Two tits good, two balls bad.

I wonder when George Orwell will be put on a government sponsored 'banned' list for schools, on the basis of insighting sedition?

...and when will I learn how to spell 'inciting'?

You old sexist pig you.

Well, did you withdraw your comments on Jacqui Smith? I hope not.

I remember a meeting in the early 1980s addressed by Professor Bernard Williams concerning his committee's recently published report on pornography. A noisy group of feminists heckled him continually and shouted everybody else down. Then they stalked out, announcing that they were going to a meeting in another part of the building to listen to a famous American feminist anti-pornographer. Some of us said that sounded interesting, and we would go along with them. "Oh no you can't", they said, "you're men, and it's a women-only meeting!"

What's "hard" about the Hard Left? Their brains are as mushy as marshmallows.

"You know, I make no claim to being politically correct. So I can say that, if I were married to Jacqui Smith, I would probably use a lot of porn too."

And you wonder why you were sacked. Grow up Craig.

George Orwell's "1984" was banned in the Irish State up to the 1967 reform of the censorship laws.

Hold the front page. Hard left has no sense of humour, shock horror. Brave of you to say that Craig. I grew up in the Hackney Labour Party of the eighties, which was a very different kettle of fish to today's party, and the feminists were in the ascendant. The fact that many of them were men-hating lesbians seemed somehow congruent with the fact that were also very ugly.

A. Margaret Thatcher donned headdress and a veil on a visit to ensure money from Saudi Arabia, so Eastern culture was respected.
B. After the war with Kuwait was declared, there were contractual obligations to sell arms to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and in the Matrix Churchill scandal the British Government continued arms sales while at war with Iraq, so western legal culture was respected.
C. Now, the University of Dundee is agonising how it is going to teach in an Arab country and honour Eastern and Western cultures at the same time. Judging from A and B above, obviously dress in traditional garb, then just take the money.

No doubt, the University will ultimately follow the money trail, otherwise, I would be very surprised that a point of high principle did prevail over considerations of financial necessity.

You lost your job Craig, because you placed the cart of principle before the horse of money. Are you again here not adequately weighing how the University is going to pull itself out of the financial doldrums – what is your solution when things boil down to these types of extreme choices? Accept the money or reject the gender segregation ( because that is what it is). Now make a clear choice – since you have no escape route and have here solicited bloggers advice – come on what is your answer? If you don’t answer convincingly, then I will lay down the law that on a point of principle you must immediately resign your position with the University of Dundee – that is the correct logical conclusion – so there!

The danger with porn is that you might impregnate Jacqui via sensual deception, and give birth to something that would never have been aesthetically conceived...

Joe99, what say you?

Jimmy:

I'm just waiting for Craig to tell the one about the Hassan al Banna visiting a gay brothel in the Vatican at the next Scottish Islamic Foundation conference.

Hello, I was there (as a Green Party delegate).

When you said this I have to say I grimaced as I knew it was going to provoke a negative response and so I wasn't very surprised by the reaction by Elaine Heffernan from the floor (someone who was once dubbed "innane hefferlump" which I thought was very cruel).

However, you're right most of the hall laughed and the reaction against was a complete over reaction - very thought police-y. Your speech wasn't full of sexist jokes it was a ballistic response to one single remark.

I fail to see how they can be for a broad movement and then insist everyone conforms to one idea of how you're meant to speak. Oh well.

I'm sorry to hear you were harrangued on your way out and that even if you don't feel you can still engage with the stop the war coalition it wont lessen your involvement in the movement that it attempts to represent (which it sometimes does very well, and sometimes does pretty poorly).

Sadly, I am afraid we do have gender imbalance...we men simply lost !

"but when I left I was harangued on the stairs by a young woman who made Jacqui Smith look positively alluring."
Whilst I agree that the reaction to your speech was indicative of a lack of a sense of humour, the above remark seems merely gratuitous.

-- Are you again here not adequately weighing how the University is going to pull itself out of the financial doldrums – what is your solution when things boil down to these types of extreme choices? --

The answer should be clear: Fiat justitia ruat caelum.

Davie,

Of course it is. It's a deliberate wind-up.

These women are sex-negative. There are also sex-positive feminists. They are less controlling. STW has been inundated, even usurped, by SWP: Socialist Workers Party, an organisation notorious for entering newly developing grassroots movements and controlling them. It is no surprise they "get into bed" (isn't that a choice metaphor) with sex-negative feminists.

These sex-negative feminists will always hate men because the motive they are responding to has its roots not in enlightened equality but in the age-old power women enjoy over men, namely sexual power, which turns on their ability to make men feel ashamed for what they are and for their sexual desires.

