Slane Girl incident shows double standard alive and well

I MISSED the whole Slane Girl thing when I was away, because of a three week self-imposed media blackout and digital detox – no phone, no internet, no newspapers, no telly. Of all the news stories I missed – apart from Syria, obviously – Slane Girl is the one that most made my jaw drop.

How much we hate women. How the double standard is alive and well and living, not just in a field in Leixlip, but everywhere, all over the internet, embedded in trolls, in the faux shock-horror of hypocrites, in the rantings of misogynists and the casual hatred of strangers.

Not that I am advocating teenage girls give oral sex in public. No. Slane Girl made some fairly catastrophic errors of judgement. I don’t know anything about her, other than she is a 17-year-old school girl from the West of Ireland. That is, perhaps not the most experienced, wise or worldly person, given that she is legally still a child. Was she treated with compassion and understanding? No she bloody wasn’t – instead she was named, and splashed all over something called ‘slut shaming’ on Facebook. And the boy? A “hero” and a “legend.”

Why is he a “hero” and a “legend”? I genuinely don’t get that part of the story. What is heroic or legendary about encouraging a teenage girl to do something that is undignified for both of you? Nothing heroic about that, pal. But it is the stark division of the repercussions which is so appalling – the hero and the slut. God almighty, where are we, the 14th century?

Teenagers have sex like they’ve just invented it. To do so in public is obviously ill-advised, but could it be that everyone was drunk out of their minds, as is the custom at Irish gigs? Surely the person – a bloke, obviously – who took the photos of the boy and girl and then posted them online is the one who transgressed the most? He took a situation that should never have happened, but did anyway, and made it into something huge, and lasting, something that she cannot delete either from her mind or her hard drive, thanks to this colossal act of spite. Why isn’t the photographer being shamed? Why isn’t he being mocked, trolled and ridiculed? Sued? Prosecuted? Arrested?

Because we still hate women. Society, I mean. Hate them. We may pretend not to, we may gasp at such an idea, but we do. Overtly, in the case of Slane Girl, and covertly, in everything from women’s magazines to the pay gap. Sexism and misogyny are alive and well, and thriving on the internet, where the haters can hide behind their made-up hater usernames. And the rest of us collude, all the time, without even realising – every time we read about something like Slane Girl and automatically make a judgement that condemns the girl, and exonerates the boy. What about the person who uploaded the photos? What about HIM?