Male violence is the standout feature of the day, but it is also central to my argument that the masculinity enjoined on all men, and paraded by so many, is a fraud. On this, I take my distance from radical feminism, notably that of the influential school of Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, which sees violence as the unadulterated and never-failing expression of male sexuality and power – a self-defeating argument if ever there was one (if true, then men will rule the world for ever). Instead, it is crucial for me that, even while calling out masculinity in its worst guise, we allow to individual men the potential gap between maleness and the infinite complexity of the human mind.

How can we as feminists make that gap the beating heart of women’s fight against oppression, against the stultifying ideology of what women are meant to be, and not allow the same internal breathing space to men? Surely our chance of a better world relies on the ability of all of us to stop, think and reject the most deadly “requisite” behaviours? No man comfortably possesses masculinity (any more than, other than by killing, one person is in total possession of anyone else). Indeed, such mastery is the very delusion that underpins the deranged and most highly prized version of masculinity on offer. Prowess is a lie, as every inch of mortal flesh bears witness. But like all lies, in order to be believed, it has to be endlessly repeated.

One of the most striking aspects of the saga of Hollywood producer and sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein, as told by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey who broke the story in the New York Times, is that he seems to have been at least as keen on the slow burn of coercion and resistance, which would sometimes go on for hours, as on any act of so-called consummation.

Rowena Chiu, for example, describes how, shortly after being hired as his assistant, she endured four hours of threats, cajoling and bribes. At the end, “He parted her legs, and told her that with one single thrust it would all be over”. She managed to get out of the room. (What exactly, we might ask, was in it for him?) Clearly, for Weinstein, the revulsion he provoked was a core component of his pleasure, which is not to say that he did not also wish to get his way with these women. “If he heard the word ‘no’,” commented one of the key witnesses in the February 2020 New York rape trial, who chose not to be named, “it was like a trigger.” For Zelda Perkins, another assistant who was subjected to his assaults, he was “pathologically” addicted: “It was what got him out of bed in the morning.”

John Smith wrote on Apr 4^th, 2021 at 2:35pm:


Johnny 200 years ago you might have been homeless and on the street.

No, that is not how feminism started.

Women worked in munitions and other defence works in the US Civil War, in WWI and in WWII. They got to like working and being paid, did not want to give that up.

Then came the Pill and women could control their own fertility and hence pursue careers and life outside the home.

There has been a reaction against this by insecure males who believe they have lost what they are entitled to—control of their wife.

Now read the article again.

. . .the sewing machine multipliedthe productivity of seamstresses making army uniforms and other clothing; and the Blake-McKay machine for sewing uppers to the soles of shoes reduced the time consumed in that process one hundredfold. Third was a great increase in the employment of women, in occupations ranging from government civil service and army nursing to agricultural field work and manufacturing. In agriculture, the increased use of farm machinery enabled women to fill much of the gap left by the enlistment of nearly a million northern farmers and farm laborers in the army. “I met more women driving teams on the road and saw more at work in the fields than men,” wrote a traveler in Iowa during the fall of 1862. As evidence of “the great revolution which machinery is making in agriculture,” reported another observer the following year, he saw “a stout matron whose sons are in the army, with her team cutting hay. . . . She cut seven acres with ease in a day, riding leisurely on her cutter.” In northern industry women worked mainly in occupations where they were already prominent—textiles, clothing, shoemaking—but increased their proportion of the manufacturing labor force from one-fourth to one-third during the war. Because women earned much less than men for the same or similar jobs, their expanded proportion of the wartime labor force kept down the average of wage increases.

yet we feel we should be able to walk through the darkest streets  at all hours....

Wow, you are so wide off the mark you are in a different country!

Women believe that they SHOULD be able to walk alone in city streets at night. None do that, however.