Naked controversy

Fierce controversy over a new statue of Mary Wollstonecraft at Newington Green, North London. People are asking why she's so small and totally naked and saying this is hardly a suitable way of honouring her memory.

The artist, Maggi Hambling, has vigorously defended the statue. "The point is that she has to be naked because clothes define people. We all know that clothes are limiting and she is everywoman. As far as I know, she's more or less the shape we'd all like to be. Statues in historic costume look like they belong to history because of their clothes. It's crucial that she is 'now'."

This seems to me a bizarre explanation. People aren't defined by their clothes but by their personality and achievements - in this case her passionate pursuit of feminism. Neither is she everywoman, it was specifically Mary Wollstonecraft that campaigners for the statue wanted to memorialise.

Caroline Criado-Perez, who helped campaign for a statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, said the decision-making process had been "catastrophically wrong. This representation is insulting to her." She argued that, as a piece of political art, it should have depicted a recognisable Wollstonecraft, as less than 3% of UK statues were of non-royal women.

The writer Caitlyn Moran said "Imagine if there was a statue of a hot young naked guy 'in tribute' to Churchill. It would look mad."

It would look totally bonkers. Personally, I think the Hambling statue should be replaced with a fully-clothed, clearly identifiable statue of Mary Wollstonecraft.

I suspect Maggi Hambling knew very well that her statue was bound to be controversial, and she's enjoying all the fuss and attention. Two other Hambling statues, Conversation with Oscar Wilde and Scallop, were equally contentious when first erected in 1998 and 2003.

Mary Wollstonecraft deserves better.

PS: The statue was commissioned by the Mary On The Green Campaign, which unanimously chose Hambling for the sculpture. Jude Kelly, Patron for the Campaign and Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre, said "She is a wonderful choice to capture the spirit and strength of Wollstonecraft."

PPS: A crowdfunder has been launched for an alternative statue of Mary Wollstonecraft by Martin Jennings. This statue would be of Mary Wollstonecraft herself.

Pic: the statue

Masculine traits

Leftie men like to give the impression that the way they treat women is thoroughly sensitive and liberated, unlike those awful right-wingers who're misogynists through and through. Leftie men are proud of their feminist credentials. They've shed all those primitive masculine traits. Or so they like to think.

The truth is that the powerful tentacles of masculine conditioning aren't shed that easily - if at all. They've been embedded in the male mind from a very early age - from birth in fact - and by the time adulthood is reached they're well dug-in and pretty hard to shift.

I know my own mind is warped by my masculine upbringing, and it would be stupid to pretend otherwise. I was taught that women should be seen in a certain way - that they should be objectified, fetishised, sexualised, pornified, commodified, trivialised, ignored, ridiculed, controlled and dominated. That's a hefty rejection of decent, healthy behaviour towards half the population, and not something that can just be shed overnight like torn jeans or a faulty kettle.

At the age of 71, I'm very aware that those disgusting misogynistic attitudes still hover at the back of my mind, however much I might pretend they've been thoroughly purged and forgotten. But unlike the men who still see those attitudes as normal and mindlessly act on them, I can at least clearly recognise the hatred of women that runs through them and consciously adopt different and more civilised behaviour.

When women angrily point out my residual anti-women habits, as they sometimes do, it's a timely reminder of that stubbornly entrenched conditioning that I might otherwise think the passing years have obliterated. If only. Unfortunately society did a bloody good job of indoctrinating me at a tender age when I was too ignorant to realise what was being fed into me.

PS: I think trying to shed masculine conditioning is like trying to shed a Catholic upbringing - virtually impossible.

Opening time

If you've written a mediocre book and you want it to get a flood of undeserved attention, all you have to do is give it a sensational and instantly memorable title. Like "Vagina".

It works like a charm. Naomi Wolf has been basking for weeks in the white heat of media publicity, as everyone dips into her long-winded tome expecting some perceptive (and saucy) insights into the much-loved female orifice.

