A Fate Worse Than Sexism

                                                             Hitch tells it like it is

      

“Have I seen this level of sexist culture in other countries? It hasn’t been so in your face in other countries.”          

So said Rashida Manjoo, the UN Special Rapporteur, who found Britain the most sexist country on earth.

This being a preliminary report she made few specific policy recommendations apart from the responsibility of the government “to protect, to prevent, to punish, to provide effective remedies”.

One example of what these will concern Britain’s children:

“So in terms of prevention [of sexism], it is necessary to mandate that certain modules are mandatory for children in schools.” 

This put me in mind of a disturbing article in The Independent a while back. The impeccably liberal broadsheet decided to address the thorny issue of what is acceptable behaviour in the office these days. After they examined 10 scenarios the upshot was that basically if you want to stay on the safe side, nothing recognisably human was permitted.

The situations covered topics such as what to do about gossip that somebody is a sex pest, or using terms of endearment such as “love” and office relationships.

                            

The point below is representative:

Scenario 6: “I recently complimented a female colleague on a dress she was wearing. She looked offended and has avoided me since. Did I do something wrong?”

That all depends on the nature of the compliment, doesn’t it? In the interests of clarity, non-safe topics include hair, shoes and cleavages. Safe topics include, work and… that’s it.

In the liberal heaven that is the modern British office you can talk about work and... that’s it.

                                          

The chatty Independent journo breezes through the various scenarios in her office relations guide with nary a twinge of doubt about the horrific soft totalitarian state she’s outlining.

This is the sort of fate that Rashida Manjoo and her army of community workers, NGOs and feminist activists have in mind for Britain’s schools.

Male teachers have been hunted almost to extinction in primary schools. The percentage in secondaries has plummeted to what would be termed “endangered” if  they were furry residents of a National Park. This lack of male role models in attendance together with teaching methods which favour girls has directly led to the situation where there are already a third more women undergraduates than men.

And now the kids are to be fitted for their straitjackets 10 years earlier.

Guess which sex is going to spend the rest of their school days on the naughty chair?