I am amused by the idea that Australia should have felt its pristine soul sullied and its politically correct sensibility scandalised last week by the misogynistic pronouncements of one mouthy Brit. That's the claim, at any rate. Last time I looked, Australia had its own impressive line in misogyny - and the rest. Fantastic, beautiful country, packed full of lovely people, but perhaps not quite at the forefront of earnest liberalism when it comes to vocab, or indeed thought processes, to do with women. Or race, for that matter.
In case you missed the hoo-ha, the chef Gordon Ramsay, who was taking part in a food and wine fair in Melbourne, decided - apropos of not very much at all - to flash up a huge picture of a naked woman which he likened to a television interviewer called Tracy Grimshaw, whose show he had appeared on without incident the previous evening. The interview had been unremarkable; Grimshaw had perhaps not been as sycophantic as she might, although she says she had agreed not to mention Ramsay's alleged extra-marital affair, which was friendly of her.
The picture in question was a doctored image of a naked woman on all fours with the superimposed face of a pig. There were about 3,000 people in the audience. "That's Tracy Grimshaw," Ramsay is reported to have said. "I had an interview with her yesterday - holy crap." It was alleged, although later denied by Ramsay, that he had also called Grimshaw "a lesbian" and suggested she needed to see "Simon Cowell's Botox doctor". Asked about the incident, he said he'd only been making "a tongue in cheek joke" that had raised a laugh with his audience.
Grimshaw took exception to this business with the pig picture, as well you might, and fired off her own salvo on her show. "Truly, I wonder how many people would laugh if they were effectively described as an old, ugly pig," she said.
"But I'm not surprised by any of this. We've all seen how Ramsay treats his wife and he supposedly loves her. Obviously Gordon thinks that any woman who doesn't fancy him must be gay. For the record, I don't and I'm not."
Advertisement
Ramsay's riposte had a rather clutching-at-straws ring to it: "To stoop that low and attack my wife is disgusting."
And so it went on with, somewhat startlingly, Australia's prime minister wading into the row, volunteering the opinion that Ramsay's comments reflected "a new form of low-life" and were "off and offensive". The story rumbled on and eventually a spokeswoman for Ramsay conceded that "with hindsight he realises that his comments were inappropriate and offensive and he has unreservedly apologised to Tracy Grimshaw".
However, the news bulletins and newspaper articles kept coming and still the people of Australia pronounced themselves aghast. Finally, last week, Ramsay apologised on television. Niftily, he alluded to a maternal "bollocking" down the telephone - ah, good old Gordon, he can't be that bad because he loves his mum and she's a woman.
Obviously, Ramsay parading his hard-core misogyny in public is not a good thing and equally obviously Grimshaw was owed a public apology. However, the Australian public's outrage does seem somewhat manufactured: has that supremely robust nation suddenly turned into a land of blushing flowers, peopled by folk who've never heard of anything so ghastly as calling a woman porcine or a lesbian? Unlikely. As I see it, rather, the sheer volume of Australia's indignation suggests a country desperate to make amends for its reputation when it comes to treating women with respect (or not), jumping gratefully on Ramsay's case and using it to signal wildly that a) Brits do misogyny too and b) it's not very nice.
As with the joke about "What do you tell a woman with two black eyes? Nothing- you've told her twice already", there is regrettably a delicious frisson attached to giving free rein to misogyny. I don't know a single man who wouldn't laugh, guiltily or otherwise, at the above joke: not because it is especially hilarious, but because its funniness resides in its outré naughtiness - no one should make jokes about domestic violence, ergo jokes about domestic violence are funny.
Advertisement
Political correctness has, thank God, put an end to the bulk of the racist jokes that were once such a staple of British life and although there remain comedians who specialise in them, you wouldn't necessarily crack such a gag at a bus stop. Not so the misogynistic jokes which are still - by a hair's breadth - considered acceptable and agreeably racy by some women as well as most men (the kind of women who say "I'm having a blonde moment". How we laugh).
Of course, this is at bottom to do with men's anxiety and feelings of disempowerment, which cut very deep and are seldom addressed, from the irrefutable fact that girls do better at school and university to the tyranny and indignity - as more men than you'd imagine still see it - of having a female boss.
The more marginalised and surplus-to-requirements men feel they have become, the fiercer the jokes, the nastier the porn, the bigger the split-personality (by which I mean the difference between the charming PC outside and the angry, raging, woman-loathing interior).
Which is to say that Ramsay's weird outburst, hideous as it was, was not merely an unwelcome little insight into the way his mind works, but also a manifestation ofa deeper malaise - one that affects us all but perhaps affects men who think of themselves as being big gorilla-chested alpha types the most. Ramsay is a man's man and he made - he thought - a man's man joke. I bet the men's men laughed, because men's men think misogyny is funny. The problem is many of us still also think misogyny is funny and even a little bit sexy - just not too much misogyny: Gene Hunt, the TV detective, say, rather than Ramsay.
So yes: slapped wrist for Ramsay. But no sanctimony, please, about how he said the most terrible thing imaginable and showed himself to be Neanderthal in his attitudes. Scratch the surface and those attitudes are, regrettably, still the norm.
Advertisement
+ Hazel Blears, who was communities secretary until her recent resignation, said last week she regretted "enormously" the timing of her resignation. She also regrets wearing a badge saying "rocking the boat" and mocking the prime minister's YouTube video. She told the Manchester Evening News "the effect on the party" was "something I will regret for ever".
I want to like these women, I really do, but they keep doing or saying things that make them sound slightly unhinged. Caroline Flint posed for photographs in this season's satin and platforms, after what looked like two hours in hair and make-up, and then complained about being viewed as "window dressing".
Now Blears bleats about how sorry she is, in the manner of a giddy woman who's had a funny turn or found herself temporarily in the throes of some kind of perimenopausal brainstorm. It doesn't exactly advance her cause and it gives ammunition to all the people out there who, at some deep level, believe that women are too "temperamental" for politics.
Also, in the aftermath of a coup that failed, hand-wringing and public emoting look kind of craven, the political equivalent of taking out a full-page advert in The Times to pen a billet-doux to someone who has taken out an injunction against you.
Who advises these people? He or she simply doesn't have a clue.