Business As Usual For Suzanne Moore
Over the last few days, whilst the Sun Newspaper has been under fire, Suzanne Moore has advocated for Guardian readers not to judge. She thinks if you actually hope for a particular outfit to close, you are just being partisan. I agree. Moore, who writes for the Mail and The Graun, may have a vested interest in her point of view.
But in the spirit of supporting the right for all perspectives to be heard in the press, I popped over to the Mail On Sunday to read Moore’s weekly column. It turns out she manages to spout the exact same feminist misandry that she writes in the Guardian. Who said feminism was just for liberals?
In a piece about service industries and domestic help she writes:
‘Judging women for having cleaners or au pairs keeps a system in place where somehow childcare, whether paid or unpaid, remains entirely a female issue. Men presumably have children too but they are not derided for having personal assistants or chauffeurs, both of which are tax-deductible.
It is madness to consider childcare a form of decadence. Without it, I would neither have studied nor worked and paid tax all my life. Going to the hairdresser’s, having the car washed, getting a manicure, having a meal out – all these things are services that people choose to pay for. The servicing of men is taken for granted but when women pay other women, mostly out of necessity, we are seen as spoilt and neglectful‘ (my emphasis).
I think Moore’s comments illustrate clearly how misandry is the acceptable prejudice, as Mark Simpson has put it. She is able to say that ‘the servicing of men is taken for granted’ when feminist culture actually demonises men who pay for sex, or female company, or meals at restaurants such as Hooters. That judgemental attitude is accepted, and hidden, whereas when women get judged for what they do, it becomes the topic of a column in a national paper.
Also, whilst Moore thinks it is noble that she and other women have worked in lowly jobs such as cleaning, women who work in the sexual service industries to make ends meet are not lauded by feminists such as Moore.
At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, whatabouttehmenz and whatabouttehsexworkers?
The Guardian and CiF have been on form in the last week in the feminist crusade.
8th Feb: http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-leaders-network/blog/2012/feb/08/gender-studies-inequality-boardroom
“transforming our culture and traditions into something more fit for purpose in the 21st century” Gender studies in the classroom. Uniformly angry male response in the comments
9th Feb: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/09/closure-of-hooters-breastaurant-welcome
Closure of the lap-dancing venue
10th Feb: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/feb/10/sun-page-3-topless-photo
Zoe Williams on page 3
12th Feb: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/11/women-prisons-urgent-reform-needed
Women should face a different, more forgiving law than men! because of equality, innit!
It’s misandry week take two, everyone..
oh I haven’t read half of those. How depressing. If you want to blog about any of them feel free!
I thought Williams’ observation on Page 3 – that it’s an anachonism that the paper hangs on to as if to spite feminists – was a fair comment: the whole Claire Short/Page 3 feud was brought up at Leveson, even though it’s was nearly 30 years ago, before some activists were even born. And the Sun will remain the same nasty populist paper without Page 3.
As for Moore, the options are: (a) better parental supoport arrangements for men; (b) remove the tax-deductable status of PAs; (c) campaign to make hiring nannies tax-deductable (maybe she can afford one, even if other women can’t); (d) recognise that PAs and chauffeurs may be employees of the company, not the individual man (but then overlooks the fact that all those women who are going to take their place on the boards of FTSE 100 companies will get exactly the same perk). As I’ve pointed out before, this may be more about class and wealth than it is about gender – universal affordable childcare is a much bigger issue than getting tax breaks for ‘the help’.
Agree with much of redpesto actually . As Elly stuck on me at moment hope she has read my 1989 Here’s Looking at You Kid essay in The Female Gaze on looking at the male body. Pre-figures much of what she is interested in.
yep I have read that. I am not an ‘expert critic’ for nothing.
and if you think it is about class not gender why bring in the old binary crap about men being ‘serviced by women’. I rest my case.