Moran, Knight and O'Neill: Old School Misogyny Rears its Ugly Head

Mea Culpa here, I haven't actually read the article that India Knight is currently being vilified for. It's behind The Times pay wall and I refuse to financially support them. All I have seen of the article is quoted here on Glosswatch's blog. The first paragraph is, well, at best, questionable. Without reading the rest of the article, I can't really comment on how it ends. What I can see is, that like Moran, Knight's response to criticism on Twitter was really quite dumb. I think they both deserve criticism for their comments. Please note that I say criticism; not full on personal attacks or threats or orchestrated attacks by people who should know better. 

Thing is, I think a lot of the more vitriolic responses that Knight and Moran received are because of misogyny. I'm not trying to excuse them because they both dealt very badly with their respective situations. But, let's be honest here, part of the reason they are getting such a kicking is because they have vaginas. After all, Brendan O'Neill called all child victims of rape, who did not report until after the death of their rapists, cowards. 

He blamed traumatised children for being too scared to tell the truth.

He blamed children when the adults around them knew they were being raped and did nothing.

Yes, Knight and Moran need to be critiqued. Their privilege-denying tweets were utterly ridiculous. But, we need to be holding male journalists accountable for the same shoddy journalism and total lack of self-awareness.

After all, I don't see the Guardian running a response to the shit O'Neill wrote in the Huffington Post. 

Or, anyone calling for massive Twitter campaigns of harassment against O'Neill.*


*Not that I want to see someone do so. Massive public humiliation, threats of violence and intimidation and general insults are playground silencing techniques. It is possible to point out just how stupid and lacking in empathy O'Neill's article was without making snide comments about his appearance.**

** Some might want to take a few minutes to review proper Kindergarten etiquette.