It’s not misogyny, Professor Beard. It’s you

raptor9

At last, some common sense!

http://twitter.com/OpheliaBenson Ophelia Benson

I already knew you were beneath contempt, but this really takes the biscuit. Yes certainly, if you disagree with a woman the thing to do is call her a cunt; yes certainly if a woman objects to being called a cunt the thing to do is say she is “whining.”

SirMontyThreepwood

But she is whining. I’m not saying she has nothing to whine about, but when you make a fool of yourself on late night TV when millions of people have been, how shall I put it, hitting the sauce, the anonymous playground of the Internet will abound with vulgar assessments of every aspect of your person. Just ask Nick Griffin….
- dalai guevara
  
  …which is an excuse for what exactly?
- Eddie
  
  A good point. Whatever one feels about Nick Griffin, he too was just expressing his opinion (and we must surely support ALL expressions of opinion equally?) – yet he came in for masses more abuse than Mary Beard.
  
  The similarity is that both expressed views on immigration; the difference is that the pc media establishment, despite prattling on about equality, do not treat people equally: they support and defend Beard, and join in the squealing mob who want to lynch Griffin.
  
  Mad, hypocritical world…
  - real__world
    
    At least Griffin was well dressed in a suit and his views are more in line to the citizens of Boston than Beards are !
  - SirMontyThreepwood
    
    Now, I really don’t like Griffin, and his ludicrous theories about what he called, ‘indigenous people,’ are laughably stupid, but in that Questiontime, I actually began to feel sorry for him because nobody would let hm finish a single sentence. This was very bad form, because while shouting him down and demonstrating outrageous intolerance for someone of admittedly foolish views, they actually prevented him from demonstrating how silly his views and those of the BNP actually are.
    - Eddie
      
      Yes, exactly.
      The hypocrisy of the BBC and others meeja monkeys here is typical: Mary Beard gets online abuse for saying immigration is a wunnerful thing; others say immigration is a real problem, and get onl;ine and media abuse from, amongst others, the BBC and the meeja monkeys who complain when the pro-immigration and diversity-worshipping lobby get abused and criticised online.
      What we have is NOT freedom of expression, fairness or equally in the way individuals are treated by the BBC and others.
      Griffin’s views as per BNP are way milder than most nationalists from Africa and Asia, and also European countries. It is possibl;e to be massively anti-immigration without sharing the rest of his views too. And yes, he was bullied on Question Time – a programme which is famous for rigging its audience in an utterly corrupt BBC pc leftie way.
      Not just Griffin who gets abused though – Peter Hitchen, and anyone who is against mass immigration and the way hoardes of immigrants from the Third World and elsewhere come here to the detriment of our society (Morrissey, others who complaim, get accused of racism by the usual stormtroopers of diversity).
      The propaganda from the BBC day in day out repeats the mantra ‘immigrationj is always good’, ‘immigration is always good’, ‘It enriches us, enriches us, enriches us’, ‘we must celebrate diversity, celebrate diversity, celebrate diversity’, ‘Anyone who disagrees is a racist, racist, racist…’
      Well I disagree, and I am not racist, (not that I have to justify it to anyone), and I am certainly way less racist than most blacks and Asians, both here and in their homelands.
      There is no diversity of opinion allowed on the BBC. I know them, and know how most there seem to think they exist as a propaganda machine to ‘teach’ and ‘re-educate’ the proles with the religion of multiculturalism and diversity. Programme pitches than highlight how wonderful immigration and diversity is have a chance of getting made; those that dare criticise it, won’t.
LEngland

Mrs. Benson,
You have demonstrated by public utterance and beyond any reasonable doubt that you, decidedly, are the one who is attestably beyond contempt.
To purposefully affront strangers in public is no means of winning sympathy for your assertions
http://twitter.com/Mykeru Mykeru

“Like Richard, I consider that article the most disgusting thing I’ve seen at the Guardian in some time, but I can say that without using sexist epithets. I don’t know why you pricks can’t manage that.”
–Ophelia Benson

Now, she later claimed to be joking, but, as you can imagine, Ophelia is the only one allowed to have a sense of humor in her presence.
http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman

Calling a woman a cunt is no different from a woman calling a man a dick, and the latter form of insult never attracts any media attention whatsoever. Equality exists. I can call a cunt a cunt, just as you can call a dick a dick. Bye, cunt.
- Eddie
  
  So true. Wonderful post!

LaBoheme

No Rod, it’s not Professor Beard. It’s you.

Eddie

Rod is right – men get mocked for being wimps, sexual inadequates, and get accused of being misogynists is they dare challenge feminisgts or criticise women. Of course, these hypocrites never think of themselves as misandrists for focusing on male attributes in their insults.

Didn’t see Beard on QT – and of course she loves immigration (like most rich un-empathetic people who benefit from mass immigration with high house prices and cheap servants) – but I don;t care what she looks like at all: the views she expressed were selfish, erropneous and were, like most twaddle that academics like her spurt into the world, opinions and prejudice masquerading as fact.

She may think she is right, but she is factually wrong: there is no net benefit from immigration, and dire cultural and societal consequences to it in the longterm.
EJ – was Tory now UKIP

No it’s not – Rod is bang on as usual.

If she’s going to go on national tv looking like a cloistered and demented old hippy and then spout deeply insulting and patronising Left-wing platitudes about how immigration’s ok because some government document tells us it is – when we all know that our country is being turned into a third world cesspit – then she’s got to expect some criticism for the sheer contempt and arrogance of her woolly-headed statements.

Let the nutjob feminists try to paint this as some sort of sinister chauvinistic attack. It doesn’t change the fact that Rod is bang on the money and the majority of British people will completely agree with him.
- TheOtherTurnipTaliban
  
  EJ: I just re-read the article closely and I am sincerely struggling to see what it is that the feminists or women generally find so appallingly offensive about it. Rod is saying that a part of Beard’s appeal to the managers and directors of programs like Question Time is her looks. I don’t know a huge amount about how TV programs are produced but is this really such a controversial position to take?
  
  She looks and behaves in exact accordance with what she is: a slightly insulated, ‘liberal’, cloistered, metropolitan eccentric. Her looks are a part of that.
  
  Take Nigel Farage for comparison, not a (critical) article goes by without describing him as looking like he’s just come from a meeting at his local yacht club or something similar, and yet nothing is made of this.
  - KavithaV
    
    The reason why this article is so appallingly offensive is because Liddle asks readers to “vote for the most stupid woman to have appeared on Question Time in the past 12 months”.
    
    I think that shows to what level he is pandering to.
    - EJ – was Tory now UKIP
      
      But you’re quite happy to see men consistently presented as female-dependent idiots and infantilised buffoons on adverts and tv shows? Don’t hear so much bleating about that…
    - real__world
      
      Stupid is what stupid does and this woman has it in spades. You don’t go on a program like QT waving some left wing report claiming its fact unless you check it out personally yourself. Her appearance just added flavour to her own stupidity.
    - Eddie
      
      So, would that be more or less offensive that all those TV shows (Loose Women, those Saturday night scream-fests) where women vote for men who have the uglist willy?
      Oh no – but when women mock, belittle, demean, disparage, insult men it’s called being ‘strong and independent’, isn’t it?
      Zzzzzzz…..
http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Harris/1201395549 Michael Harris

Oh how hurtful. Ms. Beard is my dream woman,chic, beautiful, a real stunner. Why is everybody going on about her looks?
PS-Do you do braille editions of the Spectator?
real__world

You reap what you sow and by dismissing Bostons residents concerns in the cavalier fashion she did, this academic deserves a slamming on her unsubstantiated facts. The personal insults were just the reaction of a very small percentage of twitterers who were too lazy to take her to task over her obscene immigration comments.
http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman

How so? Argue your case, you numpty.

ool0n

Riiight…. So all those tweets and comments after the presidential election about a nigger in the Whitehouse and calling Obama a monkey were not racist at all! How silly of me, they just hated him and randomly picked on his racial characteristics to demean him… Derp!

You see I’d say Rod is an arsehole, an asshat or even a shitweasel if I were to insult him, the size or condition of little Rod is irrelevant. It is quite wrong to pick on the characteristics of a person that are not objectionable to insult them. Nothing about being male is, per se, objectionable. This applies for race, sexuality, gender, etc and I’d hope to see people with a platform denounce racist, homophobic AND misogynistic language and attitudes not excuse them.

SirMontyThreepwood

Wrong, but nevertheless it is what happens, and it is to be expected. The point Liddle makes is that it happens to both men and women.
- ool0n
  
  This balls about people searching for an attribute to mock being not at all indicative is crap. If you did not find someone’s race, sexuality or gender objectionable then it wouldn’t occur to demean based on it.
  
  Regardless, lets assume this compartmentalised racist / homophobic / misogynist language user exists.They use the language but would never actually look down on or discriminate against someone because of these irrelevant attributes. Personally I find it highly unlikely any such people exist, even if they did they are making racist, homophobic and misogynist language and attitudes acceptable. They are not acceptable in our society and just saying “Oh they don’t mean it”, is utter shit. You provide an environment that at the very least hides and fosters “real” racists, homophobes and misogynists.
  
  Have a look at one well proven area where negative stereotypes promulgated by bigots have real effects on those at the sharp end of them and stop excusing this behaviour – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat
  - SirMontyThreepwood
    
    If , as it seems from what you say, you want a world in which every member of the hoi polloi takes a benign perspective towards every sort of other individual, different to him or her, possibly repellent to him or her, then good luck with that one, oh deluded soul. In real life, what you call ‘stereotyping’ the common man calls reasonable dislike. Is this to be outlawed by members of the chattering classes such as yourself? I could name you a round dozen of groupings and ‘types’ that I find obnoxious. These range from loud youths and uncouth persons of all kinds to politically inspired busybodies like yourself. It is my right – nay my duty to dislike the people I find obnoxious. It is everyman’s and everywoman’s right to do so. I expect you dislike me. I celebrate your right to do so. Well done you!!
    
    Now, when it comes to that dislike being used as abasis for the removal of my rights, or anyone else’s, that is a different matter. I’ll let you into a secret. I dislike and despise religious fundamentalists. The irrational perspective on the world that they take offends me. They operate under delusional beliefs. Some of them use these beliefs to make themselves objectionable to others and some even oppress others on the basis of them. Now – when I meet a fundamentalist – lets say a Muslim one, I despise his beliefs and way of life. You might call me an Islamophobe, but how far would I take my dislike? Would I use it as the basis of withdrawing his right to be treated equally under the law? Certainly not. He is a human being. He must have equal access to all the good things this state of ours provides. He must be handled fairly by the police, just as I must. If he is sick, would I withdraw his right to be treated by the NHS? Certainly not. He is entitled to it. However, do I feel negative about the way he lives his life? I do. Do I despise his manner of life? I do. Is this proper? Of course it is.
    
    What you advocate is that the drunken rantings of obnoxious Twitterarti about Mary Beard’s stupidity on Questiontime and their unpleasant references to her hairy private parts are a sign that she will suffer real oppression. Rubbish, they are no more that than the vulgar wanker gesturing of the young woman last week annoyed by my bicycle was.
    
    What is far more worrying, is that you consider it unacceptable for people in this country to have a negative view of others. Now that really is the way to remove REAL rights.
    - TheOtherTurnipTaliban
      
      It could equally be argued that oppressing misogynistic speech simply hides the symptoms of a streak of anti-female thought in this country. If their voices are not heard and their views debated then how is anyone supposed to know if this country is becoming a more relaxed and tolerant (actually tolerant, not fake pseudo-liberal pretend tolerant, tolerant of nasty ideas and opinions) or not?
    - SirMontyThreepwood
      
      Any attempt to oppress speech of any sort save perhaps that which advocates violence and crime, is a step too far in my opinion. I know you are not suggesting that we prevent free expression, but many here do. Like many a breed of fanatics before them, they believe somehow that they have a monopoly on how people ought to think and would punish those they disagree with.
      
      I actually think that people who believe that human beings will somehow become more tolerant and benign if socialised ‘correctly’ (read brainwashed) are barking up the wrong tree. Social mores are entirely arbitrary. Fifty years ago, homosexuality was universally despised and homosexual acts were punishable by imprisonment. This is nolonger so, not because people now are more intelligent, or enlightened, but because society has simply agreed that these are matters for the private conscience of individuals. This is not so with men who have sexual contact with girls of fifteen, such as the foolish teacher, Jeremy Forrest who ran away with the obviously consenting and precocious schoolgirl. Be clear that I am not advocating such behaviour – I disapprove of it, but as in other cases our attitudes to such matters as whether a girl of fifteen and a half is a victim while six months later she is not are merey social conventions.
    - ool0n
      
      Free speech is a totally different issue, as I said above. What part of calling people out and not excusing the behaviour equates to legislating against it?
    - Colonel Mustard
      
      Thin edge of the wedge.
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      Fifty years ago homosexuality was NOT universally despised. What twaddle! It was illegal. but that is an entirely different thing.
    - SirMontyThreepwood
      
      You were either not around much then, or you didn’t have ay contact with the mass of the ordinary population if you think that.
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      Sir Monty, I think it was your word ‘universally’ that I quarreled with. Had you written ‘generally’ I would have held my fire. Sweet reason always is my watchword.
    - ool0n
      
      I’d disagree strongly with that, making it clear that racist and homophobic language is not acceptable is part and parcel of making it clear those attitudes are not acceptable. Wider society takes it cues from popular culture, the internet is part of that, so widespread acceptance of bigoted language and stereotypes will serve to promote those views.
      
      Just look at the massive drop in homophobia in the US, amongst the young anyway. They have grown up in a society where it is no where near as acceptable to express hatred of people for their sexuality. As a result there is a massive move away from the religious right with their rabid gay hating views. Why would it be any difference for gender discrimination? Be that misogyny, transphobia etc…
    - Colonel Mustard
      
      You are conflating dislike and hatred – not surprising since the left has been doing that for quite some time. Of course when they hate and dislike, using incontinent language, they expect to get a free pass.
    - ool0n
      
      Wow a lot of word salad for a “free speech” diatribe… I said don’t support or excuse the behaviour not lock em up and legislate against it. Just hand waiving it away with bullshit about “just trolling” allows them to continue unimpeded.
      
