David Baddiel’s thoughts on women aren’t wrong – they’re just useless

Can women be hot and clever? It might sound like the most basic of insults, a question so rooted in misogyny and sexism that it seems bizarre anyone would even ask it in 2023. And yet, this was essentially the enquiry David Baddiel seemed to be grappling with in an interview with The Times last week.

The piece, which was ostensibly about his upcoming stint at the Edinburgh Fringe, ended up being primarily about a book that does not – and might not ever – exist. But the title alone is enough to illustrate how much of a stir it could cause. The Male Gaze would, according to Baddiel, stem from an idea he posited while speaking to Beth Rigby on Sky News in January in which he argued that men can objectify women while also respecting their intelligence.

“What I think is that it’s possible that men can hold two thoughts in their head,” he said. “So men can, for essentially libidinous purposes, imagine and see women in this way, while not denying their basic humanity.

“Obviously women need to be CEOs and judges and politicians and prime ministers. Is it contradictory to also think, ‘I am interested in that woman physically’? Because I can’t help that interest. That’s part of being a heterosexual male.

“It doesn’t mean that I see her only as a body. I actually am listening to her as well and think that she should be capable of everything that a man is capable of. The problem is that those two things feel contradictory and, yes, I guess that is what I would like to write about.”

These quotes have rattled the internet, to say the least. On Twitter, people compared Baddiel’s comments to John Berger, poking fun at the apparent simplicity of the former compared to the latter, who famously wrote about the male gaze in his highly influential 1972 book, Ways of Seeing. “Men look at women,” Berger wrote. “Women watch themselves being looked at.”

It’s not that what Baddiel said was wrong. It’s that it’s even been said at all. To posit the very blatant fact that we need women in leadership roles and then to point out it’s only natural that straight men might also want to f*** women in leadership roles is just quite a strange thing to say.

It’s not helpful, nor does it invoke any kind of meaningful conversation. All it does it perpetuate an archaic and damaging dichotomy of femininity, suggesting that it’s somehow novel or problematic to consider powerful and intelligent women attractive. Haven’t we moved past this? Doesn’t this just pigeonhole us further? And are we really still people out there that need to be reminded of the fact that women can be more than just one thing?

Conversations about men and women are fraught, particularly right now – just look at the reaction to Caitlin Moran’s book, What About Men? It’s hard for anyone to say anything without it being proceeded by some sort of social media dismemberment. The stakes are just too high, the stakeholders too online.

What we need more of is nuance. Let’s talk less about why men pigeonhole women and more about the societal structures that make that kind of pigeonholing possible. And how those same structures are creating an epidemic of violence against women, victim blaming, and rampant misogyny.

Just asking why women can’t be hot and clever isn’t really going to cut it.