Here are three little words that you probably thought you’d never hear regarding the querulous pity party being thrown over in Montecito: Meghan is right.
You heard. Now get to it. We must tackle misogyny. And the causes of misogyny. Everywhere.
But specifically where that misogyny pertains to the Duchess of Sussex, because it doesn’t matter what New Age nonsense she spouts about pretty much anything, we must understand – be made to understand – that What Meghan Wants, Meghan Gets.
Oops, sorry, wrong slogan. I meant to say she is just a girl, standing in front of a boy telling him his family are a bunch of uptight, institutionally sexist cold fish. With a side order of racism. But she’d like to keep the title, thanks.
And so they had to stuff their aristocratic trappings into a carpet bag and leave for Canada. But not really. It just sounded more, y’know, classy than California, where she’s now a full-time practising feminist.
As is Harry. Although that doesn’t make him any less masculine, she recently assured Gloria Steinem in an unnecessary, toe-curling sort of way.
Stop rolling your eyes at the back. It’s her feminist truth, folks. She’s told it to ITN’s Tom Bradby. And Oprah. And she forgot she told it other people, too, but the ongoing legal ding-dong with the British press has felicitously jogged her memory.
But it has also nudged ours; buried deep within reports of the ongoing court case is the reminder that when the writers of Finding Freedom were carrying out their research, feminist firebrand Meghan asked her personal assistant to tell the authors that her half-sister Samantha had lost custody of all three of her children by different fathers.
Now there’s a blatant betrayal of the sisterhood, as well as the sister. I must have missed the “dobbing in your blood relatives” chapter from the feminism handbook. My bad.
Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d say it was more of a self-serving character smear than an expression of female solidarity. But that probably makes me a part of the problem.
That’s the upshot of Meghan’s weaponised feminism, you see. Anyone who objects to the assorted histrionic accounts of her lived experience in the lonely hell of Kensington Palace or the emotional desolation of the beautifully refurbished Frogmore Cottage is dubbed a misogynist. Or worse.
And you know who’s to blame? Naming no names, but I can’t help thinking if only Kate had taken one for the realm, become Meghan’s bestie and hung out over matcha lattes a bit more, the rest of us might not be in Meghan’s firing line. Instead, Meghan jettisoned her feminist credentials (again) to sniffily let it be known Kate wasn’t as friendly as she’d hoped. Nothing to do with a culture gap, a personality clash or a wilful refusal to adapt to the arcane traditions of royal life; Kate’s fault.
In the Meghan multiverse, everyone else is to blame. Frankly, the Duchess of Cambridge got off lightly being reduced to tears (rather than rubble) over flower girl hosiery on Meghan and Harry’s Big Day.
Incidentally, I was in the ecstatic crowd, wildly cheering and waving, as she swept by in her horse-drawn carriage on a sun-drenched May afternoon back in 2018. From everything she has said subsequently, it wasn’t enough. We weren’t enough.
It’s a far cry from 1993, when 11-year-old Meghan wrote a letter to toiletries giant Procter & Gamble asking them to change the wording of a sexist advertisement that had the tagline: “Women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans.”
A month after she wrote to them – she also judiciously sent copies to Hillary Clinton and civil rights lawyer Gloria Allred – Procter & Gamble changed the tagline to “People all over America…”. Now, she and Harry’s Archewell Foundation is working with the company to promote gender equality, inclusive online spaces and “resilience and impact through sport”.
Incontrovertibly laudable, but there’s a disconnect between Meghan the passionate advocate and Meghan the rather thin-skinned feminist, hitting back at every perceived slight. Maybe a little more of the aforementioned resilience would come in handy?
Still, we are where we are. So let’s try to make amends with a rebrand to show willing and strike Megxit from the record! It is no more.
Hithertohenceforth, the departure of the Duke and Duchess from the old country with its fusty ancient chapels (can we get an ylang ylang diffuser in here, just over by the tomb of Henry VIII?) and the incomprehensible insistence on stiff-upper-lip decorum (whaddayamean “never complain”? Nobody shuts me down, Harry…) shall be known as Hexit. Job done. Happy now?
As if. What’s that, Meghan? It sounds like we are blaming you for casting a spell? Placing a hex on Prince Harry?
Crikey. That’s the thing about Wokefinder Generals: they find reason to take offence where none was intended.
The truth is that none of us will ever be good enough for Meghan, whose earnest pleas for mutual respect and understanding are so relentlessly La La Land that I’m genuinely flummoxed she stuck it out in Britain as long as she did.
I don’t doubt her sincerity, however grating some others may find it. I do wince at her lack of self-consciousness, her inability to shrug off criticism and move on. Feminism still has a great many battles yet to fight. Let us hope Meghan can learn to separate the personal from the political and use her voice to effect global change, rather than settle old scores.
You can read Judith Woods’s column every Thursday. Click here to read last week’s edition.