      You framing this as just disagreement, and expressing negative views of people is absurd. Do you feel the need to be a racist, homophobe or misogynist to disagree with people? Disagree with what they say and do, not with what they are. How hard is that?
    - SirMontyThreepwood
      
      You are stereotyping racists and homophobes. People should be able to think what they like without oppressive fellows like you wagging your obnoxious fingers at them. We have had far too much of the PC brigade dictating how we should think and look what it has brought us to. We now live in a country in which 15% of the occupants were not born here. Housing is so ridiculously expensive through shortage because three an a half million aliens arrived during the period 1999 to 2010, that the young are hideously disadvantaged in paying extortionate rents and mortgages if they can get them. It was people like you that made it impossible to speak out against the river of people that inundated our shores so that not one mainstream party would talk about it. Paradoxically, that led to the vile thugs of the BNP gaining more and more votes. We now ‘enjoy’ a country in which very nearly half the people in London were born abroad, when primary schools are full of alien children and where Muslim thugs warn off homosexuals and others from walking in ‘their’ areas (Tower Hamlets).
      
      Thanks so much…..
    - EJ – was Tory now UKIP
      
      Couldn’t have put it better. Hear hear.
    - ool0n
      
      Hehe “alien children”, alert the Men in Black! Well it would be funny if you were not such a nasty racist… ‘Othering’ people and seeing them as somehow less than yourself as they were born elsewhere or have a different religion is pretty much standard irrational racism. No wonder you are so worried about your type of people being stereotyped. WTF difference does it make if people are born here, totally irrational argument, you probably vote for UKIP
      
      “PC Brigade”, ROFL, what century are you from?
    - SirMontyThreepwood
      
      Well my fine fellow, you can make fun of my concern that swarms of foreigners are occupying housing stock to the considerable disadvantage of the people who already live here, but if you were to ask a youngster of twenty- five to thirty when they would be buying their first house, most of them would look pretty sick at your insensitivity. The reason of course is that while we were building record low levels of new housing and actually knocking down older housing stock, Labour allowed in three and a half million people. Even now, we are bringing in over a quarter of million a year and building about sixty thousand houses. You don’t see the problem? Well, there’s nothing I can do for you and won’t be likely to respond to your twaddle again.
    - BorderlineFascist
      
      And you are probably a spotty little student.
    - Colonel Mustard
      
      Didn’t take long for your mask to slip and the abuse to come out.
    - Colonel Mustard
      
      It seems that you can’t disagree with anyone without calling their posts “diatribes” and accusing them of being racist, homophobe (what exactly does that ridiculous invention mean btw?) or misogynist. Misogyny is a dislike of women as a collective group but read the (no doubt leftist nobbled) Wiki entry and it comes across as a crime (which it probably soon will be).
      
      Personally I believe someone should be able to articulate their dislike, whether or not it is justified, or are we heading towards a society where expressing any dislike about anything becomes criminal?
    - GarethSoye
      
      I suspect that they do not consider it unacceptable for people in this country to have a negative view of others, more so it is only unacceptable for people to have a negative view of the people the original poster likes.
    - http://twitter.com/Mykeru Mykeru
      
      Just want to give you a head’s up: You are arguing with a notorious time-wasting troll. Trust me. Ignore it, and it will go away.
    - SirMontyThreepwood
      
      Thanks. I’d decided not to respond anymore.
    - BorderlineFascist
      
      What is a troll?
    - Straidarran
      
      Brilliant, seriously.
    - Colonel Mustard
      
      Well said. It concerns me that (F)oolOn(goodness knows what) groups racists, homophobes and misogynists as though they were criminal, which no doubt they soon will be. He – and people like him – seek to criminalise dislike on the grounds that they dislike it.
    - SirMontyThreepwood
      
      This is a feature of the left Colonel; Beriya, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. How many more do we need to mention?
    - ool0n
      
      You’ve shown who the fool is nicely, I clearly stated I don’t agree with legislating against this language…
    - Colonel Mustard
      
      Yes, I know what you stated. And as I stated – thin edge of the wedge. What is ‘unacceptable’ in societies usually evolves via hierarchy, tradition and culture. Trying to define it, as the Left do all the time, and then legislating for it, which they also do, is social engineering of an especially pernicious and ramrod kind. By buying in to that ‘unacceptable’ nonsense you are at best a useful idiot, at worst a fellow traveller.
    - ool0n
      
      Right, so saying racism, homophobia and misogyny is unacceptable and denouncing it is the thin end of a wedge to where? A decent society where people are not discriminated against?
      
      What exactly happens that is so bad when people either do not or cannot (In your dystopian fantasies) do and say bigoted things?
    - Colonel Mustard
      
      Look, there is absolutely no point in you reconstructing my post so that you can then paraphrase it in a way that suits your own prejudice. First you must consider whether it is possible to disagree with excessive immigration and multi-culturalism without being labelled ‘racist’, to oppose gay marriage without being labelled ‘homophobic’ and to criticise women as a collective without being labelled ‘misogynist’. By resorting to those labels in those debates the left have de-valued the terms, but they have done so in order to delegitimise opposition to their views and to marginalise their opponents from rational debate. You have done exactly that here.
      
      The thin edge of the wedge is when they go even further by attempting to criminalise those whose views they disapprove of.
      
      We are not talking about doing bigoted things. That is a different matter entirely. But it usefully points to another conflation. The left assume that if I disapprove of homosexuality – or oppose gay marriage – then I will discriminate against homosexuals. So they conflate dislike and disapproval with discrimination and thus bigotry. Moving from acting on what people do to what they think and say is the dystopia – but it is not a fantasy, the left have been actively pursuing that since 1997, if not before.
    - ool0n
      
      Marriage is a right afforded to couples in this country, I can think of no rational reason to deny it to homosexuals. You are discriminating against homosexuals in my view if you work to deny a right to them.
      
      Your “disapproval” is your own, you have no right to “ram it down” others throats as you put it to me. Say what you will by all means and if being branded a bigot for holding untenable positions such as denying marriage rights to people just because they do different things to you in the bedroom… Well, tough luck in my opinion. Get over it, most people realise that bedroom habits that you don’t “approve” of are no business of yours.
    - Colonel Mustard
      
      Er, you appear to have overlooked the word “if” in my post in your feverish and foaming haste to condemn me as a bigot. Nevertheless your comment makes it very clear which one of us is the bigot.
  - global city
    
    Oh, I wonder if you’re really so pure of heart and tongue yourself?
    - ool0n
      
      No one is perfect, is that a good reason to not even try?
    - global city
      
      I agree with you, I just wanted to make you bite, and perhaps think about your own abolute righteousness, as it was coming across on this forum.
    - Colonel Mustard
      
      Then try as an individual instead of trying to ram your values down the throats of others.
    - ool0n
      
      What happened to free speech? It was killed in the library by Colonel Mustard with the lump hammer. Someone expressing that bigotry is unacceptable is not ramming it down anyone throats.
    - Colonel Mustard
      
      That is the sort of reply I might expect. Your free speech is ok but anything you disagree with isn’t and becomes that much overused word bigotry. If anyone has the lump hammer it is you. You have absolutely no self awareness to understand that some might find your views unacceptable and bigoted. You conflate your personal, subjective dislikes with a broader public unacceptability – based on what? That most people do or should think exactly like you?
      
      What is bigotry? Something that Lefties say it is. Only people on the right of politics can be bigots. Newspeak. Lefty manipulation of language and words to further a political agenda.
    - ool0n
      
      Well I cannot really have a discussion with someone who doesn’t even know what bigotry is… And “lefties”, whatever they are, can be bigoted as well. I assume Julie Birchall would be a “lefty” in your world? She was roundly shat on for her transphobic article… Shame your victim complex is not reflected in the real world.
    - Colonel Mustard
      
      You missed the point but accusing me of having a “victim complex” perfectly demonstrates that in reality you are what you rail against.
    - ool0n
      
      Ok what point? Who am I being bigoted against? Got my popcorn ready…
    - Colonel Mustard
      
      Looks like you are pretty much bigoted towards anyone who disagrees with you and rather than respecting their right to a dissenting opinion you have to resort to the tyranny of abusive labelling – q.v. most of your comments here. What is quite sinister is how you (like most lefties) conflate your opinion with holding some kind of power over others.
      
      Creepy.
    - ool0n
      
      I’d better not say anything or I’ll label you again and I’m not sure the springs in your fainting couch can take it.
      
      Thanks for “tyranny of abusive labelling” that gave me quite a laugh
retundario

“This applies for race, sexuality, gender, etc and I’d hope to see
people with a platform denounce racist, homophobic AND misogynistic
language and attitudes, not excuse them.”

Idiotic nonsense – there is actually no reason for these particular characteristics to gain particular protection. It’s like complaining about people calling George Bush stupid or a red-neck after his election, because such abuse is demeaning and red-kneck-a-phobic and stupid-a-phobic. There is no justification for left-wingers to assert a continual sense of offence in the spurious manner that they do.
- Colonel Mustard
  
  They use it as a means to gain power and control. They manipulate language to do so. Disagree with their ideology and you become an ‘ist’ or a ‘phobe’ or a ‘denier’. Even their use of the word ‘unacceptable’ is dishonest. Unacceptable to whom and on what basis? The answer is purely political. It’s NSDAP stuff – they are all basically fascists.

carolcroft

What a waste of space you are Rod Liddle. My favourite response from Mary was oh dear can’t be bothered to feed the nasty troll.

http://twitter.com/greatbiglizard a large reptilian

Reduced to the poorly-written trolling of an academic. A sad demise for a once halfway reasonable journalist.

Lucy Hill

Er, no Rod. Mary Beard actually acknowledged that some men suffer the same abuse too. Her point was that no-one should have to suffer those kind of anonymous, online comments. And she specifically only objected to comments that were nothing to do with what she said but which were sexually graphic or relating to how she looks. Her whole point was that it is not appropriate to resort to that language when you, as you put it ‘temporarily hate someone’.

SirMontyThreepwood

So what do you propose to do – prosecute those whose expressions you dislike? Be careful where you take that. Ask the people of China or Quatar, where a student has been sentenced to life imprisonment for reading a poem to some people at a party. Unfortunately for him, his poem in praise of the so called Arab Spring was filmed by a friend and put online to the considerable chagrin of the Emir.
- dalai guevara
  
  The next logical fallacy committed by you today – what has one got to do with the other?
  - Eddie
    
    If you keep on indulging in offering fallacies to strange men, Mr Guevera, you’ll give yourself buck teeth, y’know…
- Lucy Hill
  
  Of course not. It’s not about prosecuting people. It’s about having a bit of courtesy online.
  - SirMontyThreepwood
    
    Well you can object to discourtesy and criticise it if you like, but there are plenty of people who are intent upon prosecution. Have you read about the many cases lately which have been prosecuted?
    - Lucy Hill
      
      Yes I heard about about was it the Tom Daley guy and a couple of others. I don’t agree that online commentators should be prosecuted.
TheOtherTurnipTaliban

Oh Lucy who gives a shit? If you’re in public life you’re going to get smeared and abused endlessly, if you don’t like it move to France or North Korea.
- Lucy Hill
  
  The people on the end of the vile abuse give a shit. And their families. Disagree with them all you like, but is it too much to ask for a bit of commonplace courtesy?
  - TheOtherTurnipTaliban
    
    No of course it’s not but what are you or anyone else going to do about it? Demand legislation?
    - Lucy Hill
      
      Of course not. But to say ‘this hurts and is irrelevant, please take it back’ might make some people think again. Beard has acknowledged that some people who posted the comments have done just that.
    - TheOtherTurnipTaliban
      
      Don’t you think it makes women look weak and hands misogynists a cheap victory? ‘Women can’t take the heat so want us to play by different rules’? It’s the antithesis of feminism.
    - Lucy Hill
      
      Men object to vile comments all the time. Tom Daley, the Milanese footballer….shall I go on…
    - TheOtherTurnipTaliban
      
      If one is offended by the nasty things people say and yet does not intend to do anything about it except express ‘objections’ then that is known as…
      
      Whinging. Which makes them whingers.
    - Lucy Hill
      
      Right. So you’re objecting to what I say, which makes you….
    - TheOtherTurnipTaliban
      
      I saw it as more of a debate, what I’m not doing is saying that your opinions offend me and because of that I’m going to join pressure groups and lobby parliament to ban people from saying jolly nasty things.
  - retundario
    
    This “demand for commonplace courtesy” soon becomes a maniacal desire to regulate everyone’s opinion and reduce all opinion to bland monochrome cliche.
Eddie

If a man had complained like Mary Beard, he’d have been called a wimp – a weak pathetic coward of a man, not fit to be on TV or hold a high position. Yet Beard is saluted as brave for her whingeing (though at least she hasn’t burst into tears which most women seem to when playing the victim) Typical feminutsy hypocrisy.
TV is a world for grown-ups. If you don’t want people to criticise you, don’t bask in the sickly light of celebrity, deary.
- Lucy Hill
  
  I think it’s grown-up to not just take it but make a point of objecting to things that hurt and are vile, to say ‘if you wouldn’t say it to my face, why say it online?’ And again, I repeat, it’s not about not wanting people to criticise you, it’s about objecting to sexually violent comments. The more these things are glossed over and not highlighted, the more acceptable they become. Take the ‘kick racism out of football’ campaign. In the 80s it was acceptable, even normal, to hear racist insults on the football pitch. Now, thanks to that campaign, ie people standing up and saying ‘no, this isn’t acceptable’, that kind of vile abuse is almost non-existent. The player who went off the pitch recently in Italy, with his team following him after chants from the crowd. wasn’t that the right thing to do? You wouldn’t say to him, ‘come on, you’re a famous, well-paid footballer, what do you expect – just stand there and take it’, would you? Or would you?
  - Lucy Hill
    
    and for the record, that footballer wasn’t called, as you say ‘a wimp’, or a ‘weak pathetic coward of a man’, he was in fact feted.
    - Eddie
      
      Yes, but he was a black footballer making a histrionic display of outrage at the evil of racism (the greatest evil of our age, as the diversity bible states).
      He was not a TV presenter bloke complaining about being ‘abused’ by insults online – if he had been, he would have been called a wimp, with insinuations that he lived with his mother and couldn’t get a girlfriend because he was so pathetically weak, wet and wimpish.
      That’s the way it works, honey – women especially will always go for the easy ad hominem insults against men. As for insults against women – well, other women are the experts, love. Not men. Women tend to do some things better than men – being beechy, spiteful bullies is one of them.
      (Personally I have zero sympathy with thick overpaid footballers – and think they should do their job no matter what nasty words in the ‘audience’ offend them. Would there be as much sympathy for a gay footballer who burst into tears and walked off the pitch when a fan screamed the word ‘poof’ at him? Our racism obsession is silly and hypocritical – especially as as black footballers are of a demographic class that is highly bigoted and illiberal. You won’t get many black footballers supporting the rights of gay people, honey!)
    - Robofish
      
      Re footballers – surely there’s nothing contradictory about the view that racism and homophobia are both bad things, and neither should be tolerated? It’s not a matter of having to support one or the other.
      
