Holmes is not a Topman

During one of my usual episodes of procrastination in the library last week, I came across two stories in the news that caught my eye. Neither story was particularly important or life changing and if I hadn’t come across them together, I probably wouldn’t have given them much thought. Yet combined they made me realise something: while we take great pride in apparently not being racist, sexist or homophobic, we can still ‘accidentally’ be damn inconsiderate to these issues.

The two stories in question concerned how we view, as a nation, of women. The first was Eamonn Holmes’ (presenter of This Morning) rather distasteful comments made to an interviewee and rape victim, asking her why she hadn’t bothered to take a taxi rather than walk home alone. The second story to catch my eye was the appalling t-shirts that Topman have produced, making light of domestic violence.

In neither case do I think that sexism or offence was intended. Eamonn Holmes has been known to blurt out the occasional less-than-acceptable remark, but I don’t think he was blaming the victim for her own rape, as some charities have claimed.

The Topman case was also probably more an error of judgement and misplaced ‘humour’ than the brand making a mysogenistic point. So why, in both instances, did the people concerned think it was appropriate to act in such a way? It seems that the answer is one that can be applied to us as a nation: while we know about such issues as rape, domestic violence and sexism, we still can be thoroughly insensitive, and even rude about them, perhaps without even realising.
A bit closer to home of late has been the supposedly feminist Shrillblog, run by students from York, that recently posted a satirical piece that seemed to mock feminism. It’s uncertain whether the piece was genuinely anti-feminist or not, but the editor of the site has claimed he has no qualms about placing genuinely sexist material on the blog, as he wishes to stir up debate and give people a place to tackle such views head-on.

Some would say that sexist views do need to be confronted, as the BNP were when they were invited on Question Time. But does this justify posting offensive views? Perhaps the blog was just unnecessarily stirring up trouble and offending a lot of people in the name of debate. Surely there is enough sexism in the world to be tackled, without the need to create more?
I don’t wish to jump on a Political Correctness bandwagon and prohibit the discussion of issues by claiming they are offensive. However, many of the stories I hear of racism, sexism and homophobia are centered around people being completely unaware that what they say has the potential to cause offence.

There’ll always be celebrities, companies, corporations and individuals making statements that aren’t thought through, and that are interpreted to have contained offence that wasn’t intended. The fact that it happens here on our very own campus should serve as a warning to all of us. Eamonn Holmes, Topman and Shrillblog are just a handful of examples of what could be a disturbing trend in the UK. As, thankfully, overt and explicit discrimination begins to disappear from our national conscious, so too do unintentional ‘gaffes’ become more acute, more evident.

Perhaps it’s time to revive a bit of that political-correctness-gone-mad, and that traditional British politeness, and bite our collective tongues.