Sex equality laws aren’t designed to protect men

No, it was a light-hearted advert for Philadelphia cheese that dared to poke a bit of fun at a couple of rather incompetent dads. I wasn’t surprised to hear that a bunch of pompous male viewers had expressed their disgust at the scurrilous suggestion that dads might not be quite as capable as mothers. We just can’t have that, can we?

Never mind that, since the advent of advertising, women have been painted, depending on the product on offer, as dim-witted, or simpering, or vampish, or a combination of all three. Or they’re portrayed as pneumatic-chested earth mothers who love nothing better than to get elbow-deep in soap suds as they wash the discarded dishes of their hard-working husbands and wholesome children.

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This is the problem that feminists identified with advertising. But instead of explicitly dealing with the issue as a manifestation of the oppression of women, the ASA guidance, like many of our “equality” laws, is gender- and sex-neutral. So, stereotyping on the grounds of gender, per se, becomes the problem. It matters not a jot that one sex consists of the oppressed and the other the beneficiaries. It’s like suggesting that economic exploitation affects rich and poor alike or that racism against white people is as deep a problem as racism against people of colour. The reason why we have sex equality laws was to protect women from discrimination. Not men, women.

More and more, I see the objective reality of women’s oppression, inequality, and sometimes downright drudgery born of their sex, being obfuscated, minimised and sometimes rendered downright invisible by “neutral” laws and policies. Don’t get me wrong, I dream of the day humans are humans, all are equal, and the oppression of women is merely something recorded in academic libraries, museums and the deep recesses of the internet. But that’s not where we are today.

Pay inequality, violence against women, sexual assault and harassment have remained stubbornly constant down through the generations, while thoughtless everyday sexism is still so commonplace that it is too

tiresome to even complain about. Far from gradually melting way under the warm sunshine of enlightenment, misogyny and sexism remain deep-frozen within the veins of our society.

Indeed, there are signs of an escalating war on women: the financial violence perpetrated by the UK Government on predominantly female single parents; the normalisation of commercial sexual abuse of women’s bodies by calling it work like any other; the Trump-driven destruction of women’s rights to control their own health and fertility in the US; the silencing of individual women, and of women’s organisations when they raise concerns about the impact on women of fundamentally altering in law what the definition of “woman” means.

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So, forgive me if I don’t run to the barricades in defence of poor stereotyped dopey dads. For the record, I don’t think that men are inherently incapable of looking after children. But, in general, even in 2019, fathers – with notable exceptions, I hasten to add before some of you start getting agitated – are far less involved in parenting than women. The Resolution Foundation published research recently that shows that, of those parents who have given up working hours or career progression to look after children, 92% are female. Men, basically, don’t get enough practice. How many of you talk about “babysitting” your own children when your partner goes out to do her lower-paid job or a rare night out?

In general, women get more practice because that’s what we’re expected to do. And if we didn’t, men, in general, wouldn’t pick up the slack. So we’re forced to do it, because we have no choice. And like anything, from playing the piano, or football, or tennis, the more practice you get the better you become. That goes for dishwashing, dusting, Hoovering, changing beds, cooking and all the rest of it.

Another example of how legislative tools of “equality” can be turned upside down was the arrest of Valerie Sanders for “coercive controlling behaviour” towards her (now ex-) husband Michael. When he told Jobcentre staff that she constantly asked him to do more housework, they in turn reported her to the legal authorities. Thankfully, the case hasn’t gone to court, but it illuminates where so-called gender- and sex-neutral laws can get you. Do we really want to criminalise the oppressed for complaining about their oppression?

This is how power and oppression works at its most sophisticated. It creates a culture where women constantly have to self-monitor and self-censor for fear of being labelled “nags” or “harridans” when they are expected to behave like compliant hand maidens. It’s not so long ago that “scolds” were put in the stocks and women who refused to conform were burned as witches.

Too often, women, fearful of just a hint of superior physical strength, resort to cajoling coquettishly rather than assertively demanding a reasonable change in behaviour. The irony is that laws designed to tackle the psychological abuse of women can now be used to shut them up and keep them in their place. The need for women to use survival tactics that have been handed down over centuries continues.

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I can see a simmering, suppressed rage building among women that is ready to explode. If you’ve seen the recent episodes of the Handmaid’s Tale, you’ll have seen that anger rising under the polite and compliant visage of June. The rebellion is under way in the Handmaid’s Tale – it won‘t be long before it’s is here.

If you’re a man who has got to the end of this and are still reading: thank you – we need you as allies. If you feel nagged or hectored, I’m not sorry. And If you’re a woman who feels you’ve nowhere safe to express your rage, just remember the words of June to Serena: “We’re stronger than we think we are.”