Valerie Eliot Smith charity complaint

I'm still not convinced about the sexism. As the thread I linked to in my above post shows, NR is more than capable of patronising large groups of people without regard to age, gender, severity of ME, or whether he's ever met them or knows anything about them. I find him admirably indiscriminate in who he patronises. He just happens to have patronised a woman this time.

Probably hardly worth splitting hairs, maybe it's just the lawyer in me wanting to get the charge sheet right. A number of us (male and female, myself included) were complaining about his patronising style of communication over 2 years ago, to no effect.

I'm not keen on VES making it all about sexism for the same reason I'm not keen on Steve Topple making it all about poverty, or anybody making it all about anything other than ME, which I have observed various people trying to do in my 8 years with ME. ME what we all have in common, and making it about anything else is divisive.

Sure, complain about inappropriate patronising behaviour, in the same way we complain about how we are bullied, dismissed and patronised by the likes of Esther Crawley and Turdie Chalder. But leave the complainer's hobby horse out of it if possible.
 
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I don't think we can tell from most of the communication whether NR would have addressed a man in the same terms. He might well have done. We'll never know.

However the recommendation of an antiquated book that demonstrates antiquated sexist attitudes gives pause for thought. The fact that NR judges that book to be full of wisdom, and further that he thought it appropriate to recommend to a professional woman does bring sexism into the picture. I think if I had received that email I would have assumed there was sexism involved. But I also agree that even without the sexism angle the whole communication was ill conceived, inappropriate and patronising.
 
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/strident

1. Loud, harsh, grating, or shrill
Click to expand...

I've been called many things in my time, but never grating or shrill.

I agree it's arguable, and Vladimir Putin has been called strident recently, but generally I hear it more often in the context of "strident feminist" etc. It's a word whose connotations has been discussed and analysed often, eg

https://debuk.wordpress.com/2019/09/25/in-praise-of-strident-women/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/womens...n-get-you-in-trouble-at-work/?sh=4082ef9c6db3

And I read somewhere that google research had found the word more often used to describe women than men, but I can't find that article again.

We talk about the use of words like "hysterical" here without anyone calling anyone else "some people with an agenda", so why not other words?

As ever I am happy to argue both sides with anyone who's up for it, to no purpose whatsoever.
 
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