Our thanks to Nigel for this. He writes:
I highlight this because it’s a good example of how subtle gynocentrism can be. On the face of it Dominic Lawson is making good points about the sort of female “in-group preferencing” shown all the time. Women supporting women, no matter what, and of course the chivalry that draws men to support this. But he weakens his argument by falling for a classic desire to be a knight in shining armour, by repeating the lie that women in public life get more abuse than men. In fact this is simply not true as has been reported in the DM in the past.
During Theresa May’s tenure as PM a Parliamentary inquiry was undertaken into this “online abuse”. Top of the list at the time was Boris Johnson, way out ahead, Theresa May, the most abused woman in the list, was at number 7. This pattern has been repeated a number of times. Lawson clearly doesn’t read the DM and does want to believe somehow powerful women need saving from nasty abuse but the facts don’t fit this urge to protect. The point is of course that it’s this deep urge to believe women that makes feminist parroting of lies and dodgy stats so effective.
If you’d like email notifications of our new blog pieces, please enter your email address in the box near the top of the right-hand column and click ‘Subscribe’.
Our YouTube channel is here, our Facebook channel here, our Twitter channel here.
If everyone who reads this gives us £5.00 – or even better, £5.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. You can support our work by making a donation here.
By accident I happened on the Australian on line DM , apart from observing that the issues in the news are much the same there , inflation, immigration, China, housing costs etc. I noticed this. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12354945/David-Van-senate-sexual-harassment-allegations-Lidia-Thorpe. Now the context is a little familiar to readers of the redoubtable Betina Ardnt, a scandalous rape case that collapsed because the accuser was clearly totally unreliable (to put in mildly). But this reminded me of the “pestminster” scandals and many other similar such supposedly “sexual harassment” cases. Invariably they are things a few years in the past, the accusations are by political opponents and are the sorts of things its difficult to prove or, crucially, disprove. Because they are sufficiently small to not have been noticed by anyone who might be a witness. In this case “following” and “touching inappropriately”. I don’t know how big the Australian Senate building is but I expect there are many corridors with people rushing from one place to another and the inevitable crush points at lifts, stairs ,doorways. Plenty of ways to claim one was followed and “touched”.
Senator Van resigned the Liberal Party because he was treated as if the allegation was true, rather than something to be properly investigated. A classic bit of “white knight” behaviour from his Party leader. Senator Van resigned because of the ‘disregard for due process and natural justice in relation to allegations made against me’. Given that he was accused pretty clearly because of his speaking about the case that Mrs. Ardnt has been writing about, a false accusation of sexual assault that collapsed at court. It was while speaking in the Senate on this that his accuser suddenly remembers an incident three years ago, very clearly to shut him up. What has always struck me is the self defeating nature of this sort of white knightery in politics, because of course the more it works, the more the bullies will use it. As we have seen here eventually even the most feminist friendly male politicians are open to be silenced by such accusations that are often couched in dramatic language of “sexual harassment” but even if true are so minor as not to have been noticed by anyone who might be a witness. One thinks of the “knee touching” that caused a minister to resign from May’s government. You’d think male politicians would see that not insisting on investigation and due process exposes them all to this sort of thing?