Why the next wave of feminism is conservative

At a recent dinner, an MP told me a story that reveals a great deal about the current state of feminism. One of her constituents had come to her surgery in some distress. She had children at a local primary school, she said, and had been alarmed to discover that the school’s sex education curriculum contained explicit details that she considered wildly inappropriate. She was aware of the prevailing culture in which adolescents – particularly girls – are sexualised at an ever younger age, and she did not want that for her own children.

But parents are increasingly powerless in the face of progressive schools, and not having been to university, this woman felt anxious. She was intimidated by the prospect of speaking with her children’s headteacher. She didn’t understand the progressive jargon teachers used, and was unsettled by their moral certainty. So her plea to her MP was this: help me to protect my children, tell me what to say.