How instructive to see the actor Amanda Abbington give an interview to Newsnight. It followed the BBC report in which it apologised to her, upholding some of her claims against Giovanni Pernice, the Strictly Come Dancing professional she was partnered with in the 2023 series, before leaving five weeks into the competition.
Abbington spoke about her time on Strictly, which she described as “an ongoing litany of being verbally abused, sexual innuendo and sexual gestures” (Pernice denies the allegations), and how she has not ruled out further action against the BBC. She spoke of receiving anonymous death and rape threats from people on social media since speaking out: “I’ve had to deal with myriad horrible things that have continued to happen, just for really complaining about…” She corrected herself: “Not even complaining – I don’t like that word – for alerting people to what I deemed and what people before me deemed as bad behaviour.”
It seemed a telling moment: why did Abbington recoil from the notion of complaining? In the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of “complain” is: “to express grief, pain, or discontent”, or “to make a formal accusation or charge”. It seems clear, but is it more complicated than that – is it gendered? Does “complain” mean one thing for men and something very different for women?
Getting away from the actual Strictly allegations (what a stick of legal fizzing dynamite that continues to be!), it has been quite something observing the monstering of Abbington in certain sectors of the media, and beyond. How reports of her “summit meetings” with allies such as the TV presenter Laura Whitmore (partnered with Pernice on Strictly in 2016) have practically depicted them as witches, hunched and cackling around a glittery cauldron. How the vultures of social media have ripped Abbington’s character apart like so much “luvvie” carrion.
Isn’t this so often the fate of the performer who complains – to be punished and humbled? More fundamentally, isn’t it also the fate of the woman who complains?
That’s what I sensed, watching Abbington instinctively regulate her language on Newsnight: the bone-deep female terror of complaining. The baked-in dread of speaking up, “making a fuss” – not only objecting to something but insisting on being heard and taken seriously. In such circumstances, most women would hesitate, not because they’re unsure, timid or gutless, but because women who complain have a good idea of what’s coming to them.
I mentioned witches earlier. During the witch trials in Britain, it tended to be specific types of women who were targeted: old women (especially those with cats, viewed as familiars), loners, outsiders, folk healers, but also strong women, “scolds”, who stood up for themselves, spoke their minds, and just wouldn’t belt up. At other times in British history, such women were silenced with devices called scold’s bridles – iron muzzles that painfully clamped their tongues and stopped them speaking (“nagging”), some of which were fitted with bells to compound the public humiliation.
Perhaps it is fanciful to suggest that such is the long, misogynistic history of these isles, the high cost of complaining runs through the very marrow of modern British femininity. Then again, maybe not. If any woman out there ever feels genuinely, heart-poundingly scared to speak her mind, maybe she needs to know that what feels like fear or weakness may actually be centuries of conditioning.
The “Karen” thing is a mild, supposedly humorous, version of all this: for what is that again but older women making themselves heard? Mature females forcibly pushing back against the near-mandatory cloak of invisibility that an ageist, sexist society wants to throw over their heads.
Come to think of it, even the concept of complaining seems curiously gendered: domesticated, small-minded and slightly pathetic. If male at all, then only in an emasculated sense: complaint forms; noise complaints; curtain-twitching; returning clothes with broken zippers; sending back food; angry letters in green ink; one-star reviews on Tripadvisor. Fussiness. Pettiness. Smallness.
Certainly, nothing dramatic, noble or properly masculine. Because, you see, real men don’t complain, they assert themselves, clearly state their case, stick to their guns and get results. So, exactly what Abbington did but without making the rookie error of being a woman. Is this why she shrank from being viewed as complaining: the very concept has been so downgraded, so negatively feminised and drained of dignity and power, that it is unfit for purpose to even begin to describe what she has been through?
Here, then, the sexual politics of unpopularity are laid bare: many men couldn’t care less if their complaints make them unpopular; women know it could be more loaded and significant for them. Indeed, one can only imagine how it could have affected Abbington in an industry where even the slightest whiff of being “difficult” is the reputational kiss of death.
This stuff matters. During the Newsnight interview, Abbington referred to acting being the profession that “started the #MeToo movement”.
Away from all things Strictly, you are reminded that this was one of Harvey Weinstein’s favourite manoeuvres: if any of his victims fought off his advances, or threatened to expose him, he would smear them, industry-wide, as “difficult” and talk others out of hiring them. Not for the first time, “difficult” was weaponised against the protesting female voice.
That was one of the main pillars of #MeToo – the en masse overcoming of the ingrained female dread of speaking out against male abuses of power. In Abbington’s case, it’s uncertain how it will end, but maybe she might consider reviewing her dislike of the word “complaining”. It is, after all, accurate.
She is expressing “grief, pain, discontent”. She has made “a formal accusation or charge”. I completely understand why any woman balks at the idea of complaining, but maybe it’s time we all started owning it.
• Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist
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