But Sunak came in for criticism long before this latest stumble – as have other men who have cited the fact that they are fathers when talking about violence against women, for example in the context of #MeToo. Men should not need to reference their relationships with their daughters, the argument goes, when talking about women’s safety and sex equality. They should care about these objectives innately, and to invoke fatherhood is to patronise and devalue women.

These are of course coming from the same women who scream about being a mother to boys before saying we need to fight “toxic masculinity”.

One might prefer for all men to come of age understanding the dynamics of patriarchy, but that’s not where we are, and if a man’s route to shunning sexism comes through his daughters, that’s something to be celebrated rather than mocked.

One might prefer for all women to come of age having a basic understanding of reality and how actions have consequences, but we can’t all be perfect.

This isn’t a one-way street: having sons can shift a mother’s perspective too. I remember an event in 2018, a few months after the Harvey Weinstein revelations broke. One brave woman put her hand up and said she was worried for her sons and where #MeToo and the entreaty that we must believe women to the exclusion of any other accounts might take us. I have to confess that, in my anger at society’s failure to tackle sexual harassment, I wasn’t ready to hear her point.

Oh you mean the centuries long failure in locking up female rapists, sex abusers, and pedophiles like their male peers?

I’ve since reflected on what she said and now I think the fact she was a mother took her to a similar conclusion, but more quickly than me. Today, I’d accept that consent isn’t always as black and white as it would ideally be; that there could conceivably be situations between young people where a woman has not given consent for a sexual act but a man thinks she has.

Or that women are pathological liars and sexual assault/ rape is the most false reported crime in the US by… 400%

I had a fascinating conversation recently with a defence barrister about why the rape conviction rate was so low; she said that one under-discussed factor was that, to secure a rape conviction, prosecutors have to prove to a jury not only that a complainant did not consent but that the defendant did not have a reasonable belief that the complainant was consenting. In other words, the law allows for a situation in which a woman did not consent but a man could have reasonably believed that she did (that “reasonably” is critical), and juries can believe a woman’s account, sympathise with her, yet still not convict a defendant of rape.

You mean you can’t just think no, do nothing to stop the encounter, and throw a man in jail for 20 years? How revolting.