Reading the original ‘joke’ made me feel like throwing up, but watching the follow-up was even worse. I’m trying to work out what it is about the whole debacle that made me feel quite so sick, and I think it’s partly this: it’s a reminder that the ideas and ideals I live by are not as widespread as I think they are.
In case you missed it last week Unilad – that crappy website Kate wrote about a while ago – got themselves back in the news by writing a piece that advocated rape if your date “won’t spread”. The internet kicked up a fuss, so they wrote a mealy-mouthed apology and took the piece down –although their site was full of other pieces of a similar slant – and their readers responded by arguing that the piece was humorous and making unpleasant threats towards the people who complained. And then the site lost its sponsorship and got taken down.
Reading the original ‘joke’ made me feel like throwing up, but watching the follow-up was even worse. I’m trying to work out what it is about the whole debacle that made me feel quite so sick, and I think it’s partly this: it’s a reminder that the ideas and ideals I live by are not as widespread as I think they are.
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Brighton and Hove buses have informed their drivers they are not to call any of their passengers ‘babe’. This is after Jo Walters contacted her local bus service with the note she did not appreciate drivers addressing her as 'babe', 'love' or 'darling'. It wasn't a formal complaint, just a suggestion. But those buses, they’ve seen a PC trail and they’re blazing it down the bus lane, we are right behind them. The term 'babe' suggests to Squeamish Louise that the user might have taken a fancy to her and just makes Squeamish Kate plain cringe. Here’s a list of other names they have been called, don’t consider yourself good as fired if you’ve used them. Just due for some vigorous re-training. Girl on Girl reporting Image: Marxchivist It seems like everyone’s joined a debating team, Katie Price shocked Rachel Johnson and Liz Jones by beating their proposed motion, the only limit to female success is female ambition, at the Cambridge Union Society. Well, I say shocked, it was such a badly worded and absurd motion defeated by every child’s piano teacher’s favourite motto: “there’s no such word as can’t.” Last night the All-Party Group on Women in Parliament discussed The Media: A Female Politician's Worst Enemy? With the journalist and broadcaster Janet Street-Porter, Sky News political correspondent Sophy Ridge, The Economist’s Anne McElvoy, Louise Mensch MP Gloria de Piero MP and Angie Bray MP. What went down at this meeting? What conclusions did they come to? Did they discuss Leveson and censorship? Did we awake to a smashed patriarchy and Janet Street-Porter at the helm? No. We have awoken to this instruction: Get on with it. Or if you want it even less helpful, shut up, cover up and put up, Mensch. Tallulah Bankhead Image: Kate Gabrielle Yesterday Tallulah Bankhead would have turned 110. You might have relegated Ms. Bankhead in your head to a list of Golden Age Hollywood actresses headed: Not Greta Garbo. You would be so very wrong. Whilst both Garbo and this Southern Belle pop up in each other’s biographies and Marlene Dietrich’s love affairs (oh yes like that) Tallulah Bankhead deserves far more celebration than she receives and gave the world a lot more than ‘I vont to be alone’. |
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