Women aren’t being ‘fashionable’ by talking about sexism – they’re fighting for their lives-Emmie Harrison-West-Entertainment – Metro

Joanna Lumley doesn’t speak for me or my ideals of feminism (Picture: Daniel Loveday/Comic Relief/Getty Images)

I hate the word ‘victim’, don’t you?

I think it’s wrongly laden with negative connotations of self-pity, and weakness. Fragility. 

Especially when it’s used to describe those who have survived harassment and assault. 

So when Joanna Lumley said ‘the new fashion is to be a victim’, my skin crawled. She, too, was painting vocal women with that brush; implying they’re nothing short of attention seekers. 

‘It’s pathetic. We have gone mad,’ the (not-so) Absolutely Fabulous actress told Prospect Magazine this week. 

Reminiscing about the days of old, she added: ‘If someone whistled at you in the street, it didn’t matter. If someone was groping, we slapped their hands. We were quite tough and looked after ourselves.’

Well, she doesn’t speak for me or my ideals of feminism.

When I first read Lumley’s words, I couldn’t help but laugh. Hysterically. It was the kind of laugh that would probably get me arrested for disrupting the peace.

Tell me, how is it ‘pathetic’ to be a woman speaking out about the truth?

How are we ‘fashionable’ for calling out the fact that 97% of us aged 18 to 24 have been sexually assaulted? Especially when 96% of those said they didn’t report it because they didn’t think it’d change anything?

How can you say we have ‘gone mad’ for not just ‘slapping’ abuser’s hands away, when girls as young as 11 have been harassed on public transport in London? With nearly half of the city’s women terrified to travel after dark because they’re afraid?

Tell me, were the many women that have died this year in the UK at the hands of a man not ‘tough enough’? 

‘It’s pathetic. We have gone mad,’ the (not-so) Absolutely Fabulous actress told Prospect magazine this week (Picture: Rob Kim/FilmMagic)

No, it’s not about women being weak, it’s about them being so fatigued of one thing that they’re finally calling it out: sexism.

I can hardly say I’m surprised by Lumley’s disheartening words, though. Earlier this year, she shockingly suggested it was ‘wrong’ that ‘everybody is claiming the mental illness bandwagon’ – telling people to ‘just get a grip’.

Now, with her shameful (frankly, embarrassing) words on sexism, Lumley joins the ever-growing list of icons who have proved that they’re no longer relevant in the fight for equality. 

It doesn’t give me any pleasure at all in writing that, by any means, as I know that these women have surely faced the same sexist tropes as what my generation are going through. 

In the Prospect interview, writer Hella Pick says that Lumley apparently reflected with ‘little sympathy’ when asked about the #MeToo era (that is still raging on, by the way, it always will). Lumley said that women, in her day, ‘looked after themselves’. 

It makes me so, so sad and utterly heartbroken to read these words, as I know that many actresses in Lumley’s industry have unfortunately likely been gagged by men with NDAs and threats of careers ending over the years. 

Maybe, this culture of silence has changed them; made them belittle survivors who are brave enough to speak out.  

Well, people like Lumley should be thanking the young women of today for being strong enough to call out what they couldn’t, and didn’t – and still haven’t. 

Instead of tearing us down and claiming that it’s ‘pathetic’ that we are finally finding our voice, they should be supporting us equals. As allies. Because isn’t that, like, the rules of feminism?

It’s not funny, helpful or even controversial anymore. It’s not even ‘freedom of speech’, it’s harmful. And painfully so. 

Joanna Lumley’s two cents – if it’s even worth that much – perpetuates this idea that women today are weak. That they shouldn’t call out sexual assault and harrassment (which wolf-whistling and groping is by the way, Joanna – in case you didn’t know) because it’s ‘pathetic’. 

It’s a seriously dangerous notion to set, and one I don’t want to be a part of.

Fighting against sexism isn’t ‘fashionable’, stylish or on-trend – it’s a matter of life and death. 

Frankly, we’re sick of being terrified; sick of being addressed with our own mortality every single day and sick of our own sex telling us to ‘fight back’ when we’ve been fighting our whole lives to simply exist without harm.

Well, Joanna, in my opinion, you’ve proved that you’re not part of that fight.

Your ‘take’ is absolutely frightful, darling – don’t you agree?

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

Share your views in the comments below.

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