The trouble with modern girls
Sometimes, when taking part in radio discussions or talking to women’s groups, I am struck by both the lack of self-awareness and seeming total inability of so many of Millennial “woke” generation of post-feminist females to laugh at themselves or see the irony in some of their pet causes.
One of the more frequent criticisms leveled at the Rust is that its contributors are always looking back to a mythical time in the past when everything was supposedly so much better – a line regularly twinned with the barb that our views are not just coloured by old age but dominated by an unhealthy patriarchal view of society that we and our female ancestors were forced to accept and live by.
As one who young enough not to have quite been in the first wave of the sexual revolution of the 1960s – key markers the arrival of the Pill and the Summer of Love (1967) – I reject the accusation that women of my generation were somehow playing into the hands of men.
Au contraire – we were just as ‘switched on’ and savvy as any of our male counterparts and also took advantage of everything that was on offer, this whilst still enjoying the differing nuances of attitudes towards relationships between the sexes and indeed laughing at them.
Sometimes the ‘right on’ campaigning zeal of modern feminists becomes counter-productive when – as happens so often these days when championing the cause of under-appreciated and under-acknowledged is taken to its logical conclusion – we reach the stage where Fireman Sam is banned from promoting fire-fighting recruitment and transgender rights by random personal choice are apparently given precedence over common sense.
It’s the point at which irony and a sense of humour tend to take their leave and double standards enter stage left.
Here’s an example of what I’m getting at, spotted overnight on the website of … yes, horror of horrors … the website of the Daily Mail:
Firstly, a piece by Terri-Ann Williams on the vile treatment of a female police officer who acted with bravery in the tragic recent case of a baby thrown into a river in Manchester – TROLLS FORCE FEMALE POLICE TO DELETE HER TWITTER ACCOUNT
And the, secondly, Joanna Crawley reports on the development of renewed female interest in watching CBeebies Bedtime Stories – TOM HARDY PROVOKES FRENZY
Come on ladies, admit it – you’ve got to smile at the very least, if not laugh out loud!