Unfortunately a bevy of reviewers and commentators seem agreed that far from yielding shrewd insights, the book is disappointingly conservative and anti-feminist. For example:

"Much of the book boils down to the not-exactly-radical idea that a woman just needs a good seeing-to."  Anna Carey, The Irish Times

"....insisting that women have a physiological need to take delivery of flowers, to sleep with powerful men, and to receive large amounts of semen...."  Rachel Cooke, The Observer

"Wolf specifically disqualifies masturbation as a method of achieving high orgasm."  Zoë Heller, New York Review of Books

"Vagina, then, is that very modern thing: a handbook for priggish sexual conformity masquerading as a manual for erotic liberation."  Laurie Penny, New Statesman

Not that any of the brickbats will bother Naomi overmuch. No doubt thousands of women (and men) are flocking to snap up the controversial text and see what all the fuss is about, proving once again that all publicity is good publicity.

It may be full of misunderstood science, mystical gibberish, slavish heterosexuality and trite platitudes, but what the hell? Everyone wants a "Vagina" on their coffee table.

What's the book actually about? Have a look here

Pic: Naomi Wolf

Boys only

My schooling was entirely single-sex, including five years at boarding school where my contact with girls was non-existent. Whether this was a good thing or a bad thing I've never quite decided.

It meant I was able to focus on my studies without the distraction of miniskirted females checking me out in the corridors and classrooms. It meant there was no feverish competition with the other boys to impress the girls.

But it also meant I had little experience of the opposite sex and how they differed from boys. It meant there was no encouragement to be emotionally sensitive or to be aware of things that boys traditionally reject as effeminate.

So was I deprived or didn't it really matter? Did I grow up unable to communicate properly with women, unable to understand them, permanently burdened with an arrogant, thick-skinned masculinity?

I must say when I started my first job on a local newspaper, I was very bemused by all the women, who were like some exotic species I'd never met before. It took me quite a while to get used to them and work out how they expected me to behave. It also took me a while to get up the self-confidence to acquire my first girlfriend.

Later I moved to London and was engulfed by the tsunami that was the Women's Liberation Movement. I was confronted in every direction by 57 varieties of feminist thinking and demands, and in a few months I learnt more about women than I'd discovered in my first 18 years. Relationships with women suddenly became much more straightforward and comprehensible and from then on I was always acutely aware of the female perspective in every situation.

So no, I don't think my single-sex schooling did me any lasting harm. I guess what really counts is not whether a school is mixed-sex but how intensely you're exposed to the opposite sex and their take on life once you've left school. And how willing you are to embrace it and benefit from it.
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Ah yes, where was I? Jenny and I were on holiday in Dumfriesshire in Scotland. Not quite as scenic or cultural as we were expecting, but we had fun exploring a part of Scotland we'd never seen before.

The toll of 'honour'

How can a man kill a woman simply on the grounds that she has sullied the family's "honour"? And how can so many people condone it as a religious tradition that can't be interfered with?

It's worrying that even in Britain there are now regular cases of honour killings, a practice that has been imported from other countries where it is rife.

There are estimated to be up to 20,000 such killings every year around the world, and many more brutal punishments short of murder. The offences that amount to "dishonour" are shockingly varied. It would be hard for any independent woman to avoid them. They include:

- Being raped
- Having a relationship with an unsuitable person (wrong religion, tribe, caste)
- Unmarried pregnancy
- Befriending boys
- Adultery (even if your husband is dead)
- Choosing your own husband
- Claiming a man's inheritance
- Leaving your husband
- Sex before marriage
- Not marrying your dead husband's brother
- Alleged prostitution
- Inappropriate dress
- "Western" behaviour

We don't realise just how lucky we are in Britain that all these perfectly normal activities aren't seen as "dishonouring" families but are at the very most described as unwise, reckless or unfortunate.

How lucky we are too that the authorities take honour killings seriously and act against those involved, as opposed to other countries where a blind eye is routinely turned.

And how lucky again that unofficial punishments for dishonour like rape*, acid attacks, stonings, lashings, facial mutilation, forced suicide or being set on by dogs, are simply not tolerated but prompt contempt and disbelief.

