First blog post

“Gropes oops meant *Gripes of the day and everyday”

We need to get a grip over this sexual harassment witch hunt which has sprung up since the Harvey Weinstein story broke.
First of all, we have to say that absolutely nothing has been proven against Weinstein. He’s been charged with nothing (yet)- but a stream of accusations has been enough to destroy his life and crash the company he built.
Put that aside for a moment. Let’s look at the women making the accusations. Why didn’t they say anything before now? And the answer is because they were prepared to go along with it.
It’s like the old story of the man in the railway carriage who offered a woman passenger £10,000 in cash right there and then if she would have sex with him before the next station. The woman was reluctant but £10,000 is a lot of money so, just this once, she would.
“Good,” says the man. “How about a blow job for a fiver?”
The woman was shocked: “Certainly not! What kind of woman do you think I am?”
“We’ve already established that,” he says,” now we’re just haggling over the price.”
There is an unspoken deal in the casting couch: be nice to the elderly, ugly, blubbery producer, lie down, open your legs and that pretty mouth and you’ll get the starring role. Those women understood that and they played along because they were ready and willing to “do the deal”. If virtue meant so much to them, if sticking up for women’s rights was more important than getting their name in lights, they would have squealed long before now, but they didn’t.
The groping terror has spread like wildfire from the world of showbiz to the world of politics.
Nicola Sturgeon has already asked for “additional measures” to be taken at Holyrood. Prime Minister Theresa May decided this week that it’s a problem which can no longer be tolerated and threatened to sack all the gropers from her government.
Crying out loud (being as the feminists are doing a lot of that lately) she’s been an MP for 20 years, a Cabinet Minister for seven years and PM for a year. If she didn’t notice the problem before now, how big a problem is it?
I’m not saying sexual harassment doesn’t exist, but women are not always helpless victims in this.
Sometimes I like to post selfies on my Twitter feed. Sometimes they are a tiny bit racy. Sometimes men respond with compliments. Who’s to blame for that? That’s not harassment. I’m not going to go running to the Twitter police and, if I didn’t want my pictures to be seen, I wouldn’t post them.
I can tell the difference between harmless flirtation and groping and, believe me, a man knows if I want him to touch me. He’ll find out pretty damned quick if I don’t.
But there’s something bigger to consider too. Every man out there has a mother. Women make men – in every sense. We give them life and we bring them up, shape them and teach them how men should be.
If we have raised a generation of gropers and abusers, how did they get that way?