Feminism

Women of the world unite! Back Hillary Clinton! Otherwise, prepare to be damned to that special place in hell that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright insists exists ‘for women who don’t help each other’! Exclamation marks are crucial to discussing Hillary Clinton for President. If you don’t deploy one at the end of each sentence, people might think you’re hopelessly depressed that a woman is about to become leader of the free world. We’re supposed to be excited that a woman has just clinched the Democratic nomination. It took America 227 years to get so far. Never mind that the woman in question is widely disliked by a majority

I consider myself such an extreme feminist that I make Germaine Greer look like Greer Garson. (Ask your gran.) But this doesn’t mean that I have to believe women are superior to men in every way. Yes, we violently attack, sexually assault and feel the need to commit murder far less than they do. But when it comes to the little things, there are many ways in which manning up would make women better. Maturity is one of them. We are told from the get-go that females ‘mature’ far earlier than males. It’s weird that feminists go along with this, because it’s one of the main justifications for adult men

In his new book God is No Thing: Coherent Christianity, Rupert Shortt notes that religion is in some ways taken more seriously now than a decade or two ago. But huge habits of ignorance and condescension remain: ‘When secular humanists attack Christianity, they often fail to realise that it is the gospels which provide unseen elements in their own outlook.’ He rightly draws attention to the ‘tension between the enormous cultural footprint of Christianity on the one hand, and its concealment in a secular multicultural society such as Britain on the other.’ And he tentatively criticises the subtle marginalisation of Christianity from public discourse. This is a difficult thing to

Another day, another instruction manual is published on how to be female. ‘Girl Up’ by Laura Bates, author of ‘Everyday Sexism’, is out this week. It is intended to be a handy guide for women on all the ‘lies they told us’. Who are they? ‘They’ means anyone who disagrees with the contemporary feminist line: that women are weak, vulnerable and oppressed. But ‘Girl Up’ is merely the latest instalment in a series of feminist manuals. It began in 2011 when Caitlin Moran – the world’s most annoying woman – published ‘How To Be a Woman’. Ever since, media savvy feminists have continued to reel out book after book of female

   New York Even after all these years, I’m still at times floored by the scale of the place. And it’s always the old reliables that stand out: the silvery arcs of the Chrysler Building, the wide avenues, the filigree of Central Park, that limestone monument to power, the Rockefeller Center. Curiously, the recent trend for tall, slender and glassy housing among money-laundering Russians and Chinese does not mix with the city’s motto of ever bigger and grander. It’s as if the transparency of the glass structure is teasing the authorities about the origins of the owners’ wealth. Come in and take a look, we have nothing to hide. Last

Washington DC In La Crosse, Wisconsin, on Monday night, Donald Trump said, ‘If we do well here, folks, it’s over.’ He was right in theory. There were signs that the billionaire’s crusade against the Republican party establishment and the plutocrats who run it might find an ear in Wisconsin. The state has an industrial working class. It has lately seen plants close and good jobs flee. On the other hand, there were signs that Trump might go up in flames. Wisconsin is well-educated. It is one of the last places in the country where the party system resembles the sociological cliché of the 1950s: rich Republicans in the suburbs, working-class

The toughest causes to campaign for are those which are not fashionable. To fight racism in the 1950s or stand up for gay rights in the 1980s took guts – and the progress made today is largely down to those who took up the cause before it became a form of virtue signalling. International Women’s Day should be a chance to remember the billions of women who are treated appallingly in developing countries – but when it comes to Britain, the battle has pretty much been won. The pay gap is a problem for women born before 1975, but not after. The problem is sorting itself out. For the under-40s, there is a negative pay gap: i.e., men are paid marginally less.

I’ll never forget the first ‘Funisher’ I met. It was sometime in the late 1980s when you could meet all sorts of interesting girls. She was one of the moderately attractive, moderately intelligent broads the media has always been jam-packed with, the on-off up-down girlfriend of a male mate of mine, and one night she was annoyed by some roué writer who seemed to think he had droit du seigneur over all the PR girls at his publishing house, of which she was one. She fussed and fumed about it for a bit, then three vodkatinis in, a serene smile swallowed her face and she said ‘I know how to punish

Google ‘Mark Pearson’ and the first thing you will learn about the 51 year-old artist is that he was accused of a sex attack. You can read all about how at Waterloo Station Pearson supposedly sexually assaulted a woman before striking her.  Then, if you have time, read on: and you’ll also discover this never happened. That a jury, shown CCTV footage proving the incident never took place, acquitted Pearson this week. Yet while now, and perhaps forever, Pearson’s name will be linked to a crime he did not commit, what we will never know is the name of the women who falsely accused him. Right now we wait in the wake