RACHEL JOHNSON: You CAN call us totty... just give us equal pay and power first
And so to ‘Tottygate’. To recap, very briefly: a beauteous political reporter called Isabel Hardman, 29, revealed on Twitter that an MP approached her in Westminster, saying: ‘I want to talk to the totty.’
She reported him to the whips, but declined to name him in a series of tweets, saying ‘I don’t betray sources. But I will betray sexists’, like the brave latterday lovechild of Emmeline Pankhurst and Carl Bernstein.
In the ensuing furore, the MP was revealed to be Colonel Bob Stewart, 66, a former soldier whom I have stumped with on the campaign trail, an attentive gallant who draped his enormous jacket over my dress when I got a bit cold in a Beckenham beer garden.
And so to ‘Tottygate’: a beauteous political reporter called Isabel Hardman (left) revealed on Twitter that an MP approached her in Westminster, saying: ‘I want to talk to the totty.’ He was later revealed as Colonel Bob Stewart (right)
I think what happened was this: Colonel Bob suffered a classic Tim Hunt moment – remember, that poor prof who said that there was a problem with women scientists: you fell in love with them, they fell in love with you and they cried.
Like the distinguished prof, Colonel Bob made a risqué remark that went Pete Tong.
He hadn’t got that memo warning chaps that making any personal remarks or suggesting in any way that a young woman is attractive is now punishable by death by a thousand blogs.
The airwaves duly darkened as women piled in to reveal how men had also touched their bottoms or put their hands on knees, or how they’d been sent lascivious texts.
At one point, almost every other female journalist relived their various sufferings and slights at the wandering hands of Westminster men.
I couldn’t join in. Admittedly the past is a bit of a blur, especially the times I’ve attended seaside party conferences, but I’ve worked in the media all my life, and I haven’t noticed being the victim of any sexism at all.
Which is fine and dandy – for me. But I have a daughter, who’s about to graduate.
I would knee any man in the balls who went up to my daughter with the words ‘I want to talk to the totty’.
She reported him to the whips, but declined to name him in a series of tweets, saying ‘I don’t betray sources. But I will betray sexists'
So I hear the arguments of those, often younger than me (this kind of friction is often generational), who say there has to be zero tolerance of old-school sexism, as there has to be of homophobia or racism or anti-Semitism, otherwise nothing ever changes, and black women would still be sitting at the back of the bus and I’d be cleaning behind the fridge.
But still a part of me wonders – how does that work in practice? Because gender politics is different.
There still has to be some ‘safe space’ (ironic inverted commas) in public life for innocent flirting, name-calling, and even patting/touching. Not just for men, but for WOMEN too.
I have been known to go up to men I know at parties and pinch their bums. They look a bit startled sometimes but they seem to cope.
I’ve called men ‘hunk’ to their faces, and not one has complained that I am treating him like a himbo or a sex object. In fact, not once has a man broken down in distress and gone on the radio to bleat about his ‘ordeal’. Or reported me to the authorities or to his line manager.
What is sauce for the goose etc but there is a bigger point here. Surely Hardman and the sisters are not in their hearts angry about the casual and trivial sexism they experience in Westminster and elsewhere.
They are angry that a man – by using the word ‘totty’ or saying ‘calm down, dear’ in the Commons or placing a hand on a thigh – casually asserts the continuing fact of male dominance in all walks of life.
And while the odd pat, or ill-chosen word, or fruity comment doesn’t matter that much, the persistent inequality that it all cumulatively represents is enraging and unfair and I agree: it should end.
Last week’s Tottygate was a humourless affair, but at least we are now ‘having the debate’ again about sexism in general.
Unlike Hardman, I would have let it pass – I grab any passing compliments, whatever the source – but she’s right to insist that women should be judged on their ability and not their appearance.
Even if they are young and pretty.
Liz is a real bright spot
Liz Hurley has literally added colour to our dull, grey, rain-sodden lives, most recently by turning it up to the max at the Hot Pink Party for breast cancer research in New York in this very hot pink dress. Thank you, Liz. Brightened my day anyway.
Liz Hurley has literally added colour to our dull, grey, rain-sodden lives, most recently by turning it up to the max at the Hot Pink Party for breast cancer research in New York in this very hot pink dress
I’m not sure that Willkat’s tour of India is really doing it for me. I liked the Duchess playing cricket and footie in floaty ikat outfits, and feeding baby rhino, and that’s it. Have I missed something? Was it for this – a series of photocalls, basically – that the couple needed four press officers and a team of six personal assistants, hairdressers, and secretaries? Someone fill me in.
Chic Anna is so shabby
Can’t get my head around ‘migrant chic’, the term used by Anna Wintour to describe Kanye West’s collection. The phrase popped out of the US Vogue editor’s lips just as the Pope is visiting Lesbos to remind us that human beings are dying in desperate, last-ditch searches for a better life. This is scarily detached from Ms Wintour. Migration is an international crisis, not a fashion trend.
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