To think allisons pearsons rant about Angela Rayner is full of nasty stereotypes about girls who are 16 and pregnant?

[Helhigh]

Well I’m not a fan of Angela Rayner and have never voted labour but Pearsons rant in the telegraph yesterday was half assumptions that Rayner must have been a bully who thumped classmates for doing their homework and distracted the class by talking about how many boys she shagged.
And of course reading books and having a child at 16 is mutually exclusive.
I don’t think Rayner has ever said she was like this Pearson has just made a load of assumptions because she was 16 and pregnant.

Anyway it’s behind a pay wall so I had to copy and paste the nasty part:

“I have noticed a tendency among politicians and commentators, particularly the posh ones, to praise Rayner’s flame-haired “authenticity”. That’s because they didn’t go to school with an Angela. Those of us who did know the harm that the Angelas do to kids from poorer homes who want to work hard and do well but whose lessons are permanently disrupted by those who don’t. The Angelas sit in the back row of the class putting on make-up, doing their nails and chatting loudly, throughout readings from the set book, about who they’ve sh---ed. They disdain the teachers who are rather scared of them.
Angelas have sex by the age of 13 (they mock those of us who are saving our virginity for later). Pregnant at 16, they leave school without any qualifications and work behind the till in Mac Fisheries before embarking on a romantic life which features at least two injunctions and a restraining order. By the age of 37, they are grandmothers (as Rayner was).
Believe me, all the kids who want to get on in life breathe an almighty sigh of relief that the Angelas have left school because now they can hand in their homework and try to pass their exams without being ridiculed or thumped by an Angela.
So you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t join in the applause for Angela Rayner’s vibrant “back story” and her ascent to the top of government through militant trade unionism. The working-class kids I admire often came from difficult council-house homes, as Rayner did, but they clung on to education like a life raft. Or they saw a job opportunity and grasped it with both hands. They did that old-fashioned thing called bettering themselves”

But that type of girl existed. Their pregnancies were something to be proud of and their friends aspired to the same thing.

Stereotypes exist because this exists, there are areas of the country where 16 is old to be a parent, it exists

People can wish away that it happens but when children get dragged up not brought up it happens because it is a generational cycle in some cases

This is utter nonsense.

The sort of streetwise stereotype being peddled is the very opposite of my experience.

One girl in my class got pregnant at 16 and she was (and is) the most mild mannered, kindest person you could ever hope to meet.

Not that it matters, but she is actually the only woman I know who has never worn a scrap of make up in her life.

She was basically bullied into sex by her horrid (first) boyfriend who said he would dump her if she didn’t let him do it and got pregnant straight away.

She actually wanted to have a termination but her mother told her she must keep the baby so she did.

Yes fine. Any evidence Angela Rayner was one of them? I’m sure what ever profession you have (for example) there are people who are unpleasant. Would you want a national newspaper article pointing them out and calling them whatever your own first name is?

But how does Alison know Angela was one of them? She doesn’t. She has no evidence to suggest that Rayner was disruptive. She just wants to throw muck like an ape in the hope some of it sticks.

And do you think it's reasonable and helpful to stereotype young girls from disadvantaged backgrounds in this way?

I remember those girls too, ruined my time at school.
That doesn’t mean I think AR was like them.

It’s possible to hate paedos and dislike the type of person AP describes at the same time

And we know AR was like that do we?

But all of that may be completely true, it still doesn't make Rayner one of them. You simply don't achieve what she has by being this sort of person. She has clearly worked bloody hard to get where she is.

Having been relentlessly bullied by the type of person she describes, I don’t have sympathy

The jealousy drips off that article like liquid diarrhoea. Like most women of her generation, Allison Pearson was brought up to believe that she was better than certain 'lesser' people and girls who dared to get pregnant at 16 were the lowest of the low - diminished to nothing by both classism and sexism. The received wisdom is that those girls would never amount to anything, so to see one of them rise through the political ranks must drive her around the bend.

You can just hear AP thinking 'but I was a good girl, why have I ended up being a snivelling gutter journalist?' It's quite the thing when it takes someone decades to realise that the 'wisdom' they were fed as kids was shit-covered prejudice.

And paid all her taxes - oh wait…

Yes I agree. I am personally not even a fan of labour or Angela Rayner and have no issues with her politics or tax affairs being criticised but half the piece being about how she must have been a sexually voracious bully just because she was 16 and pregnant is too much.
And there is zero evidence she was like that she’s just saying it because she was 16 and pregnant and that means everyone who had a child that young is like that in pearsons eyes.
In fact I think I remember Rayner saying she was bullied by other kids and that’s why she wanted to be tough on crime. So zero evidence if anything quite the opposite

There is no evidence Rayner was like that though. Pearson has just assumed because she was a mum at 16

Tbf most of the ones I knew didn’t amount to anything - it was the generation where getting pregnant got you a house and an income.

The issue wasn’t getting pregnant at 16, it was choosing to have the baby at 16.

Where is the evidence that Rayner bullied people at school?
Or is the suggestion that any teen mum is automatically a bully?

Angela Rayner had a disabled child after caring for her mentally ill mother when she herself was a child. To do what she has achieved is admirable whether you like her or not-and I don’t. But Allison Pearson is ridiculous. She made her own son into a column saying the English examination system was unfit for purpose because her son got a C in Drama. Maybe she should have just blamed ‘The Angelas ’ for her son’s modest results.

I was also pregnant at 16 and nothing like this! I went to quite a rough school but I wanted to do well and got the best GCSE results in my year!

I should clarify that I don’t judge pregnant 16 yos now because the world has changed. I can also understand that some girls are exploited.

Yes I got straight As even though I was six months pregnant when I did my GCSEs. Pearson clearly thinks every teen mum is an idiot and bully

Allison Pearson has been investigated, quite rightly, for erroneously stirring up racial hatred. That didn't stop her squealing about how everything is so unfair for her. She spreads this victimhood so that it gives her the opportunity to be nasty, without facts.

And they were usually disruptive bullies. It was great when they left.

Pearson has taken one person - whom she did not go to school with and so has no way of knowing what she was like - and decided she was a 'bad girl'. My best friend at school got pregnant aged 17, whilst doing 4 A levels (which she went on to successfully complete). She was a well-behaved, polite and hardworking daughter of a single mum (widowed when my friend was 8) of 3 daughters.

I don't like Rayner. But she doesn't deserve this generalised bile.

I thought it was well known that Angela Rayner was a bit of a nightmare at school - and made life difficult for other children?