Rupert Murdoch, a dumbed-down press and trolls

It’s been a funny couple of days on the old mass meeja front. Setting aside the appearances of James Murdoch, and his father, Howling Mad, at the Leveson inquiry into press standards in the UK – which is the best soap opera ever, bar none – there has been another little spat to grapple with.


Mary Beard, the erudite classicist, is currently to be seen on BBC2 presenting her new series, Meet the Romans.


It’s a fascinating series that, as she explained in last night's episode, looks beyond the ‘friends, Romans and countrymen’ speechifying of white toga-clad politicians and philosophers in the Forum, to what ancient Rome would have been like for its rather more ordinary denizens.


Beard’s knowledge of her subject is beyond doubt and her enthusiasm is infectious. It's top stuff.


Her ‘problem’, so it seems, is in not being a supermodel. Well, that’s according to AA Gill, TV reviewer for The Times, who, in essence, said that she was too ugly to be on the goggle box.


Still, it meant that he didn’t actually have to review the programme. Beard does not wear make up or dye her hair: in other words: she doesn’t kow-tow to certain conventions.


As her own riposte in the Daily Mail made clear, she’s comfortable as she is.


And she make some excellent points about confidence and ‘inner beauty’ too.


Although she did very nearly chuck a spanner into the works at the end by throwing in a caustic remark about Gill not having been to university. Not all us have been to university – but we don’t all go around being terrified of and offensive about those who did.


This must have been quite hard to swallow for the Mail, which is on a permanent trip to make women feel insecure about their looks and their bodies.


On the same day it launched itself into self-flagellatory mode with a piece on 'life for a month without my beauty regime'.


Regular readers here might remember my own admissions on the pots and potions, but reading this, it rapidly becomes clear that Anna Pursglove's beauty regime is probably not what most women would think of as a beauty ‘routine’.


A brief sample will make the point. “Among my favourite monthly treatments,” she writes, “are microdermabrasion (where the skin is treated with exfoliant crystals to remove dead cells), Keratin (long-lasting) blow-drying, Shellac (long-lasting) manicures, eyebrow threading and eyelash tinting, plus waxing (legs and/or bikini line, depending on the amount of flesh I plan to show that month).


“Then there’s the ‘occasionals’ list including chemical peels, laser thread-vein removal on my face, spray tans, semi-permanent eyelash extensions and teeth whitening.”


Blimey. I know that this is all fab in the service-based economy in which we live – girls: get out and have your legs waxed for the sake of the economy – but I very much doubt it’s what the majority of women will think of as their basic routine.


Now I love an occasional massage and I love having my hair done – both are wonderfully relaxing – but that’s the limit of what I’ve ever had as treatments (although being a reasonably sensible individual, I’m not going to fall into the ‘never say never’ trap).


But let’s get back to Gill and the Times.


This latest nastiness comes just a couple of years after his “dyke on a bike” comment about openly out presenter Clare Balding, which was also in what was supposed to be a review of a TV programme in which she was touring parts of the UK on a bike.


Nor is it the first time he's had a serious dig at Beard for her looks.


Yet only today, in his appearance at Leveson, Howling Mad claimed that Margaret Thatcher didn’t understand the threat from trades unions and costs to that “iconic” title.


Things have come to a pretty pass when what was once the nation’s paper of record has been taken to such a Murdochian low as to countenance regular bouts of infantile bullying within its pages.


But then, this is a proprietor whose answer to the supposed ‘elitism’ that he has railed against is to make a substantial contribution to the dumbing down of public discourse in the UK.


Yes, people can easily avoid buying his titles or the books he publishes, or watching his TV channels. But the impact of that general dumbing down – and Murdoch is not alone in shouldering blame – is felt even by those who directly avoid his works.


The dumbing down has also been boosted by the growth of communications technology and 24-hour TV. The development of 24/7 news leaves printed news media needing to fill pages with things other than stories that are hours late.


One option is opinion. Sensation is another, cheap tactic to gain readers (and advertising).


The Mail is expert at it, even to the extent of publishing such outlandish, tear-your-hair-out articles that gets social media in a tizzy and thousands more people clicking on link to read the madness. This is usually written by a shrill woman in such a way as to demean women in general and any woman who dares describe herself as 'a feminist' in particular, and it generates massive traffic and more advertising.


