.
    An MP has some pull in her constituency, especially over a nationalised industry like the NHS. The idea she couldn’t lean on some bureaucrat to find her a convenient appointment time is preposterous.

    This is a story about a dim bint’s resentment at not getting promoted. It’s so clearly fabricated you can see the joints and rivets and chicken shit welding that is supposed to hold it all together.

  10. Anon- well yeah, but in this context what’s MPs hubby doing? If the hubby is leaving his MP wife to do the child appointments there’s the mote in their own eye to deal with first.

  11. Not saying it’s okay to call a woman a “shagger,” but wanna guess what Jackie Robinson (a man) was called on the job?

    In other words, you’re not so special as to be immune from insults and unfairness in life. Either learn to deal with it like the others, or cede that you are the weaker sex. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat.

  12. David Lammy is opinionated and plays to his own local electorate in the form of the local black population of Tottenham (London). While I DO NOT agree with his race-baiting tactics or his socialist politics, he is no idiot.

    Diane Abbott is a 100% certified idiot though.

  13. What’s weird about Diane Abbott is that she went to Cambridge back when positive discrimination was not a thing. Yes, well connected idiots did get in, but Abbott should have been there on her own merits. She then joined the civil service. Subsequently she appears to have been lobotomised. David Lammy is thick as pigshit. It’s not just his pathetic showing on quiz shows. Let us remember his amazing performance as a junior minister

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/dec/16/mentalhealth.politics

    “It managed that peak of incompetence: to win a Commons vote… while losing all shreds of ministerial dignity and creating lingering uncertainty about what has been voted on in.”

    The minister unfortunate enough to shed his dignity was David Lammy. The junior constitutional affairs minister was upbraided by the deputy speaker for failing to make available to the House correspondence that outlined the changes to the bill the government would accept. Mr Lammy’s failings, said Carr in the Independent, were the result of “cowardice, indolence or idiocy”. Andrew Gimson poured further scorn. “The longer the debate went on, the clearer it became that he was quite incapable of swimming in such rough seas,” he said in the Daily Telegraph. “It was like entering a child who has just got rid of his waterwings and managed to swim a width of the pool for a race across the English Channel.”

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