It shouldn’t take 17,500 complaints for violent misogyny to be removed from a national paper.

I am, like many of you I suspect are, incredibly relieved that Jeremy Clarkson’s hate piece on Meghan Markle has been removed after 17,500 complaints. I am also glad to see petitions circulating to see Clarkson removed from a position he uses almost exclusively to bully women he doesn’t like. Meghan Markle, Nicola Sturgeon, Greta Thunberg, pick a powerful or successful woman, Jeremy probably has a problem with her, and he’s probably written a piece on how much of a problem he has with her.

But, Jeremy Clarkson is not an anomaly. Hating Meghan Markle is, at this point, pathological for untalented men who stay relevant simply by being aggressively provocative and controversial. Alongside Jeremy at The Sun, is Piers Morgan. 4 of his last 5 columns are about Harry and Meghan. It’s literally an obsession. Over at The Daily Mail, they’ve got alumni of The Sun Dan Wootton doing much the same. Search his name, and again, 4 of the first 5 articles to come up are about Harry and Meghan, and how much he loathes them.

It’s unhinged, absolutely. But here is the thing that’s not being spoken about. We get so caught up in “Jeremy must go!” and “Piers Morgan has to be stopped.” and “Dan Wootton has never done a serious piece of journalism in his life, why do people read anything he writes.” we forget. Jeremy Clarkson didn’t publish that piece alone. It wasn’t published on his own blog, a platform he owns or is in charge of. It was published in a national newspaper that has a chain of command. Neither have Morgan or Wootton.

Chief Editor of The Sun, Victoria Newton, allowed overtly violent misogynistic and racist rhetoric to go to print in her paper. That’s the message and tone she’s okay with.

Managing Editor of The Sun, Victoria Watson, didn’t speak up and say no when this piece was submitted. Which suggests she’s apparently okay with an old man talking about wanting a woman to be paraded naked through the streets for shame, whilst people throw excrement at her.

Chief Executive of The Sun, Rebekah Brooks, did nothing either. Every single one had a chance to stop it going to print. None of them did a thing for this article, none of them have done a thing for the countless articles by Clarkson and Morgan in their paper.

And the same can be said for The Daily Mail. Ted Verity does nothing to mitigate the hate campaign as Editor in Chief, nor does Danielle Ray as the Global Managing Editor, or Lord Rothermere as Chief Executive.

And that’s noteworthy for a couple of reasons. First, whilst we write off Clarkson, Morgan and Wootton as sad, bitter old men, the majority of people greenlighting their violent misogyny are actually women. How do they sleep at night knowing it took 17,500 complaints to get that article removed because they said yes to men speaking with such violence about a woman, a mother, someone like them?

Aside from the internalised misogyny of the women allowing these men their platforms, the point is this. If The Sun and The Daily Mail are dirty rotten flowers, Clarkson, Morgan and Wootton are simply thorns we keep getting caught on. But the whole thing is rotten from the root. The roots need pulling up, and the whole thing incinerated, so it can’t spread its rot any further.

It shouldn’t have taken 17,500 complaints to have it removed, because absolutely no one should have approved that piece for print in the first place. Clarkson wrote it, but he is not the reason it went to print. He is not why it was available for millions to read. The roots are.