1). In Chapter 2 I look at the tidal wave of social emancipation that resulted and how feminism’s fundamental ideas spread into the area of personal interaction where perhaps they were not as illuminating as they had been in the public areas of work, leisure and politics. Feminism’s demand for women’s rights began to become problematic and Chapter 3 looks at the success feminism had despite, rather than because of, its best intentions. The whirlwind of economic change in the 1980s, which bears the name of a woman, ‘Thatcherism’, delivered women the economic role that feminism demanded but without the accompanying social benefits and at the direct cost of many men. Families and communities were torn apart and by the 1990s men had become a problem.
In Chapter 4, I look at this unexpected turn in sexual relations and how feminism’s response was to deny rather than face up to the crisis of masculinity, to the fact that men were being forced to change by economic realities. This was a missed opportunity; hadn’t feminism demanded that traditional male values and behaviour should change? But it was hostile economic forces, not feminism, which brought this about. So when (Chapter 5) men appeared vulnerable, with a significant increase in the suicide rate, feminism had no help to offer. In fact, men were losing moral authority in the family and on the public stage, a change which should have had an entirely positive effect on the balance of power between the genders (Chapter 6 and Chapter 7). Unfortunately, the centre of moral certainty was gravitating towards women (Chapter 8), not just swinging against men. It produced a situation where on the one hand some men identified with the self-mockery of Nick Hornby and Men Behaving Badly, and, on the other, women adopted the posture of superwoman, and no one quite believed the rhetoric.
Women were unsure of what it all meant and many found it easier to take refuge in ‘womanism’ than to take seriously a growing crisis of masculinity (Chapter 9), so it is not surprising that womanism gave birth to a reaction, a call for the need to reassert traditional masculine values and male authority (Chapter 10). This confrontation of views, of reasserting the traditional emotional divisions between the sexes, however, was and is profoundly out of touch with how parenting is being done, with the choices both sexes are making, with the way in which young males are being socially stigmatized and in the conduct of sexuality. These simplifications about gender have turned out to be worse than useless in explaining what is really going on. In fact, they have been actively misleading, disguising other problems which needed to be recognized. So the final chapters of this book are devoted to examining each of these in turn. I look at how social problems involving young men and boys are not caused by gender in a simple way but because they are at the sharp end of dramatic changes in the mix of our society (Chapter 11 and Chapter 14). Around parenting too (Chapter 12 and Chapter 13), gender simplifications have muddied our perceptions, preventing us from recognizing how people are living their lives and what really concerns them. Finally I look at how gender relations are in fact much more complex and muddled. When it comes to some of the controversial sexual issues of the times – sexual harassment (Chapter 15) and date rape (Chapter 16) – the old polarities of men as powerful oppressors and women as passive victims simply will no longer work.
In short, feminism has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the brave women who fought its first battles. Its future in the new millennium is to face up to the problems of its success, and to see gender as just one possible reason for social and personal conflicts rather than an all-encompassing cause. But if it is going to be capable of making these changes, it will first have to let go of its sacred cows.
Chapter 1 THE ASSAULT ON UNEARNED MALE POWER
Think-tanks and universities regularly commission research on young women’s attitudes to feminism. Why, they ask, do young women no longer respond to the clarion call of feminism? Meanwhile, publishers are puzzled because they cannot anywhere find a new young feminist who will set hearts racing. Perhaps, they speculate, contemporary writers lack the flair of earlier feminists. Or perhaps young women themselves are more selfish and fainthearted. Perhaps it’s ‘the backlash’. Whatever the reason, the effect is clear; whoever and however they try, the fundamental idea of women’s oppression fails to inspire contemporary young women.
All I can say is that it was not ever thus. When I encountered feminism in the 1970s, it was quite simply electrifying. I recognized immediately that notions of male power and oppression had direct relevance for my own life. Feminism illuminated frustrations I had met and offered a way out. And this was in the face of considerable media and family hostility to such views. In the early 1970s, feminism was just as unpopular as it is said to be now by the backlash theorists. Then it was tarnished with the image of the Miss World protests; feminists were seen as a bunch of sexually promiscuous bra-burners. Anyone taking up the cause knew that at some point they would be accused of hating children, families and men. My father certainly – as part of a series of more complicated views – warned me that fighting for sexual and economic autonomy would destroy men’s respect for me.
Such opposition, however, simply could not override my conviction that feminism was relevant and made sense to me. The calls for equality of opportunity, for greater personal fulfilment, for an end to women basing their lives on childcare and domestic subservience, and the challenge to the automatic superiority assumed by men, echoed my own experiences. Feminism also seemed to offer a model for new and better relationships with men. For those of us who took it on board, it resonated at an emotional level.
It is not hard to see why. Arriving at university in the 1970s it was almost inevitable that any woman with ambitions and a critical stance on society would be drawn to this dynamic new ideology. It was in and around higher education that feminism found its most fertile ground. Most of the women who threw themselves into feminist politics in Britain came from among the well-educated. We got to university after schooling which had subtly directed girls away from ‘male’ subjects, steering them instead towards ‘female’ subjects with lower career expectations. Ahead lay the overt discrimination of the job market which at the time was assumed to be the natural order of things.
When I started at Cambridge University only three out of the twenty-odd colleges, were for women. Men outnumbered women by eight to one. There was still an overt culture of misogyny: there were men’s clubs, men-only sports with their attendant prestigious culture, men-only dining clubs. The academic staff were dominated by men; female professors were still eccentric oddities. Admittedly, Cambridge was ‘old establishment’ but it also mirrored pretty exactly the establishment which ruled Britain. It was easy to see in microcosm the exclusion of women from wider positions of political, social and economic power.
Women often did extremely well academically but even so it was no passport to equal employment. Certain kinds of employment were still closed to women. Even though I entered the job market after the introduction of equal opportunities and sex discrimination legislation in the mid-1970s, there had been few changes in traditional working patterns. Many jobs were still considered ‘men’s’ or ‘women’s’ jobs and there were significant disparities of earnings as a consequence. Jobs which we now take for granted as being open to both sexes – stockbroking, some sections of the media, engineering, architecture, medicine and so on – were then
