Helen Mirren did an interview with the Times Online’s Chrissy Iley that may upset women once again. Mirren talks about date rape, for the second time, and the competitiveness of females saying she’d rather want men in the jury for a date rape case than women and would rather be interviewed by a man because women are bitchy.
“No, it’s more that I prefer male journalists because there’s a streak of female journalism — the bitches — who are mean-spirited and nasty because you are another woman and want to make you feel crap. It’s very upsetting. I’m more careful when I’m being interviewed by a woman because, from experience as well as reading articles about other women, I know there is a little stiletto knife hidden behind the back.”
She’s laughing as she sizes me up. But she’s right. On the whole, women don’t like other women, because women are competitive with each other. She says: “In a rape case the courts in defence of a man would select as many women as they could for the jury, because women go against women. Whether in a deep-seated animalistic way, going back billions of years, or from a sense of tribal jealousy or just antagonism, I don’t know. But other women on a rape case would say she was asking for it. The only reason I can think of is that they’re sexually jealous.”
We’ve gone from talk of loving women to hating women in just a few seconds. We talk about jurors in rape cases saying the victim “asked for it”. “Yes. That is terribly unfair. And that used to happen, didn’t it, in those days.” She says this with concern, perhaps even empathy.
Helen Mirren is in a self-fulfilling prophecy because no doubt hordes of women will be condemning her theories on gender roles. To put this interview in different terms. The hole Helen dug for herself is now about 20 feet deep with no way out and it’s just started raining.