The C-word insults women. What’s funny about that?

Published in Sunday Herald on 12 December 2010

How many women chuckled over James Naughtie’s little gaffe on Radio 4’s Today programme when he renamed the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, as Jeremy C***?

This incident has been benevolently described by one polite newspaper as “an unfortunate slip of the tongue”. Others have dismissed it lightly as a Freudian slip, or a Spoonerism, after the eponymous Dr Spooner who inadvertently transposed his consonants, often to hilarious effect.

I managed to miss the Naughtie incident, and its repetition, only minutes later, by Andrew Marr. Would I have giggled if I had heard it? Probably not. More like winced. Had they referred to Donald Duck as Donald F***, then I would have smiled. But along with many women, I have a strong, negative reaction to the C-word. It never loses its power to shock and wind, a bit like being kicked in the stomach. And no, I don’t laugh along with comics like Frankie Boyle when it trips off their tongues. Why? The word is turbo-charged with misogyny. I don’t see the joke.

Let’s be clear here that I have nothing whatsoever against Mr Naughtie. He is a first-rate presenter and interviewer, and having met him, he strikes me as an exceptionally nice man, the opposite of a woman-hater. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that this isn’t a word that figures in his everyday vocabulary, although in the macho world of newsroom journalism, it would be no surprise if it did.

But by common consent, the C-word registers Force 10 on the Richter scale of derogatory epithets. Forget namby-pamby words like pr***, d*** or co**. Such inherently male terms of insult are not without their redeeming nuances. They carry with them a little swagger, hints of power, stubbornness, authority, bravura, even grudging admiration.

As for the F-word, it is deemed so inoffensive these days, it even has a TV programme named after it. Gordon Ramsay’s overuse of it has doubtless been the unique selling point that got his series re-commissioned, yet in the long run, it hasn’t enhanced the Ramsay brand.

Apart from anything else, it makes him look limited and inarticulate. Judge for yourself if this is an accurate depiction. I preferred him back in his Aubergine days when he was an exceptionally talented young chef at the helm of an inspirational restaurant, not a media construction, and yearn for him to extend his vocabulary pool and find more apt, well-chosen words to use.

But to be fair, when used in a derogatory way, rather than as a linguistic alternative to “and” or “but”, the F-word is a broad-brush insult for men and women alike. The root is sexual, but gender-unspecific, and it is now so ubiquitously used by both sexes that it has lost all or most of its force. But the C-word? That’s different. There’s no remission here, no equivalent demeaning male term. The feminist writer, Andrea Dworkin, was spot-on when she said that it reduced women to one thing: “our essence ... our offence”.

When challenged, many men who regularly use the C-word – accompanied by greater and lesser degrees of forcefulness and venom – will argue that it is now a unisex insult.

The C-word has been desexed, or so we are told, particularly by the post-feminist generations. Where’s your sense of humour, girls? Don’t take it personally that we use the female vulva as a symbol of anything or anyone we truly hate. We love you really.

But it’s hard not to reach the conclusion that selecting the defining part of the female anatomy as the ultimate insult, the worst of all insults, is intentional. At best, it betrays a deeply ambivalent attitude towards women’s sexuality and reproductive power. At worst, it flags up a visceral male fear and loathing of womankind.

It implies that there is nothing more belittling than being likened to female genitalia because such organs are disgusting and repellent. The worst insult that can be hurled at a man is to describe him as a woman’s vagina. If that’s not misogyny, what is?

Occasionally, very occasionally, you might hear mature women – as opposed to teenage girls – going out of their way to offend, using the C-word as an insult. In my experience, these are women whose formula for survival in overbearingly hierarchical male workplaces, such as restaurant kitchens, the stock market and the army, is aping or outdoing the men by showing that they can be more obscene than any marine.

Psychologists could have a field day by exploring their self-hatred and examining how they have absorbed and adopted the language of their abusers.

