Author Archives: Linnea Ostlund and Jenny Wilson

Opinion: Behave yourself, woman

When we woke up this morning, we saw that Alex Salmond had used some choice words in the House of Commons yesterday during a debate. A marvellous orator he may be, but he also appears to be fond of sexist language.

Salmond told Junior Minister Anna Soubry that she was ‘demented’ and to ‘behave yourself, woman.’ This type of language is unacceptable, and without excuse. Yet many of his supporters are attempting to excuse his behaviour on Twitter, with the main theme being that what he said is not real sexism and that I should perhaps save my ‘outrage’ for real sexism. What is real sexism though? Is it the murder and gender based violence statistics? Is it the gender pay gap? Or is it putting down women through language use? Or perhaps, it is all of the above and more. It is simply a different expression of the same underlying problem.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged and | 47 Comments
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Recent Comments

  • Big Tall Tim
    An excellent article Victor on the great work you are doing. It's a great shame people like David can't give credit where credit is due....
  • Scott Rennie
    Couldn’t agree more Karen. It’s the best speech in a generation, and more importantly an opportunity to build common cause on things that matter to us, like...
  • Nigel Jones
    I too thank you for this interesting article. Community has been in decline for decades in most parts of the country, but this seems particularly the case where...
  • David Le Grice
    All whilst playing second fiddle to the Green party of course. And credit for toppling Labour goes almost entirely to them. Something that was completely avoid...
  • Nigel Jones
    Sorry! in the above I meant to say " we should be heard more on NATIONAL issues when we are campaigning locally". How else can people know what we stand for on ...