Get out the ducking stool
This again. A woman has the unmitigated temerity to have a job as political editor for the BBC – a job that had previously always belonged to a man. Someone draws up a petition to get her fired, and – surprise surprise! – it attracts the usual torrents of sexist abuse. In other news, some grass grew today.
The majority of those signing and supporting the petition expressed concerns about what they saw as biased reporting of the Labour party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn by Kuenssberg. However, some supporters on social media used abusive and sexist language in calling for the BBC’s first female political editor to go.
Of course they did. It is not possible for people to disagree with a woman in public without the torrents of sexist abuse appearing. (Then of course petitioning to get her fired goes a bit beyond disagreeing with her.)
Prior to the petition being taken down, former Independent on Sunday political editor Jane Merrick told the Guardian that Kuenssberg had faced an extra layer of sexist criticism. “She has been called a whore and a bitch on Twitter,” said Merrick. “Nick Robinson used to be accused of Tory bias but he never experienced this level of nastiness.”
“Of course, not all Corbyn supporters are sexist – far from it – but there is a core of hard-left misogyny that comes out against women when Corbyn is under pressure – such as the abuse against Stella Creasy and Jess Phillips. Jeremy Corbyn said back in September he wanted a ‘kinder politics’ so he should condemn these vile attacks against a respected and experienced journalist.”
I don’t think it’s hard-left misogyny, it’s just misogyny. It’s everywhere. It’s considered hip and funny to trash women, so lots and lots of people do it.
The petition, which accused Kuenssberg of biased reporting against the Labour party and its leader Jeremy Corbyn, attracted abusive and sexist language among some of those supporting it, according to 38 Degrees executive director David Babbs.
While some have tried to argue that the problem is nonexistent, you don’t have to look very far to find evidence of abusive and misogynistic messages being directed at, or about, Kuenssberg.
Posts calling Kuenssberg a bitch, a whore and a slag are not hard to spot on social media. Others refer to her as a cow and a cunt. Some people write that they’d like to kill her. One post included a picture of a scene from Return of the Jedi with Kuenssberg’s face Photoshopped on to that of Princess Leia in the famous gold-bikini scene and David Cameron’s face superimposed on Jabba the Hutt. It describes her as “Cameron’s slave girl”.
She’s a woman. Women are there to be degraded and demonized. Everybody hates women.
The situation calls to mind the recent phenomenon of so-called “Bernie Bros”, which saw some grassroots activists using graphic and abusive misogyny and sexist online memes to attack Hillary Clinton (although this too was vociferously denied by Sanders supporters).
Not to mention the apparent Republican candidate.
This is a problem commonly attributed to the left, but nobody has the monopoly on misogyny – it is sadly too widespread for that. Whether sexism rears its head in the political conversations of stuffy and elite male-only club-rooms or in the feverish urgency of social media crusades and online petitions, the result is often the same: built-in methods to tackle systemic gender inequality don’t figure highly in the resulting campaigns and movements. You don’t have to be deliberately or directly sexist yourself to be part of the problem by attempting to diminish it.
Yes but it’s only women. Everybody hates women.
I don’t for a second believe that this behaviour is a ‘left wing’ problem. ‘Hard Left’ or not. It’s a social problem There are many many people who support left wing politics in terms of workers rights etc, who are still socially conservative. They speak with sometimes unveiled contempt of women, other races and pretty much any group that qualifies as non-white straight male. In this aspect of their behaviour they are indistinguishable from any right-wing supporter. The irony of Bernie-bros and Trump supporters actually having something in common. It’s the problem with swimming in a sea of misogyny and general fear/contempt for anything or anyone sufficiently different from you.
But but but in the U.K., “cunt” isn’t sexist at all, it’s just something you call your buddies at the pub! Why, on the streets of Glasgow, you’re a freak if you DON’T say “hello, cunt!” to everyone you pass by!
(Just thought I’d get that out of the way. We all knew it was coming.)
Tangent Time!
This is most certainly not a predominantly left problem, and it baffles me as to where that charge comes from. Certainly the left is not immune to it, but there is no doubt in my mind that it is especially associated with conservatism, being that that is the political position of those that want to maintain current social structures as the are, with power retained by white straight wealthy men.
And so I think sexism on the left is not more common than on the right, but it seems more common simply because it is under more scrutiny and is willingly called out by people that are actually seeking to improve things on that axis. Whereas on the conservative side, where behavior is more commonplace, it is not called out nearly as much specifically because it is considered normal, if perhaps crude.
That said, the ‘Bernie Bros’ label was especially annoying. I’m well aware that some supporters are sexist cockheads, I don’t mind that being pointed out as such, but as with most labels it swiftly became overly glib, a thought free shortcut which had the effect of implying that Bernie’s supporters were especally sexist. I suspect this came about out of political convenience for Hillary supporters, but also because women are tired of men spluttering “but but we weren’t being sexist! ‘Bitch’ is just ‘hello’ where I come from” and similar. And so the label stuck, and those that dislike it get the ‘thou dost protest too much… therefore you are probably a sexist Bernie Bro yourself’ treatment.
