Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Fights of the feminists

When it comes to sheer nastiness in public debate, women are now more than equal to men

Naomi Wolf’s Vagina is not an organ so significant it needs italics; it is a book, and a catalyst for a swiftly assembled feminist lynch mob. In the New Statesman, Laurie Penny wrote, ‘Naomi Wolf’s Vagina is crassly attention-seeking… It’s upsetting to see a prominent feminist having what can only be described as a dramatic public meltdown.’ She had another go in the Independent: ‘Claims that the vagina is “not only co-extensive with the female brain but also is part of the female soul” are frankly offensive… today’s young women deserve better.’

In the Times Janice Turner complained that Wolf had ‘medically unnecessary major spinal surgery’ to restore her vaginal orgasms. ‘You can, it seems,’ wrote Turner, ‘bring down the patriarchy with a Rampant Rabbit.’ In the Evening Standard Anne McElvoy wrote, ‘It takes a lot to put me off feminism, but one more book from Naomi Wolf might just do the trick.’ There was more bad news for Wolf as she hawked Vagina around town — a poor review in the Guardian, a slap from Jenni Murray on Women’s Hour and, eventually, a request from Rod Liddle to be invited to all of Wolf’s parties anywhere in the world, at any time, without notice.

That we should waste time attacking Wolf for Vagina when there is so much else to do, is a sentence any of these women could, and should, have written. To say that we should fall on each other’s writing as carcasses to be chewed is to ignore the way the media affects our culture. Show me a woman who joins the struggle because Janice was hilariously sarcastic about Naomi and Laurie got two columns out of it and I’ll show you a white line round the corpse of feminism. The pay gap, so glibly reported by Liza Mundy in The Spectator last week as 10 per cent, is 20 per cent if you include part-time workers, rising to 27 per cent in the private sector and 25 per cent in the South East..

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