iVillage's Head of Community, Sarah Fletcher, gives her trenchant take on the world of politics and current affairs. Get involved and join the debate now...
Sex and Sexism
I'm not a big fan of women who have sex with married men and then cry about it on daytime TV, but Baroness Deech's view that the women are solely to blame for super-injunctions is alarmingly sexist.
“In many of the cases of gagging orders we read about, women have sold their favours to celebrities and then tried to make even more money out of the situation by offering to sell their ‘kiss and tell’ stories to the papers," says the head of the Bar Standards Board . “I feel quite ashamed by these women’s behaviour, although some say they have the right to ‘speak out’.”
The implication is that men can't help themselves; that these women somehow manipulate famous married men into having sex with them. It's almost as though such men can't be blamed for sleeping with prostitutes because they are by nature too weak to say 'no' to sex. There's no mention of the men's responsibility towards their partners and children in Baroness Deech's view, women are the agents of this and they are the exploiters. Perhaps, in the case of former Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas, the unnamed footballer was taking advantage of a situation in which he could have sex with her in hotel rooms and then go home to his wife and children. It's madness to place the blame solely with the woman, as it absolves men of responsibility.











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