Feminism

I always thought the Freuds a pretty sordid bunch, and after the latest revelations it seems I wasn’t far off. I first met Clement Freud when John Aspinall employed him as an adviser for food and wine. He was lugubrious and aggressive, and none of us punters liked him one bit. He was not a gambler but talked as if he were a big one. While crossing the Atlantic on board the QE2 back in 1974, he tried to pRlay the tough guy with me over — yes, you guessed it — a lady, but it didn’t work. But there’s no use giving him the business now that he’s dead,

Six weeks ago I was one of the 1.3 million Londoners who voted for Sadiq Khan as mayor. Boy do I regret it now. Because he’s just shown what he really thinks of us inhabitants of the capital: that we’re so mentally fragile, so pathetic, so vulnerable to the wicked charms of advertisers, that he must censor allegedly sexist ads on our behalf and protect us from offence. In proposing a blanket ban on bus and Tube ads that make people feel bad about their bodies, Sadiq has revealed his authoritarian, paternalistic contempt for the people who swept him to power. I’m amazed there isn’t more fury about his extraordinary

It was only a matter of time before Glastonbury, the world’s most middle-class festival, caught up with the latest political trend. In an announcement heralded as brave, pioneering and ‘necessary’, a group called ‘The Sisterhood’ have announced a women-only venue at the four-day festival. ‘In a world that is still run by and designed to benefit mainly men,’ the group argue, ‘oppression against women continues in various manifestations’. The way to combat this global sexism, it seems, is to have a boy-free zone at festivals. The Sisterhood has designed the special zone to allow women ‘to connect, network [and] share their stories’ about sex work, domestic violence and the pay

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