Just work AROUND the structural inequalities
Well whaddya know, Tory equality commissioner has a Tory idea of what equality is.
(Spoiler: it’s to stop whining and find some way to “circumvent” the obstacles that discrimination puts in place.)
Jessica Butcher, a successful digital entrepreneur, was last week appointed as one of four new commissioners at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) by Liz Truss, the minister for women and equalities.
The EHRC’s role is to enforce the Equality Act, Britain’s key equality law, and to reduce inequality and tackle discrimination. Commissioners help set the body’s strategic direction.
But in a series of speeches, interviews and articles, Butcher – who describes herself as an “old-school feminist” – has criticised many recent feminist campaigns, including on issues in which the EHRC plays a significant role.
Nah she’s not an old-school feminist, she’s just a Tory.
Butcher has also criticised a feminist “narrative of discrimination” for reducing women’s confidence in pursuing careers. She does not deny that gender discrimination exists, but in an interview last year, she suggested that women who think they have been discriminated against should find a way around it rather than complaining.
“Even if it was due to discrimination, the most productive reaction to that is not wounded insecurity, go cry to someone about how you might have been gender-discriminated against,” she said, “but it’s to actually go ‘well come on then, I’ll show you’ and take the onus to circumvent the situation in some way.
“You know, resilience, it should be about resilience, and I feel that the narrative of discrimination and victimhood undermines both that confidence and that resilience and also the individual onus to take ownership of how you put yourself forward, and to mould yourself, change yourself to the circumstances as required.”
No. Of course that’s what Tories think, but it’s not any kind of feminism, it’s Ignore Inequality and Just Work Harder conservatism. Here’s why it’s crap:
One, it’s unjust. Why should women have to make extra efforts to overcome sexist barriers? Why should anyone have to make extra efforts to overcome any form of “you’re not one of us” barriers?
Two, it leaves the system untouched. Why should “you’re not one of us” barriers remain in place forever, forcing all the underling groups to expend more effort and time just to get an interview or hired or promoted?
Conservatives like the system that way, because they’re conservative, but no one else does.
Sam Smethers, the chief executive of the Fawcett Society, said: “With these appointments one can only conclude the government is more interested in undermining the credibility of the EHRC rather than ensuring we have an independent and effective statutory body with a strong understanding of structural inequalities. There are some experienced people working at the commission doing important work. They need commissioners who can be effective champions.”
Tories gonna Tory.
In short, her message to women is STFU.
Perhaps the worst thing in an appalling interview was Butler’s complaint that feminism had stymied the aspiration of working-class girls by preventing them from…being Page-3 girls.
Boardroom for upper-class me, sex work for poor-person thee.
Somehow I don’t think her public school or Oxford college had careers talks on stripping for a living. It’s the upper-class Tory assumption that the bovine lower-classes have no aspirations, nor could possibly possess a good mind (or human feelings). For a tiny minority of poor women there’s physically attractive body to be exploited, were it not for those nasty feminists. The rest deserve nothing.
Finally getting around to watching this season of The Crown, and that, as we know, was Thatcher’s message. If you struggle to ‘succeed’ in the current economic climate (which just magically happens–or, I guess, if you’re a Tory, is ‘just and right’ and divinely ordained) then you are a loser and don’t deserve any help from other people much less, god forbid, ‘the state’. I’d like someone to try to explain to these ‘innovator/entrepreneur’ people that structural inequalities KEEP more than half the actual innovative and entrepreneurial talent in the country from not only succeeding as individuals but doing all that innovative/creative national economic growth stuff they claim to be promoting.
The problem is, they know that. They like it that way. Keeps them in low-wage cooks and nannies, and people to operate their businesses. It’s a feature, not a bug.
Well it’s really handy for them to say, and even believe, that those low-wage cooks and nannies simply aren’t capable of doing any better; in fact, their employers are doing them a favour by employing them at all, mentally and morally deficient as they are.
Seems perfectly straightforward. If your boss pinches your bottom when you come in to take dictation, give him a good slap him in the face and then march right back to the typing pool and have a good giggle about it with the girls.
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I can imagine Tories taking exactly the same attitude to regulations regarding fire exits…
“Of course
gendersex discrimination exists, I just think nothing should be done about it.”Reminds me of the first Jonathan Pie bit I saw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePVsD30WZm0&ab_channel=JonathanPie
#7 Well, Jacob Rees-Mogg didn’t do too badly in connexion with fires and regulations when he intimated in an interview that the dead were at fault in the Grenfell Tower fire, since they were too unintelligent to ignore the Fire Service’s specific instructions to stay in their flats, whereas he, having been educated at Eton & Oxford and supposing himself to have a first-rate intelligence, as well of course as the ‘resilience, confidence & individuality’ that all those stupid working-class or immigrant dead lacked, would have at once taken a stroll down the stairs to safety. He also said that the fire was nobody’s fault… there was no evil intent… it was all just dreadfully sad… a tragedy… nobody should be blamed…
I thought that was very poor, lazy journalism by the Observer. I don’t need to buy a newspaper to trawl through someone’s back catalogue, and cherry-pick the bits that suit my agenda. The Observer should have asked Ms Butcher for an interview and challenged her on her views. That way we might have gone beyond clichés of how awful Tories are. We might, for example, have learnt whether Ms Butcher believes women have a right to same-sex spaces, sports and so on. In some ways she might actually be a better person to have on the EHRC than someone whose views are closer to the liberal consensus.
“Conservatives like the system that way, because they’re conservative, but no one else does.”
Curiously, though, I have yet to hear a conservative say “well, if the government raises your taxes, then just be resilient and resolve to go out there and earn TWICE as much money!” No, in that context, all we hear about is you have to be realistic about human nature, that taxes disincentivize work and entrepreneurship, and therefore we get less of it, and that’s bad for the economy and society in general. But if women have to work X% harder, and put up with X% more bullshit, the fact that it will discourage some women is just met with “well, that’s their problem, not society’s problem.” (Which also ignores that, you know, women are a part of society….)