SARAH VINE: How absurd to make exceptions within the warfare on women-haters
Misogyny. Not a very cheery subject for a Bank Holiday Sunday, I know, but I don’t make the rules. Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government does that – and don’t they just love it?
Not even two months in, and they’re issuing new directives at a rate of knots.
Illegal immigration is to be termed ‘irregular’ immigration, so as not to offend those boatloads of strapping young men supposedly fleeing oppression in, er, France.
There are new rules on crime and punishment, too. You can be let off a prison sentence due to overcrowding if you’re a convicted paedophile (for example child rapist Rees Newman, who escaped jail despite breaching conditions of his sentence) or a serial thief. But if you make an ill-judged retweet, a cell will be swiftly be made available.
Meanwhile, 20mph speed limits, pioneered by Welsh Labour, have been approved across the rest of the UK by Transport Secretary Comrade Haigh (Louise).
Of course they have. Since 70 per cent of people oppose the policy, it’s all the more reason to double down. As a result, a junior cycling race had to be re-routed because safety cars were unable to keep up with the bikes without breaking the speed limit. Genius!
Last week, in a move to tackle the rise of ‘incel culture’ (deriving from those men who define themselves as unable to find a partner), Yvette Cooper announced that misogyny will be treated as a form of extremism
Nothing exemplifies the Left’s blind socialist zeal like spoiling everyone’s fun for the sake of it.
But back to misogyny.
Last week, in a move to tackle the rise of ‘incel culture’ (deriving from those men who define themselves as unable to find a partner), Comrade Cooper (Yvette) announced that misogyny will be treated as a form of extremism.
On the surface, this seems a good idea. After all, misogyny is the root cause of most violence against women and girls. It drove the killer of Sarah Everard, and countless others like him.
But I’m not sure Ms Cooper has quite thought this through. First, we’ve been here before. The Tory government tried to make misogyny a hate crime, but the idea was rejected by the Law Commission as unworkable.
A key problem was that it would be necessary to make being a woman a ‘protected characteristic’, alongside race, religion, disability and sexual orientation.
As women make up more than 50 per cent of the population, that would have raised its own problems, such as putting the other half of the population – men – at an inherent disadvantage.
But the main reason this is a troubled path for any government, especially a Labour one, is that it’s fraught with contradictions.
For example, Labour enjoys high levels of support among immigrant communities – some of whom uphold, for religious reasons, certain traditional attitudes towards women that, while culturally relevant to them, are to others sexist, or, at worst, deeply misogynistic.
Female genital mutilation, forced marriage, so-called ‘honour’ killings, the exclusion of women from specific spaces: these are fundamentally misogynistic practices, all too prevalent in some parts of the world but sadly no longer unheard of in the UK.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s drive for female rights on the surface seems a good idea, but taking a deeper dive suggests their gender mission is fraught with contradictions
Forcing women and girls to cover their hair and faces, restricting access to education, curtailing their freedom of movement – it’s all just misogyny.
But the contradictions don’t end there. While Labour, in its virtue-signalling wisdom, has made itself the undisputed champion of trans rights, there is arguably no greater threat to the safety of vulnerable women who seek refuge in protected spaces than the insistence of male-bodied individuals that they have access to those spaces.This is misogyny dressed up as human rights. The rights, that is, of all other humans above those of women.
Likewise, what, if not misogyny, is a biological male punching a woman in a boxing ring while insisting that she – or anyone else – has no right to protest?
Whichever way you slice it, oppression of women and a lack of respect for us as a gender lies at the heart of all these attitudes.
Just because these traditions have so-called ‘culturally sensitive’ roots does not make them any less toxic.
So yes, by all means let’s look at doing more to tackle misogyny in Britain. Just as long as it’s understood that all hatred of women is bad – however politically correct the perpetrators may be.
If you punish one type of misogyny, you must punish them all. No ifs, no buts, no exceptions.
No wriggling out, Jermaine
After the scandals of Huw Edwards and Phillip Schofield, only an arrogant prat would think he could get away with sending unsolicited sex texts to junior colleagues.
Even worse, Jermaine Jenas (right with wife Ellie) assumes simply mouthing the word ‘sorry’ in a soft-soap interview will get him off the hook. It won’t.
Jermaine Jenas – who has been sacked by the BBC over ‘inappropriate messages’ sent to a female colleague – pictured beside his wife Ellie Penfold
Predictably, someone has reported Kirstie Allsopp to the social services for letting her 15-year-old son go Interrailing on his own. Equally predictably, social services have opened a file. How shameful. Those taxpayer-funded resources could have helped a child genuinely in need.
My heart goes out to Angela
I’ve been thinking much about Angela Lynch, wife of Mike, mother of 18-year-old Hannah, who both died in the sinking of the yacht Bayesian.
I have met her and she’s always struck me as a very smart, kind woman. She showed huge fortitude during her husband’s fraud trial, nurturing her daughters while he was falsely accused and remaining generous in spirit. She’s helped countless others, supporting British science, business and the arts.
I have no idea how anyone begins to recover from such a tragedy, but my heart goes out to her and her daughter Esme.
Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck have re-engaged their feud. Jones, 84, called his rival a ‘p****’, and Humperdinck, 88, says Jones is losing his fabled voice. Jones recently said he sleeps with his mouth taped shut. Both should give it a go…
New analysis of the Turin Shroud suggests that it really could be the winding sheet of Christ. As a child, I visited the relic many times and am fascinated by the story.
Regardless of the science, it undoubtedly has a powerful aura – with a mystical energy that’s almost palpable as you walk around it. Proof, I believe, of how faith comes from within.
This newspaper reports that King Charles’s faith may be key to achieving a reconciliation with Prince Harry. Great news, but I don’t think either is the problem – the real obstacle is someone who thinks she’s God’s gift.
It’s finally happened: a judge has, in effect, ruled that women no longer exist, after a trans woman won a case against a female-only app. As a biological male, Roxanne Tickle had been denied access to Giggle For Girls, but the judge in Australia ruled that sex – not gender – is ‘not necessarily binary’. In other words, half the planet’s population has been cancelled.
