It has been a pretty terrible week to have been a female of the species.
As news of Russell Brand’s behaviour fades into the distant past, like his career, many women I know are still reeling at the suggestion that it could all just be excused as a product of the early nineties and noughties.
Lad culture that was past encapsulated by “Nuts” magazine, now consigned to the dustbin of publishing history alongside the Sun’s nude girls on page 3.
They now wear bikinis.
Those women are angry at the suggestion that any real progress has been made over the past two decades other than heightened awareness of the problem thanks to movements like #metoo.
This week well known faces from the TV Channel GB News have found themselves on the rough end of disciplinary action from a news organisation that usually gets its kicks, or should i say, “clicks” from criticising cancel culture.
Laurence Fox, actor, presenter and broadcaster largely came to prominence as an anti-vaxxer during the Covid-19 pandemic.
He also established a new political party and ran for London Mayor. He’s proudly anti-woke and took to the airwaves in a show presented by Dan Wooton during which he attacked journalist Ava Evans.
She had been on the BBC Politics Live programme earlier in the week during which the case for a Minister for Men was discussed.
Ms Evans had the temerity to disagree with that being the right response to an epidemic of poor mental health.
Mr Fox would rather like a Minister for Men being the alpha, chest beating master of the y chromosome that he is. But rather than take on the substance of Ms Evans argument, he set out to utterly dismiss and demean her.
He did so by saying “who’d want to sh*g her anyway” – demonstrating that there are still men on this earth who define women’s worth solely by their sexual appeal.
Mr Wooton giggled along but when the furore broke after the show he attempted to distance himself from Mr Fox, suggesting he was wrong to make the comments that he did, only for Mr Fox to publish a text exchange between the two men which exposed Mr Wooton for the two face opportunist he is.
You’d be forgiven for thinking this is all celebrity tittle tattle that can be easily shrugged off as readily as lint from a brush. But in this same week a 15-year-old girl was allegedly murdered by a 17-year-old boy on the streets of London in broad daylight.
Here in Scotland we’ve had to read about the story of Claire Inglies who was brutally murdered by her partner Christopher McGowan after he was released on bail to her house, despite having a previous conviction for domestic abuse. She had 76 different identifiable injuries.
Words can – and do – cause harm
The abuse of women, in whatever form it takes, is ultimately about power and men have it.
It might be a long line, but you can run a thread from the comments of Laurence Fox on TV through Russell Brand into Andrew Tate and on to Wayne Couzens (the murderer of Sarah Everard) and on to the litany of men who kill women in Britain each year.
The Counting Dead Women project has now gathered the names and stories of over 1,400 women killed by men since they started the femicide census 10 years ago.
If your response to this is to be outraged by that thread I’ve pulled and to default to “not all men” then you’re part of the problem.
That’s why it’s right that these men have been cancelled, just as it is right that we do everything we can to keep Andrew Tate and his misogyny away from the developing minds of young men.
We censor when words cause harm – these words do.
Conversation