While I wouldn’t necessarily normally turn to the pupils of Winchester College for words of wisdom, I was very impressed with the challenge one of them presented to Germaine Greer when she gave a talk there recently.
Apparently Ms Greer told the assembled boys gathered to hear her that she had ‘seldom, if ever, found herself standing in a room amid so much masculine beauty.’
At question time, one of the pupils commented that if she were not a 69-year-old woman addressing a group of boys but a 69-year-old man addressing a group of girls, such a statement would be considered highly inappropriate.
Alledgedly Ms Greer was lost for words. I think there could be some re-worded old aphorism here along the lines of ’what’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.’
Is it sexist to say “you’re beautiful”?
No, Richard, not on the face of it
- but were a 69-year-old man who’d had the good fortune to find himself amid a crowd of attractive, switched-on teenage girls to opine that he had ‘seldom, if ever, found himself standing in a room amid so much femine beauty’ he’d attract comments to the effect that he was a -pervPeter Stringfellowa dirty old man.I am irked by a TV commercial for coke showing a gaggle of attractive women leering over a handsome window-cleaner. If the roles were reversed, the advert would be condemned as sexist, and quite right too. Much as I deplore PC in all its forms, I detect a whiff ogf hypocrisy.
If the roles were reversed, the advert would be condemned as sexist, and quite right too.
Henry, the advert is sexist. And I bet it was made by a group of men to assuage their own and perceived client fantasies. I take care to point out both sexism (overt and covert) and reverse sexism to both of my children. Reverse sexism is particularly endemic in school notes to the mothers to accompany outings (this seems to be school-dependent), or “parenting” magazines that are actually “mothering” magazines, as if the fathers were mere genitors and not even possible readers, or in much mainstream advertising. Orangina has one going that just makes me gag, as well as Miel Pops (Corn Pops elsewhere).
he’d attract comments to the effect that he was a perv Peter Stringfellow a dirty old man.
and surely that reflects on those doing the commenting more than on the man himself?
Quite. It’s all a matter of perception, and that applies to Germaine Greer’s perception as much as anyone else’s – more so, as she has set herself up as a campaigner against sexism.
Ah ha. Here we go. GG’s response should have been “only if you’re a sexist pig”.
Richard – Germaine Greer’s comment would have been fine in the innocent world we’d all like to inhabit, in which men would open doors for women without being condemned as sexist, and the Two Ronnies could all make jokes which we all enjoyed quite innocently in the 1970s without anyone turning a hair. That we now live in a changed, cynical world is largely the result of the activities of people like Germaine Greer, so for her to make a comment that harks back to the old-world order that we cherished – but which she has affected to destroy — seems inappropriate. At least it does to me.
I’d love to see all advocates of political correctness put up against a wall and shot. In an essay in Have I Got Views For You, Boris Johnson wrote that when the Left realized that socialism is a complete failure as a form of government, they invented PC as a way of taking revenge on the rest of us.
Not extreme enough. :)
And when the PC brigade has gone, the HR droids shall follow.
It is an extremely important learning experience for young people when they realize that the people they have held as role models are people too, and like all icons have feet of clay. That is one of the learning experiences that marks the transition from being a child to being an adult.