Social justice warrior really does fight 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.

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 it turns out 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 vague connection, at least in Ford’s mind, to a young man asking for high-fives from women on a Melbourne tram.

Fights like a girl... Clementine Ford

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 had been told the man suffers from another condition. Ford had this earlier discussion on Twitter:

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.

“This is just another opportunity for men to discredit the experiences of women,” Ford went on.

“The only difference is that this time they’re throwing the disabled community under the bus by putting on a pretence of support for disability rights while essentially arguing disabled men are sexless, childlike and incapable of understanding boundaries.”

Ford is an expert on social boundaries. Maybe she’d be nicer towards the disabled if they rode public transport with their shirts off and obscenities scrawled on their chests — just as Ford did on Facebook last year.

Keep on fighting, girl.