Is Ed Miliband a victim of everyday sexism?

I am currently reading the brilliant book Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates. It is a powerful account of the way society treats women and girls differently in our expectations of them from cradle to grave. The examples given are heart breaking and moving – all the more so because most of them come from women and girls who are not in the public eye, but yet are expected to permanently live as is expected to live up to the standards expected as subjects of the male gaze. It’s essential reading – especially for those many commentators who are the first to comment on any piece here and elsewhere about the supposed iniquity of “positive discrimination” measures.

It hasn’t been a good week for those who try to claim that sexism in politics is a thing of the past. Cameron’s reshuffle – one that was heavily briefed by his own team as a reshuffle for women – has been lacklustre at best in the gender equality stakes.  Women now make up a whopping 29% of the cabinet. Whoop-de-flaming-do. The new female leader of the Lords was due to earn £22k less than her male predecessor until number 10 were shamed into a quick step reversal on the pay. Her position it seems remains downgraded. Meanwhile we hear tales of Tory MPs acting like sexist morons as a woman is photographed near them. Women having their image captured can only be doing so for your gaze, right lads? (Wrong lads).

Meanwhile, the coverage in the press, be it the lamentation of the loss of the middle aged white men or the Downing Street Catwalk, has made sure women are told exactly what their role is in political life. Sure you can be a Secretary of State, but what really matters is your hemline. The snappers were all but chanting “get them out for the lads”. The headlines have been so unsubtle, they may as well have.

So as I started to read Everyday Sexism on the day my weekly LabourList column was due, I was pretty sure I knew what my likely topic was going to be. And I wasn’t wholly wrong.I am writing about sexism in politics. But there was a line in the section of the book that jumped out at me. After a series of quotes and examples of the way women are discussed in politics, the author poses the test “try to imagine the same quotes being included in articles about David Cameron or Nick Clegg” and – as anticipated – I couldn’t. But there is a name screamingly missing: Ed Miliband. And now I think about the way Ed’s opponents in politics and in the press like to portray him, it is quite obvious why.

The number one word Ed’s opponents like to use against him is “weak”. It’s an odd attack when you think about it. What is weak about standing up and saying “Despite the obvious personal cost I feel I am the right person to lead my party”? What is weak about standing up on issues that really matter to real people, such as the Bedroom Tax, the cost of living and the skewed way our economy is managed? If this were the easy option don’t you think we’d have had an easier time of it? It is because these are the tough questions, and because Ed refuses to act like simplicity is the answer – despite siren calls from left and right for a more simple and comfortable answer – that he is called weak.

Since becoming leader, Ed has endured not just the additional scrutiny that all who are thrust into the limelight must undergo, but a particular flavour of derision, one that is very familiar to women.

Ed has been told he is “too ugly” to be Prime Minister a common trope used to keep women down. Remember the outrage about the horrendous “Women who eat on Tubes” crap? Wind forward a few months and we have the insanity that was “baconsandwichgate”.

The harder of thinking among you may now believe that this is the time to start cheering the death of sexism . “Yay,” you might be thinking, “If this is happening to a man too, then we truly live in an equal society”.

Well, no.

Firstly there is no anti-sexism campaign in the world whose aim is for us all to reach the lowest common denominator no matter how hard our detractors may try to paint it that way.

Secondly, I think it’s more complicated than that. The press are hunting in their pack and they are after Ed because they believe they see “weakness”. They believe they see “weakness” because he is not behaving like their outdated version of an alpha male. The tropes they use to attack him are used to highlight his perceived womanliness and attack where whey know a woman – in their experience – can best be wounded.

As long as our images of “strength” reside in desperately outmoded and old fashioned ideals of manliness then women will suffer in comparison. But so will men. Men who do fit that mould and men who don’t. They key point about sexism and gendered stereotypes is that they force all of us into boxes that constrict us. They force our dialogue onto boring tracks when we should be free wheeling.

Is Ed Miliband a victim of everyday sexism? On a conscious level, I think I’ve made a case that he might be. That our politics have defined roles for women and men and if you don’t fit your stereotype you will have to pay for that. The Tories and their press acolytes have decided to treat Ed as a “not-leader” and one of their ways of doing so, if to treat him those others they see not fulfilling their predetermined set of leadership characteristics: women.

But the real point is this: of course Ed Miliband is a victim of everyday sexism. Because he lives in a society that is daily harmed, traduced and twisted by it. Ed is a victim because we all are – boys and girls,women and men, perpetrators and victims alike, we are stuck with the consequences of this demeaning, narrow and constricting culture.