An Audience with the Anti Feminist?
As I take the very long tube journey from my place to Uxbridge to attend “An Audience with Fay Weldon” at Brunel University, I am grateful for the time it affords me to get stuck into my favourite book of the moment: ‘It’s a Jungle Out There; The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments’ by Amanda Marcotte. Marcotte is brilliantly witty and scathingly cynical and I am stifling my laughter, lest the other passengers tut at me, as I devour the section entitled “Post-Feminism My Ass: Feminists Who Are Not”. But I am struck by the realisation; I bet Fay Weldon would agree with these ‘Anti-Feminist Feminist’ arguments that are being presented by Marcotte as ripe for ridicule. So what am I doing here, as a self proclaimed Feminist, going to hear Weldon talk?
Fay Weldon is a prolific writer, having written over 20 novels, as well as pieces for stage, screen, television and radio. She writes for newspapers such as The Times and The Daily Mail. Her stint as a copy writer in advertising also credits her with the line ‘Go To Work On An Egg’, a house-hold catchphrase in the 60s that was uttered by Tony Hancock in the televised adverts. The subject of Weldon’s fiction has often been women; their relationships and their oppression, as well as gender politics and studies of patriarchy.
Once thought of a spear head in the Feminist movement with such writing, nowadays most Feminists would cringe to hear Fay Weldon labelled as ‘one of them’. On the Sky Arts Book show, Weldon told Mariella Frostrup; “There was a revolution and women won it. Women now…can control their lives and make their choices about whether they marry, whether they have children. The only thing they have no choice in is whether they go out to work because we all have to earn, and that’s another reason to feel sorry for women.” As Frostrup berates Weldon on how women are still doing around 90% of all housework and struggling to figure out their work-life balance, Weldon concedes; “I apologise I really do, (we didn’t) think it all the way through.” Rather than seeing the points raised by her interviewer as a mark of how far we, as women, have yet to go, Weldon is worried that the women’s movement went too far in the first place.
Weldon is her own backlash. She is well known for changing her mind, and not just on matters of feminism. After seventy years of devout Atheism, Weldon found God in 2006 after a near death experience caused by an allergic reaction. Weldon is also well known for saying the unsay-able, her most outrageous comment being that rape is not the worst thing that can happen to a woman. “But what I said wasn’t controversial,” Weldon has since argued in an interview for the Guardian “It was just true. Death’s worse.” But assuming Weldon has not had first hand experience of both scenarios (unless her claimed near death experience counts?), one has to wonder whether she is an authority on the subject.
In the lecture hall at Brunel, Weldon is interviewed before us in pseudo-Parkinson style by the University’s Vice Chancellor and Principal, Professor Chris Jenks. Weldon was appointed professor of creative writing at Brunel in March of 2006, so this interview is set up to be chatty and friendly, an informal discussion between peers.
After talking about her life and making a few jokes about Jeffrey Archer, Prof. Jenks carefully asks Weldon the question I’d love to ask her myself; What does Weldon actually think of Feminism? “I think it’s a continuing good idea,” Weldon responds “But the problem with Feminism is that you have to make it up as you go along. There are no party headquarters.” I’m amazed to hear Weldon echoing my thoughts, although the word ‘problem’ is not one I would use. I am very much enamoured with the personal nature of Feminism, that it has such a wide spectrum in which it allows women to find their own path. It is amusing that Weldon, someone often said to have fallen back into patriarchal thinking, should bemoan the fact that Feminism can’t be regulated by rules and regulations passed down from a party headquarters.
Still, Weldon has plucked out a truth that Feminists often discuss themselves. It is true that Feminism being what it is, something in which you will discover your own politics as you grow and learn through it, difficulty can arise when disagreements between Feminist thoughts can obscure the bigger picture. All Feminists look forward to the same future, a future of equality and freedom, it’s just that they have different ideas how to get there. This can often make those on the outside view the movement as one big un-agreed mess, rife with cat-fights (women, eh?). “It’s very annoying at times” Weldon says of ‘pick and mix’ Feminism, seemingly assuming that women will change their political beliefs at each major life event. She does admit to an understanding of changeable political beliefs, however, since “They’re only human”.
