Who hasn’t been Dean at a party?

Who hasn’t been Jacqui Dean at a function? Balancing a drink in one hand, and a canape in another, and then some guy in a suit calls you over to make a ‘‘joke’’.

What Simon Bridges said at that caucus event about five years ago doesn’t really bear repeating.

At a press conference this week he framed his comments as ‘‘relating to folk wisdom about conceiving daughters rather than sons.’’ What he should have said was that they were sexist and demeaning.

No, he wasn’t directly commenting about Dean. But you have to ask: what then, was Bridges’ intent? He was standing, apparently, with two other male MPs. He was making a vulgar – and not even very funny – joke about sex with his wife. He was making it, publicly, to a woman, and a colleague.

Who hasn’t been Jacqui Dean, after that, wondering what to do?

Do you say nothing, and laugh, joke around like ‘‘one of the boys.’’ Do you roll your eyes, and tell him to shut up, and move on? Or do you tell your boss, and risk making a fuss, knowing that it will leave you labelled as a ‘‘buzz kill’’ or a troublemaker, not cut out for the rough-and-tumble of political life?

Dean, to her credit, did the latter. Not many of us would. Bridges, also to his credit, apologised.

But Dean says ‘‘it continued to play on her mind.’’

Over the last few years, the National Party has been beset by examples of similarly boorish behaviour among its male MPs and candidates – from Jami-Lee Ross acting inappropriately towards women, to Andrew Falloon sending unwanted explicit texts to multiple women; to Jake Bezzant allegedly sending nude images of his exgirlfriend to strangers.

Bridges’ comments might not fall at the same end of the spectrum as those cases. But it doesn’t have to in order to be concerning.

Even if it had been clever or funny, jokes meant to demean women all feed into the idea that women are somehow less than men. And those are the exact conditions that set the scene, and give men the permission to, abuse women. It’s what Auckland University psychology professor Nicola Gavey calls the ‘‘cultural scaffolding of rape’’, or what the ‘‘It’s Not OK’’ campaign refers to as a ‘‘social tolerance for violence.’’

Bridges – and the men who laughed at his comments, or said that they weren’t that bad – would probably be horrified to think they were part of such a culture. But hopefully instead of getting defensive, they go home and think about it, and then explain to their sons that making jokes about, or at the expense, of women is not OK. Because Gavey’s most recent research found that despite times changing, boys still feel huge pressure to do just what Bridges was doing – act in a ‘‘blokey’’ way to fit in.

Bridges himself admitted feeling this way in his memoir. He’s not alone. According to the Australia masculinity expert Michael Flood, most men aren’t sexist or misogynist, but they assume that other men are, and so they don’t speak up.

Perhaps Judith Collins could join these men on the thinking chair.

Only Collins herself can really know why she decided to take Dean’s concerns public at 9pm on a Wednesday.

Publicly, she’s said she was ‘‘taking the matter seriously’’. Privately, I wonder if she can look inside and know that’s true. Because from the outside, it looks more like she was using Dean’s experience to take down Bridges for her own gain. It certainly does not look like she was putting Dean at the centre.

Jacqui Dean has said she wants privacy. Who can blame her? For who hasn’t been Jacqui Dean, a woman thrown under the bus.

Even if it had been clever or funny, jokes meant to demean women all feed into the idea that women are somehow less than men.