If somebody asked me who is the best speaker I’ve ‘discovered’ by doing this Speakola project, I’d say Mhairi Black. She’s now the deputy leader of the SNP, so hardly an unknown, and she’s just 28 years of age, having been elected to the seat of Paisley and Renfrewshire South in 2015 at the age of 20 years and 237 days, which made her the youngest MP to be elected since the Reform Act of 1832.

She’s a genius orator, a true natural, and for her 2015 ‘On who is the sun shining?’ she gets my vote for the best first speech (then known as a maiden speech) since the advent of video and sound. It’s up on Speakola with video and transcript.

There’s a fearlessness to her delivery, so often her eyes are up and out of notes and she’s flying off script, or at least untethered by a written speech. There’s also a fearlessness to what she says, and five years ago today she made some peculiar history in the House of Commons by becoming the first MP to drop the C-bomb into Hansard. She was doing it as part of a speech proposing a law to make misogyny a hate crime, which has been an ongoing debate in Westminster.

The current Speakola podcast features Michael Cooney, a speechwriter for Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who talks about the day she delivered her famous Misogyny Speech. Black’s contains similar themes and is similarly shocking as she shares the poison she receives for being a woman in the public eye.

I’ve tried to get Mhairi Black on the podcast, but no luck so far.

Here is an excerpt: (Unlike Black, I will ‘bleep’ the word c***, not because I’m wanting to neuter her speech, but because email filters will be unforgiving)

That brings me to the cultural side of this issue. It feels like we are at a turning point with things such as the ‘Time’s Up’ movement. Frankly, the bravery of the women who have come forward to talk about their experience of abuse, sexism and misogyny, no matter how small it may seem, is incredible. I cannot say it has been positive in terms of moving us forward, but if we have learned anything from all that, it is that these are not small occurrences. The downside to all this progress is being faced with the reality that the women in my life, whom I know and love, have been raped, beaten, assaulted, called sluts and whores, and groped throughout their lives, and they have been led to believe that that is normal and is just a given—that it is just something that happens and, like the Hon. Member for Walthamstow said, something that women should somehow deal with or solve themselves.

Misogyny is absolutely everywhere in our society, to the point that we often miss it because it has been so normalised by being continually unchallenged. Some folk will be uncomfortable with the graphic language that I am about to use, but I am not going to dilute the reality of such an important issue. I am used to online abuse in particular. I am regularly called a wee boy, and told that I wear my dad’s suits and stuff. Me and my pals actually laugh about it. That is how I cope with it. We find the best insults, and that is how we have a laugh, but I struggle to see any joke in systematically being called a dyke, a rug muncher, a slut, a whore and a scruffy bint. I have been told, ‘You can’t put lipstick on a pig,’ and:

‘Let the dirty bitch eat shit and die’.

I could soften some of this by talking about ‘the C-word’, but the reality is that there is no softening when I am targeted by these words: I am left reading them on my screen day in, day out. Someone said:

‘She needs a kick in the c***’.

I have been called ‘guttural c***”, “ugly c***” and “wee animal c***’. There is no softening just how sexualised and misogynistic the abuse is. Some guy called William Hannah—I have never heard of him in my life—commented:

‘I’ve pumped some ugly birds in my time but I just wouldn’t’.

I have been assured multiple times that I do not have to worry because I am so ugly that no one would want to rape me.

All those insults were tailored to me because I am a woman. We can kid ourselves that those are comments by a few bad, anonymous people on Twitter, but they are not: this is everyday language. I am aware that everyone here was uncomfortable hearing those insults—I felt uncomfortable reading them out—yet there are people who feel comfortable flinging those words around every day. When that language goes unchallenged, it becomes normalised, and that creates an environment that allows women to be subjected to a whole spectrum of abuse. I regularly see guys on Facebook talking about ‘getting pussy’ and using other horrible words for women, but should we really expect any better given that the man sitting in the Oval Office thinks that it is okay to grab a woman by the pussy and faces no consequences?

Tomorrow is International Women’s Day and I’ll be showcasing some great women’s rights speeches over the next couple of days, past and present.

If anyone knows Mhairi Black, beg her to come on the podcast for me!

Share