by During his tenure, Rishi Sunak has done much to popularize an intensifier favored by men who wish to announce their commitment to women’s interests while erasing any previous indifference: “As a father of daughters.”
Without his internal epiphanies, Sunak would never have understood, “as a father of daughters”, the need for girls to feel safe walking at night or to receive the same education as boys. Which is disturbing, but still. Better late, etc. His daughters are also credited with Sunak’s tribute to the Lionesses’ victories and – “women’s rights are personal to me” – his appreciation of the need for single-sex spaces.
If relying on daughters for instruction in gender equality is less impressive than promoting it on principle, Sunak undoubtedly shines compared to politicians who remain, even after being blessed with girls, in a state of nature. Donald Trump has daughters. The same goes for Vladimir Putin. David Cameron, at two, maintained a primitive preference for male colleagues and jokes. George Osborne’s daughter couldn’t inoculate him against psychopathic fantasies about Theresa May. The fact that Boris Johnson was the father, as Prime Minister, of two, and then three, girls, similarly confirms that hiring only men who have daughters cannot, sadly, be the solution to misogyny in Westminster, the City or Metropolitan Police.
Sadly, hiring only men who have daughters cannot be the solution to misogyny in Westminster, the City or the police.
It is true that, since fathering another girl, Johnson has apologized to the colleague known to his former WhatsApp friends as “that cunt.” Perhaps in more complicated cases a ratio of at least four daughters to every brute is needed to achieve the level of insight that two are said to have given Sunak?
Although we discovered that even that project has its limits, if it has not turned back. As a father of daughters, Sunak has just confirmed that date rape drug jokes are not fireable offences.
Specifically, as a father of daughters, he has decided that the banality of stupefying women with Rohypnol, the sedative virtually synonymous with drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) by predatory men, should be tolerated even when its author – James Cleverly – not only The Home Secretary, but speaking on the day his department announces measures designed to, in addition to combating the rise of drugs, improve public understanding that it is an “abhorrent” crime .
Shortly before Christmas, Cleverly’s Home Office colleague Laura Farris, minister for victims and safeguarding, told the Commons: “Pricking is an appalling predatory crime that ruins lives.” The evidence of the damage is, she said in describing the legislative changes, “irrefutable: the main victims are young and predominantly women.”
In a statement preceding his department’s proposals, Cleverly contributed: “Dose escalation is a vicious crime that can have a lasting impact on victims.” If “perverse” seems like an underpowered word to choose (it could even be taken to mean that the perpetrators are selecting, in a temporary poisoning, a singularly unreliable means to achieve their ends), perhaps this can now be recognized as another unfortunate insinuation, to add to an extensive collection, that, if not actively incapable of holding high office, Cleverly is among the best arguments yet for not devoting himself completely to the job.
But nothing, from calling a northern city a “shithole” to describing the Rwanda plan as “nonsense” before it became “common sense,” compares to Cleverly’s achievement, the day it was officially declared the seriousness of the attack, making light of the crime that same night. Not that any day is perfect for disparaging his own department.
He Sunday mirror He reported it by saying, of his wife, at a reception at number 10, that “a little bit of Rohypnol in his drink every night” “wasn’t really illegal if it’s just a little bit”. The tribute to Les Dawson (“I said to the chemist, ‘Can I have more sleeping pills for the wife?’, he said ‘Why,’ I said ‘She keeps waking up.'”), continued the benefits of keeping a spouse. “Always lightly sedated so she never realizes there are better men.”
Survivors and anti-jabbing campaigners (some of whom had contributed to the Home Office report) were quick to denounce comments that are unlikely to have educated the sort of men who think that sedating and raping women with memory-damaging drugs but That they leave no trace in a matter of hours is a form of joke. Noting repeated mentions of fun by perpetrators, the Home Office explicitly states: “This is not funny, and we must ensure the message is clear.”
Even without specialist knowledge, it is clear that Cleverly’s attitude towards crime is far from what is commonly understood as responsible. There is nothing woke, as leftists have been mentioned in their defence, in recognizing the trivialization of DFSA as nothing more than disgusting, since criminals in nightclubs and festivals take so little trouble to traumatize and assault only women young people with similar political ideas.
You don’t need to find Sleeping Beauty’s awakening problematic or want to put a warning on Keats’s awakening. The Eve of Saint Agnes, to understand why men who publicly joke about DFSA are creepy, scary on dates, and should expect immediate disciplinary action in any workplace outside of the incel community. Or the metropolitan police. Or it turns out the cabinet.
Since Cleverly could hardly claim ignorance about the crime, his spokesman’s best defense was “a wry joke.” Also, desperately, the press reception at number 10 was “private”. The most abject thing, however, is Sunak’s response: the well-known father of girls “considers the matter closed.”
Is there a possible downside to a sixth in four years? – Home Secretary, nothing compares to the benefits of not doing it, as he raises the Cleverly red flag over Downing Street, signaling the government’s tolerance for playful drinkers of alcoholic beverages. Especially when the Home Office’s “Enough” campaign advocates for a “whole of society” approach to changing attitudes towards violence against women and girls and urges bystanders to intervene. For example: “If you heard him make light of the increase in predatory beverages, what would you do?”
Like many daughters, the Sunak girls may have felt they deserved some time off for Christmas, but just look at the result.
• Catherine Bennett is a columnist for the Observer.
