People saying you’ve committed ‘career suicide’, death threats, rape threats and a national newspaper calling you a ‘Feminazi’ on its front page two days in a row. This is what Charlotte Proudman has been on the receiving end of since screengrabbing a flirty message she got from a solicitor senior to her (and twice her age) on LinkedIn and posting it on her Twitter.
And now, the 27-year-old barrister, who tweeted the picture for the circle of friends who follow her (that number’s shot up to include people championing her calling out of a sexist culture within the law community), has explained, on national TV, what she wants from the situation. Which is…an apology from Alexander Carter-Silk, the solicitor who sent the message, and an acknowledgement within the apology that telling a junior woman in his profession, via a professional website that ‘I appreciate that this is probably horrendously politically incorrect but that is a stunning picture’, regardless of the ‘I’m being open about what I’m doing so that makes it ok’ caveat, is sexist.
She might not ‘do’ feminism with the same lolsy approachability as, say, Caitlin Moran, or Amandla Stenberg, but what she says has a point. If she let this comment slide as just a compliment, she would be letting slide a wider culture where lawyers, especially senior ones ‘objectify women and see women through their bodily appearance instead of the skills and appearances of what they possess’. It’s easy enough to put up with that sort of nonsense on a daily basis, but it’s far braver to actually take a stand against it. And besides, Charlotte doesn’t want Carter-Silk banned from doing anything, she just wants an apology and a recognition of what he’s done.
Regardless of whether she achieves this, Charlotte has taken a lot of flack and handled it with dignity, so well done to her. And well done to the people who’ve spent the past couple of weeks trolling her and publicly dragging her. Because nothing says someone’s totally cool with women than criticizing or seeking to upset a woman who speaks out about a very real and tangible problem. While women make up 62.4% of students taking up law at university, and 57% of associates UK law firms are women, this drops to just 24% at partner level. With women's voices so routinely shouted down or belitted, it's no wonder why.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.