LAUREN BOOTH: Woman overboard? It's over the top, girls

‘When someone falls into the drink,’ he told us, sounding every inch the naval officer from central casting, ‘the person who sees them shouts “Man overboard!” and points at them. Got that?’

A small woman winced at his words – well, at one word in particular: ‘man’. She was clearly itching to ask: ‘What if a woman falls overboard, what then?’

I’ve no wish to give offence to my fellow passengers, so I’ve been treading rather carefully in recent days. 

Fantasy life: Joanne Massey in her Fifties-inspired home in Channel 4's Time Warp Wives

I’ve successfully negotiated such alien terms as ‘fireperson’ and ‘chairpeople’. But I stumbled yesterday when a group of female students went past. I said they were ‘nice girls’.

The effect of the word ‘girls’ on some breeds of feminist is like burping in front of the Queen.

In one sense, though, the language police are right to be concerned: there’s no doubt that women face some major problems in the way they are perceived.

We are asked to deal with a range of hugely important choices when it comes to choosing the balance between work and home life, but no one advises us which direction to take.

We are left with no confidence that our decisions are right and there is certainly no approval if we happen to be successful. Yet there is outrage at our perceived mistakes.

No wonder each time I leave my girls for work abroad – as on this occasion – I struggle with self-doubt, stress and that favourite female friend, guilt.

However, I have never worried about whether to say ‘man’ or ‘woman’ overboard. That sort of thing is unbearably trivial, particularly when there is a battle of the sexes that is becoming more  violent by the day. 

Teenage girls are victims of ever greater levels of violence, both emotional and physical. And they no longer get the sort of protection they might once have taken for granted.

Take last week’s ‘Facebook’ mini-riot, broadcast all over the internet.

Daniel McInerney, the 16-year-old boy who was filmed punching a 15-year-old girl off her feet because she soaked him during a fun water fight, now refuses to apologise
to his victim unless she says sorry first for chucking pink liquid over his T-shirt.

‘We’re both in the wrong. She shouldn’t go around throwing juice in my face . . . I would apologise to her at the same time she apologises to me,’ is his summary of it all, as if he can’t differentiate between needing Mummy to wash a shirt and needing medical attention.

His refusal to accept that this girl was more vulnerable than him sends a chill down
the spine.

In his terms of reference, she is an equal, subject to the same retaliation as a bloke his age.

Meanwhile, the ordinary coinage of gentlemanly politeness – words such as ‘lady’ or phrases such as ‘after you’ or ‘no, let me’ – disappear from our language, replaced by an aggressive lexicon of ‘slags’ and ‘sluts’.

Perhaps my co-sailor is right after all, and there is something in creating a vocabulary that protects women from abuse.

Only do me a favour if I fall off the side: ‘Man overboard’ will do quite nicely.

Bashir's macho humour is no laughing matter

American journalist Ju Ju Chang bore the brunt of Bashir's inappropriate comments

TV presenter Martin Bashir’s address to a prestigious group of American journalists was supposed to champion the cause of minority groups.

Instead, he stunned his audience by referring to the women present as ‘Asian babes’.

It got worse. Turning his attention to the dress of his colleague Juju Chang,  he described it as ‘long enough to cover the important parts and short enough to keep you interested’.

Bashir’s embarrassed apologies have been accepted.

No doubt he will write his own material in future.

But for thousands of female workers, this sort of lame humour is no mere ‘error of judgment’. It is an everyday fact of office life.

And it is naff.

Cute, but we don’t need these silly throwbacks

Channel 4 has discovered a strange new breed of woman, the ‘time warp wife’.

These curled, wasp-waisted poppets find modern life ever so hectic and uncivilised.

Their answer to supermarket queues and the work-life balance is to retreat into a fantasy life based on marriage in the Forties and Fifties.

They wait hand and foot on working husbands, ‘relishing’ all that baking
of cakes and darning of socks.

For all of seven minutes I found their efforts rather cute, even (momentarily) enviable as I dashed off emails in between washing up.

But when a wife called Joanne described her social life as ‘visiting like-minded friends for tea and cakes’, this brief delusion vanished – to my relief.

Who wants to be a Stepford Wife?

What's Paul McCartney’s game? He has every reason to loathe his ex-wife Heather Mills, yet ‘friends’ of the former Beatle are spinning away furiously, putting it about that his latest lyrics – the first since their messy split – are written in a spirit of generosity and affection towards her.

Will this help rescue Heather’s reputation with the general public? Unlikely, I’m afraid.

Nor will it help Gordon Brown to have Bill Clinton extolling his virtues.

Some brands are just beyond redemption.