When I was young (last century!), casual sexism was the norm, as were things like wolf-whistling, cars hooting at women/girls in skimpy outfits and men copping a feel in bars and clubs. None of it particularly bothered me, although I can understand why it bothered others, and I don’t believe it was right. But it seems that as attitudes that were almost unconscious have been stamped out, a much more sinister, deliberate form of misogyny has taken hold. I don’t know whether the two are related, because the latter is tangled up with gender identity politics, in particular the trans debate.
In the past, as glass ceilings were broken and women branched out into careers that were previously the preserve of men, I thought the years ahead would be better ones for women. Instead, it seems that the harder women have fought to be heard and treated fairly, the more they have been bullied and undermined, by companies, by the public sector, by media personalities – and even by a subset of (mostly young) biological women.
This has been underlined by the responses of so many to the recent SC ruling – with companies and public bodies finding every way to delay obeying the law and falling over themselves to publicise their support for those who have intimidated women. And the fact that, even now, women are repeatedly told to ‘be kind’ and asked ‘how we think transwomen feel’ about issues that have a huge impact on so many biological women makes it seem as nothing has really changed since the year dot. Women are still seen as ‘lesser’. And worst of all, fewer people now seem to view that as a problem.