Stephen Fry: What She Said

Oh bottoms!
It seems Stephen Fry has said something stupid.
Which means it's open season on Stephen.
The "National Treasure" has become an overnight pariah.
Welcome to Hate Week.
Columnists have been queueing up to say something stupid about Stephen back.
Yesterday Stephen Fry tweeted; "So some fucking paper misquotes a humorous interview I gave, which itself misquoted me and now I'm the Antichrist. I give up... Bye bye."
He seems to have meant it - today his Twitter account is "no longer in service".
A big queeny hissy fit?
Or another nervous breakdown and a moonlit flit to France, or worse?
Paul Flynn, the (very good) journalist who interviewed Fry for Attitude, says Fry was not misquoted.
Going back and looking at the interview in Attitude makes things none the clearer.
Fry is talking about gay teenage gay crushes, and crashes right into the stuff about womens' sexuality, but so sharply it looks like there are a few lines missing.
"I get an enormous amount of mail from young gay people who are in love with people in their school. 'How do I tell them? If I do tell them, will they beat me up? I think they maybe know?' It's so touching and sweet but also one must never underestimate the overmastering power of the emotion they feel. It consumes them. Those things are not to be sniffed or laughed at. They do consume you. I think most straight men feel they disgust women. They find it difficult to believe that women are as interested in sex as they are. For good reason. If women liked sex as much as men there would be straight cruising areas..."
You know the rest.
But how on Jupiter did Stephen Fry get there from there - a spectacular leap of the imagination about the nature of desire?
Whatever, please note, he was making an almost banal point; men - straight or gay - are more interested in sex than women, they're more sexually driven.
Is there any debate about this as a generality?
Stephen Fry does have some odd views about sex - and for many years was celibate as he seemed rather disgusted by it himself.
Or by himself.
But can we keep to what he actually said in the Attitude interview, please?
He did not say; "Women don't really like sex" - as it was put in the headline to The Observer article that began this perfect shitstorm.
Its author, Polly Vernon, editorialised a prophecy; "the remarks... are likely to be roundly dismissed by those who have embraced the idea of women's ability to have unemotional, uncommitted sex as an empowered lifestyle choice."
And then she found two writers to do just that.
Susie Orbach told Vernon; "Why would he believe that women could be so disgusted by men?"
He didn't - Fry said; "I think most straight men feel they disgust women."
Fagburn presumes he meant not because men are inherently disgusting, but because men have very dirty minds.
The Telegraph today quoted Germaine Greer; "Stephen Fry is clearly under a delusion that he is an authority on female sexuality. Well, if he thinks that women are not interested in genital encounters with total strangers then he is absolutely right. But to conclude that we are therefore uninterested in sex is madness."
This was a constant riff, with a distinct whiff of homophobia in the way Fry's sexuality was constantly referred to; "What does he know - he's gay?"
"Stephen Fry offering up his views on female sexuality is a bit like Wayne Rooney spouting forth on Aristotle..." (Bryony Gordon).
Though straight commentators felt free to pronounce forth about gay sex - or "homosexual intercourse" (Laurie Penny, The Guardian)
We were told it is "bad, filthy, grubby, disgusting and dislocated from the emotions." (Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent)
But Stephen Fry didn't say women were "uninterested" in sex, just not as interested as men.
By Chinese whispers, this was even twisted into 'Stephen Fry: Women Hate Sex'.
This is why it all really blew up, Fry was painted as colluding in the denial of all female sexuality, and of female sexual pleasure; viz Germaine Greer's now famous phrase "The Female Eunuch".
Or worse, that he hated women; a collective slur on gay men every bit as offensive as the above.
In The Independent, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown declared; 'Fry's misogynistic view is of women as evil temptresses'.
But by what warped logic is what he said misogynistic?
And how can you accuse him of thinking women are "temptresses" if you say he said they don't like sex?
And moreover how the fuck can you justify claiming he thinks women are "evil" - an incredibly low blow.
Alibah-Brown set about demolishing a "national treasure" - her words - with (anti?) gay abandon.
She even fell back on a variation of that old bigot's standby; "Some of my best friends are..."
"Most of my good gay friends truly like femininity. But I have known some phobic ones too..."
But what has he said that was "phobic"?
Slightly silly, yes - but he probably meant it to be.
Offensive? Clearly it was, if only to those who wanted to be offended.
But there simply was no misogyny in what he actually said.