Once again I find myself screaming at the odious Harriet Harman to, in short, stop trying to help. From the ‘they do it to us so why can’t we do it to them?’ school of ad hominum attacks, she tells us that men cannot be trusted in power, and argues that the Labour Party should always have one woman and one man as Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, or something.

It comes down, as always, to a collectivist interpretation of feminism and a individualist’s interpretation.

The collectivist likes to think in terms of collectives. So women are a collective, and to that collective are attributed lots of wonderful characteristics that are generally found in woman. Being caring. Being empathetic, etc. Each member of the collective, then, is assumed to have these general characteristics and therefore an individual woman in a position of power would bring said characteristics to the job.

Which is, of course, total bullshit.

The one true hard generalisation you can make about members of the ‘female’ collective is that they all know what it’s like being a member of that collective. The same can be said for the men in the ‘male’ collective, and I suspect this is the one that Harman is interested in.

To argue that leadership should have a representative from each of these collectives is typical of a collectivist mindset – that people belong to groups, and from those groups emerge leaders to represent their interests as a group. If those leaders advocate something, then it’s good for the collective even if the individuals within it suffer.

So is it a surprise that someone like Harman slurs men as a collective group, or that she believes both ‘groups’ should have equal representation? No. I mean, it’s the least surprising thing ever, after sliced bread selling more than un-sliced bread. It’s amazing it made even made the news.

Let’s now consider the individualist’s perspective on the whole issue of gender, of minority rights and everything else – take each individual on their own merits. That’s it. Race, gender, sexuality, disability, nationality – these are rarely relevant to whether or not a person is able to do a job.

“Ah,” cry collectivists. “People don’t though!” they argue, again generalising all human beings into yet another collective. “Ah ha!” I reply. “Perhaps if you stopped promoting collectivism and thus treating people as groups rather than as individuals, we wouldn’t have this problem?”

If only it were that simple – well it is that simple – if only it was that simple to smack such people over the head with the reality stick like that. Collectivism is the alpha and omega of racism, sexism, nationalism. “Ah but” they say. At this point another knock on the conk with the reality stick might be useful.

At completely the opposite end of the political spectrum from Harriet Harman and nearly 50 years ago, Ayn Rand – not someone I’m especially pleased to be referencing – wrote a book where the main character is a woman whose main dream in life is building rail roads, not the perfect white wedding or acquiring a pair of Manolo Balonicks.

Not only is this character technically competent (and good at maths) she’s accepted by her peers not for her appearance, but on her merits, for what she has achieved. The fact that she’s a woman is neither here nor there.

Perhaps if Hollywood ever does make a film version of Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart will be transformed into a hard-working mum, struggling to juggle her career and her duties as a mother. Luckily the state helps her out by providing child care help, which allows her to go off and do her job properly. When she finally comes face to face with John Galt, she explains how without the state’s childcare help she’d never have been able to build the John Galt line, so basically he’s wrong and must be stopped – they end up having a bit of a gun fight and in the end Dagny blows John out of the airlock, saving the country. All the other industrialists, brought to tears by Dagny’s tale, return to work with cheer in their hearts.

Annnyyyyway….

See, I’d like to see a world where women were judged purely on their merits (and, in fact, see men judged on their individual merits too), and perhaps we’re getting there. But the answer, surely, cannot be Harriet’s way – the sense of entitlement as a ‘leader’ of a collective. The answer has to be for women to show what ability they have and, in short, not give a flying fuck whether or not men – as a collective – accept women – as a collective – as their equals. It simply doesn’t matter – what matters is the individual and the individuals they deal with whether you’re a man, chicken, goat or whatever.