I'm going to start off by saying that Labour's Clive Lewis did something really stupid. It doesn't matter that he said the word "bitch" to a man, any elected politician should be aware that gender specific insults are not fine.
It's important to note that Lewis has admitted his mistake, issued an unequivocal public apology and he certainly won't be making the same error of judgement again.
Now we get to some of the people kicking up a stink about Clive Lewis' use of the word "bitch".
I'm certainly not the first to point out that the right-wing slobs at the Guido Fawkes blog have built a castle on quicksand when it comes to manufacturing outrage about the use of the word "bitch". The Guido Twitter feed is absolutely littered with uses of that word, and they have a sickening track record of dishing out misogynistic abuse against women, including Paul Staines posting a picture of himself in bed with a cardboard cutout of Diane Abbott, attempts to ruin the lives of two very young female Labour Party activists (1 & 2), and an absolute tide of misogynistic abuse hurled at Dawn Foster by Guido acolytes just because she was sitting next to Clive Lewis at the time.
The synthetic outrage from the Tory benches is even more sickening than that of the hypocritical Guido Fawkes shit-slingers.
Tories don't actually give a damn about women and feminist issues, if they did they wouldn't have imposed 86% of the burden of their hard-right austerity dogma onto women. They wouldn't have introduced the vile "rape clause", and they certainly wouldn't be championing a misogynistic throwback who believes in forced pregnancy for the victims of rape and incest as one of their frontrunners to replace Theresa May when they finally decide to stop using her as a human bullet shield.
All the Tories care about is weaponising feminist language in order to smear their political opponents.
If they really care so much about use of the word "bitch" that they want an urgent debate on Clive Lewis for using the word at a man, where were all the calls from Tory MPs for an urgent debate on misogynistic language when the Scottish Tory MP David Mundell was filmed calling Yvette Cooper a bitch last year? Where were the calls for an urgent debate on misogyny when Theresa May decided to quote a vile misogynistic extreme-right Twitter troll in parliament in order to score cheap political points against Jeremy Corbyn?
Of course these opportunistic Tories don't care that one of their colleagues was filmed calling a woman a bitch, or that their leader thought it fine to quote a depraved extreme-right misogynist in parliament. Because to them countering misogyny isn't the point.
Of course the Tories don't care that Clive Lewis has already apologised. Because to them a man learning a lesson about the continued pervasiveness of sexism and sexist language in the 21st Century and apologising about it isn't the point.
Of course the Tories don't care that Clive Lewis has done more to try to actually improve women's lives than they ever have (or ever will) by consistently opposing their ideological obsession with misogynistic austerity dogma. Because to them actively working to improve the lives of ordinary women isn't the point.
They don't care because literally the only value feminist issues actually have to them is as an excuse to launch opportunistic political attacks on one of their opponents before they immediately get back to their day job of actively and consciously impoverishing millions of ordinary women through their obsession with austerity dogma, and forcing rape victims to recount their trauma or face financial punishment.
Hopefully this desperately cynical opportunism backfires on them. Firstly because feminism is the kind of "social justice warrior" stuff that sickens the regressive tabloid-reading hard-right Blue-kipper demographic (which makes up a significant proportion of their voter base these days). And secondly because any remotely sensible feminist knows that a Labour politician using the word "bitch" at a man and then apologising for it is absolutely outweighed by the disgraceful Tory track record of spending seven punishing years actively discriminating against millions of ordinary women with their sexist austerity policies.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
No comments:
Post a Comment