      (I would agree that homophobia is a bigger problem than racism in football at the moment, but we can’t pretend that doesn’t exist either.)
    - Eddie
      
      Yes, but most footballers and the managers are obsessed with racism – the red card campaign, supporting black footballers who burst into tears (the players are all spoilt overpaid thickos, whatever colour). They are not against abuse or discrimation against gay people. Just read the tragic tale of Justin Fashanu.
      I agree with you that neither racism nor homophobia should be tolerated in sport – however, the latter is and the former isn’t, and maybe that’s because so many footballers are thick, or perhaps because a quarter are black (Africans are not known for their liberal tolerance).
      And I don’t believe is getting hysterical or players bursting into tears and walking off whenever someone calls out a rude name. How utterly pathetic! Anti-racism has become a monotheistic religion in football – and our media perhaps.
      Why don’t we give bullying and abuse of gay people, disabled people, mentally ill people, ginger people the same prominence? In particular, abuse of gays is encouraged, tolerated and even promoted in sport – so I object to being told to be ‘tolerant’ and to ‘kick racism out’ by some black footballer who wants to hang gays from lampposts.
  - Eddie
    
    And yet and yet – a lot of the vilest online abuse if FROM feminists and TOWARDS men, isn’t it? Anyone who dares challenge the pc femi-postion is accused of being a sexist, misogynist, rapist and on and on and on…
    Re football. The lessening of racist abuse is due to societal changes and not because of any diversity quangocrats getting 6 figure salaries for doing diversity workshops with African drumming.
    Seeing as black people and lower class ones in particular (ie most thick as toffee footballers) are massibely stupid, bigoted (against gays in particular), I really don’t think racism should be an obsession – after all, 20% of footballers are black, so how the hell can the game be racist? Now, how about asking black footballers what they think of gays, and you may realise they are not all the fluffy diversity bunnies you no doubt fantasis about.
    And no, I don’t believe in bursting into tears and throwing your rattle out of the pram whenever someone calls you a bad word. I believe in carrying on regardless.
    These footballers should play on, of course. Yes, they are performers and sometimes performers get verbally abused. It is not for them to throw hissy fits and let down the spectators. Any investigations of abuse can follow any game – but no match should be stopped because someone used a rude word, silly.
    Yes of course that footballer was made a saint of the church of diversity that now rules this country and its media. But I am a heretic, deary, not a member of it.
    - EJ – was Tory now UKIP
      
      Absolutely nailed it. Well done Eddie for standing up for truth and common sense. Enough of this self-righteous leftist feminist anti-male group-think.
- BorderlineFascist
  
  No- TV is a world of vapid delusionary wannabe twats Eddie- don’t get involved.
  - Eddie
    
    Yes, I agree. The vapidity of autocuties and the readers-out-loud who read the news is startlingly bimbo-esque.
    What I meant was that if you ‘go public’ then you have to accept that you will not automatically get the same deference you get from fearful undergraduates in a safe, snug university job where people almost bow to you when you swan through the corridors.
    It’s a big bad world out there. Want to go public? Fine. But don’t moan if you get slated and targeted. It happens to everyone – so why should academics or women have special treatment?
Sarah

Men who think men get the same level of online abuse as women do are deluded. Ivory towers, they are in them.

Rod Liddle, a high-profile, professional contrarian who makes a living out of insulting people (most particularly those who can’t fight back), gets willy put-downs and thinks this gives him an insight and thinks this is equivalence.

You don’t have to be high-profile or professional or a contrarian if you’re female. All you have to do is speak in public for men and women (but overwhelmingly men) to have the same Pavlovian reaction: degrade her appearance, intimidate with sexual aggression and undermine by patronising. It’s the same playground bullying girls will have experienced through out their schooling, into the workplace, often in public places, particularly places men believe they have an entitlement to such as the roads.

Which male commenters round here for example have been told they have a dripping stinking twat, have been asked if they’d like it up the arse, have been told they are a lesbian/whore/slut/friggid/bint, have been patronised with love/dear?
Which men have received hundreds of thousands of rape threats, had their wiki and blog pages hacked and vandalised with sexually abusive images for starting a kick starter project?
Which male TED speakers have to have the comments sections turned off because of outpourings of misogyny?
Which male bloggers round here get threats of rape and their address posted, for writing articles about cycling?
Which male vloggers round here get the ubiquitous response of sexual aggression in response to the most benign contribution?

It’s noticeable that more female than male bloggers and vloggers post anonymously and either have comments sections turned off or on pre-mod. More women than men keep their contact details private. The majority of women use public spaces with some level of trepidation. Many women complain of feeling unwilling to speak in public or stand for public office. While the censorious men whine about censorship.

I suggest Rod Liddle does an experiment (or lets call it, investigative journalism) and blogs under a female avatar for a while and compares and contrasts the levels of patronising, degradation and attempts at intimidation he is on the receiving end of. And then takes note of which quarter it’s coming from. And then remembers that men and women probably feel differently about sexual threats and degradation coming from men. Or he could just like ask his female colleagues in the Spectator and the wider press (I know there aren’t many of them, but if he hunts around a bit).
- Eddie
  
  Yes, dear… It’s always easy for men and hard for women in your fabricated feminutsy victimhood world, innit?
  The irony being, of course, that you fling abuse at all males who dare to challenge your feminasty misandry – which is also misogyny, because most women certainly do not share your manharting psychotic delusions and obsessions.
  Fact is, females have always been more into that nasty, evil, beechy, ostracising bullying than males – who are far more straightforward, rather than devious and evil in their bullying.
  If you think men have it easier than women, you are just spouting your usual pity party grass-in-greener femi-delusions again.
  Me are very vulnerable to being falsely accuses of being rapista and paedophiles by manhaters like you: men are vulnerable to such false accusations. Then there are all your femi-insults about men’s genitals (as Rod correctly says), about how wimpish or weak they are, how effiminate, how wet – and then when men do the opposite and get violent, you accuse them of being awful the other way! Hypocrisy and feminism are synonymous eh?
  How’s that course of medication going again, love?
  - ool0n
    
    Wow you are a sad sack, the desperation to get a negative response and prove you are right is dripping off your posts. Anyone wanting to see the type of fools that use terms like “misandric” and characterise feminists as “man-haters” should check out manboobz.com. Eddie here is a perfect example of such a boob.
    - Colonel Mustard
      
      Pretty good hate site you’ve got going there.
- Eddie
  
  Just for you Sarah, sweetie. Remember when you accused me of being a rapist and a paedo, and a racist and a sexist, and a papist and a Muslim…OK maybe not the last one, but the previous 2 a lot – week after week- whenever I expose the hypocrisy of your false arguments and your insane man-hatred and sexist obsessions.
  
  You also have stated as fact here what my life is like, yet know nothing about me (how could you?) – you have stated I was sacked from a teaching job for being suspect and a danger to kids (utter nonsense – I have never been sacked from any teaching job!).
  
  Then of course you criticise those (only the men) who do exactly what you are your twisted sister misandirst feminutsies do day in day out. Can nyou explain this hypocrisy? Or shall we just put it down to the confusion of mental illness eh?
  
  This is what Mary Beard has said:
  
  “It shows the classic signs of vile playground bullying – claiming to know about the victim, sneering at things they could not possibly know but claim they do … that’s all part of the bullying repertoire.”
  And that is what you do in most of your posts, Sarah.
- backstoothewall
  
  Yawn.
  - Sarah
    
    Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a land far far away, all the men shut up.
    
    A beautiful princess woke in the morning to an eery silence in her house. No noise drifts in through the windows. No shouts ring out from the bathroom. Turning on the radio she is greeted by silence. ”Has there been a power cut?” she wonders. The princess pads downstairs in silence and tries the TV, there is a another beautiful princess sitting in a studio – quietly.
    
    “This is a bit 28 days later”, thinks she.
    
    She dresses quickly and pokes her head tentatively outside the front door, cocking it to listen for a sound. She sniffs the air, there’s a strange sound, something like bird song. “Maybe there’s been another volcanic eruption in Iceland and the planes have been grounded”. But there’s a solitary plane in the far distance looking like it’s lost its bearings.
    
    She catches sight of other women emerging from their houses into the street. ”What’s happened?” they whisper.
    “The radio is silent” says one
    “The television is quiet” says another
    “The sports channel is just a satisfying hiss of white noise, there is no post-mortum of the action replays of the game they were talking about ” says a third.
    “I was concerned, so I checked the internet, but it’s white as the driven snow.”
    “And my newspaper arrived this morning, but it only had one article in it!”.
    
    The women are emboldened by one another’s presense and as a sunneam begins to break out from behind a cloud they follow its path towards the park. ”Something is happening” says one to another, “something has changed”. Then the realisation dawns, “the men have shut up” somebody says.
    
    “The men have shut up?” they ask, open mouthed. ”Yes, can’t you hear it? The pulpits have fallen silent, the press has stopped running, parliament has stopped braying. Th lecterns are empty and the theatres and panel shows are in darkness. And look, through that office window: that’s men working, not talking.”
    
    “The men have shut up”. “The men have shut up”. Excitement ripples around the gathering crowd
    
    Then one woman turns to another and shyly smiles, “Do *you* have an opinion?” she asks. The second woman looks panicked and glances around anxiously, “but they might hear!” she hisses, “You know what happens when they hear!”. “It’s okay”, her friend soothes, “the men have shut up”.
    
    Then the bells ring out across the land. The women take over the media, music industry, book industry, film industry. They write blogs and books about what’s good for men. It turns out to be what is good for women. They make films with 100 women in them and one man who doesn’t have a speaking part. They fill the radio waves with their interesting opinions and form schools and new religions where the men have to shut up. The women form a parliament and institute their new common sense rules and laws which includes the right to make men shut up. They fill the streets and public places with monuments to women’s favourite women and teach the children about their books about them. And every so often a man tries his luck at not shutting up, and the women shut him up, but you know they mean well because they are laughing.
    
    And everyone lives happily ever after.
    - BorderlineFascist
      
      I’m not sure the Xanex is working, get back to the quack and ask for something a bit stronger Sarah.
    - Fergus Pickering
      
      I live in a house with three women. I never get a word in edgeways..
- retundario
  
  Women often have stupid opinions which they deliver in an unbearably self-righteous manner (e.g. Louise Mensch, Harriet Harman, Baroness Idiot Williams) – these women naturally are more irritating and so produce more abuse. It’s because of the nature of women vs. men
  - Sarah
    
    For every woman delivering an opinion, there are a thousand men delivering theirs. Every time I turn on the radio or TV I’m confronted my men giving their opinions Every time I browse the Internet, I’m confronted by men giving their opinions. Every time I look at parliament, there they are giving me their opinions. Every time I go to a meeting, there they are again, telling me what their opinions are.
    
    Look at the line up at the Spectator for example: a dozen men writing writing writing, about mice, cats, storms, coffee, apples, bitches, harridans, bints, Eton, books, telling us they’re going on Any Questions, telling us they’ve been on Any Questions. And 3 women, writing as innocuously as possible.
    
    How any man thinks he needs a yet another platform to talk, and to complain about women speaking in public of all things, is beyond me. Well no, it’s not beyond me, it makes perfect sense.
    - http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman
      
      Calm down, dear. No, but seriously, calm down.
    - Eddie
      
      Sarah – you are a self-confessed manhater, who constantly flings abuse at posts here who expose you for the eejit you are, and you often accuse them not just of being misogynists (yawn) but of being rapists and paedophiles.
      You thus cry wolf and devalue and mock the suffering of all those who are abused (many are men who are victims of women, dear).
      You shamefully try and piggyback on the suffering of others to promote your bigotry – and yes, hating all men is just weird, and obviously the result of your sad past. My advice: take your meds, sweetie.
      Predictably, you promote the fabricated lie that women get everything worse than men (well, they get 70% of healthcare funding and welfare payments actually…), and that someone that if a job, career, line-up of a magazine’s staff is not 50% women, then that is due to sexism against women. Correlation is not causation.
      Is shall repeat: correlation is NOT causation.
      Most surgeons are male, most scientists, train drivers, pilots, mathematicians, economists, and those at the top of many professions (not because of unfaiur sexism, but because that reflects innate talent, determination, ambition and hard work).
      The Spectator deals with politics, economics etc. The vast majority of commentators on that (and graduates of it) are male.
      Some careers are more female. Nursing is 90% female – so does that mean then that there is an awful conspriacy against men that has caused that imbalance? Fifty/fifty gender representation is not equal at all – it does not reflect ability.
      Look at the only show where merit is seen at the BBC: Mastermind. 90% white men. If the BBC had chosen the contestants (and not ability) then it’d be like all their shows, with one token white man surrounded by black TV presenters and sportspeople, women, and paralympians.
      The magazine trade ios actually very female – a majority of all staff of mags are female. I’d guess two thirds.
      How many male staff on Cosmo? How many on Spare Rib? How many on Psychologies? How many male staff on Loose Women or Woman’s Hour.
      Now go aaway and cry your self-pitying victimhood over your copy of Manhating monthly, Sad Sarah. Good luck with the meds.
EJ – was Tory now UKIP

You ladies wanted equality with men – well now you’ve got it. So you’ll forgive us if we decide we’re no longer going to roll over and take your consistent carping and criticisms and being told how lacking we are. In fact, we’re going to stand up for ourselves and we’ll criticise you if we think you’re talking a load of hogwash (step forward Beard).

Welcome to the brave new world. Deal with it.

http://twitter.com/brain_opera Seaneen

That website also called for the rape of innocent women and, in one case I know of, said she should be killed. This level of venom genuinely made her fear for her safety.

