Emily Thornberry doesn’t know the name of the French Foreign Minister. The Shadow Foreign Secretary was discussing the Brexit talks with Sky News’ Dermot Murnaghan, when he asked her an off-hand question that derailed the entire interview and made national headlines.

But that wasn’t Thornberry’s downfall. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to answer Murnaghan’s question, and I can think of only a handful of colleagues who would. On BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning, Times columnist and former Tory MP Matthew Parris admitted that even he hadn’t been able to name Jean-Marc Ayrault, and neither had any of his CEO or journalist friends. Baroness Grender, former deputy director of communications at Number 10, was also sympathetic about Thornberry’s ignorance. She pointed out that, if France had been on the agenda, she would have been properly briefed for it, and that the ability to memorise huge amounts of trivia was not the most important quality in a minister.

So Thornberry could have recovered. She could have admitted she didn’t know, then swiftly moved on to why her vision for Europe was more important than the details in this instance. She could even have made a joke about it – maybe something like “You know Dermot, I haven’t actually memorised everything just yet – I’m taking a leaf out of Boris Johnson’s book”. (The Today Programme replayed an interview with MP Stephen Byers from 1998, fluffing the much easier question of 7×8, and recovering with grace and humour.)

Instead, Emily Thornberry resorted to the only defence she could think of: sexism. She accused Murnaghan of “pub quizzing” her in a way he never did with male politicians, perhaps forgetting that asking tough questions is a journalist’s job when interviewing a Shadow Foreign Secretary. She called his questions “patronising” and demanded he ask her something about the fall-out after North Korea’s missile launch, but stalled again when Murnaghan asked her to name South Korea’s President. And when he asked if she knew the President’s gender (it’s actually quite noteworthy that Park Geun-hye is the first woman to lead South Korea) she retorted childishly: “I’m not getting drawn by you into this nonsense.”

There are ample instances of sexism in the media. A month ago, during the Olympics, the BBC’s John Inverdale appeared to forget that female tennis players existed, while several sports commentators attributed the successes of female athletes to their husbands on live TV. In politics, Hillary Clinton’s tone has been scrutinised so intensely that news shows will interview experts on whether her body language suggests she is lying, while ignoring the obvious and outrageous lies Donald Trump trumpets every day. Until she became Prime Minister, there were more column inches devoted to Theresa May’s shoes than her policies, and Scottish newspaper The National thought it appropriate to depict the new PM as Disney villain Cruella De Vil on its cover.

But testing Emily Thornberry on facts that are relevant to her job? That’s not sexism. As Matt Chorley from The Times tweeted:

It would have been sexist if Murnaghan had asked Thornberry about Bake Off. Or her hairdresser. Not who she might talk to in government — Matt Chorley (@MattChorley) September 11, 2016

Women in politics have worked for decades to get journalists to ask them serious questions about their jobs instead of who designs their clothes and what they look for in a man. Murnaghan was treating Thornberry like a politician, not a woman, and her cries of double standards only drew attention to her incompetence.

It doesn’t matter whether Thornberry can name Jean-Marc Ayrault or not – she can’t keep her cool in an interview, and it is not sexist to point that out.