Feminism doesn't have all the answers

The feminist writer Natasha Walter has written a well-publicised new book, Living Dolls, in which she laments the liberated female's embrace of pole-dancing, Nuts magazine, Katie Price and related mainstream sleaze. I haven't read it yet, so I don't know her conclusions. But I do know one thing: feminists are disappointed in the behaviour of emancipated women, because they just didn't understand very much about how women who were not committed to feminism might behave, given emancipation. In an interview, Walter said she was inspired to write her book by a young woman who confessed she found it hard to find the courage to criticise the routine submission to male fantasy that her peers engaged in. Fair enough. Many women do feel that way. But many other women are happy to achieve validation via their ability to arouse the sexual interest of men. This sort of behaviour is not just the fantasy of (some) males, but of (some) females too. Some people, whatever their gender, simply have very crude, even deluded, ideas about what constitutes a fun time. That's just one of many human facts that feminism, for all its manifest virtues, overlooked.