Not everybody is buying this story: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/05/establishment-rallies-around-keunssberg/
This is where two of my favourite bloggers are at odds, sadly.
There seems to be no truth whatsoever in the allegation that the petition was taken down for misogynistic abuse. The google cache of the comments is available and I’ll send a copy if requested. The objection to her is that she is outrageously partial to the Conservative party. The comments I’ve looked are no more than a man would have got, and many are about the BBC generally. Reportedly there was one unacceptable comment but I haven’t read that far.
I hope Ophelia will look at what Craig Murray has to say on the matter.
Sure, misogyny is a problem for all political leanings, but now the establishment knows that when it is criticised, all it needs to do is point at how some of those critical voices are abusive to women and the anti-misogynists will come and shut down all of the others along with the bathwater. I would be very interested to see these comments from the petition… is there a link? What % of comments need to be misogynistic before the whole thing has to be burned to the ground?
Agent provocateurs are already used to break up IRL protests, and maybe I’m being cynical here, but I would be extremely surprised if they weren’t used online already – they certainly will be in the future now that this event has shown them to be extremely effective…
Interesting though, since for online petitions it is necessary to give some kind of identifying details… usually online misogyny thrives under the veil of anonymity, but in this case there was the possibility of not only deleting the comments but also starting a record of such misogynistic players, possibly leading them to be shamed in real life into actually changing their minds.
The thing is, one would expect sexists–particularly the virulent sort–to be more common among Sanders supporters than among Democrats as a whole, because sexists weren’t going to support Hillary in the first place. So if you’re a fiscally liberal Democrat who also thinks women aren’t really people, you got on the Bernie bandwagon. It’s not a function of being leftists, but rather of being sexist leftists with nowhere else to go.
And too many Bernie supporters (though not Sanders himself) ignore the hate because they want to keep as many co-travelers as possible.
Also, it’s been shown that there’s a large number of Bernie voters who are actually pulling for Trump in the general election. That makes even their actual status as ‘leftists’ pretty questionable.
Yeah, well, there’s the thing, too, that if you’re a left wing woman who supports Bernie, you get called a traitor and stuff by Hillary supporters who tell you you’re failing feminism. Like we wouldn’t vote Elizabeth Warren? I’m voting for principles, not genitalia. And the guys who tell me they are voting Jill Stein in the general if Bernie’s not in aren’t being sexist, either. So, yeah, there’s sexism on the left, but it gets inflated in people’s perception because they want to blame all the non-support on sexism or right-wing lies, and not ask the Bernie supporters who aren’t flinging insults [in fact, trying to respect the request to avoid negative comments, period] what their concerns are.
Samantha #8,
You understand this comment is insulting and demeaning to Clinton supporters, right?
Say rather that it is insulting and demeaning to that subset of Clinton supporters referred to by iknklast, i.e. the ones that chide female Bernie supporters for not voting for the female candidate.
Cressida #9:
The first time the phrase “vagina voter” came to any prominence was in an article written by Clinton supporter Kate Harding: http://www.damemagazine.com/2015/04/14/i-am-voting-my-vagina-hillary-clinton-president
This was picked up by right-wing magazine Reason, and from there onto the Gamergate-Breitbart-anime Nazi crowd.
Misogyny and harassment of women are serious problems, but when someone raises this issue it is sensible to first check that it is the actual issue in a particular case. False accusations will inevitably weaken concern about the real thing when it happens.
It seems to be becoming more common to accuse political opponents of misogynistic abuse, anti-semitism or sexual offences knowing that these are rightly abhorred by decent people, and even if totally false some of the accusation will continue to be circulated by journalists and spin doctors and stick in the minds of many people.
In the Kuenssberg case, it was likely inappropriate to seek her sacking through a petition, especially as the problem is that news services at the BBC seem to be totally controlled by people with Conservative affiliations and/or neoliberal-neoconservative opinions. But it’s vile that the people who signed the petition were labelled with the slur of misogynistic abuse, even by the Prime Minister in parliament.
Craig Murray has published a word count for the comments, which agree with my own quick check for epithets associated with the alleged type of abuse. It just does not support the allegation of misogynistic abuse. In my view, the right is desperate at the popularity of Corbyn and they will, it seems, stoop to anything.
I stand by my comment. I don’t really care who’s saying it.
Cressida, I think your comment misses Samantha’s point, which is about people who claim that feminism requires supporting Hillary Clinton, apparently on the assumption that feminists have to vote for the woman because she’s a woman. Not all Clinton supporters make that fatuous claim.
Ophelia, point taken, although I think I’m not so much missing the point as I’m partially disregarding it, because I suspect that some portion of the judgment that female Sanders supporters are feeling is self-imposed, rather than coming from real-life Clinton supporters. (Note I said *some*, and I’m also not suggesting that this is necessarily true for Samantha.) And if the judgment is self-imposed, then it’s not appropriate to lash out about vagina voters.
However, I acknowledge that my comment contains no hard evidence. (That said, neither do any of the rest of this thread’s comments on this topic; justinr’s comment points to an article, but he doesn’t provide support for the causal argument he makes.)