After Toby Young and Boris Johnson, we need to talk about 'posh boy' misogyny

The sheer nastiness of Young and fellow ‘eccentrics’ Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg hides in plain sight. When we see something so ugly, we search in desperation for the punchline. It turns out there isn’t one

I used to feel sorry for men like Toby Young. No, hear me out. I used to think how terribly embarrassing it must be to tick all those privilege boxes – white, male, straight, wealthy, connected – at a time when no one believed in that bullshit any more.

I certainly didn’t. That’s why, when I became a student at Oxford two decades ago, I took it on the chin when people suggested folks like me didn’t deserve to be there. They didn’t mean it, I’d tell myself. They were being ironic (it was the Nineties – we were big on irony then). No one, I decided, would be that rude to your face and expect to be taken seriously.

Hence I let it go when privileged male students would ask me to sew on buttons and iron shirts because “I’m used to having these things done for me”; when they’d tell me it must have been easier for me to get a place at my first-choice college due to “political correctness”; when they found the discovery that I had an unemployed sibling with severe schizophrenia inexplicably hilarious (I blamed myself for making them uncomfortable and apologised for raising the subject).

Even when they divided female students up into those who were having sex (“slags”) and those who weren’t (“prick teases”) I persuaded myself it would be in some way slut-shaming to disagree. “You’re a slag, Victoria,” one of them said to me. I didn’t object. After all, at least I hadn’t yet been included in their “satirical” college newsletter, which mainly revolved around mocking female students they considered to be too fat.

Oxford and Cambridge are strange places (trust me – like Young, I went to both). Academically, the opportunities they offer are fantastic, but much of the social and political life seems to be run on rules that no one will tell you. You either know or you don’t know, and if you dare to ask questions, you’re revealing yourself to be a pleb who expects to be spoon-fed social advantage (something only available to those already born with that spoon in their mouths).

It’s only now, in my forties, that I can look back and see how the sexism, classism and racism of so many of those Oxbridge chaps was totally sincere. Young, around 10 years my senior and recently appointed to the board of the Office for Students, has described state school pupils at Oxford as “vaguely deformed” and proposed “progressive eugenics” for “parents on low incomes with below-average IQs”.

This isn’t just bants; he apparently meant it (despite, technically, having been one such “deformed” student himself). The sheer misogyny behind Young’s comments and fellow “eccentrics” hides in plain sight. When we see something so ugly, we search in desperation for the punchline. It turns out there isn’t one.

We’re witnessing an enormous backlash against social progress on both sides of the Atlantic. Nonetheless, I don’t think the misogyny of men we see in England works in quite the same way as that of Trump. The privilege that poisons British politics isn’t just based on sex, race or even wealth; all of that is blended with a very specific type of entitlement, one that revolves around the adherence to arcane rules and the breaking of ordinary social codes. Respect, like taxes, is for the little people.

There’s no better expression of this entitlement than the boorish, bully-boy behaviour that dominates in the House of Commons. Like many people, I routinely watch in disbelief as elected representatives behave in a way that would, in any other workplace, lead to serious reprimands. The message is clear: we’re too important, too special, too superior to follow your petty little rules. We don’t do pleases or thank yous. Etiquette only exists to exclude the rabble.

And all women are, ultimately, the rabble. It doesn’t matter how much personal wealth they amass or how far they go in infiltrating the corridors of power. Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon can still be reduced to their legs and Labour MP Pamela Nash to her breasts. Nobody should believe that this has anything to do with the aesthetic appreciation of the female form; it’s about reminding women to know their place, that they are, after all, only tits and ass.

That someone as inexperienced, crass and seemingly bigoted as Young could be appointed to a job that apparently requires “high standards of personal conduct” should not surprise us. It’s the same old positive discrimination that always pushes men with connections to the top, only now we are, absurdly, supposed to consider them mavericks.

I don’t know what’s become of the posh boy sexists I knew from my Oxbridge days, although I’d pretty much stake my life on them having fewer academic qualifications and far higher salaries than my less “maverick” friends and I. I do wonder, though, how they fare when it comes to self-respect. Can they look in the mirror and truly believe that all the spite and venom they hurl at the masses isn’t meant for them? Don’t they ever wonder how they’d cope without their friends in high places?

What kind of man would Toby Young be without all that social, economic, racial and sex-based privilege?

A better one, I think. One who was far better qualified to do the job he’s been given. The trouble is, if he was that person, he’d never have that role and we’d never have heard his name.