So what should we make of the movement for women to reclaim the C-word from patriarchal misogynists? For decades now, Germaine Greer has been campaigning to adopt the word as part of an active, rather than passive, female sexuality, as in “Lady, Love Your C***”. Eve Ensler’s play, The Vagina Monologues, tackled the same challenge, telling women to use the C-word as often as possible to free it from its power to shock.

But the campaign to rehabilitate the C-word is a lost cause. Unless it is used tenderly between lovers as an archaic descriptor for the vulva, it is profoundly reactionary and fits right in there with obnoxious insults like “darkie”, “bent”, “fag” and “spastic”, with all their explicitly ugly prejudices.

No-one worth listening to would argue that those terms could ever be considered cool, any more than racism, homophobia and abuse of those with disabilities is cool.

Let’s face it, a society that relishes the use of the C-word is one steeped in contempt for women. It packs so much hate into just one syllable. If it trips all too easily off your tongue, some self-reflection is in order. What does that say about you and your attitude towards women?

Respect! A politician’s mistress who is no femme fatale

Published  in Sunday Herald on 27 Jun 2010

I WAS getting ready to disapprove of Chris Huhne’s adultery – powerful old bloke politician trades in long-suffering wife for new model, etcetera – when I did a double take.

Huhne’s lover, his former aide Carina Trimingham, isn’t young. Unless, that is, you count 44 as young, which, I admit, I am increasingly tempted to do. And she doesn’t look anything like the marriage-wrecking bimbo type that the tabloids love to hate.

Actually, seeing the paparazzi picture of them at Waterloo Station (sorry, couldn’t resist), they made quite a sweet couple. The normally dapper Huhne appeared sheepish, a bit battered, and less crisp than usual. Those moments of snatched passion, not to mention fighting off the press pack, take their toll.

She, meanwhile, the one-time high-powered PR adviser to the rich and famous, now a political svengali, looked like a shy, cagoule-clad Girl Guide pack leader, just back from camp. Beautiful people? Not. And somehow, all the more likeable for it.

In fact, the Huhne affair is quite refreshing. The tabloids, always poised to flick the “politician-hypocrite-posing-as-family-man-exposed – sack him!” switch, hit a series of obstacles with this story. For starters, Huhne cannot convincingly be accused of being a politician with a track record of lecturing the electorate on morality. I’d tag him as a genuinely tolerant liberal in the social, as opposed to political sense. OK, so he turned up at the election count with his wife, which could be construed as demonstrating a certain ambivalence towards coming clean with the truth. But anyone who is conducting an internal “Will I stay, will I go?” dialogue when contemplating splitting from a partner can swither hopelessly right up until the last minute. Even if they do make the break, they may not be sure that they did the right thing and oscillate some more.

There’s a further obstacle to shoehorning the Huhne-Trimingham tale into the love-rat politician formula. An essential requirement of this plot line is that the femme fatale must be gorgeous, or at least more glam than the wife, and preferably a bit predatory. That helps reinforce the patriarchal double standard underpinning this type of coverage: that men only ever cheat because wicked temptresses bewitch them. It’s always Eve’s fault. But if there’s a femme here, then it’s a radically different sort. Judging from the wedding photos, Trimingham was, until lately, the “femme” civil partner in a lesbian marriage. Before that, she was married to a man. Like the electorate, she can swing both ways. Her “butch” ­psychotherapist ex-“husband”, Julie Bennett, is reportedly shocked and devastated, and is sobbing into her hanky like a proper girly. Talk about role reversal.

