About two months ago I was in a panel discussion on London Live TV talking about ‘women in the workplace’ I was recently invited back to discuss ‘everyday sexism’.
Claudia-Liza Armah, the presenter, kept asking me where I got my statistics from, although I’d explained they were official government statistics – to no avail. She asserted – as she had in the earlier discussion – that the UK ‘needs’ more female engineers, in response to my pointing out that at Brunel University, female postgraduate engineering students are entitled to an additional £15,000 p.a. grant solely on the grounds of gender.
The other two panellists were Daisy Buchanan, no relation, a pleasant woman despite being a Guardian journalist, and Dina Rickman, a freelance journalist who’s also an assistant editor at HuffPo UK. I enjoyed a discussion with Daisy before the recording, although my eyes rolled involuntarily when she expressed her admiration for two prominent whine merchants, Laura Bates and Caroline Criado-Perez.
Ms Rickman joined us only two or three minutes before the discussion. Unable or unwilling to respond intelligently to reasoned arguments in the discussion, she pathetically resorted to saying this to me:
I don’t know if you know any women.
This is, of course, just one example of the shaming tactics used by feminists unable or unwilling to engage with reasoned arguments. I pointed out that British men and boys are relentlessly disadvantaged by the state’s actions and inactions, and challenged the three women to provide even ONE example of where the state disadvantages women or girls. Ms Rickman summoned the full might of her intellectual powers and came up with ‘the gender pay gap’. Seriously, she did. The remark inspired a supporter to design a ‘Meme of the Week’.
