Suzanne Harrington: What about International Hound A Woman Week?
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Happy International Women’s Day (IWD), to all you ladies and allies out there, although one does wonder about the other 364 days.
This year’s IWD comes hot on the heels of International Hound A Woman Week, with the (white, male) British media, like hysterical ferrets, pursuing (brown, female) Meghan Markle for wearing the wrong earrings, as they continue to studiously ignore (white, male) Prince Andrew. Despite Prince Andrew’s penchant for hanging out with a paedophile sex offender in a paedophile sex offender mansion. Repeatedly. But let’s takedown Meghan instead, chaps. For earrings. For ‘bullying’. For eating avocados as reported in the .
In the US, ‘male bumbler epidemic’ – a term originally coined by essayist Lili Loofbourow – is being used to describe the statement of New York governor Andrew Cuomo, currently accused by three women of unwanted sexual attention. That is, creepy and psychologically intrusive behaviour, enough to make one accuser resign from a job she loved, but not the full Weinstein.
Here’s how Governor Cuomo responded: “At work sometimes, I think I am being playful and I make jokes I think are funny.” He does this to “add some levity and banter to what is a very serious business.”
Ah yes, the I-was-just-kidding response. The deployment of words like playful, jokes, funny, banter. Ha, ha, ha. Hilarious, unless you are on the receiving end, in which case you clearly have no sense of humour, or are delusional and think your boss fancies you because he keeps asking you about your private life, your intimate relationships. (He doesn’t do this with your male colleagues). How can he have done anything wrong? He was just messing. Nobody got raped, FFS.
But here is the crux of the bumble, in the words of 63-year-old Cuomo (who told female employees he was fine dating anyone over the age of 22): “I now understand that my interactions may have been insensitive or too personal.”
Oh, well, that’s alright then. The poor bumbler, he’s simply too incompetent to realise that he is harassing anyone; he’s just doing dad jokes, right? Or as Loofbourow puts it, “The bumbler takes one of our culture’s most muscular myths — that men are clueless — and weaponises it into an alibi.”
This might work if you were some old eejit out in the sticks with no internet who still thinks it’s 1970 in Genderland, but the Governor of New York, post #MeToo? Seriously?
And yet by using words like ‘playful’, the onus is placed on the humourless, banter less shrew making the complaint. The po-faced cow, misinterpreting a boss’s efforts to bring ‘fun’ to a workplace by asking personal questions to young female employees. (Not male). Ha, ha, ha. Side-splitting.
Powerful, wealthy, successful, high profile, well-connected men do not get to be powerful, wealthy, successful, high profile, well-connected men by being bumblers. Do they hell. And yet this is the excuse they continue to deploy, Tarzan and Jane style: Me stupid, you pretty.
Really, faux bumbler? How about me had enough, you fired.
