The Women and Equalities Select Committee is a member down today after one of its male intake was forced to resign on Monday over his formerly misogynistic behaviour. However, to the surprise of some feminists, it's not Philip Davies, the man many have spent the past year calling a misogynist, but Labour's Jared O’Mara.

The MP for Sheffield Hallam's equality credentials have been cast into doubt after Guido uncovered a series of online messages from him dating back ten years or so. They include calling gay people 'fudge packers' and 'poofters', asking Girls Aloud for an orgy (on the condition the blonde member wasn't in the picture), and claiming fat women don't deserve respect. There's a lot more, too, where that came from - with more allegations appearing to emerge with every hour.

After giving an impassioned speech at yesterday's Parliamentary Labour Party meeting (perhaps his first speech in the House of Commons), O'Mara appears to have the support of his party to continue as a Labour MP. He has since given an interview to Huck magazine, explaining why he deserves a second chance:

“ '"In terms of resigning as an MP? I think there’s a place for me,” he reflects, when I ask him why he shouldn’t. “I want to educate people and help people going through those prejudices grow out of them. I’ve gone on that journey and feel I can help. If a Conservative MP had made similar comments I’d say it depends on what journey they had been on since. If they’d honestly changed and believes in equality and egalitarianism then absolutely [they have a place in Parliament], but the very culture of Conservatism doesn’t foster that equality.”'

So, what O’Mara appears to be saying is that if a Tory had behaved as he had, they ought to quit Parliament. However, because he's a Labour MP, it's okay.

This idea that being a member of a particular party automatically makes you a champion of equality is tribalism at its worst. There are many examples of misogyny on both the right and left of politics. There are also many examples of progress being achieved for women's rights on both the right and left of politics.

Oddly enough, being a member of a party that's yet to have a female leader, let alone Prime Minister, does not exempt you from criticism. But nor would being a member of any party. What's more, few in the Labour party believe it does. It was Labour's Jess Phillips who claimed this summer that left-wing men are the 'actual worst' sexists.

A similar type of argument is beginning to arise too online. Many have taken to social media to complain that although O'Mara is clearly a wrong un', the Tories can't talk because they have Davies sitting on the same committee. It's an argument we've all heard before. The MP for Shipley doesn't have women's interests at heart so therefore he doesn't deserve to sit on it. But it is ludicrous to compare the two as similar in crimes against the committee's aims.

One sang a song about 'smashing' a woman in the face, the other wants an international men's day to discuss high suicide rates among young males. One said fat women don't deserve respect, the other asked the Chancellor this morning if he would commit to changing the law so that women on maternity leave can have the same advantages with work save schemes as their non-pregnant counterparts. To accept the difference, it doesn't mean you have to sign up to Davies' full men's rights agenda – just criticise it, and his filibustering, on its own terms.

If people really want to attack the Conservatives for not taking the committee's work seriously, they should look to the fact that only two Tory MPs took up the four empty seats available to them at the beginning of the Parliament. But what's more important here is the distinction between behaving like a sexist and questioning the current intellectual orthodoxy on the meaning of equality. You can query the work of the Women and Equalities Select Committee without being a misogynist. And as O’Mara has proved, you can be guilty of sexism while also preaching its work.