Coronation Street: Feminism, The Gay Creator, Misandry And Rita Fairclough The Liar...

The scriptwriter of a Coronation Street episode in the early 1990s had no qualms in rewriting history to make our Street favourite Rita Fairclough out to be a victim of an insensitive husband, while actually making Rita seem like a downright liar, touting for sympathy, to those of us who knew the plot.

Back in 1981, Rita suddenly discovered a strong maternal instinct. True, she had looked after Harry Bates's kids some years before, but streetwise Rita had always seemed quite happy without kids of her own, telling Mavis there would be no patter of tiny feet at No 9 after she married Len.

In 1980, when Rita walked out on Len, her concerns were for a 'decent' house and a dishwasher - not kids.

But in 1981 Rita babysat Nicky Tilsley, and suddenly went all broody. She told Len she wanted to adopt, and Len, at first stunned and incredulous, very quickly agreed. Then the couple found out they were too old, and fostered instead.

But in the early 1990s, Rita told Sally Webster that by the time Len had agreed on adoption, they were too old.

A huge difference.

Also in the 1990s, Bet Gilroy and Rita had a huge barney in the Kabin. Bet pointed out that it was Len's money that got her started. Rita stated: 'Len left me a tatty little shop!'. Yes. And money in the bank, a brand new house at No 7 Coronation Street, the builder's yard in Mawdsley Street...

We adored Rita, but the Street's scriptwriters and producers sometimes did her no favours at all. The watering down of this fabulous, feisty character in the 1980s and her subsequent victimhood at the behest of Alan Bradley dd not convince us. Rita simply did not suit that storyline. She had far too much pride to fling herself at Alan in the way she did, her tears of horror ('Just like Len!') when Alan punched somebody in the Rovers (she hadn't been averse to walloping people herself, including Len, in the good old days) and so on, partially destroyed one of the show's best ever characters and seemed to be taking chunks out of the Feminist Guide To Misandry rather than presenting real life.

Corrie making victimised heroines out of its female characters is farcical. The women are at their best when being strong, human and frequently awful, seeing the faults of their spouses and partners, not their own. Audrey telling Alma she'd married a 'big baby' in the 1990s was a classic example of this. Our beautiful Aud had been selfish, childish (locking herself in the loo in a sulk after she and Alf had been forced to move into the Corner Shop flat when the chain on the house they were hoping to buy collapsed) and generally a lazy shopaholic for years. And we loved her for it. The fact she could see none of her own faults made us love her more.

I have to say that many of Coronation Street's women are at their best when following the template laid down by the show's creator, Tony Warren, himself a gay man and not averse to a bit of camp.

Let's hear Mr Warren on the subject: 'I'd known all these queens [gay men with a penchant for camp] in the village. Some of their dialogue was too good not to use. I remember giving Elsie lines that they would say. When you think of some of the things she came out with, how many straight women have you heard say that?'

The original template - women talking like camp men. The genius - the late Mr Tony Warren.

The original scripts, with their apparently ordinary but slightly tweaked dialogue (witness Ena in the Corner Shop in 1960!), were very much this man's tribute to northern English femininity. But far more evocative of a witty evening in a gay pub with a number of camp men present than ordinary female conversation. The world was really not ready for a soap about gay men!

Coronation Street has become self consciously feminist - and as that ideology is now being questioned far and wide (men oppressed women - oh, really?!) is straying far from its roots and has been growing progressively worse since the 1970s (the Susi Hush era). Ideologies are not facts.

The Street went from being a lovely matriarchy (as many such streets are) to being the misandry mile. A great difference, relying on warped Feminist dogma to score points and create female victimhood.

So, Rita, love, don't tell lies, eh, chuck? Don't forget your marriage was under the microscope on our TV screens - we were there too - so it really doesn't wash.

For years, Feminism was not questioned. But now it is. Chivalry should not allow riding rough shod over facts and demonising an entire gender, and the facts about the vote - suffragettes bombing and harming working class, vote-less men with acid, the SCUM Manifesto, the Duluth Model and the horrors experienced by Erin Pizzey in the 1970s are being examined at long last. As are the true facts about the gender pay gap and the workplace death gap.

About time too.

So, pack it in, eh, Corrie?

The misandrist nonsense (often created by 'white knight' chivalrous men) still goes on and was one of the things which drove me away from the show many years ago.

Remember your roots.

Questioning Feminism? Heresy, eh? Misogynistic or not? Not. Read what Karen Straughan has to say on the subject and just how this hate ideology has infested every nook and cranny of our lives: 
https://antifeministpraxis.com/2017/03/31/feminism-was-never-not-rotten/