If you're surprised by what Jared O'Mara said about women, you really haven't been paying attention

Labour MP Jared O’Mara has just been suspended from the party after constituent Sophie Evans claimed that, among other comments that she told the BBC “aren’t broadcastable”, he called her “an ugly bitch”.

This follows revelations by political gossip blog Guido Fawkes that he made misogynistic and homophobic remarks on an online forum between 2002 and 2004, joking about an orgy with band Girls Aloud and suggesting it would be funny if jazz singer Jamie Cullum were “sodomised with his own piano”.

So far, so appalling. But also, par for the course in politics. In this decade, this year, this week, are you really still shocked by sexist, homophobic, racist and transphobic language among politicians? How can women, especially, be surprised? Perhaps it’s true what Polish MEP Janusz Korwin-Mikke said in the European Parliament: we must be weaker, smaller and less intelligent than men.

O’Mara has resigned from the Women and Equalities Committee after apologising for his language, adding: “I made the comments as a young man, at a particularly difficult time in my life, but that is no excuse.” (That rather sounds like an excuse to me – particularly as he was in his early twenties, and this took place in the Noughties, not the Stone Age.)

The MP also said his views had changed significantly over the past decade and a half – although Sophie Evans’s allegations would suggest otherwise.

But it’s not just him. His fellow member of the Women and Equalities Committee, Conservative MP Philip Davis, has voted against equalities legislation, including same-sex marriage, argued that more women should be sent to prison, and referred to feminists as “zealots”. This is the same man who filibustered bills which sought to tackle domestic violence against women and make sexual education compulsory in schools. If that wasn’t enough, this is the same man who called for the word “women” to be removed from the name of the committee on which he continues to sit.

Then there’s Jacob Rees-Mogg, the new darling of right-wing British politics, who has consistently argued against same-sex marriage and maintains a staunchly anti-abortion stance – even in the case of rape. He also believes it is “ridiculous” for a man to call himself a feminist. Unless his top-notch education failed to teach him how to use a dictionary, that means he’s saying it is ridiculous for a man to declare himself pro-equal rights.

And what about Nicholas Soames, Conservative MP for Mid-Sussex? He found himself in the awkward situation of having to apologise to SNP member Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, for making “woof woof” noises at her while she spoke. Of course, he described it as a “friendly canine salute”. Easy mistake to make.

Remember when Chancellor Philip Hammond said that driving a train was so easy “even a woman could do it”? Or when he accused a female MP of being “hysterical” for asking a simple question?

Perhaps people are surprised to hear O’Mara’s kind of misogynistic language among Labour politicians, the party of equality and progress? Hardly. It’s just this week that Norwich South MP Clive Lewis has been publicly castigated after he was filmed telling a man to “get on your knees, bitch”. Yes, it was a comment made to a man, but it is still a slur rooted in misogyny.

And Ukip? A candidate for their leadership actually tweeted a request to silence Nicola Sturgeon by taping her mouth shut, adding, “And her legs, so she can’t reproduce.”

But we have a female PM, I hear you say. Theresa May, who former deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine once delightfully described as having “a man-sized job”. Presumably he was not referring to the fact that she takes the bins out – in her own words, a “traditional boy’s job” and her contribution to gender equality in the May household.

Criticising O’Mara’s language during Prime Minister’s Questions today, she said: “I want young women actually able to see this House as a place that they actively want to come to.” And yet she was quick to dismiss the remarkably sexist “Legs-it” Daily Mail cover as “a bit of fun”. She might as well have echoed her predecessor and said: “Calm down, dear.”

So should we be outraged at casual sexism in politics? Yes. Should we be surprised? Not at all.