When Penny decided to hire a contract research assistant, blogger Guido Fawkes published a blog post objecting to the advertisement, citing Penny’s payment and recruitment terms as illegal.

The blog post itself was shot through with Guido’s trademark sneering anti-leftist contempt, but was arguably reasonable comment. What took place in the comments section was more unpleasant. While some commenters objected with use of argument, many resorted to sexualised, violent or simply plain misogynistic insults. Here are ten examples, with a screen grab to illustrate each.

1. AngryEnglishJon‘s first reaction was a succinct “Commie bitch“, to which other commenters added jokes about paternal incest and comments on Penny’s sexual desirability:

2. Penny’s popularity on Twitter is then attributed to her being “good in bed“, according to David Davis (This of course is a flippant gag and hardly the most abusive comment in the list. Regardless, it’s a cliché when used about successful young women, so we note it anyway):

3. Righty Right Wing (Mrs) – a commenter who later purports to be female, as though this gives her remarks greater weight – suggests Penny feminises herself and finds a husband:

4. ST complains that Penny does not qualify as the “totty” requested to appear on Guido’s blog:

5. Then it gets darker. Andy B prescribes curative sex for Penny. Two other commenters join in encouragingly:

6. One commenter says he has not heard of Penny. Deep Who explains “She’s one of those plastic lefty lesbo [sic] who actually have pots of cash and love knobs up their flypipe“. Three commenters respond to this description approvingly:

7. Robert Catesby takes the commentary to the next level of rape-as-cure fantasy, with his remark:

8. By this point, some commenters have objected to the tone of the responses. Commenter skunkbuster tries to shut down the argument by implying that it’s standard rough-and-tumble “stick” to which Penny must become accustomed, and that any allegations of “bullying” are an invalid cop-out:

9. Carole, who claims to be a Tory activist, objects openly to the misogyny shown in the comments thread. She is informed by two commenters that the abuse is merely “free speech” and “like life“:

10. Commenters claiming to be female defend the misogyny, which carries the implication that their approval makes it acceptable:

Any high profile political commentator is likely to attract vitriolic opposition from readers, particularly when the abusers are able to shelter beneath the relative anonymity of the comments thread. But if Penny had been a male writer, we wonder how the response might have differed. Your thoughts would be welcomed.

For non-Twitter users, that means it was a fast-spreading meme among users. The hashtag had been used by people as a springboard for home-made jokes. Anyone can then search by clicking the hashtag and seeing what people have done with the idea.

Here’s an example of the kind of comedy this fostered:

If your sides haven’t already ruptured from that slab of hilarity, here’s another:

A Twitter account was promptly set up (we don’t know by whom) called @itsnotrape to tweet anti-rape messages on the same hashtag.

Twitter suspended the account a few hours later, for being spam. Sigh.

No matter. If you click the hashtag at the top today, you’ll see that most of the live feed has filled up with tweets that are far from the original ‘amusing’ rape gags.

Other Twitter users have taken over the hashtag to tweet rape statistics, anti-rape slogans and withering sarcasm (our favourite weapon of mass destruction). Now anyone clicking the tag for some cheap misogynistic chuckles is unavoidably confronted with a mass of sobering information, as well as declarations of disgust.

Like this:

Calmly and without fanfare, and despite the clunky unhelpfulness of Twitter’s deletion policies, the hashtag was subverted from the inside.

Can we say these days that Twitter is one of the forefront public arenas for debate, free speech and political information-sharing? What do you think?

Please stick with us. We’d love to have you around.

More soon…

On the prime-time Saturday night ITV1 show The X Factor, there are four judges. Two are men and two are women.

The women are frequently the subject of articles like this, in The Sun, framing them as rivals to be judged on the basis of looks or fashion choices:

The first line of the article reads “Are you team Dannii or team Cheryl?” The photo caption is “Week one… Dannii’s demure and Cheryl’s shimmering.”

Now, let’s be clear. The programme format itself involves an element of competition, in that each judge heads a separate competing singing group. However, the female judges’ rivalry as described in this article is entirely a looks and style matter. I could not find any examples of the male judges being played off against one another in the media on similarly fatuous criteria. (Please do post a link in the comments if you disagree.)

There are, as UK tabloid readers may have noticed, too many different versions of the above article to mention.

Of course, the publicity machine surrounding major television shows is vast and sophisticated. These stories originate from a publicist, so it’s arguable that the media are only partly responsible for the dissemination. Controversy sells papers and magazines, and it also boosts TV ratings.

But the commercial motivation behind these press releases is not the point. For our purposes, the focus must be on just how frequently women are artificially framed as competitors in media narrative and what effect this has on real women’s lives.

Another example: Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston, highly successful Hollywood actors, always portrayed as bitter rivals, fighting over a cartoonishly hapless hunk who simply happened to move from one to the other.

From Brad Pitt’s mother to Brad Pitt’s dope habit, the two women are eternally locked in combat on the pages of magazines, largely over Pitt himself. “It is well documented that Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston can’t stand each other”, insists the eminent source Playboy.

