In this week’s Spectator I’ve written about female privilege and how it accounts for public policy wrong-turns, such as the lockdown and Net Zero. Here’s how it begins:
A few weeks ago I had a crack at coming up with my own sociological ‘law’ and my first effort went as follows: “The more progressive a country is when it comes to sex and gender, the more authoritarian it is when it comes to speech and language.” I was thinking of Ireland which, having legalised abortion in 2018, is about to impose the most draconian speech restrictions in Europe. I now propose a second law: “Any group described as privileged is in fact marginalised; and any group described as marginalised is in fact privileged.”
A case in point is white men – and in particular cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle-class white men – who are now at the bottom of the intersectional hierarchy of oppression in most professions. But to add to their misery, these poor, benighted souls have to pretend they’re at the top of that self-same pyramid if they’re to retain their jobs, apologising for their ‘privilege’ in front of their more powerful black, female, non-binary, gay and disabled colleagues.
Some will think I’m being deliberately provocative, so I’ll reel off some facts and figures to illustrate this point with respect to just two groups: men and women. Their relative status is the exact opposite of how it’s usually described, making it the perfect illustration of Young’s Second Law. Some of the stats about just how underprivileged men are probably won’t come as a surprise. We all know boys fare worse than girls at school, one reason 35,000 fewer 18-year-old boys will go to university this month than 18-year-old girls. We also know that men are more likely to be addicted to drugs and alcohol, account for three-quarters of all suicides and almost 90% of the homeless. But did you know men make up 96.2% of Britain’s prison population and are 23 times more likely to die at work than women? Research carried out by the Future Men charity found that 29% of young men feel ignored, which perhaps isn’t surprising given that we have a Minister for Women and Equalities and a Women’s Health Ambassador, but no minister for men.
The idea that women are the less ‘privileged’ sex is a cliché that men are obliged to trot out if they’re to avoid social ostracisation or worse. But it’s a myth, as the American journalist John Tierney pointed out in a brilliant article in City Journal last week. “If the patriarchy really did rule our society, the stock father character in television sitcoms would not be the ‘doofus dad’ like Homer Simpson,” he wrote. “Smug misandry has been box-office gold for Barbie, which delights in writing off men as hapless romantic partners, leering jerks, violent buffoons and dim-witted tyrants who ought to let women run the world.”
Unfortunately, they do. I’m not just thinking of the success of politicians like Angela Merkel, Nicola Sturgeon and Jacinda Ardern, but the way in which public life has become feminised over the past 25 years. Women may still be a minority in the chancelleries of Europe – although for how much longer? – yet because they’re so much more confident and morally forthright than their ‘privileged’ male colleagues, they’ve become the key decision-makers. How else to explain the emergence of ‘safety’ as a sacred value in all areas of public policy? Women are, on average, more risk-averse than men, which means they’re less hesitant about jettisoning hard-won liberties to reduce the likelihood of various worst-case scenarios materialising, whether it’s locking us in our homes to ‘protect’ us from a flu-like respiratory virus or forcing us to drive at 20mph to avoid thermogeddon.
Worth reading in full.
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Isn’t this criminal collusion between a government minister and an extremist Green organisation?
Blatant stitch-up.
They are in the bubble of ‘there is no truth but my truth’ therefore this patent act of self harm for our nation passes by as ‘doing the right thing by the World’.
As with failing to commit to nuclear in 2010, the seeds of our destruction are sown by those who will be affected least by the consequences.
It is “doing the right thing” by the UN and WEF. It essentially means our own politicians are happy to impoverish us by removing reliable affordable energy so they can get a little gold star on their lapel from the Technocrats and their Sustainable Development Agenda that thinks western standard of living is too high.——– Because the west became prosperous using fossil fuels and because they are a finite resource we are to STOP using them and the excuse for that is climate change. But once you look into this issue you find it is only a smidgeon of the truth elevated into a planetary emergency for political purposes.
follow the money
How can these decisions be made while all 650 skiving C-nts are on the beach ???
We knew what these duffers were going to do.
We knew that the ‘pot bangers’ needed a dose of all this.
Next May we will see what the ‘if it saves one life’ merchants make of all this self indulgent, virtue signalling idiocy as it kicks them in the trossachs.
What’s due in May ?
Yes, Millibrain truly has several screws loose.
