Will Harris stands up for funny women

I have nothing but admiration for Grace Dent (you know Grace Dent; always on those comedy panel shows, Amy Winehouse memorial beehive, Twitter-worn nubs where her thumbs should be? Yep, that’s her). After recently falling foul of an internet troll, who described her on social media as an “ugly abhorrent horse”, the scrappy journalist did some digging and discovered an unfortunate fact about her online assailant. He works for the PR company that represents her.

Well, I say ‘works’. In the time it takes this column to go to press, that verb may have slipped firmly into the past tense; a fact Dent herself was not shy in underlining when the PR back-pedalled at her: “It was naïve and ill-warranted. I won’t delete it, as I ought to bare (sic) the full brunt of my idiocy.”

“You’ll bear the brunt of your idiocy,” Dent tweeted back, deliciously, “at 10am tomorrow morning when you’re unemployed. Good luck.” In the hours that followed, as the twittering classes all but exhausted their 140 characters mulling over the exchange, I spied an interesting trend. The vast majority of those in support of Dent’s put-down were women. The menfolk, upon further investigation, were almost unanimous in their dissent, coming out with such views as “What a hissy fit. You think having a man sacked is an appropriate response to an insult? Major over-reaction” or the equally considered; “Horse face ****.”

What is it, I wonder, that some men have against funny women? Suspend your disbelief while I assume the role of hoary old feminist in the corner (complete with brassiere-shaped scorch marks where I forgot to unhook before flicking the zippo) but why, when a woman uses subtle humour to stand up to a clearly moronic insult, are so many men falling over their Y-chromosomes to describe it as a hissy fit, an over-reaction; to deride the woman as humourless?

“To be accepted as a funny female, you’re expected to be funny looking”

Could it be because men are more interested in tits than wits? I mean, to be accepted as a funny female, you’re expected to be funny looking; or more to the point, to assume a position of supplication and make jokes at your own expense. When a woman refuses to do that, as in Dent’s case, it seems to make men nervous, which inevitably leads to clumsy attempts to put her in her place by deriding that which a woman is supposed to value above all else – her appearance. Grace Dent, for the record, does not look like a horse.

What this episode really shows is that – though many think otherwise – our actions in the so-called Twittersphere can have consequences in the real world. Any mud you throw there, might well stick here. And if you’re naive enough to confuse insults with comedy, gentlemen, the joke could be on you.