And here’s the next obstacle. ­Feminist-sounding Mrs Huhne, who, please note, does not call herself Mrs Huhne but is known as Vicky Pryce, hasn’t done the whole distressed, long-suffering politician’s wife routine. Pryce, who also had a previous marriage before she married Huhne – I appreciate this is complicated, but do try to keep up – is, by all accounts, a razor-sharp economist who worked, in a purely professional relationship I should stress, for Vince Cable. She has just taken up a new high-flying job in international finance, and despite being described by tabloids as “humiliated” has so far made no comment on the affair. That hasn’t stopped some sections of the media implying that she has fled the country to get away from the shame of it all, but for all we know, Pryce isn’t heartbroken at all. Maybe she has had her fill of her errant husband. Perhaps she recognises that their marriage has hit the skids. She could be similarly conflicted over whether there is any point trying to keep it going. Either way, unlike Trimingham’s ex-partner, she maintains a dignified silence.

Every cloud has a silver lining and the spicy bonus of the Huhne affair from the media angle is the racy references to the “amazing sex” reportedly enjoyed by Huhne and Trimingham. This was hard on the heels of a survey of contemporary sexual habits which found that three-quarters of those over 45 said that sex started losing its allure the moment they hit 40. Since the research was commissioned by a company with a vested interested in flogging us garlic pills to revitalise every aspect of our lives, as a snapshot of the state of the nation’s libido, it may be less than reliable. But you take the general point that an active, exciting sex life isn’t something that everyone takes for granted. A certain envy of those who have one is understandable.

The thing is, we’d all be a bit hypocritical if we didn’t feel just the tiniest bit impressed at Huhne and Trimingham’s efforts. One minute, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is on Newsnight, a sober talking head, droning on about something or other. The next, he’s exploring the spectrum of human sexuality with his bisexual lover. It certainly makes you sit up and pay attention to him, doesn’t it ?

My friend, a seasoned and ­cynical divorce lawyer, testifies that the “mistresses” in such affairs are usually less attractive and impressive than the wives. Where the “brown mouse” woman often scores, she says, is that she massages her lover’s ego, never expecting him to participate in the dreary treadmill of life – housework, childcare and so on – instead greeting him like a 1950s housewife in “****-me” lingerie and with a meal in the oven. It’s depressing to think that men can be that simple. I hope she’s wrong.

I prefer to think of the Huhne affair as a high-profile example of the messiness of modern-day relationships. All those imperfect, but very human, situations where expectations are frequently confounded, roles commonly reversed and the fall-out is inevitably highly personal. Whether we approve or not is ­irrelevant. We just have to live with it.

BBC was right to take a stand against ignorance

Published in Sunday Herald on 8th February 2009

Imagine the scene in the green room after the BBC's The One Show. Among the guests there's daughter-of-Maggie, Carol Thatcher, relaxed after a drink or two, attempting to wow presenter Adrian Chiles, comedian Jo Brand and assorted guests and staff with her would-be entertaining banter. Then out it pops - that depressing, ignorant term "golliwog" - which she throws in casually to describe one of the world's top tennis players, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

As an epithet, it is exceptionally ugly. Put aside any fond childhood memories involving Robertson's jam or cuddly toys, golliwog is a horrible, vicious word whose most obnoxious third syllable - wog - is grounded in deep-set, active racism. Just think of the symbolism of the original 1939 cover of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Niggers, which showed a golliwog lynched, hanging from a noose. Bear in mind that Ten Little Niggers is the name of a children's poem, sometimes set to music, which celebrates the deaths of 10 black children, one by one. We're not talking comforting heritage nostalgia here, but a word that is polluted with deeply disturbing associations.

Stuck for an alternative word to refer to those remaining artefacts of our less enlightened past, then golly, or gollydoll, are lesser evils. Golliwog, just like "darkie", is the sort of insult that was hurled at the first wave of unsuspecting Caribbean immigrants who docked at Tilbury aboard the Empire Windrush in 1946, filled with hope about their reception in the "mother country".

You might think that nowadays, privileged people such as Carol Thatcher would have moved on and might be able to see a person as a person, not a racial type. But following hot on the heels of Prince Harry's "paki" and "raghead" video nasty, Thatcher provides further evidence, if it were needed, that expensively educated rich people can be profoundly ignorant.

