Open your mouth and say it: he's a man

The world becomes dystopian when we cannot speak the truth

At what point do you know you’re in a dystopia? Or even just in a Very Bad Sociopolitical Situation? This question bothers me. I thought about it in the pandemic; how odd it is that so many of the small details of your life remain the same even though the world outside is carrying on like the film set of Contagion. Do people always just trot blithely forwards, making sandwiches and love and shopping lists even in the apocalypse? What was it like around the average family dinner table in Germany circa 1943, for example? And how does the school run play out in North Korea? “Pass the salt”. “Have you remembered your swim kit?” “Turn that radio off dear, let’s listen to the birdsong instead. Ah, there isn’t any. Oh well, radio it is then.”

This morning the Metro newspaper tweeted the following at 7.21am.

I’m aware that in this atmosphere of mistrust, you might think this absolutely blatant misogyny is from a fake account or that it’s been mocked up as a joke. I thought the same when I saw it, and had to click through to check that it was, indeed, the UK paper The Metro, not a troll or a parody. And I’m astonished to report that this woman-hatred did indeed come from their official account with its 365 thousand followers. But of course, in this same atmosphere of mistrust, you might not believe me either as I’m telling you this story. Maybe I mocked up the tweet, or someone else did. How do we know who to believe?