At the airport recently, I decided to stock up on magazines. As well as the usual Grazia, Empire and Heat, I grabbed Tatler which I have never bought before but it had January Jones, my girl-crush, on the cover so I was swayed by the idea of Mad Men gossip. I guess I had always assumed Tatler was a silly Sloaney magazine that talked about posh people and posh clubs and had photos of them at the polo. What I found was a little more sinister. It is one article in particular that had me fuming on the plane so much that Paul had to calm me down and suggested I just stop reading and blog about it when I got home instead. The article was written by a chap called James Dellingpole who I now know to be a Torygraph journalist and climate change denier…. as well as an ignorant sexist arse. The article argues that there is nothing sexist or in any way wrong about buying a private education for your son and letting your daughter ''make do'' with a state one but that, in fact, this makes perfect sense. Dellingpole says that his son (or Boy as he refers to him in the article) had difficulties at his C of E state school and that even though it was rated outstanding ‘’it really wasn’t much cop at handling bright middle class boys’’ so Boy was moved to a private school and ‘’Girl drew the short straw’’ and was condemned to a state school education. How ghastly! He goes on to say that he thinks this is perfectly acceptable and that despite the fact that this confession ‘’is the kind of thing that gets your head bitten off by feminists’’ he thinks there are very good reasons why it is more important to give your son a ''better education'' than your daughter. This is his list of reasons:
1. Boys are much more likely to end up earning their family’s crust, while girls – especially if they’re pretty – can always marry someone rich regardless of their education.
2. Girls, being more sophisticated, socially adept, manipulative and devious, are much more capable of negotiating the complexities of the state school system than boys.
3. Boys are lazier and less mature than girls and are therefore in much greater need of private school discipline.
4. Boys are more physical and are in greater need of regular sport that state schools rarely provide.
Dellingpole reckons that most of the parents in his social circle agree with him and there is now a growing trend in the recession for parents of multiple children to send the boys to private school and the girls to state school. It is NOT sexist he says, simply logical and practical.
He ends his article thus: I’m hoping that Boy goes to a tailcoat wearing school full of boys desperate to meet attractive sisters with urban state educated street-cred and that Girl therefore meets future Duke/hedgefunder through her brother and never has to work again. I don’t call that sexist. I call that common sense.
And I call you a twat James Dellingpole.
