Following the revelations by MP Mhairi Black about the online abuse aimed at her, columnist Ruth Wishart reflects on the fight against everyday sexism.

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Six years ago this summer, when #MeToo was but a glimmer in the eye of a campaigner in America, when US actors turning up in their best tux for an awards ceremony might have thought a “Time’s Up” badge referred to the end of the Super Bowl, a young woman in England launched a project called Everyday Sexism.

What Laura Bates was asking women to tell her website about was not just the heavy duty stuff, the rapes, female genital mutilations and serious criminal behaviour, but the kind of thing that all women recognise and some men refuse to acknowledge.

The kind of blokes who think it hilarious to invite women to bare their breasts “for the lads”, think it acceptable to touch women’s privates on public transport, find it amusing Trump-style to give women marks out of ten for their sex appeal. – since what else could possibly matter about them?

The young Paisley MP Mhairi Black gave heart stopping evidence in a Westminster debate the other day of the kind of daily abuse which arrived in her inbox. Abuse so disgusting that the media were unable to reprise it for their reports.

Laura Bates would not have been surprised. She too became the target of those internet trolls who, from the safety of fake names and anonymity, thought it acceptable to send hundreds of tweets warning her of particularly violent rapes if she didn’t desist.

Some went further explaining how she might be tortured before she was killed.

I mention all this because, almost inevitably, it’s become the norm to read articles complaining that the battle against casual sexism and belittling of women has gone too far. How it’s become impossible to have normal relationships with women in the office or at social gatherings in case some harpy or other calls them out for just having a laugh, just bantering, just paying them the compliment of unsolicited touching.

This pushback is coming from men who will tell you that their very masculinity is being put at risk by a monstrous regiment of women refusing to accept that boys will be boys, and why don’t they concentrate on trying to locate a sense of humour.

But here’s the thing chaps. I have yet to meet a woman who has not at some time or other been the subject of unwanted verbal or physical harassment, most often in the workplace.

Much of it has involved men more senior to them, and their failure to complain has been more about the imbalance in power and fear for their jobs, than any sense that it was OK for the men concerned to believe they were entitled to invade personal space or make gross comments.

Most men have absolutely no problem behaving appropriately at work or at parties. Most men know instinctively what the ground rules are and that they are different with long standing pals as opposed to strangers or employees. And women have absolutely no difficulty with daft banter from guys they know well and will cheerfully respond in kind.

And most men, thankfully, don’t think it’s acceptable to send threatening messages to young women whose “crime” has been to draw attention to bad behaviour. While most women are perfectly capable of discerning between sexual assault and stupid commentary on their appearance.

As they say in those ridiculous adverts for betting companies: when the fun stops, STOP.