Our thanks to Mike P for this. An extract, emphasis ours:
The 26-year-old actress, who walked the red carpet at the Golden Globes alongside Native American activist and artist Calina Lawrence, said it meant so much to her to “witness an industry that for so long has been divided by competition, fear, ego, jealousy, comparison (all products of patriarchal conditioning) radically put aside these destructive paradigms in order to unite & heal.”
An outrageous piece on the BBC website. It was written by a woman, all nine people she cites, or references, are women. This is gender balance, BBC style.
Appalling. An extract:
Elsewhere during the session, Malala was reminded that she had once said that feminism was a tricky word. What changed?
“I looked more into it and I realized that feminism is just another word for equality, and no one should object to equality … When you speak about women’s rights, you become a feminist, whether you embrace it or not.”
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.
In a few minutes time the next episode of Woman Sour will start on BBC Radio 4. Worth catching, at least for Martin Daubney’s section.
Our thanks to a number of people for this (video, 5:14).
6oodfella is a Glaswegian genius who I had the pleasure of meeting at the 2016 conference. I congratulate him for providing the best critique yet of the Presidents Club fiasco, a livestream with attendant live comments from viewers, here (video, 1:02:26). You can support his channel – and you should, you really should – here.
From the piece:
Sexist remarks could be punished in France in the same way as driving offences with fines of up to €350 under a plan to curb macho behaviour.
Five MPs commissioned by the centrist government to prepare a bill outlawing male chauvinism in public will call for a new offence of “sexist outrage” in a report later this month.
Elise Fajgeles, one of the MPs, (above) said the offence should be punishable with a Class Four fine, which is €90 (£78) if paid on the spot, €135 if settled within two weeks and €350 after that…
Critics say the scheme will be impossible to implement as men will be fined for sexist outrage only if a police officer witnesses the offence.
Justice for Men & Boys 