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I can hear it bubbling away already. ‘You’re a misogynist’. ‘Typical male response’. ‘I thought we had gone past this stuff’.
The comments come full blast through your TV screen or increasingly via the incessant social media commentators and outrage police, who all of a sudden have wide-ranging degrees in what is offensive and what we are allowed to say and when.
Merely trying to discuss another angle of this story is met with such fierce criticism that to speak out honestly in any compacity is to take a very big risk at your professional and personal situations.
These people will ensure that you are for life tarred with a brush of their choosing.
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Chris Gayle put some awkward cheesy pickup lines to Mel McLaughlin. His intention was to be goofy, cheeky and have a laugh. Yes, at someone else’s expense, as has been pointed out time and again.
However, how many times do interviews like this between two men evolve into banter and the occasional barb designed to humiliate the other? In case you had never seen an interview on the field of play I will say quite often.
This isn’t a case of males attempting to upstage and humiliate female presenters. This is a case of a joke gone bad, pure and simple.
Sexual harassment has been used in this case, which I think is not only disgusting and disrespectful to those poor people who have endured this despicable act but another sign of opportunism at its worst. Once words like this have been used the debate is over. They now have the moral high-ground and to argue against is despicable.
The definition of sexual harassment is as follows, “Harassment (typically of a woman) in a workplace, or other professional or social situation, involving the making of unwanted sexual advances or obscene remarks.”
Can anyone tell me what was obscene in Gayle’s remarks? If what he said is considered harassment I would expect there to be a lot of people in jail by the end of this weekend.
Prominent sports commentators and respected journalists (mostly female and some male, as it is trendy to do so) have told Gayle he is nothing but a Neanderthal. That he is sub par, a brainless idiot, a clown, and no better than that of a male in a nightclub trying to chat up every female patron.
Does he deserve this vitriol? Are we now not allowed to approach one another unless we have been through rigorous and peer-reviewed checks by the outrage patrol to ensure nothing will offend?
Yes, he was on the field of play. Yes, she was conducting an interview. Yes, he should have been professional. Yes, to every point made. But is this what we really want? Is this how we want our entertainment packaged, watered down to the point you can barely taste the vanilla?
Or are we mature enough as a nation to realise sports stars at some point in their lives are going to say the wrong thing and potentially do the wrong thing?
McLaughlin herself has come out accepted Gayle’s apology and described his actions as “disappointing” (let’s not forget the only one who has any right to decide what is offensive is her) and wants to move on.
But no, that isn’t good enough for the warriors on social media and journalists.
I say shame on all of you for your snarky hypocrisy. Shame on you for belittling the causes in which you stand for. And shame on anyone that did not listen to Mclaughlin herself when she said let’s move on.
And that’s exactly what most of us would like to do.
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