Singer Rod Stewart's model wife, Penny Lancaster, was on ITV's Loose Women program today. Although she was in favour of women's rights, she also thought cooking robbed men of their masculinity. Here is what she said:
“If anything, when men come home I think it’s more a case of being more a part of the family, being with the children, spending more time with the children, being a strong role model but going as far as cooking and putting the apron on, I think that, not belittles men, but takes the masculinity and I would miss that.”
She added:
“We’re different… men are from Mars and women are from Venus, testosterone, estrogen, we’re different creatures, I think you’ve got to let men do it their way…”
To me, this is as silly as the belief in Thailand that if a woman's knickers touch a man, then they rob that man of his power. The impact it has on society is that women have to ride "side saddle" on the motorbike taxis in Bangkok but men can ride them "normal style," i.e. with one leg either side of the seat behind the driver. If a woman sat that way in a skirt, her knickers would touch the motorbike seat and, because the male driver was also sat on the same motorbike seat, this would rob the driver of his power.
Utter nonsense.
We had similar cultural superstition in the past in the UK, when woman weren't allowed to vote and thought of as the property of men. Without a man, women were destitute because of these silly superstitions.
Today, women have it a lot better but there's still a view clinging on that women who have sex and enjoy it are sluts and that all women should remain virgins until they're married. Again, this is utter nonsense. Woman enjoy sex just as much as men do and have the same rights as men to enjoy the pleasures of their own biology. Enjoying sex and wanting sex are natural parts of being a woman; telling women they must not enjoy sex is stupid ideology, the sort of cultural superstition that leads to cultures carrying out FGM - Female Genital Mutilation, where bits are cut off the female sex organs just to stop women enjoying sex.
In India, women on their period are seen as unspeakably dirty and the whole concept of menstruation is taboo. It is estimated that, each year, 700,000 teenage girls in India get their first period without knowing what is happening to them. A truly horrendous statistic that the biology that brought us all into the world is so despised under a cultural superstition that it is not even discussed.
Now here is Penny Lancaster adding to that cultural superstition. A man is robbed of his power if he cooks, just as if he'd touched Thai knickers. If anyone's ever seen a Gordon Ramsay program, where he shouts and swears and bullies kitchen staff, then you'll see him be very much the macho man. Men have the skill to turn everything into a competition. Hence the reason we have Michelin stars - purely so men can fight over who's best in the kitchen.
What is masculinity anyway? How does one rob something that is hard to define? Masculinity as far as I can tell was historically the act of men beating, raping and controlling women. Should we allow men to rape women because it helps preserve their masculinity?
Complete and utter nonsense.
What is real, though, is the impact a celebrity has on culture and whether superstitions are killed off or promulgated. So here is the wife of one of the most famous rock stars in history, who is also a high-profile model in her own right, willingly spreading the cultural superstition that men should be allowed to impose the duty of cook on women.
Cooking is not women's work but a survival skill. If you want to live, then eat; if you want to eat, then cook. It's as simple as that. If you can't cook, you die. That's how evolution works. Are we to believe our male ancestors, when out on a long hunt, lasting many days, would have chosen to starve to death rather than cook something up?
Penny Lancaster has revealed herself to be either a brainwashed buffoon or someone who is being terrorised at home. We all remember poor Nigella Lawson with her husband's hands around her throat. Celebrities aren't immune to domestic violence.
And what of their children? Should social services get involved to see exactly what oppression they're being taught? Are the children being culturally abused?
Society really is filled with strange beliefs, from astrology and checking your stars in the papers to believing in ghosts and all sorts of medieval nonsense. Men and women are different - of course they are. The point of equality is to not assume those differences mean certain jobs are beyond a person because of their gender.
Why couldn't Penny promote that belief, rather than talk women down?
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