Philip Davies is the Conservative MP for West Yorkshire. He’s also actively anti-feminist. This is a man who has previously said ‘feminist zealots want women to have their cake and eat it.’ Earlier this year Davies spoke at a men’s rights conference hosted by an anti-feminism party, the Guardian went undercover and exposed him for telling attendees that Britain’s legal system is skewed in favour of women.
It’s not just the evils of feminism that rile Mr Davies up. The Conservative MP also took it upon himself in 2008 to send a flurry of letters to the Government’s equalities watchdog which amounted to him staging a one-man campaign against ‘political correctness’. In one letter he asked Trevor Phillips, the then-Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commissions: ‘is it offensive to black up or not…?’ He also asked whether a ‘Miss White Britain’ competition or a ‘White Power List’ would be racist and expressed the opinion that the existence of black power lists entrenches division.
If Davies wasn’t on your radar this should give you a pretty good idea of who he is and what he’s about. Hold that picture in your mind’s eye and read the next sentence very carefully: Philip Davies has been elected unopposed to a parliamentary committee whose sole purpose is to scrutinise issues relating to women’s rights and equality.
Yes, you read that right. Understandably, given the views that Philip openly holds about women’s equality feminists are pretty unhappy about his appointment:
However, anti-feminist men’s rights activists on Twitter were having a field day and rejoicing in the opportunity to share witty memes like this:
Just some of the subjects which the Women and Equalities Committee are currently looking into include: the inequalities faced by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, women in the House of Commons, pregnancy and maternity discrimination, employment opportunities for Muslims in the UK and the gender pay gap.
The presence of Davies on the committee may be unwanted but it’s unlikely that he’ll be able to do much damage in real terms as there are eleven other members. The Chair is former Women and Equalities Minister Maria Miller. Indeed, perhaps having his views scrutinised by the committee’s other members will force Davies to explain and back up his stance. It will be much harder for him to make the case that our justice system is ‘rigged against men’ here than it is when he’s preaching to the choir at a Justice for Men and Boys Party conference.
Hey, you never know, perhaps Davies won’t use his new position to attack women, political correctness and make obtuse remarks about feminism. Maybe he’ll bring some really well-constructed arguments about male suicide rates and the number young white men underperforming in our schools, pushing those issues up the agenda and asking what we can do about them. Maybe…
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.