Who would think any good could come from an MP calling a woman 'totty'?
Gaby Hinsliff
Don't be distracted by attempts to whip up a catfight, we all know that what happened to Isabel Hardman is unacceptable and that's a sure sign of progress
Thu 14 Apr 2016 13.57 EDT Last modified on Tue 28 Nov 2017 18.07 EST
Illustration: Ben Jennings
"Hey, sex kitten!" There's nothing like having those words bawled at you across a crowded party conference bar to make you ponder your choice of profession. But I didn't complain. Not to the big shot politician in question, and not to anyone with authority over him – although I did roll my eyes at his special adviser, whose face was a gratifying rictus of mortification. (And yes, that special adviser was a bloke. Not All Men, etc etc.)
It's hard to explain in retrospect why I was so feeble. I was a fair bit younger, of course, and still not that sure of myself as a lobby reporter; he was obviously drunk, and anyway the whole thing was so surreal it was laughable. (Who even uses the phrase "sex kitten", for God's sake?)
We've come further than we think since the days of Sex Kitten Man
But also, it was the sort of thing that just … happened. Not only in Westminster but sometimes in newsrooms, and in pretty much all the offices and shops and bars and places my friends worked too. It was just life, if you were young and female and occasionally encountered men apparently baffled by the presence of women in a non-shagging capacity; men who frankly didn't seem to know what else to say to us. It almost didn't feel personal.
So I didn't say anything, and for years continued to have a perfectly professional and often productive (in story terms) working relationship with Sex Kitten Man. And he rose into cabinet, where eventually his career imploded over an entirely unrelated error of judgment. Well, I say unrelated; a man who once did something slightly stupid went on to do something much more stupid.
It's a similar story with the MP to whom I picked up the phone years ago – back when I was the only woman on a team of five political reporters – who loftily insisted on speaking to "one of the men". He too went on into government, and come to think of it, that ended stickily too. It's almost as if there's something about the kind of men who say dumb things to women.
But back then, those were just the war stories female reporters told each other, or maybe occasionally female MPs. Stuff that just happened, and kept happening, at least partly because we only really told each other.
Isabel Hardman (@IsabelHardman)
Last night, an MP who I've only met a couple of times actually said to me as his opening gambit "I want to talk to the totty."
So all hail the Spectator's assistant editor Isabel Hardman for what she did this week, when a backbencher she barely knew greeted her with the words: "I want to talk to the totty."
Without publicly naming him, she reported him privately to his whips for behaviour unbecoming to the workplace, and then tweeted briefly to the effect that actually that's not how you treat a woman at work in 2016. "That is NOT on and lobby women shouldn't have to put up with it," she wrote in a further tweet.
All the usual knuckle draggers emerged from under the usual bridges, obviously. Hardman was promptly asked on Twitter if she flirts for stories – the old "ah, but you were asking for it?" defence – or accused of fussing about nothing much. The Daily Mail ran a piece by its political editor-at-large Isabel Oakeshott, suggesting Hardman risked looking "humourless" for complaining; perhaps there was even a "case to be argued" that she should be pleased an MP wanted to talk to her. "She did the equivalent of running to teacher to tell tales," Oakeshott said.
And it would be so easy to get depressed, or even sucked into the kind of catfight between two women with differing views (and for the record, I know and like both Oakeshott and Hardman) that the Mail so adores.
But just for once, let's not go there. Let's not go there, because actually it's the reaction of men not women to this story that is both fascinating and often really quite cheering. We've come further than we think since the days of Sex Kitten Man.
So all hail too the male reporter Hardman was with at the time, who shouted "oh, Jesus!" at the offending MP and encouraged her to complain. And take a bow Sean Kemp, former special adviser to Nick Clegg, who defended Hardman on social media by pointing out that the Liberal Democrats famously came a cropper recently by glossing over allegations of sexual harassment and that he wouldn't advise repeating the mistake.
Channel 4's Cathy Newman joins row over MP's sexist behaviour
And at least one cheer too for the party whips who ensured Hardman received a full personal apology, thus reminding anyone inclined to this sort of thing that reducing a professionally competent woman to the sum of tits'n'ass in front of her colleagues may ultimately embarrass you far more than her. Which is a lesson that will reverberate beyond parliament.
By not identifying the MP or party involved, Hardman did her best to make her point without rousing a pitch-forked mob (although the Westminster rumour mill produced a name within hours). But the reason I'm not naming Sex Kitten Man either is that making this about any one particular idiot risks letting all the other idiots off the hook.
For the point is it could have been any idiot. Not just all political parties but all professions have their share of lechers, boors and old buffers who still haven't really grasped that this is not the 1980s.
What bothers some men, I suspect, about stories like this is that it sounds as if men are getting hounded for saying cack-handed but basically complimentary things. But what women hear when addressed as totty isn't complimentary at all. They don't hear "I may be a clumsy oaf, but I think you're pretty." They hear, "I think you're lightweight/stupid/not to be taken remotely seriously; I'm only acknowledging you at all because you're pretty." Oh, and sometimes, "when I've got genuinely important business to do, I'll probably speak to one of the men".
So yes, most grown women (Hardman certainly included) can survive being addressed as "totty".
But most grown men could survive a colleague repeatedly yelling "dickhead!" at them throughout their presentation to the board; that doesn't make it just normal business behaviour that men should stop being so humourless about.
What cheers me most about all of this is that Hardman felt able to object, calmly and professionally and without fear of ruining her career, to something that everyone accepts wasn't on – and that is progress.
This may not be the easiest week of her career. But she's done her bit to ensure that this is no longer the sort of thing that just happens, and keeps on happening, because nobody ever quite dares say that it's wrong.
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