Clever, eh?


The Guardian plays a different game, giving a regular platform to a particular kind of female writer who confuses feminism with misandry, nurses attitudes that are close to US right-wing Christian fundamentalists – and an utter intolerance and contempt for any woman (particularly) who disagrees.


So the Times is not unique in this sensationalist approach – its particular tragedy is, as mentioned above, that it used to be the newspaper of record.


However, while I’m not remotely interested in calling for Gill sans his head, there is the question of response.


Like all trolls, he has the capacity to get under the skin simply by being nasty. And he’s probably loving every minute of having created this latest little shitstorm. So should one just ignore him, denying him what he craves – the oxygen of publicity?


Or should one challenge such behaviour, which is, frankly, no different to that of a playground bully?


‘Sticks and stone may break my bones’ and all that rather misses the point that words can hurt very deeply indeed.


Personally, I found the burst of confidence that hit me around 12 years ago was a big help. 


Before then, I’d been called names in the street simply for, like Beard, not looking like Claudia Schiffer. You’d barely believe the lack of self awareness of some of those doing the name calling. The only oil paintings they’d have come out would have been the nightmarish visions of Hieronymous Bosch.


I’ve also been on the receiving end in print. In spring 1998, on the basis that I was the sports editor of a national daily at the time – and the only woman in such a position – I was interviewed for the Observer by a young, fellow female hackette.


But there was to be no sense of sisterly solidarity.


Unfortunately, I no longer have the printed article, but it was bang out of order. Not only did it put words in my mouth – perhaps I hadn’t been remotely interesting enough – but her main issue seemed to be with how I looked.


And I recall one comment suggesting that, once you’d reached such a career pinnacle, perhaps one didn’t actually have to bother.


It was cheap, to say the least. Unprofessional and unethical are other words that spring to mind.


In subsequent years, I’ve developed a rather thicker skin. It’s particularly important online.


Only a couple of weeks ago, responding innocuously to a comment on the website of a particular news publication, I was lambasted for my looks. I’d signed in using my Facebook identity and it showed the picture that I currently have there as an avatar.


I responded simply by pointing out that the individual in question was a typical coward, hiding behind anonymity and no avatar to provoke comparisons with, say, George Clooney.


The thing is, though, that if you don’t respond in some way, you leave them thinking they’ve ‘won’.


They’re pitiful, but perhaps ignoring them and letting them think that they’ve successfully upset you is the real oxygen they seek.


Thankfully, I’m comfortable enough in my own skin these days not to be upset.


Sometimes I wear make up – sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I dress in a more feminine fashion – sometimes I don’t.


It doesn’t depend on how I think other people think I should dress, but on how I feel and, to an extent, social conventions about where I’ll be working and who, if anyone, I’ll be meeting in the course of that work.


My own revenge over the Observer article has not occurred yet. But they say that it’s a dish best eaten cold. It’s in the freezer even as I write.

Of misandrists and men

How long ago is it that women had the debate about whether feminists could wear lipstick?

Like you, I thought that that issue was dead in the water – after all, isn’t feminism supposed, at core, to be about women’s liberation? And wouldn’t any meaningful idea of liberation mean that women could choose things for themselves?

And isn’t it about women taking responsibility for themselves and their own decisions and actions?

Well, unfortunately, it’s not that straightforward, as Irene’s story and the responses to it that she received illustrate.

And it adds yet more weight to what I’ve been noticing in the last few years.

Self-appointed, unaccountable women who have decided that they hold the keys to everywoman’s experience of womanhood – of life – and will do their damnedest to foist their views onto every other woman around.

They’re fundamentalists and, like other fundamentalisms that are on the rise these days, feminist fundamentalism is also rearing its ugly head.

In various places, I find other women telling me what to do: how I should dress, how I should behave, how I should fuck (and whom). I’ve even been told that I should be afraid to walk the streets – and when I respond that I am not, I’ve been told that I’m a fool.

The Guardian newspaper, supposedly a bastion of liberal thought, lends legitimacy to this fundamentalist feminism by allowing its exponents pretty much un-challenged space in its opinion columns and online blogs.

