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”.