Our thanks to Nick and others for this (video, 28:47), broadcast by the BBC last night. You’ll need a BBC licence to watch it, and it will only be available to watch for the next 29 days.
This series of University Challenge is between teams of ‘distinguished alumni’ of various universities. The BBC considers Special Snowflake a distinguished alumna of St John’s College, Cambridge, what must their undistinguished alumini look like? She graduated in English in 2007 and has been a whiny pain in the neck ever since, winning several of our Lying Feminist of the Month and Whiny Feminist of the Month awards.
Special Snowflake was the only woman in the Cambridge team in this episode of the programme, the semi-final in the series. A ridiculously large proportion of the questions were about literature and prominent women, presumably in a desperate bid to make her contribution appear significant. She answered none of them.
At 20:47 the question was (for just five points) to identify the chemical symbol of HCl, an acid. If you look carefully at the ensuing footage, you’ll note both Laura Bates and Jamie Barber (who answered many questions correctly over the programme) correctly identified it as hydrocholoric acid, and said so to Giles Foden, who was required to give the answer to Jeremy Paxman. Foden chose Laura Bates to give the answer, maybe in a desperate attempt to pretend she was making a contribution to the team’s performance, maybe also because Barber had confirmed the silly woman had actually got an answer right, against all the odds. Even a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day.
Since Jamie Barber also clearly knew the answer, we’re left with this inevitable conclusion:
Laura Bates was the definition of a ‘token woman’ on this programme. If she had been replaced by a pot plant, her side would not have scored any fewer points.
The three men in the Cambridge team scored no more points after Special Snowflake’s correct answer, presumably being in utter shock.
Nick writes:
The only question which I remembering her answering correctly was essentially what does ‘HCl’ stand for. Even I managed to get that one with my C grade chemistry O level!
The opposing team, from Keble College, Oxford, won by 160 points to 105.
Justice for Men & Boys 
I remember Paul Merton doing an episode of “Have I got News for You” alone. He’d been let down by, I think, Roy Hattersley and replaced him with a plastic tub of cooking fat which he referred to a a tub of lard.
I think he won.
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Perhaps Bates was too busy maintaining that look of outrage she always has on her face. In another video I recently saw, a well-known model started talking about the oppressive “patriarchy” until Piers Morgan pointed out that the five most powerful people in the country were women. I would have gone further, such as pointing out the “oppressive” things the patriarchy had done to women in the past and, in some ways continues to do so, such as paying women their state pension five years before men (I believe they still would be doing this if they had not been pressured into changing the law by the EEC); paying women a widow’s pension when no widower’s pension existed; spending twice as much on women’s healthcare as men’s even though men die sooner; and spending three or more times as much on research into women’s cancers than men;s, even though the latter are equally lethal. After finally pointing out that most dangerous jobs needed to keep the country functioning are done by men, I would have asked her how long she has been feeling persecuted.
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Good points. Or maybe Special Snowflake was stressed out by having half an hour on prime-time TV without the opportunity to whine about ‘everyday sexism’ haha!
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“Men’s rights activists must wake up and realize that the time for trying to counter the hypocrisy with rationality – with essentially male arguments, using facts and truth, in the hope that sense will prevail – is not going to make ANY difference to the relentless feminist long march on men” -Herbert Purdy ICMI-16 https://youtu.be/PjAnRar9p4M
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TY for the link.
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