The British government is creating dismal legislation that has comes out of an alliance between fundamentalists of feminist and religious hue.

The whole thing is full of misandry – and misandry is no better than misogyny. Indeed, it’s also full of misogyny – such feminists seem to despise the overwhelming majority of their ‘sisters’.

So get out of my life. If I want to be spanked by a man, I’ll damned well be spanked by a man – and I’ll damned well enjoy it.

If I want to wear a burgundy velvet dress, team it with a studded wrist band and idly contemplate what handbag will work best with it – I’ll do so. And I’ll damned well enjoy it.

I’ve managed to rid myself of the controls of religion on my life and thoughts; I’ve dealt with the long-term consequences of having grown up with an emotionally bullying parent, and the impact on my self image and self confidence of yo-yo and faddy dieting and weight worries since the age of 12. In oh so very many ways, I spent years in an intellectual, emotional and sexual burka, hiding from view, from life. It is absolutely no coincidence that, during those days, I hid my physical self beneath layers of drab, shapeless clothing, embarrassed and ashamed by my own body and by my own physical needs and desires.

So I am most certainly not going to start kow-towing to a bunch of women telling me how I, as a woman, should live my life now.

And it would be such a dull and colourless life, because their dull and colourless little brains are filled with bile and jealousy and the need to justify their own tawdry existences by controlling others.

Like puritans and prudes and prigs everywhere, they live in fear of anyone else having any pleasure – unless they’ve approved it first.

According to a certain view, the whole fashion thing, for instance, is a male conspiracy against women – not least, because it’s about getting women to dress for men; in a way that men like.

Let’s assume for the sake of the discussion that such a simplistic idea has some legitimacy – as we’ve discussed elsewhere, dress is partly about attracting a mate.

So …

So what? If I want to dress to attract, why not?

If I want to dress to ‘play the game’, why not?

If I want to dress a certain way because it gives me pleasure … why not?

If I get a kick out of being aware that I attract male glances on occasion (these boobs are difficult to hide), then what on Earth, in Mother Nature’s name, is wrong with that?

The logical conclusion is that it is wrong for men to behave like … well, men. And that it is wrong for women to enjoy men behaving like … err, men.

How do we ‘solve’ this? How about all females of the species wearing burkas? Let’s stop those looks by removing temptation from men – because we all know that it’s women’s fault that men are sometimes tempted to behave badly, and therefore it’s women’s responsibility to avoid that. We know it, because the story of Adam and Eve made it clear that women are the temptresses who must be kept under control, lest they drag down decent, honest, God-fearing men.

While we’re at it, let’s return to the olden days where, in rape trials, the question of what the woman was wearing was paramount – was that short skirt or low-cut blouse ‘asking for it’?

There are times when these radical ‘feminists’ seem to have an awful lot in common with sexist bigots such as the Taliban. Indeed, they’re quite happy to make unholy alliances with religious conservatives in the West when it suits their ideas on certain issues – Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon are a case in point. What an irony! So-called feminists climbing into metaphorical bed with the very sorts of people who would limit women’s choices!

Feminism is not dead. It better hadn’t be. Because we have many, many important things that still need achieving. In the UK, for instance, equal pay is just one such thing. A real thing. A real, day-to-day, economic issue for millions of British women.

Elsewhere in the world, women are dying because a bunch of dried up old men in frocks have decided that they cannot be allowed to have control over their own bodies and their own fertility.

In parts of Pakistan, as the Taliban gain ground, girls are being barred from education.

But no: the important questions are whether women should be allowed to like handbags and green angora sweaters and lipstick. And whether they should ever dare to allow themselves to sexually play a submissive role to a male Dominant (the other way around is just about acceptable, apparently).

What spectacularly crass priorities.

Simone de Beauvoir must be spinning in her Montparnasse grave. But then again, de Beauvoir understood the value of intellectual rigour – not the sort of self-indulgent wanking that the women who would replace a patriarchy with a matriarchy like to pretend passes for ‘thought’.

Now, if you'll excuse me: I've a clothes and lippy shopping trip to plan for this evening.