It’s not misogyny, Professor Beard. It’s you

Oh, this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is.’
— Gaius Valerius Catullus

‘I do not know whom Mary Beard is but wyth a name lyke that she surely has a third teat and a hairy clopper.’
— Internet posting following Professor Mary Beard’s appearance on Question Time

So Catullus, mate — things have not got much better over the last two thousand years. People, it seems, are still ill-bred and tasteless, as that second quote up there would suggest. It was not the most tasteless comment on the internet over the last week or so, or even the most tasteless to be directed at Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge. There are others, most so vulgar even I wouldn’t repeat them, from quite the most ghastly ill-bred people. I suppose it is shocking that someone of Professor Beard’s standing and breeding is forced to suffer its hideous manifestations.

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