Damned if you do ...

[UncleEbenezer]

Thursday's "today in Parliament".

They trailed a clip of some woman MP telling with outrage how some male MP had made some bad-taste joke about hot flushes. Sounded pretty gross.

Then towards the end of the actual programme, we got some context. The part trailed was preceded by her saying she was wearing a badge about some menopause campaign. Well, come on, that's bloomin' well soliciting jokes on the subject! She'd have been outraged ("see, they just don't care") if the men had just ignored the badge. Given that context, surely the bad taste was nothing worse than a bit clumsy.

Then there was some whipping of the men: we should ask women to pour out their hearts to us about it. Dammit, if we started doing any such thing we'd be lucky to get away with nothing worse than a slap and a label of pervert!

[stevensfo]

They trailed a clip of some woman MP telling with outrage how some male MP had made some bad-taste joke about hot flushes. Sounded pretty gross.

It is gross. Years ago in France, we had a plumber connect our toilet to the hot pipe by mistake ( a new house and apparently the pipes all ran under the bath and he didn't check).

For the next month we had nothing but hot flushes and it's not nice. So if this is in some way an insult to mentally-challenged french plumbers then yes, he should resign.

Not quite sure where the menopause comes into it. Anyhow, it's all outrageous, we all feel offended and it's gone viral, so maybe they should both resign?

Steve

[bungeejumper]

Then there was some whipping of the men: we should ask women to pour out their hearts to us about it. Dammit, if we started doing any such thing we'd be lucky to get away with nothing worse than a slap and a label of pervert!

Aaah, I remember the time when French and Saunders (I think?) started introducing some rather explicit period jokes into their stand-up routines. The women in the audience would cackle; the men would freeze, uncertain as to whether they were supposed to laugh as well, or whether that would make them perverts. Fortunately, everyone seemed to be agreed that periods were men's fault in some way or other. The bastards.

BJ

[UncleEbenezer]

Then there was some whipping of the men: we should ask women to pour out their hearts to us about it. Dammit, if we started doing any such thing we'd be lucky to get away with nothing worse than a slap and a label of pervert!

Aaah, I remember the time when French and Saunders (I think?) started introducing some rather explicit period jokes into their stand-up routines. The women in the audience would cackle; the men would freeze, uncertain as to whether they were supposed to laugh as well, or whether that would make them perverts. Fortunately, everyone seemed to be agreed that periods were men's fault in some way or other. The bastards.

BJ

Ah, they were comedians, right? So their bullying of (half) an audience might reasonably be taken in the spirit of, say, Groucho Marx's wisecracks at everyone's expense.

Reflecting on this since posting, this was terrible bullying by the woman of the man. And she's the one in the position of power: not so much because she's an MP, but because she's the one who automatically gets portrayed as the wronged victim when reported by the likes of the BBC.

[Slarti]

[Aaah, I remember the time when French and Saunders (I think?) started introducing some rather explicit period jokes into their stand-up routines. The women in the audience would cackle; the men would freeze, uncertain as to whether they were supposed to laugh as well, or whether that would make them perverts.

Get it right, some men in the audience would freeze in embarrassment/confusion/whatever, while others would get the joke and never even think if they should or shouldn't laugh. For me, if the joke was funny to me, I laughed, if it wasn't I didn't.

And if you thought they were a bit rough, you should have seen Marti Cane before she cleaned up he act to do New Faces

Slarti

[Rhyd6]

I remember a female supervisor I had when I first joined the civil service, she was ex army and not to be trifled with. One day she was particularly cranky and one of the men made a crack about her being "one the change" as it was referred to in those days, her answer "well at least my change will be for the better you, on the otherhand, will remain a grade A idiot for the rest of your life". That's how we women (proper women not the perpetually offended) deal with such situations.

R6

I dread to think how some women today would have coped with a night out at Bernard Manning's club