Feminists in the mould of the original Mary Wollstonecraft, following on from the liberalism of Mill, do not have an agenda of control. Theirs is one of freedom. Therefore they have no need to hate and control men. Theirs is a principle of enlightened equality for all human beings, not the untrammeled expansion of power for women over men. They don't need to hate men or sex.

Well, Craig, you're political incorrectness gone mad - so we must make allowances.

I broadly agree with you but I do find that when a lighthearted salvo is fired on the web in the war of the sexes, and the women dare to fire back, it does tend to unleash a torrent of misogyny much of which goes beyond a joke.

I think that it's a generational thing. The world has moved on a lot since the 1980s battle of the sexes, and moved on again since the nineties/noughties lad/ladette thing. I wonder if we might now be about to emerge into a altogether better new era. But our generation will be stuck in the past of 70s/80s attitudes, which were themselves a reaction against the pretty gross sexism of the 60s and before, which nobody would want to return to.

'If I were married to Jacqui Smith, I would probably use a lot of porn too.'

If I were married to Jacqui Smith's husband I would probably use a lot of porn too.

Everybody happy?

PS I am not married and I don't use porn, just the occasional bathplug or two.

I think both of your comments were
more looksist than sexist. Sexist in the sense that women should look sexy to men I suppose. I'd probably reserve those jokes for after dinner speeches myself. No point in risking any damage to your credibility.

Too many campaigners are humourless, but that doesn't mean that those of us who aren't should feel free to poke fun where we know it won't be appreciated. The deplorable consequence of doing so is that attitudes which should merely be deplored as bad taste, and dismissed with a shrug, end up being criminalised in the false guise of "hate speech" and everyone's freedom is diminished. I abhor 'Political Correctness', but I do try to avoid being deliberately provocative.

Mary Wollstonecraft, btw, flourished and wrote in the 18th century - John Stuart Mill and his wife in the mid-19th. So she was the true pioneer of enlightened feminism.

Well said, Strategist. Personally I am in two minds on political correctness: I think in general I would rescue it from the negative image painted by the tabloids and remember that the original idea was to discourage the growth of discriminatory ideology by avoiding stereotype-reinforcing language. But the original idea has been largely forgotten, and instead we suffer a few fools who think that 'blackboard' is racially discriminatory.

Were I in that audience I would have laughed too: I am a male feminist, but not of the angry variety. What a shame that a representative of StWC - I speak as a contributing member - would be so rude to an invited speaker.

I guess it is an example of the inability to sensibly prioritise different categories of belief. It reminds me of when I was collecting signatures against the occupation of Iraq some years ago. One angry women clearly wanted to sign, but went on her way shouting at us because we'd not used hemp paper.

Anyway, I am somewhat amused at anyone who would defend Jacqui Smith on feminist grounds. Her nasty politics of the neo-conservative right are, to my mind at least, a subconscious demonstration that she can be as mean as the boys. Feminists should be championing anyone who opposes the politics of patriarchy - which surely does not include the Home Secretary.

Hi Craig,
I suspected it might be a wind up - excuse my po-facedness. It's a long way down from a high horse.

Jon wrote:

"Feminists should be championing anyone who opposes the politics of patriarchy"

How many fathers do you know, who would agree to the indoctrinal use of Ritalin on their sons?

How many feminists do you know, who would not resort to such tools?

Jon,

Actually, I am against all forms of disadvantage on grounds of race, gender etc.

Where I differ is that I view sexuality (as opposed to gender) as simply another attribute and as open to use and to humour as any other.

As a teen I shovelled coal on a coalyard at weekends. In the course of the day men might easily lift and carry fifty tons of coal on their back, in hundredweight lots. I do not view that as any less explotation of the bodies than the work a prostitute does. And I don't view clerical drudgery as essentially different.

Actually, am I alone in thinking Ms Smith a tad hot? Perhaps it is that cleavage at the dispatch box - the combination of sex and power. Whoa.

I am not really with you on that one - not my type, more Max Mosley's, I suspect - but neither is it really her physical appearance I was referring to. She could look like the young Carla Bruni, but with her politics and personality I wouldn't want to spend time with her.

If you squint, Harriet Harman can look quite tasty; especially if you're squinting behind an ice hockey mask, and wielding a chain saw.

lol at JimmyG

@JimmyGiro - you forgot a third category. What would be the position of people who are both feminists *and* fathers? :o)

@Craig:

> Where I differ is that I view sexuality (as opposed
> to gender) as simply another attribute and as
> open to use and to humour as any other.

That's fair enough, and for clarification, my comment wasn't designed as a criticism! Just reflecting on the PC debate in general.

Admittedly, I can see how the feminists saw the comment in gender terms: (a) a woman seemed to be being judged on the basis of her attractiveness, and perhaps even (b) a statement was being made on the acceptability of pornography. However, you were doing neither, which is what your hecklers missed entirely.