The golliwog is a brainless, reactionary stereotyped depiction of a black man, based on the blacked-up whites who posed as black minstrels to make a living in US variety shows. This minstrelsy tradition is intimately connected with the slave experience in America. Bulbous white eyes, skin black as pitch, exaggerated lips, all framed by braids that look electrified..... no wonder black people have fought to have this image discredited. Looking at Tsonga, any objective, observant person would see a big, handsome, short-haired, coffee-coloured French citizen of mixed-race. His mother is French, his father is Congolese. Oh, and he bears a passing resemblance to Muhammad Ali. Tsonga looks nothing like a golliwog - who does? - unless, like Thatcher, you choose not to differentiate people as individuals but heap them together by skin tone. Thatcher is probably one of those people who think all black people look the same, which tells us more about her than them.

Thatcher was, of course, brought up with all the harmless "childish fun" of Enid Blyton stories which conditioned white readers not to flinch at words that black people hate and rightly find derogatory, as in this taster of her book, Three Golliwogs: "Once the three bold Golliwogs, Golly, Woggie and Nigger, decided to go for a walk to Bumble-Bee Common. Golly wasn't quite ready so Woggie and Nigger said they would start off without him...... So off went Woggie and Nigger arm-in-arm, singing merrily their favourite song - which, as you may guess, was Ten Little Nigger Boys."

Many middle-class white people, like Carol Thatcher, still live on a modern day Bumble-Bee Common where the very presence of a black person - as a sportsperson, newsreader, even a president - is something to be constantly commented on and remarkable.

If Thatcher was a National Front skinhead, mouthing "golliwog" at some random black passer-by, she would be roundly condemned. But on Bumble-Bee Common among nice, unprejudiced, non-racist white folks, that still appears to be acceptable - provided it's accompanied by a snigger.

The BBC was entirely correct to sack Thatcher from the One Show and not uncourageous either, given the inevitable outcry from the ragbag "political correctness gone too far" lobby which insists that it's fine to use a term that offends most black people, as long as you're "only joking". Thatcher's spokesperson refers to her green room gaffe as "a light aside about this tennis player and his similarity to the golliwog on the jam pot when she was growing up".

Could it be that Thatcher moves in homogenous, all-white circles where she rarely, if ever, meets anyone of colour and where the odd glancing, racist remark slipped into a conversation will not even raise an eyebrow? A world where words such as "wog" or "paki" trip all too easily off the tongue and plug in to some assumed consensus? A world where anyone who bristles at their mention merely lacks a sense of humour?

Have you ever been shocked, perhaps at a social event, by the expression of a gratuitous racial comment and debated, just for a second, whether to challenge it (and make everyone squirm), or just let it go? To the credit of Thatcher's fellow guests, somebody was un-amused enough by her "jest" to make an issue of it. That's something we should all do more often.

When will militant mothers cut the rest of us some slack?

Published in Sunday Herald on 24th October 2010

A buggy manufacturer has issued product recalls for certain models following reports linking them to baby strangulation accidents in the US.

What a horrible thought. By now you might have thought that pushchair manufacturers would, as a minimum, have ensured the safety of their strollers.

Wrongly, I suppose, I had assumed that the vastly increased dimensions of the contemporary toddler buggy must be safety-driven. How else can you explain their tank-like proportions?

When my children were small, like every other young mother, I had a buggy so light and flexible I could collapse it with one hand and sling it over my arm. For all I know, the flimsiness of these lightweight, compact prams did irreparable harm to the physical and mental wellbeing of my offspring. If they ever accuse me of doing them damage by being a useless parent, I will cite the negligence of buggy manufacturers in my defence. But as far as I can see, being pushed around in modestly-sized pushchairs left no lasting scars.

