Woman Up Bridget

I love “sexism”. Not discrimination against women and girls, obviously, but the word. It is plain and honest. It may lack the cachet of other ‘isms’, but because it demands recognition of sex it serves a useful purpose; it separates ‘the women’ from ‘the girls.’

“Misogyny”, by contrast, is a word I have come to distrust. In the mouth of the professional class of feminist, it is a vessel into which can be poured everything from rape to rude tweets. So when Bridget Phillipson MP launched a “misogyny taskforce”, rather than an initiative to tackle sexism, the only thing raised at TERF Times HQ was an eyebrow. 

The Minister for Women and Equalities says she wants to root out “harmful attitudes” online, at work and in communities. In an interview with LBC she claimed misogyny means women “make their world smaller or curb their ambitions out of fear”. But tackling misogyny without having the guts to proudly define the ‘gyn’ is doomed to fail.

Let’s not forget, Phillipson is the self-identified feminist minister who voted against an inquiry into the rape-gang scandal, is too cowardly to say which “communities” might require more targeted intervention, and has assembled the usual government fluffers rather than the grassroots grafters who have spent years defending women’s rights. There’s no mention of groups like Women’s Rights Network, Standing for Women or For Women Scotland.

Instead she has extended a hand to Girlguiding, which spent most of a decade prioritising pervert men and deranged parents of sons, ahead of the safety of the girls it exists to serve. Everyone’s Invited, a charity staffed by She/Hers which tackles “rape culture” by essentially telling everyone to be kind. And Equimundo, an organisation for men and boys which works in “partnership with women and girls and individuals of all gender identities”. Nuff said.

The one reasonable name on the list is the once-formidable End Violence Against Women Coalition. EVAW weathered the trans storm well, only to fall at the last hurdle. Last year, it was among the signatories to an open letter warning that concerns about sex crimes committed by migrant men were being weaponised and fuelling “misinformation and division”. Whatever one’s views on small boats, surely the feminist approach would be to establish whether women and girls face a risk before implying that coverage might stoke racism.

That these limp, confused and conflicted groups might be able to tackle a problem as old as humanity is at best a sick joke. And the ‘Just Say No’ approach to Andrew Tate and his greasy online brethren will act as a recruiting sergeant for the manosphere.

Inevitably there will be roundtables on “healthy relationships”, plenty of branded stationery and much hand-wringing about what boys are up to on their phones. But do not expect any challenge to pornography, or any enquiry about what boys’ fathers are doing. And do not hope for judgement that might offend adherents of misogynist religions. 

Sexism in policing, collapsing rape-conviction rates and the sexual violence turbocharged by new technology will not yield to a consent lesson or a clutch of wet-wipe regime approved charities. They require confronting institutions, industries and men with power. Of course, that’s harder work, and far less agreeable to the men on whom Phillipson’s career depends.