Oh, also, I’m not famous and that website had a page about me which said I should, amongst other things, kill myself, and various misogynistic abuse. Nor was it confined; people from there abused my friend on her blog and Twitter, and I had the same treatment. Whether it’s a famous academic or a non-famous blogger, their summations of them are being too ugly to rape, to be killed, various slurs about their looks and their vaginas. It is misogyny. They hate women. And it is not harmless. Good on Mary Beard. I am sick of women like myself having to be quiet and, “take it as a joke”. It’s not a joke, it is dead serious.

http://twitter.com/GeorgiaArlott Georgia Arlott

How horrible for you, Seaneen. I am very glad that you, at least, haven’t chosen to self censor. It’s really important for people of both genders to fight back against this kind of neanderthal, hurtful, threatening abuse.
TheOtherTurnipTaliban

They don’t specifically hate women – not 99.9% of them. I’ve spent a lot of time on blogs and the like over the years and the vast majority of them are just hateful and pissed off people generally. The number of people I’ve met who specifically single out women for extra abuse because they are misogynists, well I can count them on one hand. I think the truth is that if you want people to hear your opinions you’ve got to be able to take the rough with the smooth, because the only alternative is censorship – and you really, really don’t want that.
EJ – was Tory now UKIP

Any sane person would condone such extreme reactions, but there are plenty of people who are equally tired of listening to self-righteous lefties like Beard preaching their drivel and reacting with apoplexy when their ridiculous dogma is challenged. The same goes for the militant feminists: by all means say your piece, but don’t expect us to roll over and take it just because you’re a woman. When it hits the fan in this country – and believe me it’s coming – it won’t be over-sensitive lefties and feminists who will save the day.
- TheOtherTurnipTaliban
  
  I’ll get stick for saying it but the whole thing sounds like feminist intelligentsia demanding to have their cake and eat it. If you want to be treated as equals you cannot pick and choose the desirable aspects of equality.
  
  The politically and journalistically powerful men in this country are subject to every kind of mockery and abuse you can possibly think of. Take Nicholas, “like having a wardrobe fall on top of you with the key sticking out” Soames for example.
  
  The world is an uncouth and and nasty place full of horrible people. If you can’t handle it by all means complain vociferously about it and dole it back to your opponents.
  
  …But don’t demand the state or legislation does this for you, this is not how a thousand years of free speech should come to an end.
BorderlineFascist

bollocks- drama queen unreality. Grow up and smell the cofee you dumbass. We are are a bunch of monkeys running about – its not ‘dead serious’
Eddie

Seaneen.
I too have been the victim of online abuse, for a book I wrote and for the business I run – I was targeted by a hate campaign instigated by a senior academic. This was then picked up by others online – inlcuding women who as per usual took the line of attack many women use in such circumstances: mocking my life, making presumptions about it, calling me names that women are never called. Really, women get it easy. If someone had attacked my hairdo and make-up, I really wouldn’t have minded, y’know…
So, what did I do when I was a victim of cyber-bullying? Burst into tears? Have a group hug? Call a helpline?
Nope, I just picked myself up, brushed myself down, and started planning my revenage against this senior academic. Not legal stuff – that’s expensive and can rebound against you. But there are other ways… Ways that did not and would not hurt me or make me criminally responsible – but really, these days it is so easy to find out anyone’s personal details (work address, home address, email and phone contacts). One can always pass those on to others…
It seems women are less good at hacking it really. Men put up with far more, professionally and personally, every day.
Watch TV: every advert mocks and demeans men. Go on, you pity party victimhood-craver, just watch.
And grow up, stop moaning and get over it. Being stoical is a wondeful thing – yet you and others have been trained to cry in public by the Oprah-fication and feminisation of our media.
Stiff upper lip, deary. Grow up. And plan revenge against your enemies – I can say from personal experience that I have derived enormous pleasure from their suffering…

http://twitter.com/brain_opera Seaneen

Oh, and this misogynistic crap is prevalent all over the internet. When a woman posts an article, blog, video, whatever, on any topic, people who disagree inevitably inundated with comments about her appearance, her weight, her sexual attractive to some universal dick, being accused of being, “hysterical”, “typical woman”. This shit is killing discourse because women are often self-censoring for fear of this abuse. “Do not feed the troll” (maybe I should have listened to this advice for this article) is another, “just take it” simplistic piece of advice. But if you do respond, you are, “over-emotional” and it escalates. This is misogyny. Men don’t get this kind of thing when people disagree with them. They might get racist abuse, which women get too, or for the particularly unimaginative and detestable be called a, “fag”, but they don’t get the same kind of abuse women get, with people not even engaging with her opinion.

SirMontyThreepwood

You should see the way I have been described my dear – oh and the threats of death that I have received too. The point is, this is the Internet. It is not real. It is the playground of half drunk fools who react without utilising their frontal lobes. They can do that because they are anonymous. Can you recall the times that you too have for a moment thought, ‘I’d like to kill him’, and then moderated that thought and instead of expressing it, said to the object of your loathing, ‘You can be really horrible darling’? A hundred times a day I have violent and unworthy thoughts which I quickly stifle. So does everyone. On the Internet however, they come right out, probably more so at night when people have had half a bottle of wine.

If you don’t like the medium that allows you to express your own opinions, don’t use it. It is also available to others who dislike what you say.
- BorderlineFascist
  
  Absolutely right Monty, I would guess at least ninety percent of ‘death threats’, vile slurs and insults are posted by pissed up twats or hot head juveniles.
  P.S. My Mrs has a third teat and a hairy clopper- just how I like it.
TheOtherTurnipTaliban

I really think you need to broaden the scope of the comments you read, firstly they are called ‘trolls’ for a reason – they deliberately say what they think will cause most offense, and for women these are comments related to rape etc. Do you think Rod Liddle is crying himself to sleep over the fact that some commenters think he is a sexist twat with a small knob? Have you ever read that kinds of comments people leave on George Monbiot’s articles? Or what people say about George Galloway? Or the Daily Mail’s comments section when it concerns a murderer or rapist?

Keep it in perspective
- http://twitter.com/GeorgiaArlott Georgia Arlott
  
  In many ways, you’re right, there is a broader context and lots of people come in for this sort of treatment. But I think you’re wrong if your general argument is ‘lots of people suffer equivalent or worse abuse, remember that, and get over it’. Maybe some people are able to take it and not cry themselves to sleep at night, but lots of people/journalists/public figures get very upset about it indeed. I think they are entitled to be. Even if some people ARE tougher than others, surely bullying and harassment are wrong whatever the victim’s response?!
  - TheOtherTurnipTaliban
    
    Of course it’s wrong and sad that such bullying and harassment is so common, no one would dispute that. But what is anyone going to do about it? What could conceivably be done about it? Legislation?
carr30

“This is misogyny. Men don’t get this kind of thing when people disagree with them”

Yes they do, you’ve just described us as ‘universal dicks’.

Liddel is absolutely correct about Beard and she needs to accept that she brought this on by talking nonsense not by being female.
- http://twitter.com/brain_opera Seaneen
  
  No, I didn’t describe men as universal dicks; I mean the comments women get about their own fuckability being for, “universal dick” i.e men saying, “no-one would fuck you” etc.
EJ – was Tory now UKIP

Oh for Gods sake calm down dear
Eddie

Yes men do get abuse too – just as much or more than women. True, their appearance is less focused on – but then it is always women who are the worst bullies of other women, and who mock their appearance (any teacher who has seen the snakepit that is schoolgirl bullying will know how bad females are when compared to males).
Men get accused of being paedophiles and rapists online all the time, get called perverts, get women and men mocking their sexual organs and performance, hinting theyr are effeminate and weak and wet, demeaning them by putting them down to not havig success of status in their jobs etc.
This is evolutionary: men get status from what they do; women get it from their looks.
That is why the mode of attack is different.
But by far the worst development in recent years has been the habit of accusing innocent men of sexual crimes as a means of revenge, often. Women, though actually being responsible for most child abuse, never get that.

http://twitter.com/GeorgiaArlott Georgia Arlott

I really, really disagree with this. If you look at the horrible website that upset Prof. Beard so much, it only criticised women in this way. I think they even had a whole section called something like ‘Feminists are rubbish’. That’s why she called it misogynistic. The people posting on there were true low-lives.

Men suffer from this too, but I find it frankly bemusing that you would choose to excuse or even celebrate such narrow-minded nastiness! I have a bit of a feeling that you were low on ideas for this week’s article and don’t really agree with what you’ve written. Surely everybody would wish this sort of abuse would end! And just to prove that it isn’t only women ‘whining’ about this sort of thing, please see Philip Hensher’s fabulous article on the subject: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/disagree-with-me-sure-but-dont-wish-me-dead-8463835.html

BorderlineFascist

oh put a sock in it
http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman

It criticised men men every bit as much as it did women. You liar.

maurice12brady

Oh Dear Rob — What a to-do! You are liable to make a name for yourself! —This oddball gets onto the only current affairs ‘prog’ (as dear departed Jimmy was wont to refer to the BBC scheduling process) with any hint of controversy — & doesn’t expect to be clobbered for her airy-fairy dismissal of concerned locals — Now there’s naivete for you! The criminal aspect of all this is — PC clowns like this woman can influence aspects of our daily lives — Without the slightest notion of other peoples reality.

Colonel Mustard

Well said.

SirMontyThreepwood

I think Liddle here has hit the nail on the head. I have very much enjoyed Professor Beard’s TV programmes on Ancient Rome, and I must confess to have marveled at her quaint appearance. Nonetheless, I had to acknowledge her command of her subject. However, on watching the Questiontime programme, I was aghast at her smug, and willful blindness as she made the case by using a local council report (we all know that local councils are entirely impartial on matters like multiculturalism) that an influx of east European immigrants to Lincolnshire had brought nothing but delight. How utterly stupid.

As to the reaction on Twitter and elsewhere; well, it was not pleasant, or polite, but neither would it have been if a man had made that case. If it had been made by Mr Pickles, his physique would have been abused, but it was made by Professor Beard, so her quaint appearance became the stick to beat her with. LIddle is also right about the mention of her genitalia. This is indeed horrible, but if she and the harridan Jenny Murray (by whom she was interviewed in a sisterly manner) earlier this week) think that the genitalia of men are not called into question by angry women, they are very much mistaken. I have lost count of the number of times I have been abused by aggressive young women who make the ‘wanker’ sign out of their car windows at me when some aspect of my driving or cycling has annoyed them. It is vulgar and unpleasant, but this kind of vulgarity is not only directed at women.

Many of the ladies venting here about Liddle’s remarks, ladies like Ophelia Benson just below this box, are entirely wrong. Liddle isn’t claiming that it is acceptable to call the wild haired professor a c** t, although she might appreciate its Latin derivation (cunnus). He said very clearly that people are pretty horrible, but that when you make a fool of yourself and especially when you anger people, they will use the Internet to abuse you roundly. Beard made a fool of herself and she angered millions. What else was going to happen. When that more malign character from the BNP made an idiot of himself on the same programme, he was heaped with ordure of the same kind.

Noa

Mary Beard has chosen to become part of the entertainment industry. As Rod says, not because she is intelligent or a Professor, but because she looks like the bag lady just down the road.

She can either take the downside of being a talking head, especially the deserved abuse she gets when she talks rubbish, with humour and a shrug of her shoulders. Or she can retire back to her cosseted, academic world and continue to dominate undergraduates.

Best of all, she could visit Anne Soubry’s tailor, a hairstylist and a dentist so that, when she makes a comment, whether or not we agree with it, we may reciprocate the respect she is prepared to give to her audience.
- Eddie
  
  I tend to agree. It may well be cruel, be you can’t go on TV in a quest to be a celebrity (which is what academics do just as much as the deluded Deans, Kellys, Carlys and Jordans of The X-factor) and expect no criticism. It comes with the territory – and these days the sniping is online, not just in the pub. Tough. If you can’t stand the heat…
  Plenty of men get targeted too – usually accused of being perverts and paedos by feminists too.
  I am afraid I have little sympathy for these academics who seem outraged that they get treated the same as everyone else. Best go back to the coddling and cosseting of that quasi-mental-home world of Oxbridge, deary.
  - Noa
    
    Quite right Eddie. If she can’t take being a joke she shouldn’t have allowed herself to become one.
  - Robofish
    
    “you can’t go on TV in a quest to be a celebrity and expect no criticism”
    
    Now, hang on a minute. This comment, and Rod Liddle’s column above, appear to draw no distinction between legitimate criticism and simple abuse and insults. I’m all for public figures being criticised, but there’s a difference between criticising someone’s arguments and just calling them an ugly c**t.
    
    Yes, these days, such abuse is inevitable – no public figure can really escape it. But that doesn’t mean we should accept it as OK and just part of ‘the price of fame’. A society that accepts nasty insults as normal is one we should all be ashamed of.
    
    (Mind you, if you think the world of academia is one of ‘coddling and cosseting’, you clearly don’t know it. Academics can be just as rude to one another as any Internet troll can be.)
    - Noa
      
      How would you distinguish between justifiable and unjustifiable criticism? Who would decide? You? The offended party?
      A free society must be based on the right to give offence.
      The protection under English law, has until now been Defamation. What the rather prissy definition of offence that you advocate leads to is state control and censorship.
      
      In short, you are proposing Leveson.
    - Robofish
      
      No I’m not. Where did I say such comments should be illegal? I don’t think they should be. I agree that criminalising offensive comments would be deeply stupid and a waste of time.
      
      What I am saying is that we shouldn’t just shrug our shoulders and accept them either. Online abuse shouldn’t be illegal, but it’s not a good thing and we should be able to do without it. It was quite right of Mary Beard to call attention to these recent comments – that’s the right response to online trolls, exposing them to public criticism, not making them illegal.
    - Noa
      
      “..we shouldn’t just shrug our shoulders and accept them either.”
      
      Agreed. They should be treated with the contempt they deserve and ignored.
    - Craig_Ranapia
      
      “How would you distinguish between justifiable and unjustifiable criticism? Who would decide? You?”
      