Yet buggies, with their flapping rainproof covers, thick tyres and bed-on-wheels upholstery, have turned into the toddler equivalent of 4x4s. It’ll be tinted glass next. Be ready to jump off the pavement when one of them hoves into sight. As for twin buggies, we’re talking lane closures. Minutes tick away at the bus stop to allow for the slow, cumbersome business of admitting strollers the size of golf-course lawnmowers. Breathe in, or your ankles may be scythed by wheels and sharp metal. Watch out for those increasingly common stand-offs as resentful mothers huff and puff when asked to move for someone in a wheelchair, or a fragile senior citizen with a walking frame.

Behind the wheel of the 4x4 buggy, you’ll often meet a militant mummy, generally of the middle-class sort, powered by a righteous “child-friendly” ideology which holds that the world should be adjusted to accommodate Junior’s needs. You get a flavour of their mindset in those smug car signs that read “Keep back! Baby on board” which imply that every non-infant human is a life less valuable. The panzer tank buggy is just a further expression of the same sentiments.

Child-centric, middle-class militant mummies take the view that the world should be one big Early Learning Centre that is simultaneously a haven of safety for anyone below the age of two. When their world view collides with that of others – basically anyone not still in nappies – they become irate.

Ask café proprietors how they feel about militant mummies and you may be some time. Having dropped the older kids off at school, these women descend as doors open, order a round of cappuccinos then become engrossed in chat for hours while listless toddlers crawl around exploring power points and swinging kitchen doors.

One proprietor told me his café had been the subject of an internet boycott by parents. In order to avert an accident, and alert to the strong possibility of being sued for pain and suffering, he had asked a mother to stop letting her infant get under the feet of staff carrying hot drinks. This action was interpreted as child-unfriendly, shared via blogs and websites ... and business plummeted.

It only takes one buggy these days to cause congestion, and designated buggy parks – or lack of them – also figure prominently in the militant mummy’s manifesto, as do changing facilities. The owner of another tearoom – which is shoehorned into a small shop in a listed building with severe planning constraints – told me of soiled nappies dumped beside lavatories in an H-Block-style “dirty protest” against the lack of a changing space. He had to bite his lip when one militant mummy proceeded to change her child’s nappy on top of a café table, then left the object in question as a political statement-cum-souvenir. To demur would have been to invite a tirade on the absence of a motorway service station-type baby changing facility.

Brought-in food is another buggy-bear. Militant mummies are adamant that as Precious must have his/her own special food, it’s fine to bring some along and then let it be massaged over everything in sight. For a café owner to remonstrate here could prove incendiary. This would be construed not only as child-unfriendly, but also as discrimination against vulnerable souls with eating difficulties.

Heaven knows, the militant mummies are terrifying. You vex them at your peril. When Lothian Buses tried to ban buggies that couldn’t collapse because drivers were reporting that mothers were refusing to move them to make way for disabled passengers, it had to back down. The parental blogosphere – all those articulate lawyers on maternity leave – are adept at writing letters to councillors and organising guerilla campaigns. As I pen this, I brace myself for the deluge.

When I and my contemporaries had babies only two decades ago, we were undoubtedly too humble. Child-friendly anything was an ideal, not a right. Some correction was overdue, certainly, but has it gone too far? Our infants risk becoming little tyrants with a VIP status to which the rest of society must defer. Where does this child-centric vision stop? Having a baby is a choice, one that involves accepting that other areas of your life will be affected: your income, your sleep, your behaviour in public places.

Looking back, it strikes me that having young children can temporarily skew your world view. At the time, the kids are paramount, they are the obsession that follows on from the all-embracing preoccupation of pregnancy. But when you come out the other end, you realise that while children undoubtedly matter, everyone else in society does too. You begin to re-identify with all the other demographic groups who don’t fit into the “parents and toddlers” category – the childless, the old, the disabled, the teens. Then life begins to look decidedly different.

