As a middle class midwife of a certain age,  I was aggrieved by that late-middle-aged-pale-male’s unwise comment. I just Googled him, and look, he’s a (probably) working class Saaarf London boy who must have worked pretty hard to get where he is. I’ll let him have that. But. 

13 individual complaints. All for sexual harassment? Not gonna lie, there’s not much learning going on there… look, he probably thought he was being gregarious, friendly, complimentary. Obviously I don’t know the exact details but I do know this: when people put in a written complaint, they are seriously unhappy. They also, and this is CRUCIAL, need to feel certain that they will be (sympathetically) heard. Twenty five years ago, a twenty something woman starting out on her ambitious TV career may well have felt belittled by a touchy-feely, slightly slimy star presenter, but she was in no position to complain. There was far too much at stake, and she was expected to take the unwanted attention and sleazy comments as compliments. She knew that, and she did not complain.

Being ‘of a certain age’ myself, I remember the 90s and noughties. It was all about the ‘ladette’.

According to Madeline Richards (The Bristorian, 2018), the concept of ‘Ladette culture’ emerged on the centre stage of 1990s British society, as more and more women found liberation in behaving the same as men; boisterous, outspoken and unapologetic.

But, as Frances Ryan wrote in the Guardian in 2018:

“In many ways, feminism seemed to be in an era of the emperor’s new clothes: there was the illusion that women’s equality had already been achieved, but sexism was still rampant. The objectification of women was still normalised: ladette TV presenters – conventionally hot women “behaving like men” – was offered as empowerment, while lads’ mags were mainstream.”

In the inevitable backlash, continues Madeline, the ‘media increasingly photographed and framed these women as party-obsessed, overly-promiscuous and irresponsible binge-drinkers, despite only mimicking men’s behaviour.’

In short, women were expected to behave like lads (because, equality), but also berated for it (yup, you guessed right, not that much equality girls, and show some decorum young lady).

By and large, it was fun. Being a young woman (white, middle class, straight) back then did mostly feel carefree and optimistic. But even then it was a double edge sword. A girl could do whatever a lad could, both professionally AND socially, and that was good. She could ogle a Chippendale, she could swear like a trooper, she could get blotto, she could be as promiscuous as she liked. That was the theory. In practice, it was understood that this unladylike behaviour would inevitably be used against you if, say, a drunken amorous encounter went a little further than you’d have wanted. Consent was mistakenly implied by virtue of being a ladette. After all, if you insisted on being one of the lads, you were kinda expected to shag like one too. You know, equality and all that. Hmmm. But it was worse: even if you were OK with those dubious assumptions, society’s expectations about the kind of women a man might marry hadn’t evolved. At all. Overt promiscuity in a woman branded her  as easy, not wife material. Double standards 101. And even though social media wasn’t yet a thing for spreading disinformation, word did get around if you were considered easy, your reputation tarnished. Being a ladette was fraught with unwritten contradictions. Yet we were supposed to be grateful. We were in the boy’s club but we had to laugh at the locker room banter, admire the page 3 girl, swoon with delight when our worth was confirmed by tactile assessment of our physical attributes, oh, and get the coffee. As with all the ‘best’ clubs, membership came at a price, with conditions. Women had to be petite and pretty even as they were downing pints and scoffing kebabs. But if you could stomach all this, and somehow negotiate the usual pitfalls (marriage, kids, other care responsibilities), you could hope to do well in a man’s world. Fast forward 20 years, and these are the middle class women of a certain age that our pale male is complaining about now. It took ovaries of steel but they played the long game, for better or worse, and are finally in a position to complain about historic wrongs. Thanks to the Me Too movement, they know they’ll be heard. And, here’s the thing, they now have daughters. They’ll want to protect the next generation from enduring all that ladette nonsense. It wasn’t equality then no matter what people said, even  if we played along. I suspect our pale male wasn’t the worst offender, not by a long stretch (think Al Fayed, Saville…) and this must be particularly galling for him. Look, getting a complaint is jarring, there’s no getting around that. Offense was caused, for sure, but most likely wasn’t intended. The complainants obviously misunderstood him, he is now the victim… this gives rise to the ‘sorry if ‘ I offended you non-apology. This is understandable, but totally unhelpful. You are either ‘sorry that’ or not sorry at all. And look, maybe, just maybe, it’s sometimes OK not to be sorry. Like if someone posts a malicious complaints on trust pilot. But mostly, I’d refer back to my earlier point about complainants: they are upset enough to have gone out of their way to complain. However inadvertently you caused offence, and even if everyone acted as you did – despite (unfairly) remaining unpunished- you should have the decency to say sorry. Properly. Our pale-male’s sorry excuse for an apology was precisely the kind of victim blaming unrepentant non-apology that merely adds insult to injury. It’s hard to believe no-one warned him about his ‘over-friendly’ behaviour. Maybe they really didn’t,  perhaps once you reach a certain level of fame, complaints get brushed away before they even reach your ears, perhaps he was surrounded by people just like him and very young (powerless) women who are were all happily bantering away in an unintentionally toxic manner. It’s not so hard to see how that could have happened. And why, therefore, he felt so hard done by when he suddenly, out of ‘nowhere’, got 13 complaints. From things that happened eons ago. And anyway, why did the seemingly up-for-it ladettes not complain at the time?

It’s not hard to use these pseudo-plausible excuses for ignorance to convince oneself that one is blameless.

Think of it like a speeding ticket when you accidentally went a fraction over the limit, which you believe to be stoopidly low, I mean, what was wrong with 30mph in the good old days? You’ve heard the blablabla about how it’s safer for everyone and better for the environment but you’re an excellent driver, it was 5am, you had places to be… but are you really going to argue your case with the geezer who is doing your speed awareness session? (Good luck with that, it’s infuriating but the geezer gives zero $h!ts about how unfair you find this, and you have GOT to put on a convincing show of contrition or take the 3 points, that’s just how it is). We all feel your pain (hell, we’ve probably been there, I certainly have) at having been caught doing a measly 2mph over the limit, but jeez, the signs were everywhere and the camera is canary yellow) so do the course, pay the fine and suck it up. And drive slower. And try your hardest not to get caught again (preferably by driving slower). The point is that we’ve all done stuff that we’re maybe not terribly proud of. There’s often mitigating circumstances, and we hardly ever intend the hurt we cause. Mostly it won’t take a written complaint for us to reflect on what we might have done better. But sometimes, like speeding tickets, complaints arrive like a slap in the face, totally oblivious to the difficult circumstances that surrounded the incident. The hardest thing in the world is to acknowledge we were just plain wrong (It happens, we’re not perfect). The second hardest thing is to apologise meaningfully. Preferably without blaming the actual victim. Who had to wait decades before they felt safe enough to raise their heads above the parapet and explain the sodding obvious, hoping against hope that things will improve for the next generation.