      The Spectator has a chap called The Editor, who applies standards slightly more elevated than the walls of the grottier public lavatories. It’s worked reasonably well for 185 years. .
    - Eddie
      
      No – you hang on a minute.
      Look at the abuse flung towards people in the public eye – politicians and public figures, but also anyone who’s on telly really. And yes, that is abuse. Many TV presenters have been called an ‘ugly c’ and worse; some men are accused of being preverts and even paedos for example. Anyone who dares challenge pc diversity-worship orthodoxy gets it worst – and probably gets blacklisted from TV too.
      It is NOT worse for women than men either. Beard is just whingeing and trying to make this all about sexism and supposed misogyny – when in fact it’s all about her, her ‘unique’ witchy look, and her ridiculous, selfish, out of touch views about immigration (spoken like a true hypocrite).
      Beard is so mollycoddled by the deference shown to her at Cambridge that she is amazed when she gets the same treatment as others. I do ‘clearly’ know the academic world as I used to work in it – I know academics can be sad biitchy spiteful saddos too. I was referring to the deference shown to academics at Cambridge by undergraduates – Mary Beard is at the top of a very defined class system, a noble amongst serfs.
      You and other pc academics seem outraged that Mary Beard has been attacked like this, but didn’t say anything when non-acdemics were trolled and cyber-bullied – from Jade Goody to Richard Bacon and more.
      The real question is: why is such a person on QuestionTime in the first place (ah yes, she’s a woman and looks funny – that’s why). Then we can ask why she goes on other TV shows and how much she gets paid: senior academics at Cmabridge really don’t need the cash, so vanity, vanity, all is vanity – that’s the reason for this news story and Beard’s meeja mooching too.
    - Robofish
      
      “You and other pc academics seem outraged that Mary Beard has been attacked like this, but didn’t say anything when non-acdemics were trolled and cyber-bullied – from Jade Goody to Richard Bacon and more”
      Please don’t presume to speak for me. I can’t speak for anyone else, but for what it’s worth I thought the way Jade Goody was treated by the press and public was awful, and considerably worse than anything Mary Beard has faced. I’m not so sure what you’re referring to with Richard Bacon, but I do remember him being forced off Blue Peter and vilified after admitting to taking drugs, which also seemed pretty harsh at the time.
      
      So yes, I do think this kind of abuse is wrong no matter who’s being subjected to it. It’s unfortunate that the media only get interested when someone like Beard is being victimised; but we should be glad that they have, because it’s led to the site which was attacking Beard getting shut down, which also makes the world a better place for all the less prominent people who are attacked by such sites.
      
      As for: “Anyone who dares challenge pc diversity-worship orthodoxy gets it worst – and probably gets blacklisted from TV too.”
      As far as I’m aware, David Starkey still appears on the BBC, doesn’t he? While it undoubtedly has a liberal bias overall, it’s hardly the case that rightwingers are ‘blacklisted’.
      
      I’d also love to know what BBC show featured ‘one white man, two black men, three women, and a dwarf’. Are there really that many BBC shows starring dwarfs? Obviously I haven’t been watching the same ones as you…
    - Eddie
      
      I think David Starkey was banned for daring to say what many were thinking about inner city black criminals and their white ‘wigga’ emulators.
      My latter comment was about the Comic reflief baking shows on at the moment. Whenevre the BBC or any media organisation wants presenters or participants, it diecriminates against white men, keeping them down, and raising women, ethnic minorities and the disabled up. Is that right? I don’t think so – I think merit should be all. Mastermind shows when merit is all 90% of contestants are white men, doesn’t it.
      (BTW I meant John Leslie not Richard Bacon). Plenty of men have been attacked as much as Mary Beard but in different ways – I think all those innocent men accused of being paedophiles then shown to be innocent put up with much worse than her (and trust a pc queen to claim it;’s all about misogyny, when in fact it’s all about a smug pious selfish academic priestess from the church of political correctness facing, on a TV show she wouldn’t be on if she were a white man probably, the reality of the public opinion of ordinary people out there – who she and her pc nobility see as dirty peasants really).
      Mary Beard is part of the establishment elite – the so-called liberals who in the 60s were the rebels but, like Napolean succeeding Snowball, are now in charge. Her version of history is very much bottom-up, all about the people below, focued on women and ethnics in a relativist soup: no wonder kids no next to nothing about history. Beard is a cheerleader for the little people toiling in the fields and all women and ethnic minorities.
      History is just prejudice masquerading as fact anyway: that’s why I never read history books, and keep my cynical hat on whenever I watch any documentary. One needs to read several books by opinionated authors to even get close to the truth. The truth as portrayed by the BBC now is focused way too heavily on women and ethnic minorities and is way too relativisitic and bottom-up.
      I don’t mind Beard actually – her series on Pompeii was fun, if achingly politically correct. But really, she does owe her TV job to her gender and appearance – as do so many others. And no, she has not been unfairly singled out – look at the abuse some men get! Julian Assange, for one. Neil Kinnock. Any fat, bald, ginger man. Any man who dares to admit any weakness gets a barrow-load tipped over him from women hypocrites who call his a wimp (then they’re surprised when some men hit women – after basically stating that men who don’t are wimps!)
    - http://twitter.com/NewFallEve Samantha Ashman
      
      Nice. They tend to say it in less simplistic and more verbose ways though. Rather than, ‘you c**t’, it’s ‘although Dr. Smith’s theory seems valid from a superficial perspective, anyone who has properly studied the issue… (will know that his theories are thought up by a combination of chimps and alphabetti spaghetti) etc.’
      
      One, of course, has the right to GIVE offence. Whether one exercises that right, and how one exercises it, is a matter for personal taste.
MikeF

Hardly anyone would abuse Diane Abbott on the grounds of her colour because most people aren’t prejudiced in that way and any that did would be hunted down in all likelihood by Interpol – though I suppose they might get away with saying something about her eyeballs. As for young women and the and gesture it occurs to me that the right response would simply be to thank them for the offer but express doubts as to their competence.

TheOtherTurnipTaliban

“Smug, patrician and fabulously ill-informed” This sums up our ruling elite perfectly. It has to be said though, that some of the most egregious offenders are usually cosmopolitan Labour/Lib Dem MPs and authors. Perhaps because they tend not to get both barrels from newspapers and audiences in the same way men do, and so feel more at liberty to patronise and talk down to people – knowing as they do that no one is likely to go completely ballistic at them.

Perhaps that sounds a little like a generalisation but go to the various blogs discussing QT or other political BBC programs after the fact and there are usually calls for tarring and feathering or for them to be hung drawn and quartered. Women like Beard here are just not used to dealing with such brutal criticism, that’s all.

fitz fitzgerald

… abuse and so called criticism on line are there to be ignored – not read and emoted about

welshdai

Rod is spot on ,she is on these shows not because she is clever but because she looks like a nutter?

fitz fitzgerald

She is pretty edgy on Romulus & Remus …

http://twitter.com/almolx Alan Molineaux

Rod you have the ability to sound intelligent whilst saying the most stupid things.

Whenever I see vile, misogynist, and aggressive people they are always followed by eloquent and seemingly reasonable commentators who reinforce their objectionable opinions. (Often by calling women “whiners” or “shrill” etc)

The overtly vile are, in one sense, easier to dismiss; people like you are not because you have what looks like a legitimate voice on a legitimate platform.

Some of us see through your disguise Rod. You are a misogynist.

I am about to run a competition on my website called ‘The Most Stupid Rod Liddle of the Year’

It’s only been two and a half minutes and, so far, you are a shoo-in.

TheOtherTurnipTaliban

I really doubt Rod literally despises women.

Dog Piddle

Ha ha ha – I love how ironic this piece is! Having worked on commissioning panels myself – we’ve twice invited Rod Liddle onto programs – specifically to inject an element of ‘weird drunk freakish c*nt’ into proceedings. Unfortunately the second time he was so drunk he vomited on himself and we had to roll him into a taxi and send him back home before it started (and this was for a mid-morning show). He cried quite a lot. It was – pretty f*cking embarrassing to be honest. After that no more invites (so stop calling us please!)

Although it is a slight pity as Rod is so monumentally vain he’s one of very few hacks who will turn up without us needing to pay him (in case anyone else needs him to sub in – remember he’ll do it for free) Even De Botton doesn’t do that.

vieuxceps2

In my opinion Professor Beard should not be criticised for her appearance or her gender but for her views on immigration,the point of the original question.If you recall her programme on the Romans you will have noticed that scarcely any Romans appeared in it , the main attention being given to those who had immigrated into Rome and, in the Professor’s view,were patently the ones who had made Rome great.I commented on this at the time.I thought then,and think now ,that a programme on history should not be used as a propagand vehicle for present-day political views.
It seems that the Professor is now intent on bringing her agenda up-to-date. I suggest her opinions are bizarre enough without needing to remark on her looks.

Vulture

It’s not Beard’s hideous appearance that is the problem. It’s her sheer ugliness of soul.

It takes enormous arrogance – and huge vanity – to appear on TV with that hair and those teeth and not expect people to comment. Surely she can afford to visit a hairdresser and a decent dentist?

Nor are her vacuous hand-me-down Leftist views especially surprising.

What is unacceptable, and should have barred her from society for ever more is her view that the 3,000 innocents slaughtered on 9/11 ‘had it coming’.

She is, in short, an uglier left-wing female version of David Irving.

pedestrianblogger

I agree entirely. Professor Beard is invited onto programmes like Question Time precisely because of her appearance and her “controversial” (i.e. standard-issue leftist) views and can hardly object when these are commented on. She has had her feelings hurt (poor woman) and I must admit that much of what has, reportedly, been said sounds very unpleasant indeed. However, 3,000 people were not insulted by foul-mouthed nutters on blogs but were burnt alive or eviscerated by psychopathic religious maniacs. I know which form of hostility I would prefer to be on the end of.
Robofish

‘her view that the 3,000 innocents slaughtered on 9/11 ‘had it coming’.’

Actually, she didn’t say that. What she said was ‘the United States had it coming. That is what many people openly or privately think.’ – which is absolutely true, many people *did* think that, particularly on the left. She was drawing attention to such views, but wasn’t saying it was her view herself.

As for her appearance – I don’t think she found the comments about it surprising or unexpected as much as unpleasant, which seems fair enough.
- Noa
  
  You equivocate, and so does she. Her meanings very clear and needn’t be weasel worded by the likes of you.
  
  “…Beard’s most controversial comments to date followed the 9/11 attacks when she wrote in the London Review of Books:
  “However tactfully you dress it up, the United States had it coming.
  That is, of course, what many people openly or privately think.” Her
  argument was far from a vicious gloat, she has claimed, and she merely
  wanted to point out that bullies “even if their heart is in the right
  place, will in the end pay the price…”
  
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/apr/29/observer-profile-mary-beard

Anna Marie

I wonder if Mr Liddle bothered to read the Boston Report on Immigration in Lincolnshire which Professor Beard cited. I also wonder if Mr Liddle has ever been to Lincolnshire. So, Mr Liddle, here is the report:

http://www.boston.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=4629

How about going to Lincolnshire yourself, reading the report, having a think, and writing a considered piece of journalism instead of making fun of Professor Beard’s appearance?

EJ – was Tory now UKIP

How about YOU listen to the people of Boston – who, like the majority of people in the UK – are sick to death of the cultural displacement that is destroying our country?
- Anna Marie
  
  EJ, Have you talked to anybody in Boston? Have you read the report? And, which majority…do you have statistics? That is the point. Rather than relying on emotive responses, you need to read, analyse and consider. That is the crux of rational debate which does not rely on ad hominem attacks.
  - SpAd
    
    According to the report’s recommendations, the situation in Lincolnshire will require remedial action from all the following:
    
    (i) the police (ii) the local Council (iii) local employers (iv) local schools (v) local media (vi) community groups (vii) the Border Agency (viii) local businesses (ix) the Member of Parliament for the area.
    
    The report specifically describes the area as facing a series of “challenges” that will require “hard work and patience”.
    
    Sorry, but that doesn’t sound like a fluffy diverse utopia to me. And anyone who has dealt with the public sector will know that when they say something “…faces challenges” it’s usually shorthand for “…is on the brink of disaster”.
    
    Here’s an idea Anna Marie – why not have a skim through the report yourself?
    - Anna Marie
      
      I did read it, quite thoroughly, and I am glad you read it yourself and followed the link I provided. I never said anything about utopias; everything in life is subject to a cost benefit analysis.
      
      If you read my post, I said that the article that Mr Liddle wrote was ad hominem and did not concentrate on the issues, and that he needed to write a considered piece of journalism. The fact is that the immigrants are here, like it or not. They are here legally and are working and paying taxes. And, we do have to meet these challenges with hard work and patience rather than focusing on attacking someone’s appearance like Mr Liddell did.
      
      But, we also get benefits from immigrants being here too. If you go to Boston (and have you?), you see shops on the high street…immigrant grocery stores, restaurants, where there were boarded up storefronts before. They pick the vegetables in the fens… there have been Eastern Europeans doing that in that area since time immemorial…in the 1980s when the Communist bloc fell, they came here to do that in large numbers.
      
      You might want to look at his article too. It is about the history of gangmasters in the UK. Food for thought anyhow.
      http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-125.html
      
      Why I am interested in this issue? My husband grew up in Lincolnshire, our family and friends are there, we are moving there to care for my mum-in-law, and I actually do care about the area. It bothers me little if people disagree about immigration, but the attacks on Mary Beard were just vile.
    - EJ – was Tory now UKIP
      
      Yes the immigrants are here – in massive and ever-increasing numbers and without the British people ever having been asked. We don’t like it, it’s turning our country into a foreign land, it’s shoring up terrible trouble for the future and destroying the prospects of the children of indigenous families who have been here for generations. When the balance tips, you think we’re all going to be holding hands singing Kumbaya?
      
      The over-crowding, the burden on public services and the crime – which far outstrip the “benefits” you imagine – will get worse and worse. We’re about to allow in god knows how many hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians and Romanians. God help places like Boston. Again, we were never asked.
      
      The British people will get angrier and angrier – just like the incredibly brave lady who stood up to Beard on Question Time. It was Beard’s arrogance and contempt which elicited the reaction you call “vile”.
    - BorderlineFascist
      
      Its actually nonsense to assume hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians and Romanians will arrive next year. If I had to place a bet I reckon it will be twenty or thirty thousand. I don’t want to sound like a filthy rich slum landlord or anything but I have been renting rooms to Romanians in Lincolnshire for quite some time. Anybody from those two countries who felt like coming here are already here on student visa. Most are extremely hardworking pleasant people who are trying to better themselves. If you want to have a gripe about the situation in Boston please talk to the wankers in Blair’s government, not the individuals who come here and bust their nuts for seven pounds an hour.
    - EJ – was Tory now UKIP
      
      No its not nonsense – the mass influx will be the final nail in this country’s coffin – despite the smug dismissive paltitudes spouted by people like yourself. It’s happened before and it will happen again. I don’t give a t*ss if you think these people are “nice”. They are here in massive numbers., they are changing the very make-up of this country and they keep on coming. The indigenous people are utterly fed up, intimidated, threatened, bullied and displaced and this will end in civil strife.
    - BorderlineFascist
      
      cool down tiger
    - retundario
      
      This article wasn’t about her appearance – you haven’t read the article or the report you’ve linked to you clown

Eddie

Question Time will always go trawling for lots of women and ethnic guests these days – which is why utter non-entities (like the gormless journalist bint who was on last night) will be on it.
Jeez – imagine if Churchill’s wartime cabinet had been cobbled together under the shadow of the diversity-quota jackboot! No nasties like the hideously white men Atlee, Wilson, Eden and the rest.
Oh no – we’d have had some feminist role model aristocrats in there (whose beliefs were usually that working class people should be boiled down into glue if they ever complained), plus perhaps that bloke Sabu from those Kipling films, and maybe the bloke who played Fu Man Chu? No doubt, Paul Robeson would have been made Welsh Secretary too (nice singing, yeah, but maybe a bit weak on economic policy and planning),, whereas evil Al Jonson would have been put in the Tower, his minstrel mammy head eventually stuck high on a pike by London bridge.
Perhaps they might have found and dug up Mary Seacole’s corpse and put it in a mausoleum (built by slave labour – all those branded as racists by the gestapo of political correctness), where parties of children would visit and pay their respects to the high priestess of the church of diversity.

