Sacred Cows: Is Feminism Relevant to the New Millennium?

When Faludi interpreted expressions of hostility to feminism in terms of a backlash against women’s achievements, however she handed feminism a most impressive weapon against accepting that society had really changed. From her perspective, it was possible to interpret any number of phenomena, from films to newspaper concerns with career women, to hesitancy over positive discrimination programmes, as manifestations of a deeper underlying principle: male resistance to female progress. With a concept like this to play with, the idea that a new order might emerge from women’s changing status interacting with rapid changes in men’s lives was simply ruled out of court. What remained intact was the idea of men’s structural power over women which they would fight to hold on to at all costs. For many feminists, the idea that all men have power over all women remains fundamental, in spite of male protests to the contrary. From this perspective, the proposition that men might be experiencing some kind of crisis of their own is just part of an attempt to derail the needs of the truly powerless group.

Here I could see I was seriously travelling in a different direction. Many women fell on the idea of backlash as the new feminism, whereas I disliked its assumption that men would inevitably seek to oppose and challenge women’s equality. But I wasn’t surprised that the idea was so popular. Such assumptions were everywhere, especially in what I have called ‘womanism’, a sort of popularized version of feminism which acclaims everything women do and disparages men. Womanism is feminism’s vulgate. It asserts that women are the oppressed or the victims and never the collaborators in the ‘bad’ things that men do. It entails a double standard around sexuality where women’s sexual self-expression is seen as necessary and even desirable, but men’s is seen as dangerous or even disgusting. Womanism is by no means confined to a tiny, politically motivated bunch of man-hating feminists, but is a regular feature of mainstream culture. It fuels the tabloids and the broadsheets alike. Womanism is a convenient response to many of the uglier aspects of the great convulsions shaking modern society; the very convulsions that are, in other aspects, delivering what feminism demanded.

Of course, many men, especially social commentators, have not responded any better. They have indulged in nostalgia and made various attempts to push the genie back into the bottle. They made it easy for feminism to justify ignoring the changes. But both sides seemed to me to be insisting that there was only one relevant question for understanding sexual relationships: given the gender divide, which sex has power?

I knew that I had finally crossed some invisible boundary when, after New Labour came to power in May 1997, I began to feel so ambivalent about the activities of feminists at the highest level of government. The establishment of a women’s unit and the appointment of a women’s ministry did not fill me with joy and enthusiasm, nor did the sight of ‘Blair’s Babes’, the huge increase in the number of female MPs ensured by the policy of all-women shortlists. Of course I was pleased to see all those women at last changing the appearance of the Houses of Parliament and promising to change the culture too. I ought to have been delighted to see people with the same history as myself now able to argue the feminist corner, fighting for greater equality between the sexes of all levels of society. So why feel uneasy?

This was not the usual radical unease – that feminists in government are prepared to do too little, are too cautious, too ready to kowtow to the limitations imposed by a government determined to carry majority consent with it at all times; instead, it was caused by the conflict between the certainties of this new feminist regime and my own perception that there were real social changes underway no longer easily understood by these feminist ideas. I thought we needed to look at what was happening to the sexes, without the preconceptions that one group still has power and the other needs special privileges to compensate for this. Yet here was a women’s unit confidently telling us it would champion ‘women’s interests’, apparently taking it for granted that we all knew what these were, so that we would finally be on the way to that elusive equality. The unit took for granted as truth that very rhetoric which I was beginning to question.

While these tendencies were steadily building a power base, I had been travelling in the opposite direction. I’d let go of the fundamental proposition that women are by definition oppressed. I began to wonder what it means to have institutions fighting for ‘women’s interests’ at the beginning of the new millennium. But no discussion was forthcoming. Everyone seemed to know what women’s interests were, from types of childcare, through assumptions about what women want and what men are, to the continued need for privileging women in order to further their equality. In contrast, I wanted a more honest appraisal about whether women are consistently discriminated against and what different women really want now in terms of work, childcare and mothering.

Once you let go of feminism’s fundamental propositions, the world looks very different. In the West in the 1990s the meaning of gender has changed and so too has its significance in relation to other aspects of society. Interpreting these changes from the perspective of an unchanging model of male power seemed to be less and less tenable. Instead I could see situations where men were really becoming vulnerable and women potent. And I was worried that because it did not share this realization, feminism could end up allying itself with socially divisive and bigoted ideologies which attack and blame poor men for all society’s problems.

So this is the complex context of men’s and women’s relationships as we enter the new millennium. Many aspects of the feminist vision are within grasp but not in the form originally envisaged. Instead of the rout of men sought by the radical feminists or the cosy co-operation envisaged by the socialist feminists, the 90s has been a sexually uncomfortable and sometimes antagonistic time. Oliver James, the psychiatrist, has described it as a time of ‘gender rancour’. There is much confusion about how to interpret this antagonism and neither sex has covered itself in glory when trying to do so. Some women have fallen back on old simplicities about men’s power and women’s moral superiorities. Some men have called for traditional solutions so that they can feel comfortable again.

This book is a detailed account of what has been happening between the sexes. What is the truth about the so-called male crisis? Is it an illusion? Or has men’s position really changed for the worse? If so, is this descent of man anything to do with the ascent of woman? What has been feminism’s contribution to these complex economic changes? Has it been useful in keeping gender in mind or has it simply hung on to its old ideologies and policies, involving a problematic blindness to the most vulnerable groups of men? And if blind to the different degrees of vulnerability of men, is it possible that feminism might have helped demonize certain groups, disguising rather than illuminating what is really happening in society.

This book has three key themes: families and parenting; the increasingly problematic socialization of boys and young men; and the fraught area of sexual relations. In each it is clear that feminism clings to the fundamental tenet that women are by definition the oppressed party. In each case this obscures what is really happening and can produce public reactions and social policies which can be retrograde and divisive. And in each case, by clinging to its old tenets, feminism fails to see that it has been successful, that it has changed society in deep and unforeseen ways. It is time that feminism faced up to the problems of its success.

So first I examine where feminism came from, why it was necessary in the 1970s and the ideas that drove it on (Chapter 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.

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