I see from the comment section that I’m not the only one who picked up on this….
From the site Women’s Views on News, “a daily online news and current affairs service aimed at women” that “allows anyone (once they have been given guest author status) to post a story about any news or current event anywhere in the world, as long as they abide by two basic rules:
- That it is about women or told from the perspective of women
- That it respects the “house” rules which, in general terms, state that racist, sexist or fascist material will not be accepted.”
….here’s Phyllis Stephen writing about Samantha Cameron’s decision to have her children driven to school by a woman rather than by a man:
“There are two things at issue here. The first is the security of the children which must always be paramount. It is in my view questionable whether the driver should in this case be a woman. If there is an incident involving the children, and one hopes that is not even a remote possibility, would that be more easily dealt with if the driver was a man? Risk assessment of security issues must involve assessing the worst case scenario and that must therefore anticipate a kidnap or terrorist possibility, so is a woman driver in this particular case the best person for the job?”
Wtf?
I don’t think Phyllis can have read the house rules properly…
Samantha Cameron is entitled to have a woman driver for her children if she wants. I couldn’t help noticing the sacked man was black though.
Well, there are two main things at issue here:
1. Is it the job of the chauffeur also to be the bodyguard?
2. Is this new driver not trained to be a bodyguard?
I don’t see how one can determine whether the new driver is suitable or not simply based on her being a woman.
Perhaps, if the driver does need to be a bodyguard, Samantha Cameron could hire a bodyguard to actually bodyguard and keep the driver to do the actual, you know, driving.
And perhaps, if the driver does need to be a bodyguard, the woman might actually be a trained bodyguard.
I’m a man, and I can assure you that my maleness would not in the least bit help me in protecting anyone’s children. I’m skinny, out of shape, and not trained in any martial arts or physical self-defense.
Wtf indeed. Do I need to read the article, or was the point really missed that having a non-penis person spending time alone with your kids, rather than a penis-person, causes their risks of being harmed to plummet to nothingness?
I see the offending paragraph has now been removed…..
I’m not on twitter, so just saying thinking of you, Cath.
This seems to me to be quite ridiculous.
I have been reading through your site today and so far like what I see.
If you don’t mind I would like to ask you (and anybody else here) to have a look at my blog and give me some feedback. Thanks
Surely the main sexist point is the idea that it’s safer to have a female driver rather than a male one?
What a peculiar milieu.
Somebody has seen the Transporter a few too many times. Yes it might be nice to have Jason Statham on call, but seriously……