Newspeak from the Next PM

It was thoroughly depressing to hear from Keir Starmer following the D-Day celebrations this week. He said:

Before the event I went down just to look at the beaches where those young men and women ran up on D-Day and I found that very humbling to just think of the bravery: they were under fire as they came ashore

For heaven sake! Does he not know that there were no women running up the beach on D-Day under fire?[1] Presumably, he reckons that “young men and women” sounds better than “young men”, and is perfectly happy to trash what could have been a respectful occasion with his politically correct woke nonsense.

But it is worse than that. Anxious, presumably, not to be out woked by Starmer, the Prime Minister for the time being, Rishi Sunak, issued a tweet saying:

The 80th anniversary of D-Day has been a profound moment to honour the brave men and women who put their lives on the line to protect our values, our freedom and our democracy.

In those weaselly words, Sunak implied without saying as much that women were in the front line on that day. Of course women (including my mother, who drove an ambulance in London during that war) made a very significant contribution during the Second World War in numerous support roles. But they did not take part in the D-Day landings.

But it gets worse still. The Telegraph included a piece with the headline:

D-Day 80: We Were There, review: the memories of the Normandy heroes still deserve to be heard

Now in their nineties and older, the men and women who landed on the beaches on D-Day gave moving testimony in BBC Two’s documentary

One might think that Keir Starmer is not very well informed, but The Torygraph! Happily, Max Hastings is not dead, but if he were, he would, one might think, be turning in his grave at this appallingly slack journalism.[2]

Does it matter that the politicians and the newspapers are prepared to say things which are manifestly untrue as a matter of well documented fact in support of some neo-religious dogma? Well, yes it does, actually.

And

Misogyny or feminism? Which is worse?

Clearly, misogyny is unattractive, dumb and unkind to women.  There is no need for me here to expand on this proposition.

But it seems to me that feminism is just as bad, causing damage which is more indirect but equally invidious.

One problem with feminism, of course, is that it typically equates equality of opportunity with equality of outcome.  Some feminists purport to understand this concept in the abstract, but they almost always abandon it in the application. Similarly, feminists will not infrequently acknowledge that there are some material differences between men and women, both in terms of the body and the brain (you might reasonably say here that the brain is part of the body. But that is really another way of making the same point). But again, this acknowledgement tends to evaporate in the application.

Another problem with feminism is its implicit assumption that if a man acknowledges a woman’s attractiveness, then that must necessarily infer that he fails to appreciate her other qualities. In fact, the opposite is true. If a man finds a woman sexually attractive, he is more likely – not less likely – to think her intelligent, witty and good company.  Especially if he is at liberty to acknowledge how he feels, rather than keep those feelings buttoned up as a guilty secret.