Edwina Currie shuts down Paul Joseph Watson’s comments on sex and men wearing face masks

Former Tory minister Edwina Currie has sharply rebuked conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson after he crudely attempt to mock men who wear face masks to slow the spread of coronavirus.

The Infowars editor, who touts himself as a “brilliant polemicist”, fired off a series of tweets on Wednesday which baselessly equated men’s choices to wear face masks with poor sexual performance and low testosterone levels.

He then concluded with: “Basically, if you’re a man who wears a mask, you’re broadcasting the fact that you have been f***ed in the a** by your girlfriend. And that is not something to be proud of.”

Among the many respondents who took issue with Mr Watson’s outdated take on masculinity and sexuality was Ms Currie, who served as junior health minister under Margaret Thatcher.

“Idiot,” the 74-year-old replied, adding: “Try it, you might enjoy it.”

The unlikely intervention drew much amused praise on social media, including from Independent columnist Shappi Khorsandi, who wrote: “I did not expect to be retweeting Edwina Currie's suggestion to this vexation that he should try pegging, but there we are. Strange times.”

For his part, Mr Watson replied: “No thanks, Salmonella woman” – a jibe about Ms Currie’s resignation in 1988 following her claim that “most of the egg production in this country, sadly, is now affected with salmonella”.

During her time in office, Ms Currie also courted controversy by claiming: “Good Christian people who would not dream of misbehaving will not catch Aids.”

Following her departure, she has penned several novels, often centring on politics and romance, including her Diaries 1992-1997 collection, which revealed an affair with then-Tory prime minister John Major upon its publication in 2002.

Mr Watson’s comments reflect a wider trend of men choosing to reject face masks, with one survey finding male respondents in the US – where the pieces of cloth have become a potentially deadly victim of the country’s “culture war” – were more likely than women to view wearing one as “a sign of weakness”.

Another study, conducted by the US-based Kaiser Family Foundation found that 68 per cent of women frequently wore a mask outside the home compared with less than 50 per cent of men. 

Meanwhile, self-styled strongman leaders, such as outgoing US president Donald Trump and Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, have acted as prominent examples of how face masks have been politicised.

“Conservatives seem to be reacting to a broader sense of the erosion of male privilege and dominance in society, and they therefore look up to male leaders who embrace masculine stereotypes,” Peter Glick, a bias and discrimination expert at Lawrence University in Wisconsin previously told The Independent. 

“The masculine leaders they elect are very protective of their macho image, making them anti-maskers.”

While it took the UK government several months from the pandemic’s outset to decide to make face masks mandatory, their use is now legally required in most public settings.