October 24, 2009

Causes and Effects

Posted in Conservatives, Education, Feminism and Gender Equality, Media, Political Philosophy, Politics, Society at 11:56 am by Paul Sagar

I’m substantially editing this post because I got some stuff wrong in the original version. I think my core contention stands, but I got there through faulty reasoning. The altered version is below. H/T to Grace and Peter for forcing me to get clear on this. Unfortunately, the original version containing logical fallacy has gone up at Liberal Conspiracy already.

Additions and alterations in bold.

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I’ve already commented frequently about the fact of gender inequality in our society, but also of the fact most people just don’t see it.

But it’s always good to have up-to-date examples.

Take Amanda Platell, writing in the Daily Mail, for example:

“All the more so when Labour’s own experiment with female shortlists proved to be so disastrous.

Has Cameron learned nothing from the catastrophe that was Blair’s Babes – the female intake of the 1997 election?

Remember Ruth Kelly? Jacqui Smith? Caroline Flint? As with so many Labour ladies, they turned out to be stunningly incompetent or ill-suited for high office. It was a national embarrassment.”

As Sunder at Next Left points out (h/t owed for the above), neither Kelly, Smith nor Flint were actually selected via women-only shortlists. So Platell’s article commits a basic error of fact, if her argument is that all-women shortlists returned particular examples of bad MPs. on that front, although it is true that Jacqui Smith was selected from an All-Women Shortlist (AWS).

But the Daily Mail has never been particularly troubled by the petty business of accuracy in reporting, so nothing new there. And nothing new in the Mail’s raving misogyny, either. But it’s worth reflecting on the nature of that misogyny.

Platell’s reasoning (if it deserves the name) appears to be this: there were some bad women MPs who were selcted from AWSs, ergo all-women shortlists are a bad idea, because they will return bad MPs.

Imagine the logic, applied to men:

“All the more when the United Kingdom’s centuries-old practice of either only – or overwhelmingly (in recent years) - selecting men to be MPs has proved to be so disastrous”

“Has Cameron learned nothing from the catastrophe that was the last 400 years of Parliamentary supremacy?”

“Remember Anthony Eden? Neil Hamilton? David Amess? As with so many Tory gentlemen, they turned out to be stunningly incompetent or ill-suited for high office. It was a national embarrassment.”

The reasoning is patently preposterous. The idea that men are ill-suited to be MPs because there have been bad male MPs is laughable. It’s hard to believe anyone would even think about putting the above into print, or that it wouldn’t be laughed out of town if they did.

Yet this treatment is applied to women, in a national newspaper with a circulation of nearly 2 and a quarter million. Again, the Mail’s misogynistic editorial line is nothing new; that’s not primarily what I want to point towards. Instead, let’s reflect upon the fact that this sort of unashamed misogyny and idiocy passes with millions of people not batting an eyelid. That means that Platell’s absurd and sexist reasoning is, to a large extent, symptomatic of a society which is not only tolerant – but must in some ways, itself actualise – basic, unashamed misogyny of Platell’s sort. (Of course, the story rapidly gets more complicated: the Mail is not just an effect, but also in some measure a cause, of the entrenched sexism which makes Platell-style nonesense socially acceptable. More on that in a minute).

Originally, I wanted to argue the following: Platell’s claim that all women shortlists returned bad MPs is based on misogyny, because nobody would point to the fact that the present electoral system returns bad MPs as proof that the present electoral system is undesirable. I implied that these examples were ‘symmetric’, and therefore what had to be doing the work in explaining how Platell could get away with her comments about Smith et al vis-a-vis women’s shortlists was an underlying sexism which tolerated one set of judgements against women, which are not applied to men.

That line of reasoning, upon reflection, cannot be maintained as definitely correct. For consider: Platell could reply that all she aimed to show was that AWSs returned poorer candidates, because they widened the pool of selection to those who were under-qualified. She could cite as her evidence the presence and career of Jacqui Smith.

Now this is different from saying that because there are bad MPs elected on the present system without gender-specific shortlists (e.g. Alan Duncan, say), therefore the present system is undesirable. The important difference is that Platell could claim that 1) returning some bad MPs is an inescapable consequence of any selection/election procedure, but 2) that AWS are more likely to return bad MPs than a system without gender shortlists.

Now, we may think this is a very bad argument. Platell’s evidence would have to be numerous cases of bad MPs who happen to have been selected via AWSs, and she would have to show that overall, the proportion of bad MPs returned by AWS was higher than on the non-shortlisting system. I doubt she can do that, and certainly simply pointing to Jacqui Smith (and erroneously, Flint and Kelly) doesn’t achieve it. But that’s not to say it couldn’t be done (though defining “bad MP” is going to be messy). 

However, it’s not a gendered distinction. The argument rests upon a claim about AWSs returning worse MPs than the non-AWSs system, and that can be gender-blind.

Now, I happen to think that in the original piece Platell wrote there were misogynistic undertones, and I also happen to think that the reason many people didn’t balk at Platell’s remarks but would balk at my XY-rendered version of it is because of deep-seated attitudes constitutive of gender inequality, rather than sophisticated technical arguments as outlined above. But I can’t prove that, and it stands that I was wrong to imply that Platell’s piece necessarily rests upon misogynistic attitudes (even if I suspect it did, given where it was published and remarks Platell uses like “so many Labour ladies” – regardless of whether these “Labour ladies” were selected by short list or not).

So what happens to my original over-all thesis, that there are examples in the media of the misogynistic treatment of women which illustrate a deep-seated cultural misogyny? Fortunately, it is not much affected, as thanks to Peter I can supply another example, here. The article by James Slack (which I’ve discussed before), is, as Peter says, probably as bad as Moir’s one about Stephen Gately. So my over-all thesis can continue unabated, thanks to Peter’s supplying an alternative case-study.

If our society wasn’t so tolerant of misogyny to begin with, articles like Platell’s/Slack’s wouldn’t be standard fare for the Mail. Indeed, we have a case in point. Last week the Mail’s long-running homophobia reached an apex with Jan Moir’s horrific article on the death of Stephen Gately. And Britain kicked back, hard. The Mail certainly went “too far”. But it wasn’t a simple case of there being a timeless, unmoving line which the Mail had crossed. Rather, society has changed to the point where huge numbers of people will no longer tolerate the Mail’s homophobic hate in such manifestly blatant and vicious forms: the line the Mail crossed has moved.

Of course, the Mail will still run lie-filled pieces of homophobia, claiming that (for example) gay adoption harms children (for which there is bascially zero evidence). But the point about the Jan Moir fall-out is that some things are now unacceptable before the court of public opinion, and full-throttle aggressive homophobia is now one of them. Social change on matters of ingrained prejudice is therefore possible. The Mail finds itself having to adjust to altered circumstances.

We’ve a long way to go, of course. But we mustn’t view the Mail as simply a determinant of social attitudes towards gender (and sexuality), through its influence on a predominantly right-wing middle-class readership. It may itself shape a lot of nasty views, but we should not be over-simplistic (and pessimistic) in our analysis: the Mail is in turn shaped by what our society will and will not tolerate. One day maybe our society will move to the point where blatantly misogynistic reasoning is as derided as unfounded smears on a gay man’s life and  death. Accordingly, articles like Platell’s/Slack’s will generate as much outrage as Moir’s did should they even make it into print.

We’re a long way from that day, to be sure. And the battle must go on. But the fall-out from Moir is cause for hope: change is possible; the Mail must adapt as well as dictate.

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