Book review: Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism

Published on Sunday 7 February 2010 10:34

LIVING DOLLS: THE RETURN OF SEXISM Natasha Walter Virago, £12.99

WHO could doubt that there is a need for a book such as Natasha Walter's Living Dolls: The Return Of Sexism? Headlines of recent days have been dominated by sex scandals in which women are reduced to little more than avaricious "sluts" or put-upon wives; an anti-abortion advertisement is to be broadcast, for the first time, during the Super Bowl (the most watched sporting event on the planet) today, and the rape conviction rate remains at the disgracefully low level of 6 per cent.

Why, then, is this such a disappointment?

A respected journalist – Walter has written on most aspects of women's rights, prostitution and pornography – Living Dolls is her survey of what has happened since the publication of her first book, The New Feminism (1998), and, to an extent, is her apology for getting it so wrong.

Back then she argued feminists should turn their attention to specific political, social and financial aims with the understanding that, once these "conditions for equality" existed, "old-fashioned sexism in our culture (would] wither away". That's not how it has played out. Sexism hasn't withered, it has renewed, become re-energised and has been tirelessly reasserted. As Walter states: women still do more than double the domestic labour men do; they still earn nearly 20 per cent less than men for doing the same job; they remain under-represented at the highest levels of politics, business and the justice system. What's worse, though, according to Walter, is that the "rhetoric of liberation" that emerged from feminism has been co-opted to make women feel they have more choices than ever, while in reality their options have become fewer and more proscribed.

The rise of glamour modelling, the popularity of memoirs about prostitution that suggest selling sex is simply an easy way to make a buck and the pervasiveness of pornography are Walter's concerns in the first half of the book. She takes us through interviews with young women discussing their sex lives, a prostitute, and a man addicted to porn. The news is grim: Bella, 18, has had 22 sexual partners and sees no connection between sex and emotional intimacy; Angela, the prostitute, feels she consents to being raped for money; Jim, the porn addict, admits that the porn available now is "much more brutalising than it used to be".

Depressing, certainly, but these are well-known issues and well-rehearsed arguments. Walter's use of well-worn examples – Sex And The City, John Gray's Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus – only highlights her failure to bring any new perspective to bear. She is, as you'd expect, good on the detail, but what is curiously lacking is a larger theoretical framework in which to contextualise her observations and, more importantly, a sense of outrage or anger that might act as a call to action.

Walter might make the case for dissent, but her tone is so measured, so meek, she comes nowhere near managing it herself. "I'm not about to judge…" is a phrase that pops up with alarming regularity. Presumably chided by the awareness that "to judge any aspect of our culture or behaviour is now often seen as impossibly elitist", her tone is so equivocal that, at times, it's hard to work out what she's saying. For feminists such hesitancy will, at best, infuriate and, at worst, bore. For readers looking for a way to engage with feminism, such recalcitrance means that they will struggle to see the book as a manifesto for change.

In the second section, Walter turns to the rise of biological determinism – the notion that men and women are innately different. She convincingly destroys shaky studies that push the notion of women as empathetic and unable to park a car, men as logical and unwilling to parent. What she's less forthright about is the overriding narrative. Why does the media focus so on this approach? Whose ends are served? Her message is positive – there is a way beyond the fatalism of "girls love pink and boys love blue" – but it's given in such a downbeat way (and on page 198) that it feels like an anti-climax.

In the final section of the book (the part that I think should have come first) Walter admits her pessimism is at odds with at least some of what is going on around her. She describes the optimism of women in positions of power, the increase of grass-roots women's organisations (many web-based) reinvigorating feminist debate. But it's too little, too late.

Two more books by British feminists come out this year (Kat Banyard's The Equality Illusion and Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune's Reclaiming The F Word: The New Feminist Movement). Perhaps they will find the courage, the righteous anger, that eludes Walter. For the sake of us all, not least the women who think liberation is getting your kit off for the boys, I hope so.

&#149 This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday on 07 February 2010