Nele Schindler

Somebody further below wrote: “Her point was that no-one should have to suffer those kind of anonymous, online comments.”

Why not? Why should no-one have to? And more importantly – why should she HAVE to? Can’t she just get herself off stupid Twitter or not frequent the internet at all? It’s like going to a football match and complaining about the noise.

And I hate the word ‘trolling’ as used a few times below. Please use the more accurate ‘uttering an opinion I disagree with’. F***ing poor English.

mikewaller

I think people like Rod are tolerant of such disgusting behaviour for the self-serving reason that they are up to their necks in the mass-media dimension of the same business. If in ordinary conversation I made an ad hominem (sorry for the sexism!) attack on somebody with whom I disagreed, I would be considered both rude and incapable of carrying my argument by logic alone. So why should we look any less critically of people doing the same thing via social media? If the aristocrats of media knockabout such as Rod adopted basic good manners, it might just be that some of the peasants would follow suit.

BorderlineFascist

kack

LaBoheme

I’m loving how so many men are queuing up to tell women what is and is not misogyny. Like they’d know?

taytelbaum

Do you really have that a minuscule penis? Hmm…

Robert Taggart

Our only suggestion concerning your person Roddy – DIE (or is it DYE ?) – your hair !

BorderlineFascist

don’t be daft

Peter Jackson

Did anybody see that ridiculous programme she did on Pompeii? It was so bad I thought it was a Frankie Howerd spoof. I suspect Beard has seen how much Starkie rakes in and wants a piece of the action. The BBC want a Lefty counterbalance to Starkie. Difference is Starkie’s learning and eccentricities are genuine

http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman

Starkie is a legend. I love people who tell the truth. MAybe Beardie should reflect on why people really hate her. Hint: Starkie tells the truth.
BorderlineFascist

nah

real__world

By far the biggest complaint at this women was her total lack of understanding of social issues or even bothering to find out what its like in a town like Boston. She was that lazy she relied on some half baked report she and her ilk love to endorse just because it fits into their wet liberal views whilst they live a cloistered life away from all the real problems that affect most of us.

The country is sick to death with academics like her with no grasp of reality and it was a golden opportunity to put her down when a lady from Boston, Lincs actually disagreed with her and had the first hand experience which academics lack. The fact she appeared on a prestige program like QT looking like a reject hippie from the 60′s just added fuel to the flames she ignited. If other experts can turn up smartly dressed didn’t it occur to her to do likewise.

David Starkey can turn up in a suit and talk real facts and hold his own against 4 to 1 rants from the likes of Caroline Flint and others deniers then so should Professor Beard, but sadly that’s not a leftie trait.

Simeon Howell

It reminds me a bit of an argument I had once a few years back with a medical consultant. The argument was about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I was more on the Israeli side. The consultant was more on the Palestinian side. I wanted to just politely agree to disagree, would he let me? Hell no!! I was staying at a friends house at the time and this guy lived there also, as the hospital in which he worked was near by and they both rented the place…(yes I thought with the money he was earning he could have just bought a place too, but that’s an aside.) Regardless he carried on arguing, whilst getting more and more obstinate, desperately trying to convince me that I was wrong, using the usual tactics where this debate is concerned. He was hopelessly ill informed/misinformed. Nevertheless I got the distinct feeling as he held me hostage and would not allow me to retire, that he genuinely thought he knew better than me because he was a medical consultant. Therefore qualifying him above all others in all other areas.

BorderlineFascist

Were you drinking whisky at the time?- if so, thats quite a normal healthy conversation I would have thought. The Jews are a tricky one for the metro lefties though, on the one hand they are victims of one of the worlds worst crimes but on the other they are evil oppressors of innocent Islamic poor people. When your local bien pensant pesters you just bring up the Israelis, they’ll be all at sea before you know it!
- Simeon Howell
  
  It wasn’t healthy because i could hardly get a word in
  - Eddie
    
    Funnily enough, I had a conversation with a medical student over 20 years ago too – from a well-off British Indian family (public schools etc). His view was that India should bomb Pakistan quick before they got nuclear weapons too!
    
    Later, I spoke to a Muslim medical student who thought the same should be done to Israel.
    What is it with medics eh? Perhaps because so many are ethnic and religious, they are way more bigoted than the general population?
Eddie

Not unusual. It’s the same with academics, who believe their opinion is superior to anyone else’s (or at least anyone who hasn’t got a PhD is crop rotation of the 14th century, or ‘feminisms and equalities: persceptives on media paradigms’.
I usually tell such persons to fug off.

brillo

This is vile stuff you’ve written here, Rod.

BorderlineFascist

more kack

http://biasedbbc.proboards.com/index.cgi Teddy Bear

Beard shares the same mindset as the BBC. The belief that their theory sounds so good, that despite all evidence to show it doesn’t work, they persist pushing their agenda.

In the case of the BBC they simply patronisingly dismiss complaints directed at them for pursuing an agenda, instead of adhering to their charter. They are so oblivious of the real ignorance of their way of seeing the world, but they use their power to shove it aside, and make themselves the only voice heard. They will never see the truth, even when there is nobody left to agree with them, because of the facts on the ground.

Beard doesn’t have that power, so she got the reaction that many of us would like to inflict on the BBC. They do so much to destroy what was a decent society in their pursuit of an ill thought out agenda.

BorderlineFascist

Its some terrible self destructive groupthink thing that struck sometime in the early seventies. Somehow the UK has to feed the worlds poor, treat the worlds sick and disregard the well-being of our own citizens in favour of the poor oppressed victims of the evil British empire. Of course the Mary Beards of this world who think of themselves as ‘socialist’ and representing the everyday bloke on the street are anything but.
- http://biasedbbc.proboards.com/index.cgi Teddy Bear
  
  In India many years ago, I found out that there are families who purposefully deform their children so they can earn more money as beggars. Lefties cannot understand that just giving without wisdom can create more misery and malcontent than if they would just leave things alone. they are so eager to feel good, they don’t look at the effect that their thinking dictates they should do, so long as they fulfil their rudimentary beliefs.
  
  Since they cannot tolerate criticism, this alone makes them completely hypocritical for who they profess and believe themselves to be.
  - BorderlineFascist
    
    Quite so. We’re probably both to blame though. I don’t get involved in local politics or in fact any political party. I just sit about and watch as gormless idiots with absolutely no experience running a chip shop take over running the country. I rememember Tony Blair in the seventies gurning his big power hungry grin on Nationwide and disliking his shifty manner. To be honest I don’t really give a shit and maybe thats the problem.
    
    It could be something to do with TV and information overload I think. In days gone by there was an aura and disconnect between those at the top and the rest. Now everybody wants everything and it doesn’t quite work.

Badly Done Emma

Rod makes me laugh and think – always good.

David Ossitt

This unfortunate woman, who is only just 58 years of age and yet looks much older, has led a sheltered life she is the only woman Professor of Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge.

Newnham College is a college for women students only (though I believe some of the staff are men) and this drab woman has been there for 29 years, half of her life, is it any wonder that would appear to have little understanding of matters other than her college and the subject that she teaches.

That said she should have enough common sense not to talk twaddle.

BorderlineFascist

I quite enjoyed her TV series though- I know it had a bit of a lefty perspective but thats just the way it is. We make the money by making stuff and selling it, we give 50 percent to the government and they spend it on teachers and clever people who know all about clever things. They inform us about how the nasty money needs to be spent on poor people and how the nasty Romans were nasty to nice people. But at the end of the day we’re all much much nicer for being educated by the recipients of the nasty money that we have created. I think thats right isn’t it?

Augustine

Hoi polloi. Already contains the definite article; so why should some cockwomble put “the” in front of it.

http://twitter.com/wmarybeard mary beard

ok just two points: 1) i commend the Boston local council report (not county council) to ant readers. It includes facts and figures, eye witness testimony and urges myth busting. 2) Rod Liddle himself recognises the nastiness of the site. but readers, let me urge you to reflect whether this is whining about appearances. Sod appearances. Suggestions of ramming things up my vagina are not about appearances. Nuff said.

http://biasedbbc.proboards.com/index.cgi Teddy Bear

Ms Beard – I doubt anybody would be making comments on your appearance, or even care, if your mindset really took in THE EFFECT of your desired way of thinking, contemplated the real consequences, then adjusted your thoughts as necessary. Instead, you prefer to think that everybody who disagrees with your beliefs are either misogynists, or in the case of Question Time – xenophobic.

You might do well to open your mind to what is being expressed – and WHY, and take that on-board. Nobody cares what wisdom looks like if that is what is being expressed.
- http://twitter.com/wmarybeard mary beard
  
  it is hard to imagine what people who reflect on rogering 58 year old women, and shoving things up their c**** are (this is from the website, not me). I am thick skinned, but…
  - http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman
    
    Hey Beardie,
    
    If you were thick-skinned, you wouldn’t be googling yourself every five minutes to see who was taking the piss out of you. Everyone’s laughing at you, Beardie. But hey, you’re ‘thick-skinned’, so this won’t bother you one iota.
  - http://biasedbbc.proboards.com/index.cgi Teddy Bear
    
    Can you imagine that these people are simply angry, and are not well enough educated to express themselves any better? They simply want to hurt you the way they feel that you, and those of your mindset, are hurting them.
    
    If you don’t listen – expect rage and shouting!
  - BorderlineFascist
    
    Don’t be daft Mary- its pissed up kids. Don’t try and deflect the real anger out there. You grey haired old stoners and deadheads from the post war boom all sit about reflecting on some utopian paradise whilst the Chinese are waiting in the wings to all fuck us up the arse. Its very unfortunate but we don’t run the world like your mummy and daddy did. We have to be real I’m afraid. There’s nasty people out there.
    Its not all negative though, we live in a superb country full of violent creative maniacs.
  - Eddie
    
    I get the distict feeling Mary Beard that you are really enjoying all the victimhood and attention – and sympathy from the usual feminists and meeja eejits.
    Bet the BBC give you another series now eh? Probably on how poor wickle women are so hard done by and how those nasty wasty men are so awful. Or how women invented everything (no need to bother with the facts – I see you don’t when it comes to immigration).
    Yawn…
BorderlineFascist

Just ignore the ignorant nasty stuff. But to be honest you are out of kilter with a seething unrepresented mass of working people who are pig sick of pseudo intellectual idiots making pronouncements about immigration. You do not know what you are talking about, you exist in a rarefied world of seminars, conferences and taxpayer funded bullshit. You don’t even realise it because you have never had to work. Read ‘Small World’- thats you that is
- BorderlineFascist
  
  the one by David Lodge
EJ – was Tory now UKIP

Beard – your smug arrogance and total contempt for the hard-working indigenous Brits whose lives are being absolutely ruined by mass immigration – while you sit in your ivory tower spouting twisted statistics and preaching leftist dogma – that’s the reason why you have elicited such an extreme reaction. Not the fact that you look like the straight man’s worst nightmare.
Eddie

Men come in for just as much abuse, in different ways, (usually calling them wimps and weak seems to be the wimmin’s attack mode and attempt to humiliate, often referring to the tininess of their genitals), but don’t moan and whinge about it – scream their victimhood from the rooftops – then repeat ad infinitum how thick-skinned they are, when their response shows the opposite.
I am no fan of online abuse, and have been a ‘victim’ myself too of being targeting for someone I wrote. However, I just got on with it, and didn’t make it an issue. Blubbing ‘it’s not fair’ is something everyone should stop doing aged 11.
Ultimately, if you can’t stand the heat…
If you want to bask in the sickly yellow light of celebrity, don’t be surprised if you become the focus for attacks. Nick Griffin got way worse than you, as do people like Peter Hitchen – and even Rod Liddle himself. Anyone who dares challenge the hegemony ofthe diversity-and-immigration-worshipping BBC gets accused of being a modern nazi.
(And as an end-note, we should remember that many women presenters are on TV, not because of their qualifications or expertise, but because the feminist, politically correct, doversity-worshipping BBC has trawled around to find women – and ethnic – presenters, and thus discriminate against those nasty evil white men. Having said that. Mary Beard is at least qualified – unlike some of the other massively irritating younger female presenters who leapfrog over better men to get the autocutie presenting roles…)
- Eddie
  
  PS Look at the massive abuse thrown at anyone who dares to challenge the political correctness of academe. Larry Summers was hounded and lynched for stating the obvious: boys are innately different from girls and their behaviour shows that. Or what about the bullying of anyone who dares to criticise the dumbed down uni sector, or its aching political correctness – or if any academic dares even to ask difficult questions: eg is there are link between average IQ/intelligence and ‘race’ (in which world population your origins lie).
  Hilarious really whenever academics with pots of money and tenure and who are well used to bullying others whinge about people criticisng them and praise the mass immigration which makes poorer people’s lives such a struggle.
  I think Mary Beard should never have been on QT in the first place, and was only there because the BBC always asks women and ethnics on to make the panel ‘diverse’. Stick to history, Ms Beard. Leave the politics to the big boys.
  - http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman
    
    Some woman Lib Dem peer in the House of Lords was moaning about the proposed changes to A-levels (end of year exams) because they are discriminatory towards girls, i.e. girls find end of year exams harder. Logically, if that were true, that means that the current system of lots of coursework discriminates against boys. She didn’t seem concerned about that. Feminism isn’t about equality, it’s about favouring women over men, and if need be they will bring in ‘positive’ discrimination to counter the discrimination they have invented. They are morons.
    - Eddie
      
      Oh don’t get me started!
      
