The Female Eunuch was published two years before I was born so I wasn’t aware of it for quite a while after it came out. Here’s the story of how I discovered the book, and the issues raised, both in the book, and in the way I came to read it for the first time.
I was 17, in my upper sixth year at school. I had met, and slept with, a woman (L) who I really liked. I wanted to impress her in the hope that she would agree to sleep with me again, and hopefully on a regular basis for some time.
As an aside (there may be many of these), I had quite quickly, after breaking my duck, come to the conclusion that it was better for me (and easier) to persuade one woman to have sex with me multiple times, than to try to convince many different women to sleep with me just once.
Anyway, to the book. The woman I had met was a university student, reading Womens’ Studies, and a ‘feminist activist’. Also we liked lots of the same music and got on well. I took an interest in her studies and she suggested The Female Eunuch as a sort of introduction to then mainstream feminist thought and writing.
So, partly I went and bought a copy and read it out of genuine interest in the subject. And partly because I wanted to impress a particular woman, and get laid.
My next aside. In the years since, I have heard from many women of the scourge of ‘fauxminists’, blokes who feign a vague knowledge of feminism, or describe themselves as feminists, purely or mainly as a ploy to attract women. And I suppose, at 17, I was a little guilty of that. Except that I wasn’t feigning the interest. Also, I did know that skim reading it and coming out with some trite platitudes on the issues wasn’t going to get the result I wanted. L was far too clever for that.
It's been 34 years since, and I don’t remember re-reading it in full, but have gone back to some passages and chapters. The main thing that struck me in The Female Eunuch was the now very famous line (goes to google to correctly quote) “Women have very little idea of how much men hate them,”.
Even then, that line landed with me. I, of course recognised that men and boys I knew and saw often behaved in ways that showed Germaine’s statement to be true of many. I was also aware enough of news and current affairs to see that this hatred was manifested in many crimes of male violence against women and girls. I don’t think I had linked the two before.
The most interesting, and disturbing, question was, if that’s true, did I hate women? Or did I display behaviours, or excuse others’ behaviour which would suggest it? I had of course, at this stage received 17½ years of male socialisation, so you would think some of it would have rubbed off.
I came, then, to the conclusion that I did not hate my sisters, mum and my many good and close female friends and other family members. My attitudes to women around my age who I was attracted to and saw as potential sexual partners, I concluded, needed some work, and thought.
Anyway. The relationship with L petered out after a few months, as teenage romances do, for reasons I won’t go into but were helpful as a learning experience.
So, a brief relationship, on the face of it, set me down the road of reading about feminism and womens’ critiques of society, and the ways in which it discriminates against them, as a sex class (had to get that in). And all because I was a heterosexual teenager who wanted to get his rocks off.
On the face of it. But that’s not the whole story.
To illustrate this, I’ll refer back to my 12-year relationship with Rachel (R).
One reading is that R was a committed feminist, member of the Labour party since age 17 and worked (sort of) in the violence against women and girls charity field. So, of course I was influenced by that, and my thinking changed and developed, and I became an ‘ally’ and read more around the issues involved.
It’s chicken and egg though.
Another reading is that I was 35 when I first met R, was already a member of the Labour Party and, as detailed above, had already been reading around feminist books for many years. These facts about me were surely the main reasons I made it from date 1 with Rachel, to date 2 and eventually to moving in and marriage.
Did R change my views, or did I only get to be with R because of views I already had?
A bit of both.
So, maybe the main point. Does it matter, in this instance, or in other circumstances, what people’s motivations are for a course of action they take?
Is it bad that I had a sexual motive for reading Germaine’s book?
Is it bad if a politician takes up an issue, not because they have any interest in it, but because voters have raised it with them and demanded they do so?
Is it bad to train to be a teacher because you believe that it pays relatively well and the holidays are good?
Is it bad for those with a criminal sexual interest in children to volunteer to be a scout leader?
Some of the answers (the last one) are obvious. Some are more nuanced.
I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Thanks for reading. Dave x