The Theatre of Victimhood

(Photograph: David Woolfall, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

There’s something deeply distasteful about trial by social media, whoever’s side you might find yourself on. The onslaught is relentless, and has driven people over the edge – with the matter of guilt often very much a secondary concern. This week’s beneficiary of the baying mob is Carl Benjamin, a popular YouTube personality who runs the Lotuseaters website. 

What was Benjamin’s crime you might ask? Smashing up priceless artwork to make a dubious political statement? Forcing his children to undergo gender transition so he could fit in more at home on parents’ evening? Openly calling for genocide on the streets of London? Nope. Being the founder of a podcast on which Liz Truss appeared to plug her book, seems about the strength of it. 

Still, not to worry – these days there’s always someone willing to find offence in the innocuous. Cue the misandrists’ misandrist, Jess Phillips, for whom this concatenation of events embodied just about the perfect storm. Phillips in her own words was ‘raised to hate Tories’, and openly considers them ‘thick’, so we can probably extend that to Truss and her book. More to the point, the Birmingham Yardley MP has a feud dating back the best part of a decade with Benjamin, so there seems no reason not to milk it for all its worth. 

Earlier this week, Phillips tweeted an open letter to Rishi Sunak, demanding he de-select Truss for her appearance on The Lotuseaters podcast. For those unfamiliar with Benjamin, she decided to fill-in the blanks by labelling him ‘an extreme far-right commentator’ , a term Labour MPs customarily reserve for anyone slightly to the right of Jeremy Corbyn:

Phillips’ hostility to Benjamin stems from an exchange dating back to 2016. In response to complaints that she regularly received threats of rape via social media, Benjamin tweeted back: “I wouldn’t even rape you”. This was exacerbated by a YouTube video in 2019, when Benjamin expanded: “with enough pressure I might cave, but, let’s be honest, nobody’s got that much beer.”

While on the surface Benjamin’s comments certainly appear extremely crass, there’s a lot going on here which we need to unpick. First and foremost, these were jokes – jokes about not wanting to rape Jess Phillips. Moreover, they were in response to Phillips’ perceived mockery of Philip Davies, when he highlighted the prevalence of male suicide, and called for a debate on International Men’s Day. In his own words, Benjamin explained “A decent person doesn’t laugh about male suicide”. On his refusal to apologise, he added that he would do so, provided Phillips also apologised for her comments about men.  

Jokes of course are subjective. If you don’t like the joke, fine; if you think the joke’s in bad taste, fine; no arguments. But, if you think a man deserves prosecution for the rest of his life for an ill-judged one-liner, then sorry, no. Who among us could have our entire back catalogue of utterances replayed out in public, and expect to come away unscathed? I couldn’t; Jess Phillips certainly couldn’t. Christ, even the wokest of the woke cannot dodge the insatiable appetite of cancel culture. 

Second, the slur of ‘misogyny’ (which seems to consist of little more than criticism of feminists, or worse still, not wishing to sleep with them) is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Consider the similar case of Laurance Fox, hung, drawn and quartered for the crime of ‘not wanting to shag’ Ava Evans – a particularly grotesque double standard against men is grotesque, seeing as Evans go-to putdown to men was precisely the same.

Third, it should hardly need saying that the sensitivity to jokes is a one-way street. No feminist is going to complain about Dame Joan Bakewell calling Laurence Fox a ‘dick’. No one batted an eyelid when Ofcom bleater, Marina Purkiss questioned his sexual allure. There were no consequences when Jo Brand joked about throwing acid over Nigel Farage, when Miriam Gargoyles admitted she wanted Boris Johnson to die, or when Sophie Dukes joked about ‘killing whitey’ . Mysteriously, we all knew these were jokes – and we all know why: white men have no access to the victim card. 

Fourth, the feminist misandry (reserved for white men) is no longer even being concealed. Here for instance is Phillips early in the year, having to invoke white men as her villain of choice, when faced with anti-white Muslim racism: “This man is horrific, just like the millions of white men I could post about who beat or murdered women this week, but I’m not stupid enough to blame all white men for that, are you?”

There is something entirely more disingenuous and dangerous than mere hypocrisy at play here, however. Philips, Evan’s and their ilk are far more interested in the theatre of victimhood, than the genuine incidence of it. They concern themselves with the confection of outrage and wield it against their political opponents, safe in the knowledge that those opponents pose no genuine threat. Place Phillips face-to-face with actual ‘toxic masculinity’, antigay protests in Muslim-dense areas for instance, or the grooming gangs scandal, and she becomes suddenly more muted. Benjamin, as far as I’m aware, has never committed any such act, and yet is facing more opprobrium for uttering the word ‘rape’, than those who actually commit the offence itself. 

Jokes must be defended, especially those in bad taste – i.e. the good ones. Besides which, Phillips should be cheering. While all feminists’ clamour for equal treatment, she alone is finally getting it – disparaged for her looks, just like every member of the patriarchy in history. 

Frank Haviland is the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West, and writes a Substack here.

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