Despite those blinkered folk who maintain feminism is no longer needed, honour killings make it abundantly clear that many women are still struggling for the most elementary freedoms.

* Yes, you can be raped for allowing yourself to be raped.

Women on the march

For years it's been fashionable for women to deny they're feminists and say they don't need that sort of militancy any more, they're getting on fine without it.

I always wondered how they could be so blasé about the obvious fact that women are still second-class citizens in so many different ways.

Now it seems feminists are coming out of the woodwork again and women are no longer making light of the numerous burdens and disadvantages they have to labour under.

They are joining women's groups, going on marches, visiting feminist blogs, and are generally less willing to stay silent and pretend everything's okay.

Membership of the Fawcett Society has risen by 25% in a year, over 2000 women took part in a Reclaim the Night march in London, and the website The F-Word is getting over 110,000 hits a month. University women's groups are thriving again and half those declaring themselves feminists are under 25.

Apart from the widespread frustration that men still get the upper hand in so many areas, women are said to be increasingly sickened by the growing sexualisation of everyday life and by women's bodies once again becoming more important than their skills and abilities.

If you ask me, not before time. The only result of women scoffing at feminism has been rising complacency and arrogance among many men, who conclude that they can still happily put the little woman in her place and grab all the goodies for themselves. If they're about to be seriously challenged again by seething females, I for one can't wait.

Pic courtesy of the Fawcett Society

Asking for it

After so much censure of rape and the men who do it, I can't believe 46% of Northern Irish students still think a woman who flirts is partly responsible for being raped.

And 30% think a woman is partly to blame if she wears revealing clothing.

These extraordinary figures are from a survey by Amnesty International. Not from 50 years ago but right now, when supposedly attitudes have moved forward a bit.

Sorry, but as I see it men are 100% responsible for raping a woman, whatever her behaviour beforehand. If she doesn't want sex, that's her choice, and all a man has to do is keep his pants zipped up. What's so hard about that?

Men still think they have a right to sex and if the woman complains they still blame the victim. Well, obviously she was "being provocative", she was "asking for it", she was "desperate for a good seeing-to."

I'm surprised the excuses stop at flirting. Why don't men just say "But she had breasts, what did she expect?" or "She had long hair, it could only mean one thing."

Funnily enough, the opposite doesn't apply. If a man gets attacked, nobody blames him. Nobody points to the beer, the tight shirt, the bare flesh or the look in his eyes. Or his inappropriate behaviour. Oh no, he was attacked for no reason at all, right out of the blue, by a complete lunatic. What do you mean it was his fault? Come outside and say that....

So much for feminism being obsolete.

Men's liberation

According to a new Irish Times survey, Irish men are shedding the old masculine stereotypes fast. And far from being confused and demoralised by feminist demands, the vast majority are content with their life.

The survey says 53% show their feelings easily, 58% think it's okay to cry, 51% are very sentimental, 48% get annoyed by men who stress 'manliness', and 79% are content with their lot.

That puts paid to the conventional wisdom that men feel they're being pushed around by bossy females and just can't be themselves any more. Or the idea that men are still so strait-laced they can't express tenderness or warmth or any emotions other than rage.

Or does it? People don't always tell the truth in surveys, they often say what they think is expected of them, or what will make them look normal or likeable. If the men's partners were asked about their answers, would they agree?

I have a strong suspicion there's some glossing going on here, and the women in their lives might very well say "Mark expresses his feelings? You're joking. He's like a bloody sphinx." Or maybe "Pete's content? But he moans about everything non-stop. He's the original grumpy old man."

But perhaps I'm being too cynical and men really have changed dramatically. That's what my male readers tell me, anyway. It's certainly encouraging to think that despite all the 'backlash' propaganda about shell-shocked men clinging to their masculine comfort blankets, many of them have no problem with opening up and showing their real selves a bit more.

In fact in all sounds so positive I think I'm going to cry.