“There is so much women do not understand” is a well-known advertising slogan from an advert in which a blonde woman seems confused over how men view football.
But when Venstre party head Lars Lokke Rasmussen used a version of the slogan during last night’s debate with PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the reaction to what many saw as a gender-based attack was fast and mostly furious.
Rasmussen’s comment to Thorning-Schmidt during a foreign policy dust-up that “there are many things you do not understand” echoed the sexist advert, and the Twittersphere was immediately filled with tweets condemning Rasmussen’s sexism.
“Venstre has sunk to a new low,” tweeted MP Astrid Krag.
Botox blowup
Along with her outrage at Rasmussen’s apparent sexist slight of the PM, Krag joined others in condemning Venstre MP Thomas Danielsen for a tweet that seemed to focus on Thorning-Schmidt’s appearance.
“Sorry, HTS. The frown-lines of Danes can’t be removed by Botox,” he tweeted during the debate.
Other politicians were quick to distance themselves from Danielsen’s comment. Liberal Alliance head Anders Samuelsen tweeted that he wanted to distance himself “100 percent” from Danielsen’s comment.
“Let’s stick to politics,” he wrote.
Morten Bødskov, the former justice minister, called Rasmussen’s comments “grotesque”.
Know your place, woman!
Not to be outdone in the blue bloc sexism sweepstakes, Venstre’s Søren Pind, commenting on the number of times the PM interrupted Rasmussen’s rhetoric last night, mused via Twitter: “Why is it okay for women to interrupt men?”
According to Pind, the PM interrupted Rasmussen 28 times, while he only interrupted her 13 times. He asked: “Is that what feminism is about?”
