I've no wish to reignite a dormant feud, but I feel very strongly about this so I'm going to say it anyway. Last night, a certain radical left columnist said on Twitter that if Donald Trump ever offered Nicola Sturgeon the same "weirdo handshake" he offered Justin Trudeau, she should "kick him in the balls". Now, clearly that was intended as a whimsical joke, and judging from the response a large number of people found it extremely funny. But I would just ask you to ponder what the reaction would have been (not least from the self-same columnist) if Hillary Clinton had won the election, and a male Twitter user had then made a joke about a male politician inflicting physical violence upon the female President of the United States. For a clue as to how things might have played out, we don't need to look much further than the strong condemnation of Owen Smith for his "smash Theresa May back on her heels" boast. For some reason, the instinctive reaction to a metaphor about male-on-female violence is outrage, and the instinctive reaction to a joke about female-on-male violence is amusement and merriment.
That sort of joke trivialises violence against men. If you trivialise something, you legitimise it. If you legitimise something, you ultimately make it more likely to happen in the real world. Is that OK? No, it's not OK. Domestic violence against men, for example, is a significant social problem, not least because men find it hard to come forward about what has happened to them, and fear that they will not be taken remotely seriously if they do. The apparent acceptability of a thoughtless crack about a woman kicking a man "in the balls" goes a long way towards explaining why that is the case.
There endeth the lesson.
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James you are right. Too much macho politics do turn women off.
ReplyDeleteI see Stuart Campbell has commissioned an opinion poll on the forthcoming. Local elections.
He's not talking about macho politics. Hes talking about misandrists who celebrate violence against men but melt like snowlakes in the Sun when anybody says a woman is less than perfect in any way.
DeletePersonally I'd boot hillary and donald in the face until their heads exploded. But that's just me.
I do wonder how the Donald is going to handle the State visit. Her Maj will not take kindly to being mauled around.
ReplyDeleteI thought Trudeau handled the handshakes pretty well.
ReplyDeleteThing about "The Donald". He is an ego-centric and has to dominate every situation. Its why he got sent to military school when he was young, though it didn't slow him down. He still has to be the centre of attention. How that will play out in his presidency is hard to say. Putin is smart enough to "play" him, and get him on-side if Trumps many advisors allow it. People of the stature of Angela Merkel is a different matter. She wont be patronised by Trump, and certainly wont allow him to dominate either Germany or the EU.
We are in for an interesting time of it.
And Germany will soon not be running the little EU satellite surrounding states. And Scotland will never again prostrate herself to a former Nazi state. We are soon tae be oot of the EU Nat si. So eat yer words fash boy.
DeleteAbsolute bloody state of this roaster.
DeleteI bet they look like satsumas
ReplyDelete