Why does this woman get to write columns in major newspapers? The answer is simple; she sells. I can't imagine why, but if she is offered a platform it's because the editors think it will make them money. That's the point of newspapers. They are businesses, and they sell us what we want. Government-run papers are even less trustworthy than the private ones, so we'll have to put up with it.So what does she use this privileged platform, in a journal with a proud tradition of being a free voice in difficult circumstances, for? To express her hatred of men and to call for the suppression of ideas she doesn't want to hear, of course. Even when they only exist in her head. Just in case.
Men, it appears (all men, everywhere) are beastly, and they must be stopped from being beastly. By a form of magic, apparently. If men are deprived of the words they use to be beastly with, they won't be able to be beastly any more. I think that's how she sees it working.
If her silly little campaign to ban words and 'tones of voice' that she doesn't like were to succeed- which it won't, naturally- she would continue to justify her proudly unrepentant hatred of anyone with a penis, but she wouldn't have to listen to anything that might upset her. But someone will be listening, ready to use her ideas against others, and eventually against her. It is weak and whiny creatures like this woman, moaning that someone must do something about things she disapproves of, who give totalitarians the excuse to suppress freedoms and control the rest of us.
There are men who are a danger to women, who beat them, who rape them, who kill them. It is the rest of us who try to stop it happening, and who help to catch and punish those we can't stop. Wha has Bidisha done to help the real victims of bad men? Perhaps a lot, I have no idea what she does, but writing this article has, as she says, 'made her feel better afterwards, but hasn't changed anything in the wider world.' No, it hasn't, has it? But I suppose it pays the mortgage.
Go and do something useful. I call her weak because her attitude in this article is weak, but she is probably capable of doing far more than hectoring people to ban words. We all like the sound of our own voice, but that is not the way to change the world.
2 comments:
It was indeed a horrible article and would put me off that newspaper totally. (Mail and Guardian? It seemed an unlikely alliance, thinking of the London Daily Mail and what used to be called the Manchester Guardian. Till I saw it was a South African paper.)
I read it because it is one of the best African newspapers that I've found, but like any paper, it contains a great deal of junk, fluff, gossip and stuffing.
The reason I picked up on this article, when there is no shortage of such rubbish in the world's press, is that I'm certain this woman could contribute to solving real problems, but not by writing nonsense about something relatively unimportant and largely imaginary.
She writes for the (UK) Guardian as well, and the very fact that she has achieved it shows that she could do more than just howl in the dark like this.
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