In an excellent essay I wrote for this magazine at the start of the year – ‘Sir’ Ed Davey’s Lib Dems are the real nasty party’ – I touched on my adolescent crush on the Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe:
‘I felt confusion watching Thorpe speak – he sounded so kind, yet looked so cruel – but dismissed this as a paradox of sex appeal, which he certainly had, having outraged his classmates at Eton by announcing that he planned to marry Princess Margaret, at that time second in line to the throne. It wasn’t until I read Jamaica Inn and shared Mary Yellan’s horror on discovering exactly how the vicar saw his flock that I was able to make sense of the strange situation. When all the awful stuff about Thorpe came out as my teenage years drew to a close, I felt I had learned quite a lesson about politicians who present as virtuous; give me an outright bounder any day.’
When it comes to sexism, the Greens are in a league of their own
The incident from Jamaica Inn I referred to is when Mary finds a secret drawing the apparently kind and gentle preacher has done, portraying himself as a ravening wolf leading a congregation of duped sheep. Observing the behaviour of the Greens recently, I’d add that this ambiguity applies to them, with knobs on – and what a bunch of knobs they are, regarding women. Reading their manifesto, one can’t help but ask, as a member of the gentle sex – is this a threat or a promise? And also – why do the Greens hate women so much?
In a report by Sex Matters called ‘The Green Party manifesto – human rights: not for women’ a damning examination of their crackpot plans for single-sex spaces can be found. I’m afraid I always think of the rather judgemental old phrase ‘Normal For Norfolk’ (Wikipedia: ‘A slang term used in some parts of England for something that is peculiar, or odd… comes from the inventive language created by doctors the world over to insult their patients’) when it comes to the Greens. Or even indeed the splendid but unfashionable word ‘crank’ (‘a person who has strange or unusual ideas and beliefs’, Cambridge Dictionary).
The Greens have drunk more of the trans-Kool-Aid than any other party, which is very strange when you consider that they rage against Big Pharma more than all the other parties. Aren’t drugs which block puberty the most ‘unnatural’ things one can imagine? They are mad keen for ‘self-ID’ but as the report points out: ‘The manifesto is silent on how the Greens would make sure that this is compatible with the human rights of other people (or whether they have considered other people’s rights at all). Relevant rights include the right to freedom of belief and expression (to continue to say that men are male and women are female), and freedom of association (such as the right of lesbians to have their own associations).’ Maybe they believe that being a lesbian is ‘unnatural,’ as did many people until relatively recently?
The Greens have at least dropped their plans to cut medical intervention in childbirth, obviously catching on at some point that when it comes to letting that all-knowing wise-woman Mother Nature take the reins in the course of childbirth, pesky old infant mortality often raises its head. As Sky put it ‘The plan, which has since been deleted from its website, referenced the fact medical interventions in childbirth have escalated in recent years, “particularly the rate of caesarean sections which are expensive and, when not medically required, risky. We will work to reduce the number of interventions in childbirth and change the culture.”’
Asked on Sky News about the policy, deputy Green Party leader Zack Polanski said: ‘Pregnancy can be really traumatic for people, and this is a really sensitive subject. Ultimately, this will not be in our manifesto, which will be launching next Wednesday…it’s not that we have changed our minds.’
As if all this wasn’t enough to make women Green-avoidant, it was recently revealed that Polanski once ‘worked’ in a Harley Street clinic as a ‘hypnotherapist’ flogging 90-minute sessions for an alleged £222 to desperate women who believed that this would help them grow bigger breasts. LBC’s Tom Swarbrick queried Polanski about this prurient practice in the wake of a piece in the Sun . To quote the LBC news website: ‘Mr Polanski apologised for his past actions and said he never believed them: “It does not represent my work, it does not represent me. This was 11 years ago. I wasn’t involved in politics at all.” Mr Polanski added he never charged for the service.’
Isn’t it reassuring to know that there are noble men out there who will lead you – and your flat chest – up the garden path for free? I muse here that the original meaning of ‘tit’ was ‘fool’ rather than ‘breast’, which reminded me that ‘boob’, too, does double duty on this front. Once a Democrat wit remarked upon the election of John Warner, Republican senator and then married to Elizabeth Taylor, ‘Looks like Virginia just elected the three biggest boobs in the country!’ Somehow, this seems particularly pertinent to the somewhat befuddled Mr Polanski.
A minority of Greens have put up a fight against the sexist ignorance of the greatest cultural appropriation imaginable: the right of men to ‘become’ women, whereas even taking a selfie in a sombrero during a drunken night out at a Mexican restaurant would be considered an act of malign mockery. Earlier this year, a court ruled that Shahrar Ali had been wrongfully evicted from his role as Greens spokesperson due to his sensible views on the threat his party posed to women’s rights with its weird enthusiasm for a cross-dresser’s right to be indulged at all costs. Zoe Hatch, Jude English, Emma Bateman and Dawn Furness have been expelled or suspended over the past five years due to their common-sense views.
The Cass Report was a defining moment in picking out those who were so wedded to magical thinking that no amount of facts could turn them against their cult. It’s no surprise to find that it caused a massive kerfuffle within the Greens, who issued a statement about it which was withdrawn after an hour due to the seismic split on the right to be gender-critical – or rather ‘sex-realist’ – within the party. Zoe Hatch has pointed out the double standards involved wherein the Greens have not suspended councillors who have made anti-Semitic statements while expelling women’s right advocates.
No party has much to feel proud of when it comes to women. Yes, Labour will even further degrade our right to single-sex toilets and sporting trophies – but the Tories have let the situation come to this woeful pass in the 14 years they’ve been in government. But when it comes to sexism, the Greens are in a league of their own. Why is this? It might be as simple as the fact that misanthropy – and there is a streak of dark Green thinking which sees humanity as a blot on the landscape – also includes misogyny. Or it might have more convoluted and creepy origins, with men in hemp sandals who pay lip service to gender equality dreaming of a time when you could sacrifice a virgin at the drop of a hat, before corrupt old civilisation came along and gave virgins – and women generally – rights.
That the Greens are also currently cuddling up to Islam and have councillors who shout ‘Allahu Akbar!’ when they win might also give pause to women who believe that a vote for them is the caring, sharing option. The Greens were always in competition with the Lib Dems for the floating crank vote, and this time they’ve outdone themselves. For if one is a woman, the Greens are now the nasty party – wolves in sheep’s clothing, bent on silencing the lambs.
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