Curfew quarrel
Following the abduction of Sarah Everard in south London, police officers working on the case in the area advised women not to go out alone
and to be careful
; which doesn't seem too unreasonable, since the perpetrator was still at large at the time. But Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb's response in the House of Lords upset a number of people, and was widely ridiculed:
I would argue that at the next opportunity for any bill that's appropriate I might actually put in an amendment to create a curfew for men on the streets after 6pm, which I feel would make women a lot safer and discrimination of all kinds would be lessened.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, quoted by The Independent
Baroness Jones had attempted a form of reductio ad absurdum. Many people thought that she was serious, however, and she later had to offer a clarification, stating that the comment was
. Unfortunately, as is the way of the internet and social media, she received the predictable hate messages.not an entirely serious suggestion
and reiterated that a ban on men leaving their house was not Green Party policy
Since my comments about a curfew for men to keep women safe, I've had a deluge of misogynistic emails and tweets. Which rather proves my point about the problem being with men ...
Jenny Jones via Twitter, quoted by The Independent
Only some men, your majesty—and not all your critics were men anyway. Nevertheless, Judi Atkins, writing for The Conversation, asks why did so many people take her 6pm curfew for men proposal at face value?
Atkins doesn't fully answer her opening question in so many words, instead offering some general and specific observations [my emphasis highlighted]:
Infusing this category of responses is the age-old trope of women as “hysterical”. From this perspective, Jones’s suggestion is a massive overreaction to a single incident, and the (perfectly legitimate) concerns of other women for their safety are dismissed as irrational. Even their calls for more protection are ridiculed using the language of mental illness, which perpetuates the “crazy woman” stereotype and so invalidates their experiences. These tropes are at odds with the intensely dry, straight way that Jones delivered the line. She seemed to be taken seriously at least in part because of the lack of irony or flourish in her tone as she said the words, and yet this section of her audience still received her as a hysterical woman. Sadly, the vitriol directed at Jones was not an isolated incident. For women in public office, misogynistic online abuse comes with the territory and – on occasion – they may be targeted offline.
Judi Atkins The Conversation
Atkins hit the nail on the head as to why people took Jones's comment at face value; it was delivered in the intensely dry, straight way
of someone who doesn't make jokes
, without irony or flourish in her tone
. What she doesn't account for is why people misunderstood her message; explaining the backlash solely in terms of the misogyny trope—which presumably doesn't apply so well to Jones's female critics. The reality may be more complex; the problem lying not so much in that people took Jones's comment at face value, but that her real message required them to not take it that way.
The use of reductio ad absurdum as an oratorical technique is not straightforward. By showing your audience that you know what you're saying is absurd, and that they're in on it, you invite them to reflect on the absurdity of the premise that you're criticising. But it requires charisma and skill to get it right; a twinkle in the eye, a play of the lips, and tonal modulation of the voice. These cues to the audience indicate that what you're saying has a deeper meaning, and shouldn't be taken at face value.
These are characteristics that Jones clearly doesn't possess; her delivery was dry, atonal, and without the nuance or physical expressions needed to convey her underlying message. So people who don't know her natural demeanour took her comments literally; and that made her, not them, look foolish. Bonkers, even.