The mote in your eye

I believe the Rowling-McGarry Affair has been disastrous from a feminist perspective.

It has distracted attention from the blight of online misogyny by making the story, from a journalistic point of view, an argument between two public figures. We should instead be focussing our attention on the misogyny of which they, like most women, have been victims.

There has been a somewhat unedifying response to this online, in which each "side" accuses the other of hypocrisy and competes over who is the biggest victim of misogyny by pointing out instances of misogynist abuse committed by individuals from the opposing camp (since the two individuals involved in the affair are unfortunately seen as representatives of two different sides in a debate which, it so happens, has nothing to do with misogyny).

This achieves precisely nothing.

It lets the authors of the original abusive misogynist material off the hook.

So, rather than tallying up offences and allocating blame on the basis of this futile calculus of victimhood, we should be focussing on those on our own "side", whom we can more easily influence, and make them desist their misogynistic practices. If we are serious about tackling misogyny online we should start with those whose behaviour we are more likely to be able to modify on the grounds that we find common cause on other issues.

So advocates of Scottish Independence who use Rowling's opposition to it as an excuse for a misogynistic response must desist. Men who are threatened by a successful woman with an opinion, to which she is perfectly entitled, cannot be allowed to use disagreement with that opinion as an opportunity for misogynist abuse.