Daily Maybe makes a some good point: surely if 99% of a speech is fully agreed with, one would have to be an extremely difficult character to fulminate over the 1%. I have made the same mistake too, though thankfully not in a speech!

I do hope StWC invite you back. They do need to stay a broad church, despite the "popular frontism" sniping of the communists. The movement won't get anywhere with that attitude.

I don't want to stray too off-topic from the point of the post, but am interested in the point about the fall-away of ordinary support from the anti-war movements. Is that just because those folks have felt that after protesting a few times, with no resultant British withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq, that they might as well give up? I guess the reasons might be many and varied, but it's the only one I can think of.

"@JimmyGiro - you forgot a third category. What would be the position of people who are both feminists *and* fathers? :o)"

Under the thumb?

'If I were married to Jacqui Smith, I would probably use a lot of porn too.'

If I were married to Jack Straw, I would probably make extensive use of a vibrator.

What on *earth* was all the fuss about?

I like the sound of Mary Wollstonecraft. That's the kind of feminist I was back around 1970. Very different from the man-hating, aggressive types I see on the net today (many of them in North America for some reason.)

dreoilin wrote:

"What on *earth* was all the fuss about?"

Craig rang a bell, and some feminist salivated.

Jon As of today we are out of Iraq so you could argue that STWC is 50% there - not that their point of view made a blind bit of difference.

@Dreolin

After the chainsaw, presumably.

The Hands Off the People of Iran is not in good odour with the Stop the War Campaign leadership because it (HOPI) is, within its opposition to military attacks and economic sanctions on Iran, very hostile to the Iranian regime, which it sees as repressive and unpleasant to the population of Iran. This, for some reason, upsets the people at the top of the Stop the War Campaign.

In a sense, it is a squabble amongst people on the hard left, but, as a HOPI member, I feel that it is necessary to condemn the Iranian regime whenever it oppresses workers, women, national minorities, etc, etc, alongside opposing Western military and economic action against Iran.

I no longer see female executives on the motorway, copying men in powerful cars, usually with a slightly flat tyre to remind us of their underlying vulnerability, and maybe a few less well-heeled young ladies in the middle lane oblivious to all as they gossip on their mobiles. The recession has resulted in essential-only journeys: family visits and people going to work.

The politically incorrect are having to mind their p's and q's now just to get employment. Maybe the scarcity of people at the stop the war coalition meeting is because Obama's peace slobber has temporarily confused the punters, especially those colourfully dressed Quaker ladies who believe in the power of that kind of talk.

Having been involved with some of the above types of women I can tell you that a Muslim wife is an asset of pure gold, definitely another species to the likes of sour Smith and barmy Blears.

Who cares what "the people at the top of the Stop the War Campaign" and the addlebrained SWPers and other 'hard left' groupuscules think? These people are mosquitos on the political elephant.

I think the question really is, does it help or hinder the broader points you're making if you intersperse them with asides, however brief, that essentially come down to: "also, my political opponent is ugly and I would not have sex with her. Haw haw."

You've been a public speaker long enough now, I presume, to realise that it can be the little throwaway asides that get lodged in people's minds. That might not be the intellectually optimal outcome but it sure as shinola is an accurate reflection of the way people think. Why resort, in the middle of a speech that everyone present agrees with, to the kind of schoolyard rhetoric which you must have been aware would cause a ruckus.

Being "PC" in the parlance of the tabloids is what we used to call "basic politeness" before the white male backlash had its way and convinced a generation of privileged people that personally insulting people based on their class was a mark of intellectual courage. You wonder why comments like that can upset people so? Because from their point of view it says this: "I may well have presented a cohesive viewpoint that seems to be on your side, but when it comes down to it I still have no reservations with defining a woman in terms of whether I would have sex with her or not." Militant and ugly or not, we always throw up our hands at this because it's not necessary and it does nothing except point out that you think there's nothing wrong with indulging in a bit of sexist banter now and then - just for fun, though, right?

You say it wasn't her physical appearance you were referring to, but it doesn't take a genius to realise that is how it would come across. Criticising people for not getting the many levels of subtext buried beneath a petty insult smacks of sour grapes.

And "it's just a joke" can't excuse everything. Had you made a joke about Barack Obama loving him some fried chicken I'm sure you would have come in for just as much public opprobrium. More importantly, I hope you'd realise that such a joke would be outside the bounds of good taste and therefore not suitable for throwing in as an aside to "tease the left", no matter how funny or light hearted you believed it to be.

