FIGHT THE DISABLED LIKE A GIRL

Clementine Ford’s main problem is that she actually does fight like a girl. It’s all scratching, clawing, hair-pulling, biting, screaming and crying without ever landing a direct hit.

Social boundaries expert Clementine Ford

Clementine Ford’s main problem is that she actually does fight like a girl. It’s all scratching, clawing, hair-pulling, biting, screaming and crying without ever landing a direct hit.

The Fight Like a Girl author’s latest Fairfax column, in which she defended her earlier decision to join in an online shaming campaign against a man who suffers a form of mental disability, is a perfect example.

Her column began with 257 words mentioning Victorian rapist and murderer Adrian Bayley, an attack on a young woman in California last year and Pittsburgh killer Charles McKinney. These cases all have some connection, at least in Ford’s mind, to a young man asking for high-fives from women on a Melbourne tram.

After the fellow’s photograph was published online and social justice warrior Ford joined the shaming, it emerged that he suffered a mental deficiency. “I know this man,” one woman wrote in the man’s defence. “This man is disabled. A simple reminder of personal space and friends vs. strangers and he understands.”

Some reports inaccurately described him as autistic. This was seized upon by Ford as a way to excuse her behaviour, which had led to online threats and abuse towards the would-be high-fiver.

“Facts evidently matter very little,” Ford wrote, presumably about herself. “It doesn’t matter that the family member I spoke with confirmed this man wasn’t on the spectrum.”

But Ford is aware of more than that. She knew, but did not disclose to Fairfax readers, that the man suffers from another condition. On Twitter, Ford had this earlier discussion:

Questioner #1: “Clem, how do you know he’s not autistic?”

Ford: “His sister stated it.”

Questioner #2: “Did she expand on that? (Whether he has any sort of diagnosed condition?)”

Ford: “She did.”

And that’s as far as Ford went. Distract, evade, deny. Bite, scratch, claw.

(Continue reading Fight the Disabled Like a Girl.)

UPDATE. The unspoken rule of lefty book reviewing: never mention how badly written a book by a fellow lefty might be. This is why, in the case of particularly lamentable works, friendly reviewers focus on other angles. If you ever see a leftoid book praised as “brave”, for example, you know it’s garbage.

So consider how lame Clementine’s Fight Like a Girl must be to earn this slapdown from the reliably lefty Saturday Paper:

Righteous anger, even if justified, does not automatically translate into good writing or nuanced arguments. Particularly grating is Ford’s insistence on diminishing human beings to their sexual organs …

Eager to redress the balance, she writes that “the threat of some dude’s disapproval or disappointed flaccid cock doesn’t tie me up in knots anymore”. Does scornfully reducing all males to their penises really help? It reads disagreeably like revenge. She holds particular venom for men who declare themselves feminists and expect a welcome reception.

Fight Like a Girl is less funny and less profound than books such as Shrill. West’s vulnerability is more honest and engaging, where Ford’s talk-to-the-hand monotone can seem contrived.

Monotone. Good call. Another critic might describe it as limited range.