A tip of the hat to Naomi Firsht, a freelance journalist and Spiked magazine columnist, for this piece in today’s Times:
If you hadn’t read the Financial Times exposé on the Presidents Club dinner and had only seen the hysterical response to it, you could be forgiven for thinking it was essentially a sex-slave auction. The overblown reaction has turned one [J4MB: ALLEGEDLY] sleazy dinner into a national incident. But it shouldn’t be.
By all accounts the dinner was an awful, old-fashioned kind of evening where some of the guests behaved in a lecherous and unacceptable manner. And no woman employed as a hostess, or in any job, should have to put up with being groped.
But the outrage is completely out of proportion. Already there has been a resignation, the club has been shut down and there is talk of charities returning the money it raised. Moreover, this sad, seedy event has dominated political discussion for more than 24 hours.
The Labour MP Jess Phillips branded the event a “lady zoo” and said that “women were bought as bait for rich men”. In doing so she patronisingly denies the free will of the women who chose to work there. It appears that some hostesses had worked at the dinner before and were happy to do so again. And they all received an email a few days before the event specifying what colour underwear to put on. Surely this must have rung alarm bells about the kind of event they were taking part in?
Commentators are appalled by the hostesses’ skimpy outfits, but plenty of women gladly work in jobs from pole-dancing to car show hostessing where they make money by looking attractive. It’s not exclusive to women either, as any male stripper can tell you. Will these other lady and men “zoos” have to be shut down too?
The auction prizes offered at the dinner, including trips to strip clubs and plastic surgery for the wife, are undoubtedly offensive but are they really worthy of so much agonised national debate?
The descent into moral panic has many commentators asking whether the Presidents Club dinner is indicative of wider issues of inequality between men and women. Even Theresa May worries what the dinner “says about this wider issue in society about attitudes to women”. But all it tells us is that some rich men enjoy being waited on by attractive women. [J4MB emphasis] That’s no shock, and it shouldn’t result in soul-searching over women’s place in society.
Justice for Men & Boys 
Can someone remind me, how much did this organisation raise for charity over the years?
Other than a lot……
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£20 million. And the sum raised by women-only events over the same period? £0.00?
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At a guess a piffling sum.
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The horror I feel at the way society has reacted to this event started off slowly but reached fever pitch this morning, when a front bench Labour peer was sacked from front bench over Presidents Club event essentially for having been a guest at a charity event, while the Guardian is calling for the head of a Tory minister who was also a guest.
To be clear, neither man has been accused of doing anything or covering anything up – but just having been invited to a private male-only event is now enough for someone to lose their job. Is there now no freedom of association in this country? Are men to walk everywhere with a female guardian like a sort of reverse Saudi Arabia? Why is nobody worried about the increasingly frenzied and insane tone being taken on by political, media and NGO groups with a feminist bent? Do they not see how they are undermining basic democratic rights with their ant-straight, anti-male hatred?
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Quite. There is no implication that they did anything illegal, nor immoral themselves other than tip up at a posh dinner. Part of me might hope the Labour Peer might be sacked for meeting up with a load of capitalists. But the hapless tory bod I gather arrived and tootled off early.
Its another test of the PM will she yet again throw another male minister under a bus on the flimsiest reasoning? In a way I hope she does as it may help to get the message to all the white knights in Parliament that the days of donning the “this is what a feminist looks like” T shirt or pompous speeches about the Istanbul Convention, as just a jolly wheeze to look virtuous; are over. The sistas are coming for them too.
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Congratulations to Ms Firsht, whose ‘Spiked’ articles I read from time to time. No doubt she’ll receive (and probably already has received) plenty of flak from predictable quarters in relation to her above-mentioned article.
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