Burka ban won’t aid the cause of integration

Published in Sunday Herald 31st January 2010

The news that France looks likely to ban, in some public places, the wearing of Islamic face veils will further embolden the BNP leader Nick Griffin and his more respectable counterpart, Nigel Farage of UKIP, to press for similar measures in Britain.

For them, the presence of a few women flitting through our streets in a burka or niqab is the thin end of an unpalatable Islamic wedge.

“The real worry,” Farage believes, “is that we are heading towards a situation where many of our cities are ghettoised and there is even talk about Sharia law becoming part of British culture.” For him the niqab and burka are symptomatic of a different culture that is being “forced” on parts of Britain. Farage wants a total ban, thus upstaging Griffin, who so far, has only called for a ban in schools. Listening to them, you might think that the Taliban was massed outside school gates, stoning Muslim girls who dare to turn up in school uniform.

The enthusiasm of far-right politicians for a “burka ban” should set alarm bells ringing among those of a generally liberal inclination who find themselves broadly supportive of the French veil ban on grounds of promoting women’s equality and encouraging a more secular society. Such a measure plays right into the hands of those with a xenophobic, anti-pluralist agenda. Note how the committee that voted for the ban in France also recommended that anyone showing such visible signs of “radical religious practice” should be refused residence cards and citizenship. It’s no coincidence that the veil ban comes parcelled with measures to restrict immigration.

Let’s get the “problem” of the veil in proportion. The French government says that only 1,900 women in France wear such a garment, that’s out of a total population of just over 65 million. No such figure is available for the UK, but given that France has the biggest Muslim population in Europe, we can guess that the British equivalent will be smaller. London is arguably a more international capital than Paris with a more diverse demographic make-up, so a minor adjustment upwards may be needed. Whatever the exact figure, people in Britain who support a ban on veil-wearing seem prepared to ditch civil libertarian sentiments because they take exception to the dress code of no more than a few thousand women. Most of us would rather not have to try to conduct a conversation with a woman whose face is obscured by a veil, but even out-and-out atheists should be able to tolerate the tiny number of women in the UK today, many of them British citizens, who wear them. It is, after all, a sign of their adherence to a particular religion, and we are all meant to be “cool” about that.

Orthodox Jewish women who wear wigs may look odd and downtrodden but we don’t feel the need to ban the wearing of such hair pieces. Evangelical Christians sport prominent crosses but unless you work for BA, no-one will seek to restrict that. Sikh men with their locks piled up under a turban add colour and exoticism to our grey world. Why not ban Orangemen from wearing bowler hats and sashes, and while we are at it, proscribe religiously-observant Jews from wearing the kippah skull cap outside their homes? As for nuns, are we going to tell them to stop wearing their habits? You can mount a convincing feminist argument to that effect. After all, they are submissive servants who practise unswerving loyalty and obedience to a male god, so if we are looking to liberate oppressed women, then surely nuns are prime candidates?

Of course, all the fuss in France isn’t about the positioning of bits of cloth by a vanishingly small percentage of the population, it is about picking a fight with Muslims. It may be couched in terms of upholding the principles of a secular state, but like the Swiss bans on minarets and the wearing of the Muslim hijab, or headscarf, at football matches, it is a deliberately provocative gesture, and will legitimately be seen as such by Muslims within Europe and around the world.

A French burka ban will do nothing to aid the cause of integration, nor will it combat the influence of extremist jihadis. Instead, it will act as a further reminder to Muslims in Europe that they are eternally “other” and can never belong unless they stop being themselves. What better way to encourage expressions of extreme religion than to ban them? It is hard to think of a better tool for radicalisation of Muslim youth.

The French are increasingly gripped by anti-Arab sentiment and a visceral fear of being swamped by Islam. Already they have banned the wearing of the hijab in schools. France’s Muslim population has effectively been exiled to apartheid housing estates on the urban periphery. I’m proud that Britain is more tolerant. Schools Secretary Ed Balls says that it is “not British” to tell people what to wear in the street. He is right.

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