Monthly Archives: July 2014

Bossy Women

Bossy, pushy, bolshie, stroppy, mouthy and strident. I keep reading stuff about these words. Apparently they are words used dismissively to describe women but are behaviours applauded in men.
shutterstock_157419281
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, has a particular problem with the word ‘bossy’. It’s a negative way to describe a women but apparently not used for men, who are never described as bossy but as assertive which is a positive description.

I’d just like to say that from a male perspective, this is bullshit.

Nobody likes pushie, bossy or assertive in anyone: man, woman or child. Men don’t admire other men who are bossy, we think bossy men are ‘wankers’, which they are. They may be rich. They may be successful. But they’re still ‘wankers’. The thing is that men (in my experience at least) tend to prefer the general insult rather than the specific, so when we come across a man who exhibits the above characteristics (bossy, bolshie, strident), we tend to use more sweeping adjectives: dick-head, bell-end, twat or douche nozzle.

So ladies, if you don’t like bossy ( and I can see why you wouldn’t ) don’t feel picked on or discriminated against. She’s a ‘bossy cow’ still sounds much better to me than he’s a ‘gobby twat’ and yet they mean much the same thing.

If we really want equality by all means drop ‘bossy’, that’s fine with me, and then we can all get on with being a unisex bunch of ‘strident wankers’.

Paying for the privilege of a private education

Private schools are divisive, unfair and plain wrong. No political party is ever going to put a stop to them, so what is to be done?

The obvious answer is to improve the state system so people will be less inclined to waste their money on private. But improving state schools is not easy and the solution is not to bring back grammar schools which were also divisive and unfair. No…the answer is to invest in; well run, secular, comprehensive schools. It’s a novel idea but this is the best chance of giving every child an equal chance regardless of wealth, class, religion or innate IQ.

This isn’t enough though, we also need to accept the obvious advantages of private schools and recognise the greater effort that state schools pupils require to achieve the same results. Universities need to positively discriminate in favour of state schools pupils to rebalance the fairness equation. Employers should look to state schools for their high fliers and elitist ghettos like politics and city institutions need to break the stranglehold on top private schools filling their seats.

For too long the UK has been afflicted by division based on privilege and demography and the private school system lies at the heart of the problem. It is now time for change.