What the Spectator article about sex workers tells us about men

The case of the ogling columnist who went to a brothel? It’d be pathetically laughable if it wasn’t so sinister, writes Dr Charlotte Proudman

The openly sexist article, and the lack of retraction from author or publication, reveals just how deeply set the culture of misogyny is (Jooney Woodward)

Only a privileged white man would feel entitled enough to pen an article about how he attended a lecture at the University of Cambridge where the professor’s appearance – specifically her blonde hair – was so sexually arousing that he was compelled to go and find a sex worker.

Shocking as that is, it happened. Lloyd Evans – writing in The Spectator – described a trip to Darwin College to listen to Professor Lea Ypi, an academic from Albania. Evans admitted he’d been so turned on that he later felt compelled to visit the “rougher end” of town.

“Her blonde hair spilling over her shoulders absorbed far more of my attention than her political reflections and I was desperate to speak to her afterwards, but I had no way to orchestrate a meeting,” he laments – before describing his “social rendezvous” with a “petite” and “buxom” woman called Shea, who “looked Chinese”.

He then describes being covered in hot wax before she “ordered me to flip on to my back as she dimmed the lights and raised one eyebrow at me suggestively”, adding: “This was the cue for negotiations.”

When I read this diatribe, I – along with half the internet – was floored. It seems to me that it doesn’t matter whether a woman is prime minister, a professor, or a sex worker; in a world run by men, they can reduce us to little more than a body in the blink of an eye.

Evans was apparently baffled by other men calling him a “sex pervert” (after he published an article about being a sex pervert). He insisted his experiences were designed to “encompass both poles of life, between the intellectual high-flying political philosophy and a sexual encounter.”

His glorified ogling and dehumanisation of Professor Ypi shows me precisely what he values women for – and it’s not their intellectual ability. In a comment to the Telegraph, he said, “she was physically attractive and that made me feel a bit lonely”.

The inability of Evans to possess a woman who is plainly so out of his reach that he was left “lonely” – so that he had to pay for sex with a woman who would never have chosen to have sex with him otherwise – is tragic.

Even the way he described the sex worker he hired gave me serious pause for thought: “Mine ,” he wrote, “was petite, black-haired, and buxom.” Sorry – “mine”? No one owns a woman, not even those Evans pays to sexually objectify (and some might say, exploit). So why does our society teach men that they are entitled to women?

Evans continues to defend himself, saying: “I mean literally it’s rather exposing you have to take your clothes off, in a brand new building, and you’re fully naked and I find that quite humiliating and difficult.” Cry me a tiny river. Ironically Evans did expose himself to the entire world.

To me, sadly, such examples of flagrant misogyny are merely an indictment of the society we live in

He tries to explain himself by saying, “I just find clever and articulate women very attractive.” How many articles have you read of a powerful woman saying she finds clever articulate men so handsome that she just had to pay for a male sex worker? None. It would be laughable if it was not so sinister.

I’ve seen similar examples in my own life: such as the time I got into a row with colleagues over Penny Mordaunt when they were talking about her big breasts, rather than what a major accomplishment it was taking a lead role in the coronation. When I called them out, the women backed away and the men tried to make me look like the problem, rather than their sexism. I had another instance where male colleagues were loudly guessing whether a senior female lawyer was wearing tights or stockings and which is sexier.

One young lawyer was once told by a senior partner: “I couldn’t concentrate on your presentation because I couldn’t stop looking at your breasts.” Another colleague recalls being rated out of 10 by the men in the events team. Another had to put up with a desk of burly blokes by the female toilets, chanting “Wouldja wouldja” at every woman who went to the loo (as in: “wouldja shag her?”)

Since when did what (to me) seems the outright hatred of women become legitimate public opinion? It wasn’t so long ago that Jeremy Clarkson wrote a column in The Sun saying Meghan Markle should be stripped naked, marched through the street while people shout “shame” and throw excrement at her. Her crime? Being a woman of colour with an opinion. IPSO later upheld a complaint by the Fawcett Society about the “sexist” article and The Sun apologised.

To me, sadly, such examples of flagrant misogyny are merely an indictment of the society we live in. Women are forced to navigate a world where a simple stroll past men feels like tiptoeing through a minefield of sexual harassment (from catcalling to being groped). Is it any wonder men believe they can sexually harass women on the street (more than 60 per cent of women report being victims) and at work when articles like these actively encourage and laugh at seeing women as sexual objects?

It doesn’t just stop there. One in four women are sexually assaulted or raped – and one in four rape victims are under 16 – and most of the men who are reported to the police “get away with it”. Too often, the police take no further action. Just 3 per cent of reported cases end in a charge.

Evans’ failure to apologise – and The Spectator’s failure to retract the article, along with Evans’ subsequent defence – shows that men are rarely held accountable for their actions. His avoidance and rewriting of reality isn’t a surprise, either. Women’s experiences of misogyny are all too often invalidated, downplayed or denied.