      I can say, as a former and sometime teacher/tutor/lecturer, that this is indeed the case – the present educatiin system is feminised in such a way as to make it institutionally misandirst and discriminatory against boys. That, as you say, is seen as ‘a good thing’ – as any discrimination, indirect or direct, against men is apparently justifiable punishment for the allegewrong-doing of all men in history, and a nifty way of cooking da books, rigging the system, and enabling women to leapfrog over better men to high levels of careers.
      
      The curriculum has been rigged over the last 30 or more years to make it more feminised: to make it all about coursework, talking, non-fact-based, non-exam-based, feelings-based, empathy-based – ie designed to appeal to innate female abilities.
      
      When IQs are tested,9
      
      Fact is, boys dominate all subjects – even things like languages where most students are female.
      
      Males totally dominate maths and science – and the reason for poor teaching now is that male teachers represent less than 30% of a very feminised profession now, (it used to be 50%+). Most maths and science graduates are male.
      
      95% of those with the top 10% of IQs are male; there are more than twice as many men as women who have an IQ which is above average.
      
      Females tend to be middling – a huge lump of mediocrity in the middle of the scale. Today’s education system celebrates mediocrity, and allows all those below-average girls tro get GCSEs and degrees. That is why people always say ‘girls are doing better than boys at school’
      
      Gove is right – we need a rigorous exam-based system.
    - http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman
      
      I think I’ve fallen in love with you, Eddie. Tell me you look like Carol Vorderman and you will receive a love letter. But seriously, you are 100% correct. I’m intrigued by Gove’s proposed changes to A-levels. Just maybe this will be the start of something great.
- http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman
  
  Bravo, Eddie. The truth of the matter is that British society is anti white-male, if it is anti-anything. The difference between us and women is that we only bring it up when women WHINE about the nonsensical claims of ‘sexism’ towards women. We watch all the anti-male, pro-female propaganda, talk of non-existent ‘glass-ceilings’, etc., but just get on with our lives. Women claim they are equal but WHINE when they are called out on their lies and appalling behaviour. Listen to them WHINE.
  - Eddie
    
    There is no glass ceiling, of course. Correlation is not causation, and the fact that 95% of surgeons are male, for example, and the same for airline pilots, scientists, inventors etc, reflects ability (innate and learned), and is not the result of sexism: that is the great feminist lie.
    
    There is no unfair gender pay gap either. For the same level of the same job, men and women earn the same. The fact is, however, that for innate and ambiition reasons, men work harder to get more status and get toi the top; women tend to like safe middling jobs – men take risks. Thus if one looks at the mean average, of course there is a gender pay gap – but it is in no way unfair. It reflects the reality of differing ambitions and innate aptitudes and abilities between men and women.
    
    There is of course also a welfare and pension and healthcare gap: Almost three quarters of healthcer spending in the UK goes on women, and most of the benefit and welfare budget goes to them too. YOu don’t hear much about that gap eh? Wonder why…
Noa

You may commend the Report, but in fact it is a poor, tendentious and self serving document.

Its primary purpose is to cover over the massive social and infrastructure problems caused by mass immigration and seek to obtain non existent government funding to address them.

The most remarkable and fallacious part of the report is the benign Marxist viewpoint of another Professor on the tremendous benefits of sudden, permanent mass immigration:-

“..Professor Craig was the world’s first Professor in Social Justice when
he was appointed at the University of Hull in 2000. He was also founding Fellow
at the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation (patron,
Archbishop Desmond Tutu) and led the team working on issues of modern slavery…”

Needless to say he provides a perspective which, like your own, flies totally in the face of the reality experienced by the people of Boston. I quote one excert, the writer totally unaware of the ironies, prejudices and evident contradictions in his viewpoint:-

“People say “they’re taking our houses”. Again this is untrue in general although there may be some local effects. First, there’s the decline in social housing opportunities – that’s the responsibility of Government from 1979 onwards because they flogged off the best so there’s now less than half social lettings of what there was then. Secondly, less than 1% of social lettings nationwide have gone to migrant workers. Thirdly, in the private market there’s creeping deregulation, which has meant rents have gone up and up. Amongst the migrant
worker population, half a dozen people might share a house; 4 share a room by
‘hot bedding’. The impact has been that rent levels are higher than local people can afford. Who’s to blame? Not the migrant workers; it’s the Government. A lot of problems lie at the hands of Governments. You need to look at the
facts and the evidence…’
Colonel Mustard

“It includes facts and figures, eye witness testimony and urges myth busting.”

Facts and figures can be manipulated to any message. Eye witness testimony is subjective and can be wrong, often exhibiting preference or prejudice. Urging myth busting is not the same as actual myth busting. No doubt your own prejudices and preferences influenced your defence of the report as a single and definitive piece of evidence. But since it relies partially on eyewitness testimony then the eyewitness testimony of the lady who disagreed so passionately with you on QT must be considered too. I expect there are many more like her and I doubt that their testimony is represented in the report – which sounds like a typical local government job – a combination of propaganda and artificially constructed street party joy that presumes we are all happy with what has been imposed on us without our consent.

The tendency for the Left and those who support it is to engage the eye witness testimony most favourable to them – and to use “facts” and figures in the same way. It is for those reasons we are largely where we are. In a dis-functional country with some even more serious problems in store for our future generations.
Radford_NG

Irrespective of you views being those of every government and the Spectator for 50 years:the answer to sick abuse may be found by searching for `jyoti singh pandey` and for `malala yousafzai`.

David Lindsay

Written before last night, of course.

Anna Soubry and some occasional contributor to the Daily Mail about how rich her husband is, the latter drafted in as what the Question Time producers obviously regarded as an acceptable substitute for the billed George Galloway.

Even worse than it sounds. Impossible? I’d have thought so, too. Until I witnessed it.

Noa

Quite right David. It was awful, tedious tosh.

John Steadman

I think it would be a a step forward if the ‘not acceptable’ fraternity (oh how they love that ambiguity) would always be perfectly clear about whether they mean ‘not acceptable to some of us’ or ‘not acceptable, lock’em up’. I often have the impression that their preference is for the latter, but that they lack the courage to say so, even with the protection of a pseudonym.

Mind you, there is a place for the would-be (or, these days, perhaps even currently-active and at-large) censors, because they allow me to enjoy seeing them getting a good arse-kicking on this forum.

Smashing read Mr L., and others.

http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman

Beardie is supposed to be intelligent and highly-educated yet she doesn’t seem to have figured out what trolling actually means. The site in question was set up for people to have a rant about people that piss them off. There must have been hundreds, possibly thousands, of public figures who have been mocked on that site since its inception. I think it’s obvious that Beardie can’t handle criticism, just like most of these out-of-touch, fascistic academic-types. Now Beardie, go wax that godawful pubic monstrosity, please.

Sarah

Of course it’s misogyny Mr Liddle, it’s always misogyny.

Why do you spend so much of your time on women and comedy sexual violence for example (or mice and cats during Indian Rape Week, as the case may be)? Because the pomposity of Mary Beard, women and sex abuse charities is greater than that of men and the media and requires greater satirising?

Come on now, man up and at least admit what drives you. Don’t worry, sex isn’t in the anti-hate legislation (it only covers the forms of discrimination that bother men), so you’ll be allowed to continue unimpeded.

http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman

Is it misandry when a woman calls a man she finds repugnant a dick? This should be interesting. (Liberal logic 101 – it’s only ‘sexist’ when a man does it, it’s only ‘racist when a white man does it.)

evad666

The current disasterous immigration position is fuelled by the classists in Government service and Politics who adhere to the honourable savage concept as formulated by Rousseau.
Remember poor are good but poor white are bad this racism has nothing do do with the market and everything to do with an education in Law and the Clasics.

retundario

It’s appalling that such a fuss is being made about the abuse this woman has received. Migration is an issue which provokes strong feelings on either side. For at least three decades, those on Mary Beard’s side have self-righteously poured abuse on ours without any censure, without them stopping for a moment to think about the consequences of their abuse or what that might mean in terms of stigmatisation or just wider debate. Now the tables turn and we get tears and self-righteous wailing from the effete wankers – utterly pathetic.

Hendox

wow you want to come off as more of a xenophobic shit bag?
- http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman
  
  Yes, anyone who criticises immigration policy is a xenophobe. Did you never learn how to reason?
- retundario
  
  misandrism! my feelings! online abuse! wail wail wail
- Glenn Ludlow
  
  Sir, I believe you may possibly have waded into the deep end by mistake.Please could you return to the toddlers pool.

Ipsmick

Liddle by name, liddle by nature: a person useful only for the writer of limericks.

http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman

I notice you can’t present an argument. You must be misandrous. See what I did there.
Colonel Mustard

At least it is his real surname, unlike dipstick.

Hendox

This is hilarious man, she just wasnt xenophobic and all these frustrated white guys lost their shit. Whom most likely, will never change their pitiful view, even if the evidence proved it without a doubt. Man , I do find it rather embarrassing as a brit how crazy people get with immigration. Granted this is shouting into a hurricane of vile bile. So will just disappear.
Humanity has always migrated and its perfectly legal. You just xenophobic racists, pointless to even rationally discus immigration, when you should be able. I love how you guys all honestly think you decent people or victims because you being told off for being scum bags. I pity you dudes so terrified of non white people. Immigration has done fuck all it- the reason for the woes. Is freaking shit economy and shit government. You want to whine about them taking the jobs? Maybe you should think more about whom is giving them the jobs. E.G The companies. Immigrants, just people like you and me. Wanting jobs, they dont just magically get jobs. If any get jobs maybe it two reasons.
1. They actually had the skills for the job and possibly better then other applicants.
2. The companies know they can get away with things when they have migrant workers.
I also love, how all these dumbass xenophobes dont grasp that people leave the country too- immigration comes in , goes out. So people maybe coming in- but people still going out. So unless people utterly stopped leaving this country, immigration does nothing.
This guy. Has just focused totally on her gender – I dont think we will see anytime soon, stupidest men on Question time.
I really wish all you freaking reactionaries and xenophobes would grow up, and stop retarding (to make slow; delay the development or progress of an action, process, etc.; hinder or impede. society,) but that is unlikely due to you guys being so vile and irrational.

http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman

Xenophobic white men? You mean like the ‘xenophobic’ white woman on Question Time who told us about the problems in Boston? Are you saying she’s a man? Also, what does skin colour have to do with this? The topic of conversation was Polish people, who are white! You say you want to discuss immigration rationally but you are hysterical. You appear to be wrong about everything, and your knee-jerk, badly-spelled, badly-written comment does seem to suggest that you have a problem with white men. The question is, who is the real sexist and the real racist here?
- EJ – was Tory now UKIP
  
  Bang on Lenny – nailed!
retundario

You’re not the brightest are you Hendox?
retundario

I think the authorities should ask you to take the language/citizenship test again, i think your post was in English but I’m not sure.
EJ – was Tory now UKIP

Hmm clearly a “street” person: swears a lot, talks about “white guys losing their shit” and “dumbass xenophobes”. Classy.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Charles-Hedges/100001511186412 Charles Hedges

This article, and most of the comments, display a philistine petty mindedness, a desire to attack universities, women, and anyone who does not toe the party line. You all endorse a level of laddish thuggery and bullying which is contemptible. But of course most of you vote for a party which is in thrall to ATOS and enjoys kicking the weak, the poor and the disabled. Professor Beard took the trouble to read the Boston report, most of you assume that any report not repeating your Daily Mail platitudes cannot be worth reading. If you know all the answers, why pretend you care about debate?

retundario

“not repeating your Daily Mail platitudes cannot be worth reading.”

&

“But of course most of you vote for a party which is in thrall to ATOS and
enjoys kicking the weak, the poor and the disabled. ”

What was that about platitudes?

Go away you Dave-Spart-a-like bore.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Charles-Hedges/100001511186412 Charles Hedges
  
  Are you challenging the facts about ATOS?
  - Colonel Mustard
    
    I see what you did there. Mary Beard gets criticised for her lefty pro-immigration views and somehow this becomes an opportunity for you not just to criticise the Conservative party for ATOS but also to dare anyone to challenge you on it. I know you lefties are tribal and share the same gormless, wired-up attack response as the Borg but even so that is some pretty deft dancing round the issue.
    
    And, please, don’t ever try to peddle the idea that lefties engage in debate. They don’t understand the meaning of the word.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Charles-Hedges/100001511186412 Charles Hedges
      
      You have failed to show that ATOS is acceptable, or that a vote for Cameron is not a vote for that sort of persecution. And it is only because you choose to remain blind to these facts that you can spout your convictions about “leftist drivel” I know ATOS got their contract from the Labour party, I regard anyone who supports ATOS as a bully. If to say that is “sanctimonious” in your book, it is still rather more humane than you or David Cameron are able to be. As to Mary Beard, those of you who believe that sexual insults are acceptable if levelled at anyone who does not share your certainties have a damned odd notion of debate.
    - Colonel Mustard
      
      I regard anyone who supports the Labour party as borderline deranged, but certainly dangerous. Don’t hang your silly labels on me or try to measure my humanity on an imagined concept of whether I “support” ATOS or not. I’m not here to show that ATOS is “acceptable” for your benefit. This thread isn’t even about ATOS.
    - http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman
      
      Is he still banging on about ATOS, Colonel? Talk about wandering off into irrelevant topics.
http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman

This article was written by a Labour supporter, and I’m a UKIP-supporter. What’s that you were saying, you moron.
Colonel Mustard

What a load of pompous twaddle. We just don’t like obnoxiously sanctimonious and self-righteous lefties like you – and with good and justifiable reason I might add.

Robofish

So, the short version of this column is: calling a women a c**t is not misogynist. Right, glad we’ve got that sorted out then. What social problem shall Rod Liddle solve next?

http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman

A woman calling a man a dick isn’t misandrous, thus a man calling a woman a cunt isn’t misogynistic. Non-problem solved.
- Robofish
  
  They’re not exactly the same thing though, are they? One is a considerably harsher swearword than the other. Nor do most men in the public eye get faced with large numbers of derogatory comments about their appearance (Rod Liddle may be an exception to that rule), comments they should ‘stay in the kitchen’ or suggestions they should be raped.
  
