Let's hear it for ungrateful women!
Let's hear it for ungrateful women! The slightest suggestion that a woman is not grateful enough is pounced upon, highlighted and twittered about in the media with relish. We can find examples everywhere, and particularly in politics, sport and the media. Recent high-profile attacks have been made on Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe for quietly disagreeing with her husband in a press conference, pointing out that it had taken five foreign secretaries and six years of unjust imprisonment before she was released. No matter said the critics. She was ungrateful, she was rude, she should be sent back. Dina Nayeri, an Iranian refugee who has American citizenship, has spoken of ‘gratitude politics’, where refugees are expected to wear a grateful face. But, she warns, they shouldn’t be too successful or assertive, because then they become labelled as ‘greedy interlopers’. Women in sport are constantly getting it in the neck. Megan Rapinoe, the strong, gay captain of the US Soccer Team, wa...