Exclusive: Giles Coren is Not the Devil

Wow. Giles Coren really knows how to upset people doesn't he? At least he does if Twitter is to be believed.

The day of his article in the Daily Mail claiming that it is more socially acceptable for women to make sexist remarks about men than the other way round Coren received quite a lot of stick in a 140 characters or less.

Most of this was good natured tutting at Coren's deliberate wind up about child birth being easy or him claiming that: "Women are far meaner, more brutal, aggressive,  small-minded, jealous, petty and venal than any man."

Utter nonsense of course but surely that was the point? Maybe I'm given Coren too much credit but surely he knew that would get people Tweeting him and leaving comments on the website expressing their outrage at such sexism. Isn't he just illustrating his point? Say something about women and you get called all sorts of names.

Some people missed the point a lot more dramatically than others. Scottish Socialist Youth posted an article entitled 'Giles Coren, What a Cunt.' It proceeds to denounce Coren by outlining every bit of attempted humourous hyperbole and taking it at face value.

Sometimes you just want to say to people 'He's winding you up mate.'

The author also goes on to say something along the lines of 'Sexism is about power. Men have all the power in the world therefore women can't be sexist.' Nevermind the fatuousness of this argument it's so far of topic as to be risible. All Coren was doing is drawing a parallel between Andy Gray and Richard Keys' stupid 'joke' and the endless similar 'jokes' on shows like Loose Women and virtually every advert. Neither have a lot to do with real issues of sexism but do happen to be remarkably similar. The only difference being that the bollocks on Loose Women is considered legitimate content (God knows what they reject) while Gray and Keys have to be closet sexists.

I feel that Coren was just trying to make people upset thinking that that will demonstrate the lunacy or the whole situation. Having said that he does get a bit carried away but if you've ever read any of his articles in the past you'd know that that's his style. I'm not condoning his style (he's wound me up a bit in the past as well) but calling him a cunt is a bit much.

Though perhaps it's not really his Daily Mail piece that upsets those at the Scottish Socialist Youth that much. They make lots of references to how 'posh' he is. Though they do claim they don't care about that. Just before calling him a posh dick.

Taking Coren's wind up about Gray/Keys being like Loose Women and comparing it to being followed home by a stranger from the bus is far more offensive. It has nothing to do with the patriarchy's control over women. As socialists you would think they would have a better understanding of what control means.

On SSY's comments section the author delights in how much traffic their article has generated (along with accusing an English reader of cultural imperialism for not knowing that they don't have 6th form in Scotland). All of that traffic has come from Coren himself retweeting your article.

What a cunt.