Many slurs such as Karen, witch and Harpy aren't from men but self-righteous ... trends now
Oh, I’ve been called all the names. ‘Pearl-clutching middle-aged prude’ came first — live on air from a male radio presenter. My crime? Arguing that pornography does incalculable damage to women and children, indeed to the world.
A Left-wing man denounced me as an ‘old witch’ on Facebook — all because I’d suggested mildly that even if you disliked Boris Johnson, his address to a packed Ukrainian cathedral in London (not long after Putin invaded) was moving and brilliant.
Then comes the more modern insult, ‘Karen’: a middle-aged white woman who — shock, horror — has opinions. I was recently smeared as a ‘Karen’ on social media by a beautiful, young, black businesswoman. What had I done? Taken issue with an assumption that Megs and Hazza are brave saints, victims of racist Britain.
Last but not least is ‘Terf’. As someone who has stood up for women’s rights against the ‘trans’ takeover of our spaces, our language, our identity, being called a ‘Trans-exclusionary radical feminist’ was par for the course. Bring it on. Broomsticks to the barricades!
Last but not least is ‘Terf’. As someone who has stood up for women’s rights against the ‘trans’ takeover of our spaces, our language, our identity, being called a ‘Trans-exclusionary radical feminist’ was par for the course
A Left-wing man denounced me as an ‘old witch’ on Facebook — all because I’d suggested mildly that even if you disliked Boris Johnson, his address to a packed Ukrainian cathedral in London (not long after Putin invaded) was moving and brilliant
Needless to say, I stored up all the curses with a witchy cackle and added them to the bubbling cauldron of wicked spells stirred by my fellow hags.
But to doff my pointy hat for a moment, I have to admit I’m now well beyond these names that spurn a woman in middle age. No, this punchy granny identifies as a veritable crone. So call me a prude, a witch, a Karen, a Terf — even a harridan and a harpy — I’m much too leathery to care.
The trouble is, my slightly younger sisters do care. They care very much. So why is hating middle-aged women the last acceptable prejudice? Why should women in their mid-40s suddenly feel targets of disdain for expressing their opinions? For centuries, we were supposed to accept our status as second-class citizens — and if you think that stopped in the 21st century, you need a wake-up potion.
Women are used to men putting them down. But what happens when other women join in? As a provocative new book claims, these days, younger women seem to loathe us older women for our un-progressive views.
As someone who considers herself on the right side of the word ‘liberal’, it gives me no pleasure to note that the liberal-Left (women and men alike), who think themselves so virtuous and ‘kind’, in fact have the monopoly on abuse.
In her new book Hags, the journalist Victoria Smith has written a devastating and clever critique of why and how older women like herself (not yet 50!) seem to be dismissed as morally inferior to the open-minded, sexually tolerant younger generation.
They are the ones who diminish the brutal reality of prostitution by calling it ‘sex work’, see nothing wrong with students regarding digital stripping as a career option and chorus ‘trans women are women’ with all the fervent piety of acolytes at the altar.
Smith traces hostile attitudes back to primitive fears of older women that demonised the crone at the end of the village. She may have been a herbalist who handed out wisdom and cures — but she was a threat. So find the witch! Burn the hag!
Smith asks why is this kind of demonisation so prevalent now? Why the rage, ageism and misogyny?
My baby-boomer generation wanted everything and thought we had it. But 1960s feminists like me grew older, had children and realised the world is far more complicated than we thought.
Why did Emma Watson join Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint in disassociating herself from the great J.K. Rowling — the Harry Potter author without whose stupendous creativity they (indifferent actors all) would not have got such lucky breaks as children and subsequently amassed millions?
That progression seems to have happened to the author of Hags, too. All through her book, Smith reflects ruefully on her youthfully progressive views and assumptions, compared to the reality today.
One aspect of that reality is younger men showing contempt for older women. The old hags are no longer fertile or fanciable. They’ve grown into feisty old bags who stand up — using reason plus emotion — to challenge the progressive status quo.
And we are called ‘bigots’ for our pains. Posturing drag queens in schools and libraries, sex-education that brainwashes children to think there are any number of genders, the ubiquity of loathsome, woman-hating pornography which schoolboys can access at a click? All this turns mothers into militants and grannies into (imaginary) gunslingers. Older women unite under a banner that screams: ‘NO!’
But here’s the difficult question. Why do some other women hold back? Why do we see, on a recent episode of TV’s Loose Women, four professional women fawning shamefully over the trans activist and model Munroe Bergdorf?
They did not ask a single question when Bergdorf praised the trans charity Mermaids — notorious for lobbying clinicians at the now-discredited NHS Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock clinic — recommending early interventions on children.
The damage done to these unfortunate youngsters has still not been quantified. Nothing of that on Loose Women. Those idiots just wanted to play ‘nice’.
Why do so many intelligent young women bow down