  I’m not saying sexism against men doesn’t exist – you can certainly find it if you go looking, and it’s wrong too. But if you think it’s anywhere near as widespread or nasty as sexism against women, you’re plainly mistaken.
  - http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman
    
    I’m not plainly mistaken, at all. It isn’t plain to me, and it seems it isn’t plain to most who are commenting here. If you had an independent mind and hadn’t been brainwashed by feminazis, you’d realise that sexism towards men is more prolific in Britain than sexism towards women. All you need do is look at how men are represented on our screens every day. And your assertion that cunt is a harsher swearword is subjective. It may or may not have a harsher sound to it but that’s just because culturally dick is more acceptable. What I have said still stands – a woman calling a man a dick is EXACTLY the same as a man calling a woman a cunt. Now THAT is plain to see.
    - Robofish
      
      Well, I don’t agree that ‘sexism towards men is more prolific in Britain than sexism towards women’. If you can find me a website that attacks a prominent man in the same venomous terms as Mary Beard was attacked by this one, I’ll reconsider.
      
      Here’s the thing, though – it’s not a competition! Both sexism against men and against women are wrong. I agree that men are often portrayed badly by TV series, and that’s a bad thing. But it’s not as though you either have to only object to sexism against women and accept sexism against men as OK, or the other way around. We should be able to do without either of them.
    - http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman
      
      Or we could all just stop whining and grow thicker skins. You will NEVER stop people calling people names. This entire thing is nonsensical, but hey, it’s distracting attention away from Beardie’s moronic comments on QT, so job done for her.
    - Robofish
      
      “it’s distracting attention away from Beardie’s moronic comments on QT”
      Now that I agree on – arguments over trolling distract from the more serious arguments we should be having. All the more reason not to do it then, and keep your disagreements polite. Otherwise, you’re only making it easy for people like Beard to dismiss all her critics as trolls.
    - http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman
      
      I’m amazed that the media are going with the narrative that she’s been targeted by ‘trolls’. She was never targeted. She sought it out. I wouldn’t be surprised if she googled ‘Mary Beard is a cunt’ and that’s how she found it. It’s like Gordon Brown breaking into my house while I’m calling him an economically illiterate twat and I wish he’d be hung for destroying the UK, then whining that he’d been trolled.

http://twitter.com/Booneyboone B-Careful

Whats most amusing about this none story is that @wytchfinder_gen who posted the ‘hairy clopper’ tweet was not watching question time and has no idea who Ms Beard is. So to Quote him, complete with olde English syntax, is giving us, as the kids say, many LOLS.

justejudexultionis

Rod, just because you’re fat, ugly and not very bright doesn’t mean you can insult someone who is fat, ugly and much brighter than you for saying something you don’t agree with, does it now? Do you understand how ‘democracy’ works? You know, ‘democracy’, that thing where people have complete freedom to say what they like and vote for whatever they like without being put in prison for it. You do understand the difference between ‘insult’ and ‘argument’ don’t you? Have you been taking lessons from Julie Burchill?

http://biasedbbc.proboards.com/index.cgi Teddy Bear

Well judging by the response Ms. Beard gave to my replies to her, and just focussing on the abuse she received, but not addressing the reasons for anger that led to that abuse, it’s clear it’s her way of avoiding the fact that she got it wrong.

‘Methinks she protesteth too much.’

She may be book smart, but that’s a big difference from being street smart. I’ve no doubt if she was questioned in a classroom about this abusive behaviour she could explain very cogently what causes people to react the way they did. The only reason she clings to making herself the victim, is not to own up to her own failings.

This is the problem with lefties, they adhere to ways of thinking because it ‘sounds good’ in their mind, so it must be good. Then they go on ostrich-like to avoid the reality that might prove them wrong. So they never learn.

Martin_Kinsella

Mary was not only right in what she said but the savage comments aimed at her were disgusting.

The woman who criticised her on QT, a “get orff moi land” type if ever there was one, is from immigrant stock herself !!!

http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman

And how does being descended from immigrants invalidate her argument that immigration is out of control? You guessed it, it doesn’t. Are you ever right about anything, even by accident?
- Martin_Kinsella
  
  Mary gave an evidence based reply against a person who has gained by immigration but wants to deprive the hard working immigrants of Bostn the same opportunity.
  - http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman
    
    So British people should suffer because of your ideology? Why don’t we import the whole of Africa, then?
  - Colonel Mustard
    
    Ha ha! Evidence based reply! What nonsense. She cited a piece of leftist propaganda tripe.

http://twitter.com/MTFF MTFF

I disagree entirely with everything you have said. Her looks are entirely irrelevant to her arguments. It is absolutely permissible to criticise her views, pick apart her arguments and those who use the media as a platform should expect the public to debate and disagree. However, there is no way that men’s physical appearance is ever the subject of vitriol and scrutiny in the same way as women’s, and she was the victim of horrendous abuse. In the same way that the press (let alone the public) feel free to comment on Hilary Clinton’s hair and wardrobe, Cherie Blair’s cellulite, or Angela Merkel’s cleavage (with the public following suit) and yet we do not hear about Cameron’s ‘package’ or, in fact, Mr. Liddle’s own lack of nubile charms. It’s pretty straightforwardly sexist. We did hear a lot from trolls about ‘the monkey in the White House’, though, and nobody much argued that this was racism, did they?

http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman

Rubbish. You are seeing what you want to see. There is just as much mockery directed at men, but you don’t see it because it’s socially acceptable.

David Lindsay

Clopper?

And I hate to tell you, Rod, but if you worse glasses…

David Lindsay

It turns out that a clopper is a (legally) grown-up brony, a brony being a male fan of My Little Pony.

Quite what it therefore means that Professor Beard has “a hairy clopper”, I shudder to think.

embolalia

This is a horrible article and you ought to be ashamed.

http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman

Why is the truth so repugnant to you? Do you see lying as a virtue?
- embolalia
  
  Is it not misogynistic to “run a small, light-hearted competition every year on my blog for people to vote for the most stupid woman to have appeared on Question Time in the past 12 months”?
  
  And the final paragraph says that Professor Beard is only invited on to TV programmes because she looks eccentric. Could it not in fact be that she brings an interesting perspective that other panellists might not? Could the reason for her classics programmes not be that she is an engaging and passionate speaker about classics in a way which is accessible to ordinary people, much as Brian Cox is about Physics? He isn’t faced with the suggestion that only his looks are the reason – in fact his looks are pretty much never an issue at all, whereas Professor Beard has suffered huge, sustained criticism, from anonymous Internet users and respected journalists alike, simply because she has the audacity in her 50s not to look like she’s in her 30s.
  - Colonel Mustard
    
    Or is it that she is only invited on TV because she is a lefty?
    - embolalia
      
      She’s much less unambiguously left-wing than, say, Owen Jones, who was on QT pretty recently. But in any case, obviously a political panel show wants to have a balanced panel, so in a week with Nigel Farage, they wanted someone vaguely left-wing.
      
      If you think she’s only invited to do classics programmes because she’s a “lefty”, then you my friend are a conspiracy theorist and I’d point you in the direction of David Starkey, for a start, who is as much a lefty as David Dimbleby is a 30-year-old woman.
    - http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman
      
      Yeah, we know that, David Starkey is the token Righty when he’s invited on. 4 lefties versus him, calling him racist for telling the truth.
    - embolalia
      
      Yeah, because every Tory is a rampant lefty.
      
      …
    - http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman
      
      Can’t you read. I said 4 lefties versus Starkey (a Righty). You fucking moron.
    - embolalia
      
      Yes, and since every episode of QT has a Tory MP on it, you implied that Tories are lefties. No need to swear just because you don’t understand.
    - http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman
      
      You think the current Tory administration is right-wing?! lololol
  - http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman
    
    No, she’s receiving sustained criticism for talking nonsense. If she was a man, she would have come in for the same stick. Nothing to see here, militant feminazi.
  - Craig_Ranapia
    
    “And the final paragraph says that Professor Beard is only invited on to TV programmes because she looks eccentric.”
    
    Well, that explains Boris Johnson – scruffy little git.

Karen Fletcher

Presumably Rod, you also run a small, light-hearted competition every year on your blog for people to vote for the most stupid man to have appeared on Question Time in the past 12 months?

http://twitter.com/Abstractivum Goodrum

Disgusting attacks, misogyny and hate speech. There will always be people that disagree with everyone/anyone about something, enough is enough. The vilification and attacks upon her were disturbing, now we have you in for your two bobs worth too. Pathetic.

http://twitter.com/MatofKilburnia The Snowmat

Is someone who has accepted a police caution for domestic violence the best person to be talking about misogyny?

William Thomas

What I find a bit odd about Mrs Beard is that she is obsessed with sex. In her blogs, articles or on TV, she will always find a way of bringing sex in. Not only is it often quite inappropriate and irrelevant, it is also very boring.
When she was interviewed about the very unpleasant remarks that had been made about her (and I can quite understand that they were upsetting), instead of just saying “they were nasty” – she went into enormous, medical detail in a way which only underlined the obsession to which I refer above.
Very odd. If it was a bloke saying the things she does – the Boys in Blue would have hauled him off years ago.

Marcus

Brilliant. Very funny article, agree with every word. Best thing I’ve read in ages.

http://www.martinsewell.com/ Martin Sewell

‘Misogyny’ is a myth invented to excuse misandry (hatred of men), misandry being a common prejudice of women, and not just feminists.

Craig_Ranapia

“But does she really believe that men do not get the same level of abuse
when they have angered people on TV, or in print, or on the internet?”

Just for the record, Rod, how many people have offered to anally rape you? I know it’s your stock in trade to be “politically incorrect” – and if you can’t be bothered pulling a comb through your hair before having your photograph taken, that’s your look out – but please don’t try being cute about threats of physical and sexual violence against women who have the gall to express unpopular opinions.

fitz fitzgerald

This Beard bird is not as out of touch as she looks … and has milked the situation created by her brazen comments relentlessly since it occurred … from Brasenose, is she ?

mumble

Newnham.

fitz fitzgerald

If la Beard was really serious about the storm she caused, she would have been to Boston , Lincolnshire by now to seek the truth and reported back to her public. The BBC is only too obviously at her service to share her musings.

The_greyhound

Unfortunately Mary Beard’s comments on Ancient History aren’t always as informed or carefully thought through as they might be. And that lack of self-criticism and scruple is all too evident when she’s in the studio.

Odd, then that the sisterhood has taken her woes so much to heart. I don’t remember them putting their arms around Margaret Thatcher when the TUC were being vile about her.

mumble

Why and how did increasing diversity come to be seen unquestioningly as being necessarily good?

Rather obviously, it might well be good, but, rather obviously, it might not be.

“Increasing diversity” is not an end in itself.

mumble

Why does being a Professor of Classics give:

1. a Professor of Classics, or

2. anyone else

a sense that a Professor of Classics has useful opinions in unrelated areas?

Seriously?

Fixated with class, quite racist and fairly misogynist … gotta love the Brits on these forums

Seriously get a grip people, the woman has an opinion and she obviously knows her stuff. If it weren’t for Polish plumbers Britain would still be dealing with a massive water pressure problem and endemic tap leakages. So you disagree, big deal, listen and move on. Whatever happened to the very British “I see your point but I disagree?”

And Mr Liddle, the bit on the complaints in Lincolnshire about anti-social behaviour: that would be the behaviour of the indigenous, right? Have any ASBO orders ever been given to foreigners? I wonder.

When I first arrived to teh UK there was very little awareness here about hair conditioners, olive oil, edible food, wine, you know … all the good things in life. So really we are all better off for finding each other and bouncing ideas off each other. The internet is a perfect place to do that. Don’t remain narrow minded, love yourselves, get out in the sun, use hair conditioner and stuff your face with ice-cream. It’s lovely.

http://www.facebook.com/lenny.newman.505 Lenny Newman

Yes, and we’re all better off for having muslims here, because now we have curry. Hooray!! Die.

Alex James

Someone who repeatedly asserts that America deserved to suffer the 2001 terrorist attacks might be thought to have a skin thick enough to withstand comments on her appearance. The wider question here is why the opinion of a professor of classics on the problems of immigration in Linconshire is of any importance. We would not ask the
immigration minister to express a public view on the reasons why the Roman
republic failed. Professor Beard brings discredit to classics, a discipline
which at its best imbues structured thinking of which she seems incapable, and
to the Cambridge faculty in particular. She is the immediate choice of the BBC
to comment on any question of Roman history or culture. It is only when another
classicist takes her place that her lack of serious scholarship becomes
generally apparent. And, of course, she has a slot on the Radio 4 programme A
Point of View, that repeat vehicle for untested bien pensant liberal values.

LilyDame

‘A small, light-hearted competition to vote for the most stupid woman to have appeared on Question Time’? You’z so fly! As Catullus might say.
Or as he actually did say:
What god, badly-disposed towards you,
intends to start a mad quarrel?
Or is it to achieve vulgar fame?
Why the assault? You want to be known everywhere?

Victoria

Why do you have a competition for the most stupid woman on Question Time, but not the for the most stupid man?

Eratosthenese the wibbly

Beard’s appearance is unfortunately exactly what some might expect from a lefty, lentil bothering, Chairman Mao portrait-sporting, mutli-kulti apologist, educated, fool. I saw the QT episode and her risible quoting of “a report” which she purported to be more authoritative than the experience of the people living in and around the area day to day.

She may be an expert on some periods of ancient Roman history, but she appears to know fuck all else. Anyway, I prefer the Greeks.

Terry Field

Liddle seams to tend to fascist means of argument – approval of vox pop experience over more balanced analysis, circuitous associative argument – she is foul, that is why she is on television, and her arguments, being foul in themselves, are all of a piece and easily rejected. His tenor fits the times, rough, tough, brutal and – like modern England – to be avoided.
Poor Mary.

http://www.facebook.com/kelliejay.keenminshull Kellie-Jay Keen

You run a lighthearted competition to find the most stupid woman on Question Time? Really? Do you have one for men too? When David Starkey made racist comments on Newsnight people didn’t whine about his appearance, whether or not he was fuckable. He was criticised for his comments, his ignorance and his prejudice. All Mary Beard is asking is for the same treatment. Considering the wider issue of how most women are portrayed in the media I think she has a fair and valid complaint.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=36808551 Jack Harris

“Accurate refutations of her vacuous argument”. Unbelievable. That anyone should suffer being dubbed “ill-bred” by this truly loathsome man is rich beyond measure. Now for the “Most contemptible fool to post a piece of commentary online” award, 2013. Perfectly light hearted, of course. Let voting begin. (I await my own name being nominated below by some predictable troll or other…)

disqus_nJNkPFgoIo

Lighthearted? The most stupid woman? You must really hate women. That is completely disgraceful. Have a read of everydaysexism.com and maybe you’ll rethink your lighthearted competition.. You really don’t have a clue.

It’s not misogyny, Professor Beard. It’s you

Now read on

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