Feminism

If there is one thing the reactions to the Harvey Weinstein accusations have confirmed, other than the common knowledge that human beings are corruptible and will sometimes try to exploit their position of superiority, it is feminism’s obsession with men in power. When confronted with Björk’s accusations of sexual harassment by Danish director Lars von Trier on the set of Dancer in the Dark, Trier’s producer, Peter Aalbæk, rejected the claim, maintaining that if anyone was to be made responsible for harassment it was the singer, who, he claimed, had been bossing the two men around. The online response to this male perspective on Björk as a dominant female was outraged

If someone had told you 10 years ago that it would soon become tantamount to a speechcrime to say ‘Men cannot get pregnant’, you would have thought them mad. That would be like punishing someone for saying, ‘Humans need oxygen to survive’. And yet here we are, in 2017, where PC has spun so violently out of control, and the cult of gender-neutrality has become so unwieldy, that one of the most controversial things you can say these days is: ‘Only women can get pregnant.’ Apparently that’s offensive to transmen (women who identify as men). ‘Men can get pregnant, too’, trans activists cry. Which strikes me as a real-life version

Very good piece from Giles Coren (as usual) on the intrusive and aggressive act of putting ‘xx’ at the end of emails. I had been thinking pretty much the same thing. I suppose one could quote Derrida and the structuralists and insist that there is no one-to-one relationship between the signifier (the ‘xx’) and the thing signified (putting your tongue halfway down some babe’s throat). There certainly isn’t when I do it. But there’s the fear. What if the recipient isn’t a structuralist? Incidentally, if you want to see where we are right now with this issue, just read the comments from Caroline Kirkpatrick.

Following a weekend crammed with ever more salacious revelations about Harvey Weinstein, hundreds of thousands of women have now taken to social media to share their own experiences of sexual harassment. This is called the ‘#MeToo’ movement, and it’s gone viral, in the way that these things do. According to Twitter, this reveals ‘the magnitude of sexual assault’. In reality, it does nothing of the sort. #MeToo tells us far more about the desire of some women to reach for victimhood status. The accusations against Weinstein include charges of rape; as such, they deserve to be taken seriously and tried in courts of law rather than by public opinion. At

Almost two and a half years ago, feminists called on Transport for London to remove adverts of a scantily-clad Australian from the tube. Protests against the infamous ‘beach body ready’ adverts claimed that showcasing a woman in a bikini to peddle weight-loss pills was offensive to women. Apparently the sight of a skinny woman was upsetting to all of us non-skinny women. And, after pressure from London Mayor Sadiq Khan in 2016, TfL promised to ban all adverts which didn’t adhere to the notion of ‘body positivity’. Not all women were happy about the ban. Back then, I, and other commentators, warned that giving TfL the power to decide which

It would be wildly generous to bill Hugh Hefner as some kind of grandfather of feminism – I’m not sure his interest in women extended beyond getting his rocks off – but it’s equally outrageous to depict him as a gang-master abuser running a harem of sex-slaves. As it seems some feminists have. The women who worked for him were adults making choices and, brace yourself, some of them enjoyed themselves! Still, watching the bile rise for Hef after his death, I’ve been shocked to see the insults aimed at the women who worked for him, and how quickly their experiences have been written off. In his later years, padding

However stressful and bad things get for a parent of young children, there is always one thought that puts it all in perspective – just wait until they’re teenagers and they’re calling you up at 3am asking for a lift from a nightclub in New Cross. So reports like this one, showing that one in four adolescent girls suffer from depression, are bound to add to that gnawing feeling of dread. Firstly the caveats – any statistic that claims ‘1 in such and such’ suffers from this, or is a victim of this, should be treated with scepticism. Depression is also an ill-understood term, a medical diagnosis widely applied by

There was much fanfare last week when Holly Willoughby’s apparent ‘huge £200k pay rise’ meant she’d finally be earning the same as her This Morning co-host, Phillip Schofield. The closing of this pay gap was hailed by some as a victory for womankind, but it seemed a travesty to me. After all, why had there been such a mighty imbalance to begin with? What’s worse, though, was that the whole saga highlighted a bigger problem with feminism: its obsession with equality. The reality is that Willoughby isn’t equal to Schofield. She’s better than him – in a commercial sense – and therefore deserves to earn more. If you doubt me, just take a look at the

There has been an unprecedented development this year in the Islamists’ war on the West. For the first time their foot soldiers are singling out women to kill. Women have been the victims of terrorism before, murdered by paramilitary organisations such as ETA, the Ulster Volunteer Force and the IRA, because of their uniform or their beliefs, or simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but never solely because of their sex. In the era when Islamic terror groups hijacked aircraft it was rare that women were harmed. When a Trans World Airlines jet was hijacked in 1985, for example, the terrorists released all the women

Despite Taylor Swift’s aspiration that her sexual assault trial last week should stand as an example for all women, what’s been notable outside the courtroom is how little support from the sisterhood Swift’s had. When Swift’s pop contemporary Kesha faced her own sexual assault case last year – against music producer Dr Luke – female celebrities clamoured to express their support. An MTV line-up of Divas tweeted their wishes: Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Kelly Clarkson, Lily Allen and Lorde made #freekesha trend. Even Adele used the headline-grabbing moment she collected her BRIT for Best Female Solo Artist to holler her encouragement for Kesha. By contrast, Swift’s case was met with deafening silence

I never dreamed I’d see the day when I agreed with Miriam González Durántez – such a snob that she believes people can be socially snubbed by being given Hellman’s mayonnaise, such a Euro-bore that she found Brexit ‘devastating’ and so short-sighted that she sees sex with Nick Clegg as a reasonable proposition. But with this recent Twitter rant, I quite warmed to her: ‘When you have a 2.30 hours delay in a British Airways flight (what is happening to this airline!?) open the inflight shop magazine and want to scream: STOP-CALLING-GIRLS-LITTLE-PRINCESSES!! It cannot be so difficult for an airline to get this right…’ Mind you, it’s pretty likely that

The hen party was seated at an outside restaurant table under the plane trees when I arrived. They sat with straight backs conversing normally, looked cool and lovely, and everything appeared seemly. Yet it was now ten o’clock on their first night on tour. They seemed unusually glad to see their chauffeur; apart from this, there was nothing to suggest that they were even slightly drunk. Appearances might have been deceptive, however, for they were all of them privately and expensively educated young women. I was bidden to be seated and offered a glass of wine, which I accepted. I sat and sipped and listened to their chatter. That something