Piers Morgan blasts feminist for wanting to make wolf-whistling illegal

Piers Morgan has blasted a feminist guest for wanting to make wolf-whistling illegal.

The Good Morning Britain presenter expressed his opinion on whether the age-old sexist act should be banned and made into a crime.

Debate raged when guests Martin Daubney and Rebecca Reid joined Piers and co-host Susanna Reid to discuss the pros and cons of outlawing it and acknowledging it as a hate crime against women.

Piers attempted to laugh off the idea while Susanna felt something certainly needed to be done about the problem.

The issue arose after British police forces were asked to record the abuse of women as a hate crime, with Nottingham Police saying: ‘At present, most forces don’t record abuse of women as a hate crime – but campaigning groups are urging them to follow Nottingham Police’s example.’

After Piers tried to say that women whistle at men on red carpets, Rebecca hit back: ‘As a woman you have this awareness you are less physically strong than every second person in the world, if someone is being threatening you, it’s frightening because you know you’ll come out of that tussle a loser.’

The presenter went on to undermine the issue further by deeming it harmless fun: ‘I’m talking about the builders on a building site who look down and if they see an attractive woman they give a little whistle and say “alright love, you look lovely.”

‘What is so criminal about that?’

Clearly Piers doesn’t appear to grasp women’s daily struggles against objectification and sexism, as he plays down the degrading act.

And Martin was eager to chip in with his take, too: ‘It’s the absolutely pinnacle of snowflake Britain,’ as he insinuated that wolf-whistling was something women should deal with and simply get over, especially after calls for the act to be criminalised.

He also said that it would be a very hard law to uphold: ‘It’s practically impossible to enforce. It would cripple the legal system that is already under immense pressure.’

It wasn’t long before Piers piped up again to discredit the issue, branding the harassment as ‘trivial’: ‘The feminist movement seems to be more exercised about relatively trivial movements like this, in terms of big public campaigns, than they are about legitimate abuse of women [referring to FGM, or arranged marriages].’

After the GMB poll revealed more people didn’t think it should be criminalised than should, Piers topped his argument off by making a bizarre comparison to liking or disliking food: ‘I might find this apple and peanut dish really offensive it doesn’t mean we ban everyone in Britain.’

Catch GMB weekdays, from 6.30am, on ITV1.

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