I was recently in the studios of London Live TV, being interviewed along with feminists in response to a prerecorded piece from Laura Bates, the inaugural member of The Whine Club. There were four recorded discussions in total, of which we’ll be posting links to the videos shortly.
Not a “morning person” at the best of times, I had to set my alarm clock at 02:30 in order to get to the studios in Kensington before 06:00. The studios are in Northcliffe House, the plush headquarters of the Mail, Independent, and Evening Standard newspapers. All the people I saw working in the building at that time were of the male persuasion. A security guard was “manning” reception, later in the day the sole preserve of women, needless to say.
I digress. The first three short interviews on the topic of sexism were at around 06:15, 07:15, and 08:15, and Roz Hardie was the feminist with whom I had the unadulterated joy of debating. Hardie is the chief executive officer of the campaign group OBJECT. The ladies at OBJECT have been wittering away for over 10 years now—surely generating enough hot air to lift a fleet of hot-air balloons—and the following extract from their website should give you a flavour of their “thinking”:
OBJECT is a human rights organisation which challenges ‘sex object culture’—a culture in which women are increasingly objectified as sex objects in our media and everyday lives. It is long established that the overwhelming portrayal of women as sex objects in society plays a role in maintaining inequality between women and men.
The organisation campaigns against lap dancing clubs, prostitution—they want the Nordic model, which criminalises men and decriminalises prostitutes—lads’ mags, page 3 of the Sun (a tabloid that for 40+ years has featured photographs of topless women on page 3) … you get the woeful picture. Now, the website doesn’t contain any images of Hardie, so far as we can see, so here’s one I found online—it was taken last month—with Hardie wearing a T-shirt bearing the logo and slogan: “OBJECT: Women Not Sex Objects.” Hopefully, by linking to this image, I’m not sexually objectifying her in any way. I’m fairly confident I’m not.
We had plenty of time between the interviews for informal discussions, and at times they became heated. Hardie felt the £22,750 ($35,000) sponsorships available only to female engineering postgraduate students at Brunel University are perfectly reasonable, given that it costs more to educate autistic children, and most autistic children are boys. When I related this to a supporter later in the day, he responded:
Dear God, these blithering idiots have an answer to everything!
A good point, well made, I thought.
On a number of occasions during my discussions with Hardie, I pointed to the fact that decade after decade feminists have lied shamelessly to pursue their agendas, they continue to do so, and the mainstream media never (or virtually never) calls them out on those lies. I gave as an example the case of Caroline Criado-Perez, to whom we presented a “Lying Feminist of the Month” award—the story is here. We’ll shortly be presenting her with the same award for a second time. Along with her “Whiny Feminist of the Month” award, I think that makes her our most celebrated feminist. In the case of CC-P, as with others I cited, Hardie had the same pat answer: “They’re only lying in your opinion.”
I explained that it wasn’t a matter of opinion, in each case the feminists were demonstrably lying, and in each case we’d furnished the proof. All of this made no impact on Hardie, of course—a woman I branded a liar in at least one of our three recorded discussions—so it’s time for another public challenge. I’ll be emailing her a link to this blog piece shortly, and the challenge is this:
Roz, yesterday we discussed the issue of feminists lying to advance their agendas, and I cited some examples of feminists—including Caroline Criado-Perez—to whom we’ve presented “Lying Feminist of the Month” awards. In each case, you said the women were only lying “in your opinion.” I publicly challenge you to email me explaining why, in your opinion, each of these feminists wasn’t lying. Our list of award-winning lying feminists is here. We look forward to hearing from you in due course. Take your time, no rush. Will 12 months be sufficient?
