Fox (n): carnivore of genus vulpes; crafty person; scavenger; (vb) to confuse; -ed (adj): to be drunk.
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Thursday 26 July 2012

Bloody women.

IT'S my fault, I know.

Everything is my fault. It must be because, you see, I'm female.

So if a man wants to buy sex from me, I'm more likely to be convicted of an offence than he is. If I want to work and have a baby, I'm the one being selfish and causing problems for everyone else.

If I am raped, it's probably because I got drunk or wore the wrong clothes. If I am hit by my partner, it's because I was too stupid to leave. And don't forget that if a man is interested in me when he shouldn't be, that would be my fault for making him fancy me.

Whether he's married or I'm married, or either of us are single, it will be down to the woman if there's a fling or an affair. It will not matter which of the parties is cleverest, richest, or what the deeper reasons are - the woman is a siren, luring nice men to their doom.

When Jeremy Clarkson decided to injunct his ex-wife over a book she was writing about herself in which she claimed they had an affair after he remarried, she was said to be 'cashing in' and was personally threatened by the court with jail time, a fine and loss of her home.

When Kate Rothschild had a fling, which she and husband Ben Goldsmith tweeted all about, she was called a whore and a bad mother, and had threatening emails and phone calls. She wrote to the trolls: "This is the darkest time of my life and a weaker woman would be broken by your cruel, ignorant condemnations."

Even when sex is not involved, people assume it sort of secretly is. When Neil Heywood was allegedly poisoned over his business dealings in China and a woman called Gu Kilai was said to have confessed, it stopped being about business deals and started being linked to a possible affair.

And now an actress called Kristen Stewart, who has a boyfriend, has been seen kissing a man called Rupert Sanders, who has a wife and family. And it's all Kristen's fault.

There have been death threats, grief, outraged fans, abuse about her acting ability, questions of her intelligence, she's been called a home-wrecker and has now issued one of the most grovelling and heartfelt public apologies I think I've ever seen.

Kristen Stewart is 22. That might seem really old and grown up if you're a teenaged fan of her and boyfriend Robert Pattinson's appearances in the Twilight film saga, but it's a relative baby when you consider she'll probably live to over 80.

She's been famous since she was 12, and really famous since 2007 when she was signed up for the Twilight films. Since she was 19 she's been dating her co-star and they've been infantilised by their fans as having the same intense first-love as their on-screen characters.

They've been christened K-Stew and R-Patz, and if that weren't nauseating enough together they are 'Robsten' because they are one perfect unit rather than individuals or ordinary, flawed human beings capable of duff decisions and a desire to spread their wings.

Kristen is also the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, taking home £22million so far this year thanks to a canny share in the film rights and despite not being the kind of celebrity who trills about her love-life in magazines, poses in her kecks, cuts her body up or otherwise prostitutes herself in return for attention and money.

For the past year or more she's been working on a new film and touring the world for its premieres, which is more of a slog than it sounds, and somewhere along the line actress and director got too close. They were seen meeting for what used to be called some heavy petting behind a disused building in LA.

Kristen has been stupid, she's done what most 22-year-old girls would in the presence of a 41-year-old, handsome, admiring male, and while she's caused her share of the hurt to his wife it's the stupid, cheating, lying male who deserves most of the blame.

The director is old enough to know better. He has made promises to his wife he should stick to until she releases him from them, his children are going to hear all about it, and if anyone led anyone else astray it was almost certainly him doing the tempting when you consider he was dealing with a girl barely out of her teens who's been watched, controlled, directed and otherwise told what to do for 10 years and probably leapt at the first chance to do something wild. I'm surprised it took her this long.

But blaming men for anything other than being slave to their genitals is really difficult to do - even when we see there were two sides to it we still apportion the majority of badness to the female rather than the male. We're all taught from an early age 'they can't help it' and that it's up to women to act responsibly if men aren't to stray from the right path.

My own marriage ended - as far as the court was concerned - because my husband had an affair with another woman, so I have spent a fair chunk of time blaming her for the hurt, selfishness, desperation, and lies which were involved. And after a while I came to realise she may very well have been thick and unkind but she wasn't the one who'd broken any promises - she had merely believed in him, like I once had, and all she deserved from me was passing sympathy.

As such I've not as much time for Kristen Stewart as much as I do the poor man's wife sitting at home filled with tears and snot and pain. She has at least apologised, although I wonder if she'd have come to her senses as quickly had her behaviour not been splashed across a US magazine. But it's the husband who should be scared to Google himself, not her.

I do not know where this urge we all have to blame the female or her love-life for things that go wrong - whether it's arguments in Thatcher's cabinet or a celebrity fling - comes from, but I can't help thinking it's not a million miles away from creation stories claiming Eve tempted Adam with the apple and as punishment her daughters were condemned to bleed for perpetuity.

Never mind that men and women are equally capable of being horrid and doing rotten things, never mind we don't know the gender of the snake or what was going through the mind of the alleged Almighty when he put juicy apples inexplicably out of bounds.

No, inquiring women reasonably questioning the received wisdom of what's right and wrong will be damned for all time because for some reason that's seen as unnatural, even though we've been doing it forever.

We are unclean. We must atone, forever.

And a women who is not content with that - even though discontent causes people to strive and improve the world around them - will find it is best to keep that dirty little secret to herself.

If you cut me, do I not bleed?