Charlotte Proudman - Press Silent

Lawyer Charlotte Proudman, who became briefly well-known last year after she called out a male colleague for gratuitous sexism on LinkedIn, has apparently left Twitter after she received an unrelenting stream of abuse, much of it gratuitous and vicious, and from those who like to dish it out while remaining anonymous.

As Legal Cheek has told, “The junior barrister who shot to stardom after tweeting a screenshot of a senior lawyer’s sexist message has left Twitter after receiving unrelenting abuse from online trolls”. The post notes “The move comes as The Telegraph published a correction last week about its reporting on Proudman, apologising for, among other things, incorrect claims it had made about her relationship with her late grandmother”.

The Telegraph’s excuse note bears closer examination: “We wish to make clear that the last contact Miss Proudman had with her grandmother was more than two years before her death - not ‘shortly before’, as the article stated - and that Miss Proudman did not accuse her grandmother of having ‘failed in life’. Nor had Miss Proudman ‘thought up’ her surname; she adopted her maternal family’s surname. Her grandmother in fact died in January 2014, not April 2014 as stated. Miss Proudman has also asked us to clarify that one estranged family member expressed anger to the media, not her whole family”.

In other words, the Tel had published a pack of lies. And therein lies the problem for Ms Proudman and so many others targeted by the Fourth Estate as a means of filling column inches and giving pundits targets for them to unload a little bile. The Twitter trolls don’t just lock on to their targets: they look to see who the press is goading and baiting first.

This, not surprisingly, brings us to the Daily Mail and its singularly unappealing bevy of Glendas, who have devoted considerable energy to demonising Ms Proudman. Take Sarah Vine, for example, who moaned “If a man can't compliment a woman, the human race is in deep trouble” before calling Ms Proudman “hysterical and laughably pompous” and decreeing that she was a “Feminazi”.

Glenda Emeritus Amanda Platell was also on the case. After accusing her of hypocrisy, she asserted “Ms Proudman believes she has given a voice to women in the battle of the sexes and will not be silenced. Well, she certainly does not speak for me - nor for any women I know, young or old … it is Ms Proudman who is stuck in the ancient past. 
She is fighting old feminist battles that women of my age fought - and won - decades ago”.

Rachel Johnson, famous for being Bozza’s sister, chipped in with “Fancy getting fired, chaps? Just say 'that's a pretty frock’”. Jan Moir sneered “Little Miss Look-at-me is anything but a victim” and - tellingly - added “And as she complains about yes, yawn, receiving death threats on Twitter”. Death threats are so, just, YAWN! Well, they are for overpaid Glendas who don’t do Twitter.

For those who have to deal with the lynch mob incited by lousy journalism in the Telegraph, and ranting punditry in the Mail, though, the abuse is not at all Yawn. It is all too real, and its occurrence so soon after the press has done its trashing is not an accident.