GENDER SEGREGATION AND THE McCARTHISM OF LAURIE PENNY
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| Laurie Penny |
Laurie Penny, a regular
contributor to the Guardian is upset. She has been forced to address an issue
she obviously would rather duck. This is the request by some Muslim student
organisations that at events they organise they be allowed to segregate
audiences along gender lines.
I have already written
about this demand which seems to have finally pushed some woolly liberals into
bestirring themselves to protest. This has infuriated Ms Penny, not least since
others protesting about this ban hold reactionary views, some even, and here
you will have to steady yourself for a moment, have been ‘white men!’
‘I am
infuriated by white men stirring up anti-Muslim prejudice to derail debate on
western sexism.’
Speaking as one of white
men who protested this attempt to facilitate such segregation according to Ms
Penny I should have self censored, having no business whatsoever addressing
such issues. (Incidentally it does not seem to occur to her that it is possible
to be white, male, and Muslim, and opposed to gender segregation, but expecting
such coherent thinking from someone so obviously caught up in their own righteous
indignation is perhaps expecting too much).
In an article that would
do credit to any totalitarian organ of the right or left it uses every sort of McCarthyite
tactic; smearing opposition to such segregation by association with the EDL,
the BNP, and the elite all male Oxford Club, the Guardian helpfully adorning
the piece with a picture of an EDL protest. (I had hoped for better from the
Guardian, it seems I hoped for too much).
Part of being a grown up
involves the realisation that sometimes you find people in agreement with you whose
views you otherwise abhor, and that sometimes their motives for aligning with
your own position may indeed be questionable. Thus I find my self at one with
Paul Dacre on the issue of the attempts to impose state regulation on the
press. Perhaps I now need spell out to Ms Penny in words of one syllable that
this does not make me a fully signed up member of the Daily Mail beat up a
benefit scrounging foreigner club.
It seems that Ms Penny had
to amend her article to include the fact that ‘…many Asian women's groups and
individual Muslim feminists joined the subsequent protests, sometimes taking
personal risks to do so.” My how that sentence must have hurt. Though she goes
on to state, ‘…Unfortunately, right-wing commentators and tabloids seized upon
the issue to imply that Islamic extremists are taking over the British academy.’
She goes on to say that consequently ‘Muslim Feminists [are]…forced to watch
their truth, to paraphrase that fusty old racist Rudyard Kipling, "twisted
by knaves to make a trap for fools".[1]
In so doing becoming, unlike the morally firm Ms Penny, dupes of white men who
‘…don't care about women. They care about stoking controversy, attacking
Muslims and shouting down feminists of all stripes.’ Blimey there are my
motives exposed for all to see.
This is a nasty little
article, incoherent, riddled with smears and Orwellian Doublethink. The
giveaway line in the piece is:-
‘We are the fools, if
we believe that accepting aggressive distinctions between nice, safe western
sexism and scary, heathen Muslim sexism is going to serve the interests of
women.’
Leaving aside the
implication that those like my self who opposed this attempt at segregation
believe in something called ‘nice, safe western sexism’ the key words to
hone in on are ‘aggressive distinctions.’ Here lies the heart of the
argument, - and indeed the heart of her self image as a bloody but unbowed
warrior. From this point of view it is essential that there be no
distinctions between the gender pay gap, sexism in the media and the ongoing
verbal and physical violence that women suffer in Britain
This unpleasantly and
shoddy piece of work could be laughed off where it not for the fact that the opinions expressed are poisoning a serious debate. Ms Penny’s views
must be confronted, and the perverse thinking that they express, exposed.
The kind of Sexism that is
still prevalent in British Society, for example as illustrated by the hideous
attacks on Stella Creasy on social media, must continually be confronted and
fought. However anyone who believes that there is no qualitative difference
between the kind of difficulties that women face here than the kind they face
in say Afghanistan Iran Saudi Arabia Pakistan
Perhaps Ms Penny is such a
fool; her article certainly contains such indications. However she may be much
worse than a fool, she may be being dishonest as well as cowardly, that for
all her talk of the wearying burden of struggle that she will duck that struggle when opposing sexism becomes entangled with minority
rights and cultural and religious sensibilities. To take a stand in these circumstances would involve real
risks and might also alienate some of those very cultural and
religious groups whom it is essential for her self image that she be seen to support. Such a position of course
would involve the kind of rank hypocrisy with which she seeks to impugn others.
[1] There is something
particularly comic about her quoting Kipling.
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