These kind of all-forgiving, ultimately understanding phrases pepper Weldons words, a little sensitive seasoning that, to my mind, forgives her a great deal. However naively, Weldon does seem to search for the good in people, which some might attribute to her new found religion. It is what inclined her to declare Katie Price, better known as Jordan the glamour model, to be a good role model for girls; ‘Well I just thought she was a nice person,’ Weldon says ‘She has a great appetite for life’. Feminists were outraged because Weldon appeared to be approving of a society in which statistics tell us that teenage girls would rather be glamour models than teachers. When questioned about her ‘Katie Price is Right’ article in The Times, Weldon seems a tad embarrassed, admitting to the audience that she wanted to take back her words after seeing Price’s terrible chat show and learning of some dodgy sex tape of hers. ‘Sorry about that’ Weldon smiles, to laughs from the audience.
It’s not difficult to see why Weldon would prefer her female role models ultra-feminine. Weldon is often accused of Biologism, that is using biology to understand human social behaviours, often extending her reasoning to explain social constructs such as patriarchy. When interviewed about her book ‘She May Not Leave’ by Christina Koning in The Times (June 28 2007), Weldon said; “I’m interested in women’s lives — they still seem to be a separate species in many ways. And of course, the way I differ from the feminists with a capital F is that I don’t want them (women) to be like men. There’s a whole denial of difference which I find inexplicable.”
In Weldon’s world, men are pretty much from Mars and women from Venus, a notion that my own Feminism (infused with Queer theory, amongst other things I have picked and mixed along the way) makes me very uncomfortable with. Whilst Weldon may see my Feminism as proof to her theory, I would disagree. Break down notions of what a man’s and a woman’s roles are, yes. Explore and deconstruct female and male identities, definitely. But deny the existence of a uterus, never. This is why, when Weldon bemoans women having no choice nowadays but to earn and sacrifice chunks of their motherhood, my ears prick up. It’s true that we still have far to go in negotiating parental leave and evolving attitudes within business towards working mothers. Still, whilst Weldon might want to regress to a time when women were women and stayed at home to raise their young, I look forward to a time where women are women and can be supported with better childcare facilities and more flexible employment. Women and men don’t have to be the same to be treated equally.
Staying on the business of business, Professor Jenks wonders what Weldon’s opinion is of the under-representation of women in top ranking business positions “You are assuming that the goal is to earn as much as men”, Weldon muses, which strikes me as an interesting point. After all, there’s nothing wrong if a person would rather stick to the position that makes them happy, rather than exhaust themselves striving for a position that makes them wealthy. The problem arises when women do want to go for the more powerful positions and find themselves hitting that glass ceiling. “It’s not that women are kept out, it’s that they choose to stay out” Weldon claims, but I can imagine that this ‘choice’ is often one that is made for women, either by employers that see their future full of maternity leave and days off or by the drain on time that comes from managing a family. Having a child doesn’t automatically mean you are actively making a choice to opt out of a high flying career.
Weldon has been literally begging to be subjected to the Feminist-with-a-capital-F microscope since she wrote a book entitled “What Makes Women Happy”. When Prof. Jenks broaches the subject of the ’self-hinder’ book (as it was described when reviewed by for The Times), Weldon seems flustered and admits that the whole thing was not her idea, but her publisher’s. This is not excuse enough for the books contents, however, which most famously advised women to fake orgasms in order to keep their partners happy. “The girls under thirty were shocked” Weldon smiles, “But the girls over thirty, who’ve had babies and are getting quite tired, thought it only sensible”. The audience erupts into laughter, and the statement sums up Weldon completely; Fay Weldon is as funny as she is out of touch with a young female audience. In this auditorium, though, she is pitching just right, and receives a long applause to go with her bouquet as the interview is rounded up.
I leave the lecture hall with the knowledge that Fay Weldon is intensely witty, to the point of sacrificing political correctness for a laugh; “You’ll say anything for a smart line” she had admitted to the audience at Brunel. As she brandishes her sharp wit, Weldon has little care if anyone might feel the blade along the way. It is not her intention to make those deep cuts, and I imagine she must marvel at those who take their time (as I have done in this article) to gape down into those chasms that she has created and wonder what it all means; “Books are for reading, not brooding over” she has said.
A very large pinch of salt, and a good dose of patience, is what is needed when dealing with Weldon’s words. I believe that, as an author of fiction, Weldon finds it all too easy to slip into the psyches of her ‘Mars Men’ and ‘Venus Women’. Because of this she can empathise with her understanding of The Modern Man, and she believes herself when she says they have it bad because they have to iron their own shirts. But really, this is fiction we are dealing with, not reality. Still, no one can deny that fiction can hint at truth and be a fabulous thought provoker. This is why, for all her shock inducing statements, I am glad that we have a wit such as Weldon to make us Feminists-with-a-capital-F take stock, and to keep us pushing forward, rather than pulling back.