The problem is, and this is something that a lot of men don't necessarily *get* because it doesn't happen to them, is that "minority" classes struggle to deal not just with their reputation as private individuals but with the reputation of their class. Driving is a quick and easy example. If you see a man crash his car into a wall the natural response is rarely "pfft, male drivers, eh? They should stay in the shed." Women - and blacks, muslims, homosexuals etc - constantly find themselves under scrutiny not just for what their actions say about them but what their actions say about everyone they are being lumped into. Thus when a person takes offense that person is lumped into a discounted group, those "angry" feminists who are insufficiently quiet and who have the audacity to tell men that they're being rude. And when confronted by such a person, the natural reaction appears to be to lump that person into the group with Jacqui Smith - "her point may have been valid or invalid, but before we get to that, did I mention that I wouldn't have sex with her?" And we needed that information why, exactly, to help us with our value judgement of her personality?

I hope you see what I'm driving at here. Maybe not. I'm sure JimmyGiro will come in to point out that I am "under the thumb," "sex hating" or possibly some variation of not a real man or something, but then, he seems to have some kind of autistic spectrum disorder that keeps him as a kind of petulant man-child, spouting nonsense about he's soooo underprivileged, because everyone knows the mark of equality is when you can insult someone and they can't tell you that you're being rude.

But really, what you did here was stand on a public platform and said you wouldn't send Obama out to pick your watermelons for fear he'd steal them, and then described the people who criticised you for it as uppity. Think about it in those terms. Still just a funny joke?

I am vehemently against "hate speech" laws and PC-speak excesses, but I also deplore bad taste. Surely it is taste, and the wish not to offend gratuitously, which is the mark of the civilised person (dare I say "gentleman"?)

As I belong to at least two minorities who are commonly insulted and treated with opprobrium (gays and atheists), am I not entitled to protest at rude jibes about either? It's not a matter for censorship; it's about tolerance and social justice.

I really don't understand why an idiot on another thread thinks it's useful or relevant - whether true or not - to accuse Craig of being a closet homosexual. What interests me about Craig is his politics, not his sexuality. He can enjoy having sex with three baboons whilst hanging from the ceiling for all I care. I would think no worse of him for it.

Boys you really need to go lie down somewhere very quiet and stay there til you get over the ”feminist” who turned you down! Its alright the world won't end just cos a couple of women forgot our place and expressed an opinion critical of an important man

I don't understand what you're moaning about? If you make a sexist remark at the annual conference of a coalition to the left of politics in this country, expect to get challenged over it.

What you shouldn't do is repeat such bullshit on your blog, along with the frankly abusive remarks above about a young woman's looks and insinuating that women who are angry about your views are just 'mad feminists'.

A racist comment would not have been tolerated, and nor should a sexist comment. Sorry Craig, I think you're a remarkable and courageous person, but really you should know that a remark of that nature would not go down well on the left who treat sexism with the contempt that it deserves. You should have apologised, or explained that no sexism was intended if that was the case, but instead you have come away with a slightly bruised ego and chosen to make further offensive comments about females at the conference. What a shame. I am sure you are not 'persona non grata' in the eyes of Stop the War (I don't believe they are that foolish) but obviously this will cause a rift if it can't be nipped in the bud now, and infighting benefits nobody but the warmongers and the torturers.

"but when I left I was harangued on the stairs by a young woman who made Jacqui Smith look positively alluring."
Whilst I agree that the reaction to your speech was indicative of a lack of a sense of humour, the above remark seems merely gratuitous.
-----------------------------------------
Agree with this. Very disappointing rhetoric from Craig Murray and a million miles away from the qualities that has made him a hero in the eyes of so many. Please stop this now.

I'm not going to feign shock-horror at Craig's comment. Not just because it's a relatively trivial incident in itself (hardly the basis for a split in the antiwar movement) but because everyone who has read his book or just read the newspapers knows that he is not "politically correct". There are less flattering ways to put that, but the point is that I'm not surprised that Craig would make a joke like this. I am bit surprised he would make the mistake of presenting it to an audience of leftwingers, and not expect someone to challenge it. And also a bit depressed by the stock response to being challenged on this sort of comment by a woman (which is to impugn the appearance of the challenger: cf., Billy Connolly joking that his response to a feminist was: "I thought you were the plumber"). I do think this reflects a feeling that many men have of being entitled to sexist jokes, to the extent that they expect not to be criticised for it.

Even more surprising is the jurassic quality of some of the comments in this thread. It is very easy, and obviously very tempting for some, to lampoon offended responses to sexism as just the humourless hysteria of the hard left. Such was the typical response to serious anti-racist and anti-sexist activism during the 1980s: you can't say anything with the loony left breathing down your neck. It was probably a good alibi while it lasted, but I don't think anti-sexism is the preserve of the hard left any more. I can imagine any Guardian-reading liberal, and probably quite a few Tories for that matter, being just as offended. Atrocity tales about Trots and radical feminists are no longer as potent as they were.