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”

No they became bile soaked journos, because they couldn't get a decent job.

It's click bait journalism. Alison Pearson has found a handy stereotype we all recognise and written that AR must have fitted it at school. Simple then to say those interested in educating themselves at that point might remember they were glad when they left pregnant etc. She doesn't remind us we also felt sorry for them and/or knew their lives were tough/families were broken. It's all just a knee jerk reminder of one aspect of school life their departure improved, a point of view from a 16 year old self Pearson made into the main viewpoint.

Except, of course, it isn't because Pearson slips in that 'militant trade unions' bit of right wingery. She doesn't tell us Rayner was a carer to her mother, she doesn't point out how hard it is to get ahead from a position of poverty, depravation and teenage pregnancy. Rayner may not be perfect or have the politics one might personally believe in. But just slapping a label on her is lazy journalism.

It's also the nastier flip side of when people laughed at buffoon Boris Johnson and him having multiple kids by different mothers. A posh male stereotype.

Not liking someone is no reason for that article or for defending that article. That is disgusting.

I think perhaps you are less cynical than me!

Also we can talk about her without subscribing to the Telegraph and funding her spiteful misogyny.

A happy double win in my opinion.

OK. Fair enough. Apologies for being a bit cynical.

I understand how you see it like that but it isn’t specifically because she got pregnant at 16. But like it or not, many people recognise the stereotype of the pita pupil who causes trouble and eventually gets pregnant. And AR does come over like an older version of that pita.

Of course not all girls who get pregnant at 16 are or were like that.

She doesn't remind us we also felt sorry for them and/or knew their lives were tough/families were broken

I didn't feel sorry for them. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when thick, vicious bullies left.

Feels similar to the 'not all men' thing, only this time it's 'not all teen mums'.

Yes, not everyone is like that. But I dare say there are many. I certainly remember from my school there were several girls who fitted that description, and I imagine it's something most people can relate to from their school days, too. Every school has the geeky types, the sporty types, the class clowns (probably Boris Johnson to carry on the anology), and the ones who fall pregnant early and want everyone to know about their...ahem...extracurricular activities...

Fair point.

No she didnt describe herself as a wildchild at school.

She was described by her secondary school headmaster as his shadow because she was being bullied in school.

She described herself as a wildchild for going clubbing at 13.

But you know that.

Yes that’s why I copy and pasted the relevant part believe it or not the first half of that article was a tedious rant about potholes

‘The headmaster, Ian Tunnard, knew the name of every pupil in the school and tried to keep a tight grip on bullying, truancy and antisocial behaviour.
‘My door was literally and metaphorically always open,’ he recalled. ‘I tried to be a constant presence. I was straight-talking. I was not afraid to permanently exclude those who clearly were never going to change their ways and were ruining our chance to educate others.’
He has strong recollections of Rayner, calling her a ‘little shadow’, because she was a semi-permanent fixture by his side during lunch and break times – particularly, he believes, from the age of 13 or 14. The reason?
She needed to be protected from other children.
‘Things were difficult for her. She was bullied. She came to tell me, though, and I gave her a place of safety. I wasn’t aware who I was protecting her from – she never told me that.
‘I understood why. In her case, there was a very real possibility that she would have had to walk home with those same protagonists, and I wouldn’t be there to protect her then. I could not make sure she was safe around the clock. She was clearly vulnerable, because she came from a very difficult, deprived background.’

https://share.google/vzKrNU9KLhidnKXF1

So you are projecting?

I'm very sorry that you were bullied, but unless it was actually Angela Rayner that was bullying you, I'm not sure why you are so keen to associate her with your bullies?

No most of the ones I knew kept having babies with various men, never worked and their children are doing exactly the same.

I realise that MN thinks that sort of person doesn’t exist but it does

This. I don't see how some posters are missing the point (unless doing so deliberately 👀) if the journalist wants to write a think piece about how 16 year old girls who get pregnant are vile, anti-education, violent bullies then go for it, although I doubt she'd get as many defenders without pinning the vitriol to a divisive scapegoat.

But to pick one aspect of a person's life that they have decided is a common denominator with these stereotype bullies and attribute all these hypothetical misdeeds to a specific person as though it is proof that they definitely engaged in similar behavior is just lazy nonsense and it's disingenuous to retreat to "oh so you're saying these people don't exist" or "well she did another unrelated bad thing later in life so ... You know.... It's fair."

If I wrote a piece about a politician named Dave from an area or school which had a history of gang violence or knife crime and then throughout the article kept saying "we all remember the Dave's of this world taking our money at knife point and threatening to kill our mums if we went to the police" nobody would accept "oh so now you're saying knife crime doesn't exist" or "there was a load of boys like that in my school" or "well Dave did fail to disclose he got a suit from a party donor" as justifying an article that talked about stabby knife wielding Dave

No more projecting than the OP who is upset that the article mentions AR having a baby at 16, because she also had one at that age

No, we know that people like that exist. We just don't agree with taking one aspect of someone's life experience - such as having had a baby at 16 - and extrapolating from that to make all kinds of unfounded assumptions about other aspects of their lives and characters which may be entirely unjustified.

The OP is objecting to the stereotype, because it may directly impact on how others see her. So not comparable, I'm afraid.

No one said they don’t exist we are just say not everyone who got pregnant young was like that and there’s no proof Rayner was

Except the stereotyping of BJ was a stereotype of an adult man. Which even if accepted would not place him in danger.
This person has not restricted herself to stereotyping the adult AR, she has stereotyped WC female children. She has explicitly linked a demographic of girl children with being sexually precocious and obsessed with 'shagging'. This is dangerous rhetoric.
We really shouldn't lose sight of that in the midst of the other stereotypes, such as disinterest and alienation from education, which may have some basis in fact, and need to be addressed with the same zeal we seem to be applying to WC boys now it suits us; rather than using them to insult and demean children.

I don’t think anyone is saying children like that don’t exist. There’s just no real reason to think AR was one of them, apart from a teenage pregnancy. Is there any reason to think she was mocking virgins and disrupting lessons?

I don’t like AR, I find her incredibly annoying. I really hope she doesn’t become PM. But none of that is based on a complete fiction about her when she was 13.

Not when the only reason you are DPM is because you tick so many pc boxes and not through merit. You can't seriously believe AR got to be DPM through merit? Same with Lammy.
Most senior politicians are there through merit but some stand out like sore thumbs.

Merit? Really?

Being rich and able to buy influence does not equal merit.

So you're classist, misogynistic and racist? Quite the combination.