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." - Isabel Hardman

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.

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

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