Their looks, love lives and clothes aren’t all. Even matters such as their careers and finances are viewed through the prism of their Pitt-centric love lives:

In contrast, Pitt appears in the stories to have no agency at all, despite theoretically being at the centre of these long-running disagreements.

Contradicting all of this, Pitt is quoted as saying this purported rivalry is manufactured by the press in the first place.

Female rivalry is a construct so prevalent in celebrity media articles that it is almost impossible to imagine a story about two young, beautiful women in the public eye without one having been pitted against the other somewhere in the narrative.

Gender studies lecturer and author Susan Shapiro Barash sees this as symptomatic of the way women are “trained from an early age to compete with one another“.  Writer Leora Tanenbaum similarly believes that “By definition, the female role is something a woman ‘wins’ at.”

Another interpretation might be that framing any female difference or disagreement as a ‘catfight’ is somewhat erotically-charged notion designed primarily to titillate the onlooker. See the YouTube clip below to witness (a fictional) one of these in full swing.

There is no conclusion to this post, as further examples would fill the entire blog and more. It is simply remarkable how commonplace it is for women to be represented as either/or propositions, not cohorts or buddies or colleagues.

If rivalry is presented as a natural part of female experience, or even the default setting, it must influence every aspect of women’s relationships with one another, and with men. So Misogyny Watch will take special care to pay attention to these artificial rivalry constructs when they appear in the media. Only when this narrative device starts looking artificial do we have a hope of reducing its use in our public spaces. Please do comment or tweet @misogynywatch to let us know when you see prominent examples.

How I learned to love my (very) big bottom – Carol Vorderman is happy with the ‘bigger-than-normal rear asset’ that she’s inherited from her family

Nicola Roberts squeezes into a pair of trendy ‘jeggings’ – The redhead wore the bang on-trend leggings with a denim print

Every other story listed in the Femail article rundown is about clothes, women making “a show of” themselves (getting drunk at parties) or having emotional reactions to relationship issues. There are no exceptions.

These are the news stories the Daily Mail feels are of most relevance to women’s lives on Friday 9 October 2009.

Elsewhere, The Sun carries a brief piece about a new sketch on Funny Or Die which takes as its central point of humour the fact that the former Baywatch actor Nicole Eggert is slightly larger than she was when she appeared in Baywatch. Two men pretend to be drowning in order to attract a sexy lifeguard. Nicole appears, in red bikini, and they are disgusted by her. They eventually drown rather than accept her help. Click the picture to see for yourself:

The first line of the article is “THIS makes a refreshing change – an actress who is prepared to make fun of her own weight gain.” I estimate that this actor is, what, a UK size 12? Not that the specific size is the issue.

But these are just random examples, on an average morning in Britain. If we pulled out every example of this in every British newspaper, we’d be here all day. Women’s magazines and celebrity gossip magazines are similarly focussed on body size and shape. None of this is searing insight. We all know how women’s bodies are policed.

The issue is the inevitable hyper-awareness of physical form that comes from growing up female and seeing how your body is not only the first thing that you are judged on, but the last thing too. More or less, the only thing. If you took your cues from mainstream media – and it’s hard not to, if you live in society – then it’s inescapable. You are what you look like.

These statistics come from the Pink Stinks campaign site:

FACTS
Almost 50% of girls between 5-8 want to be slimmer
British Journal of Developmental Psychology study, 2005

8-15 years olds are more worried about being the right weight (32%) than being popular (20%).
MTV Wellbeing Study, 2005

97% of girls (15-17) feel that changing their appearance would make them happier – body weight and shape being the most cited.
Beyond Stereotypes: Rebuilding the foundation of beauty beliefs, 2006

All these statistics are chilling, but that last one… 97% of 15-17 year old girls think they look wrong and that this visible wrongness is responsible for their less than optimal happiness levels? 97%?*

Perhaps the real question might be: how can anyone be happy if their body is eternally public property? What can we do about it?

(* And can we talk to the happy 3% and see how they’ve managed to escape it? Brilliant work, teens.)

Click the photo to open the original article in a new window, and see for yourself:

Apparently Kate’s first mistake was wearing the leggings while “claiming to be a supermodel”. Her second was wearing them in public, thereby forcing Heat to spend money on a paparazzi zoom lens photograph of the outline of her vulva showing through the pink fabric.

They’re pretty upset about being put in this awkward position:

“We feel like our pupils are actually on fire – but yet we can’t stop staring! … No wonder Jamie Hince looks a bit alarmed. We’d be terrified too if that was advancing towards us.”

It’s disgusting! It’s an offence to the innocent onlooker! The onlooker who would love to turn away, but is prevented by the sheer explicitness of the anatomical display! For everyone’s sake, Heat must intervene. Even if it means risking their ophthalmic health.

“Our eyes! Our eyes! Good GOD.”

A thinly-veiled cock, on the other hand, is absolutely fine.

(Again, click to view the original.)