Hasskampagne gegen britischen Politiker, weil er keine Wahllisten allein für Frauen wünscht

Auch den ersten Feministinnen scheinen die Attacken ihrer "Schwestern" auf Männer zuviel – dann zumindest, wenn diese Attacken zum Beispiel ihren eigenen Ehemann treffen. So enthielt die britische Daily Mail gestern folgende Schlagzeile:

I'm a feminist who ardently wants more women in the Commons. But I'm appalled at how my Labour MP husband Austin Mitchell has been... monstered by the sisterhood, says LINDA MCDOUGALL

In dem darunterstehenden Artikel erfahren wir, worum es geht:

It's been a bad week for me and my husband, Austin Mitchell, the Labour MP for Grimsby. He’s been bullied and abused by his colleagues in his own party for daring to discuss the future of all-women shortlists.

‘Sexist and misogynistic,’ said Lucy Powell, Shadow Children’s Minister. ‘It’s the old, cloth-eared, macho politics,’ growled Labour aristocrat Dame Tessa Jowell. And Hull East Labour MP Karl Turner joined the ladies, describing his neighbour and colleague as ‘self-serving, chauvinistic, antiquated’.

Austin has been battered all over the media since his article in last week’s Mail on Sunday where he gave his views on selecting many Labour candidates for next year’s Election from all-women shortlists (AWS). Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry MP weighed in with ‘suspect his wife Linda is not amused either, is she?’.

You’re right, Emily. I’m not.

I have, for as long as I can remember, been a feminist. And I have, from their inception before the 1997 Election, been an enthusiastic supporter of AWS. Of the 120 women who became MPs in 1997, 101 were Labour. They changed the face of Westminster for ever. I was so thrilled I wrote a book, Westminster Women.

However, there have been some disturbing trends of late: seats where only one or two women applied, seats fixed in advance for favoured daughters. AWS should not become the ‘old boy network’ in a skirt. Most concerning of all, it appears to have become untouchable. Any suggestion of change or modification is howled down and treated with derision.

Austin wrote a perfectly sensible piece exploring the possibilities for an end to AWS. He was neither hysterical nor misogynist. He said many things I would wholeheartedly support (albeit in less careful language than I’d have used). For this he has been utterly vilified. The Labour Twitterati got their teeth in and held on all week: ‘I cannot wait till your generation finally dies,’ screamed one.

Austin was determined to stand down before the 2015 Election. He’d had serious heart problems in 2013, and it would have been hard to go on with his 80th birthday coming up.

(...) The jihad sisters who’d decided it was best to keep the old boy out of the process until Melanie was safely selected, rose up as one to abuse him. Of course they never bothered to read what he actually wrote. The name Austin Mitchell and AWS in the same sentence was all it needed.

Like trained guerilla fighters, they went for him with both barrels and chucked in a couple of hand grenades and a shoulder-launched missile for good measure.

Then the BBC’s Newsnight picked up the baton and handed it to Stella Creasy MP.

Stella and Newsnight’s Kirsty Wark were in the studio in London. Austin was in the BBC news room in Leeds perched on a stool in front of a monitor which showed him only a picture of himself or a newsfeed of events in Gaza. He remained there for 45 minutes. Austin is at the best of times fairly deaf, an advantage in politics but not on Newsnight.

He couldn’t see what was going on and he heard little. Stella had decided that the way to win was to interrupt Austin if he even opened his mouth. This she did very successfully.

It looked hilarious: two women talking urgently among themselves while a bewildered older man appeared above and between them in what seemed to be a glass box. He was looking puzzled and holding up his hands in a ‘don’t shoot me’ kind of way. When women finally do take over the world, I imagine scenes like this will be commonplace.