Feminist icon Doris Lessing says men are the new “silent victims” in the sex war. Yeah right
BODY LANGUAGE
Jeanette Winterson
Men have found a new champion. Feminist icon and world-class novelist Doris Lessing has told the girls to lay off. She used her Edinburgh festival appearance to lament the cultural divide between men and women, blaming women for their “pointless humiliation” of the hairier sex.
Is Lessing living on planet Zog, or is it just that she is 81? There is an elder-statesman syndrome that seems to affect literary types such as Lessing and Naipaul and even David Mamet, who is a bit too young to join the End of Everything club. Just as Naipaul and Mamet drone on about the End of Culture, now Lessing is lamenting the End of Feminism (“lazy and insidious”), or maybe it’s just the End of Men.
The truth is that nothing is ending the 21st century is a fabulous time to be alive. It is also a time of change and transition. New forms, new ideas, new technologies and above all new social relationships are reshaping the Western world.
The dance between men and women may seem out of tune and out of step, but that is because both partners are having to learn some fancy footwork. Inevitably, women are treading on men’s toes and some of us are taking the lead. Never doubt, though, that the whole damn ballroom still belongs to the boys.
And what a ball the boys are having. Lessing says we’ve got equal pay and equal opportunity: is that why only 3% of university professors are women? Is that why the highest-paid journalists and TV presenters are men? Why are there still so few women in government and at the top table in the boardroom? Women are catching up, but we don’t run the world. As far as the power struggle goes, men are still on top which everybody knows, except those “kind and most intelligent men”, who will now be reading the Mail & Guardian wearing their “I Love Doris” boxer shorts.
I decided to conduct a modest vox pop. I asked my hairdresser, who is female, intelligent and sexy, whether she reckoned that men were running scared. Interestingly, she thought they were not suffering at all in terms of work and status, but absolutely when it came to sex and, as she pointed out, with men, it always does come down to sex, doesn’t it?
She told me that all the men she knows are terrified of their wives and girlfriends having an affair. To me, women having affairs means that women are sexually and socially confident. For untold centuries, women have endured bad marriages and male infidelity never forget that the suffragist slogan was Votes for Women and Chastity for Men.
Women seeking sexual pleasure or emotional fulfilment is an inevitable consequence of a shift in the dynamics of male/female relationships. Women may not have the power yet, but maybe we are losing our fear.
My taxi driver told me that he thinks of himself as boss in his marriage, but he understands why his wife won’t do his ironing. He doesn’t care he was one of the first to buy a Power Iron. Him and his mates do it together trying to get the fastest time while they watch the football. I bet Lessing knows nothing about competitive ironing.
I meet a lot of young people who read my books. What excites me about these kids is their easiness with one another. Sure, feminism can claim some incredible legal and social victories, but for me its great achievement is in creating a new generation equipped to recognise each other as equals.
Women are not automatically inferior any more. Boys do not expect a woman to take care of them and give up work. Best of all, there is a playfulness on the streets that gender politics misses. Even builders are allowed to whistle at you these days and you know what? It’s fun.
So come on, Doris, lighten up. It was your generation of feminists, the Seventies, the golden age of the women’s movement, that gave us the really damaging, batty stuff: all men are rapists, all sex is power, pornography is abuse, marriage is a crime. And what about separatism and political lesbians? Thank God those days are gone.
Men will have to cope with a bit of criticism. That said, men and women are good for each other and we need each other. I am optimistic about the new shapes we are making. If it is hard for some men, well, that is their share of the work to be done. Sorry if it’s tough.
Meanwhile, as my rampantly heterosexual assistant explains to her husband every day: “You can’t help it, love, you’re just a bloke.”