A new taste of Twitter nastiness

Whenever I hear a leftie complain about being abused on Twitter, I think: ‘You should try being me.’ A case in point is the journalist Caitlin Moran, who has often taken up the cause of feminists threatened with violence. Among other things, she campaigned for a ‘report abuse’ button in the hope of making Twitter a safer place, more in keeping with ‘the spirit that the internet was conceived and born in — one of absolute optimism’.

A noble sentiment, but I couldn’t help taking this with a pinch of salt after the abuse I’ve suffered at the hands of feminists on Twitter. Take the time I appeared on a BBC2 discussion programme with Germaine Greer. My ability to irritate is so reliable, one irate female viewer tweeted, that it ‘could be used to power an atomic clock’. She then added: ‘Oh, Germaine Greer. You’re still MAGNIFICENT. Please end this brilliant monologue by running a sword through Toby Young’s face.’ Needless to say, the author of these offensive tweets was Caitlin Moran.

But I had an experience recently which made me think perhaps those on the left who complain about their treatment on Twitter have a point. It all began perfectly innocently when I tweeted a picture of my ten-year-old son Ludo. This was on the morning of World Book Day when primary schools encourage their pupils to dress up as their favourite literary characters. A girl in Ludo’s class bet him £1 he wouldn’t dare come to school as a female character so he decided to go as Goldilocks. In the picture he’s wearing a blond wig, a flowery dress and long white socks. The message accompanying the picture read: ‘My son Ludo is going to school as Goldilocks #WorldBookDay.’