Godless in Eden. Fay Weldon

a fish needs a bicycle.’ That is to say, she didn’t need one at all. Time, for good or bad, has proved that once unlikely poster right. The world changed: the laws changed: and any young woman these days can live without a man. She may not want to, but she can. It may feel unnatural, she may be lonely at night, but she has her freedom and her financial independence. She can earn, she can spend, she can party. She can find casual sex if she wants to and there’s contraception to ward off babies. (Because what she can’t have, if she values her freedom and independence, is a baby.)

      If a woman is young, bright, educated, able-bodied, attractive, childless and in the professions she can live very happily indeed. And just as well, because this seems to be the kind of woman – like poor, nervy Ally McBeal: poor all-over-the-place Bridget Jones – who these days has to do without a man. ‘No wonder,’ observes my mother, who is ninety-one. ‘She’s too proud and picky for her own good. She wants someone she can look up to, and where’s she going to find him?’ New Woman, claims my mother, shocks potential partners to the core by demanding sex and refusing love (just as men once used to) so he’s off and away by morning. ‘And if they’re not shocking him they’re insulting him,’ says my mother. ‘So who can blame him?’

      Sexism becomes something more directed towards men by women than from men towards women. Women can speak about men as men can no longer speak about women (at least in company). To do so becomes so much a cultural knee-jerk women don’t even notice they’re doing it. It is commonplace to hear the entire male gender written off as selfish, obtuse and bullying; rapists in spirit if not in deed. ‘Men, who wants them? Who needs them?’ And men laugh uneasily but, astonishingly, collude in this description of themselves. Men are portrayed as braying, despicable fools in cartoons, books, plays and advertisements. Male journalists and TV interviewers, talking to me on ‘pity the poor men’ themes, are even more scathing than traditional feminists. ‘But we’re crass fools,’ they say, in effect, ‘How can you have a good word to say for us?’ They behave like hostages who have fallen in love with their captors; with the colonised who admire the colonisers: I am perpetually amazed. Try writing a film these days about a woman who isn’t ‘strong and independent’. It won’t get made. You can be as insulting as you like about men.

      When girl-babies are born – certainly in my part of London – there’s rejoicing: if it’s a boy, it’s, Oh well, better luck next time.