Isabel Hardman Quotes

Last night, an MP who I've only met a couple of times actually said to me as his opening gambit "I want to talk to the totty."

The message from [Rosie] Duffield's experience is that if you are a woman in politics, you'd better think really long and hard before you dare stick your neck out on issues you really care about – and not because people will argue with you, but because they'll threaten you.

Have been thinking about whether or not to tweet about it, but actually that is NOT on and lobby women shouldn't have to put up with it.

Politicians often repeat the mistakes of the past – the level of turnover in parliament makes it even more likely that no one will notice.

So I have passed the MP's name on to a whip. I don't betray sources. But I will betray sexists.

There is a lesson to be learned from [George] Galloway's comments, though, which is that rape is not well understood at all. When he says something is "not rape as most people understand it", this is because society still largely imagines rape as an unexpected attack on a woman walking down a dark alley late at night. By describing what [Julian] Assange is alleged to have done as "bad sexual etiquette", Galloway demonstrates that he does not understand the legal definition of rape, or of sexual assault for that matter. Neither, he suggests, do many other people.