Out of curiosity and off topic, is there anyone with an opinion on what currency or commodity to buy into? Seems like the pound and dollar are due for a collapse…
Silver, and keep it under the mattress.
Gold or silver with Monetary Metals in Arizona. They do leases and bonds on silver and gold that pay interest in gold.
I have no stake only because I cannot sfford 10 ounces of gold.
Gold is free of capital gains tax and VAT.
The collective insanity of these parasites borders on treason. They are selling their country out
It has crossed the border and is an illegal immigrant there. It deserves swift and firm action.
Ah yes, I’ll take that segue, thanks. Immigrants…I can’t quite believe this. Well I can, but I’m as incredulous as these ladies, to be honest. They obviously have money to burn. ”Erm..erm, uh…” This bloke can hardly construct a sentence and rivals Kamala Harris in the basic art of speech;
”Insane exchange where it transpires The Government are always paying for 5,000 empty hotel beds “just in case” they need them for illegal immigrants.
The meeting delegates can’t quite believe what they’re hearing.”
https://x.com/BGatesIsaPyscho/status/1828565487141224457
Much better to talk about the portrait of Thatcher!
Welcome to the UK – twinned with Venezuela
at least Venzuela is interested in accessing and monetizing its Oil & Gas resources
Watch: Colorado Residents Sound Alarm as Venezuelan GANGS TAKE OVER Entire Apartment Complex (infowars.com)
Yes, and here’s what the Venezuelans are doing in the USA:
BREAKING VIDEOS: Illegal Alien Hordes Now Hijacking School Buses As Apartment Complexes Across US Are Taken Over By Armed Venezuelan Gangs! (infowars.com)
Shock Video: Venezuelan ‘Migrant’ Delivering for Amazon Runs Over Mother Pushing Stroller, Flees Scene (infowars.com)
And here’s what the Marxist Pope says about it, as he is pictured here washing their feet:
Pope Francis says Deliberately Opposing Migration ‘Is a Grave Sin’ (infowars.com)
As Alex Jones pointed out, have you seen the huge walls of the Vatican? The Marxist Pope houses no illegal aliens there, and the Vatican is well protected by those walls.
This sets the precedent that any half wit climate activist can sue you for anything whatsoever that they claim affects climate. —-eg Having a car. Flying in a plane to Tenerife. (or Davos) Eating a fillet steak. Not getting a heat pump. Not getting a Smart Meter. Infact everything that humans do involves the release of some CO2 which means that every human activity can be challenged by lunatic activists, but also by pretend to save the planet politicians who know that controlling CO2 gives them the power to control every human activity, and that is what Climate Change policies are really for, with climate simply the excuse for that eco socialism.
Why place a handful of neat riggs in these North Sea fields producing reliable and efficient fuel for reliable and efficient ICE vehicles when you could instead smother them with hundreds of monstrous, bird-shredding, inefficient and unreliable jumped up windmills producing intermittent power for inefficient and unreliable jumped-up Scalextric cars?
I mean, come on…
This is the most dangerous human being in the UK, and the only reason he now has this power over our well being and prosperity is because the Conservatives turned into just another bunch of Liberals and truly made a pigs ear of an 80 seat majority to allow these cretinous goons that not so many voted for to now have us over an eco socialist barrel
—-I am warning everyone now that you will be forced into having a smart meter and a heat pump, petrol and diesel will be taxed to kingdom come and everything in your shopping trolley will be assessed for its carbon footprint, and all because…….the Tories made a total hash of it.
“and all because…….the Tories made a total hash of it.”
That implies they wanted to do the right thing. There is no evidence of that.
That was quite a subtle reply. ———But you know what I mean.
Yeah, no criticism Varmint, just that as time goes on you increasingly, reluctantly draw the conclusion that almost no politician or associated hanger-on is in it for the good of the people or country (any more). Quite the opposite.
And quite sobering and depressing.
Or as Mark Twain said “Politicians are like diapers, they need changed often and for the same reason”. —–They don’t work for us anymore. They work for the UN/WEF.
I like that quote. But the canvassing bloke who knocked at my door prior to this last election, did not, which makes me smile even more every time I hear or read the quote
With Labour set to make another tax raid on the oil and gas industry, you wonder whether Equinor and Shell were actually going to develop these fields in the next 5 years anyway.
A bit riçh of ClaireCoutinho.