Lori Anderson: Girls just want to have fun (but self-respect, too)

MARTIN and me, we're just like two nodding dogs in the back window of a car. Let me explain. I've always had a high regard for the little author.

For others, Martin Amis stirs up a dust storm that swiftly spirals into a tornado of blasphemous controversy. But for me, it's a haze of peace, love and copacetic agreement whenever he thrusts his picador wit into the flabby white underbelly of society.

The central argument of his new novel, The Pregnant Widow, is that the sexual revolution of the 1970s has been a Pyrrhic victory for women. What began in his book with topless sun-bathing or "the monokini" by the pool of a Tuscan villa in 1970 and evolved over that sun-drenched summer with women now acting like men in pursuit of sexual pleasure, has ended in the "raunch culture" of today, where lap-dancing is akin to female empowerment and sleeping around is liberating.

I do like to balance my literary diet – the empty calories of fiction are mixed with the roughage of fact – so I've also been delving into a book that acts like a sterner companion to Amis's slouched wisdom.

Whilst it was the American writer Ariel Levy who coined the term "raunch culture", another feminist, Natasha Walters, has explored today's hypersexualised version of womanhood, in her sprightly written and challenging new book, Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism.

Walters explores the sad facts behind Amis's fiction, which are that almost 50 per cent of teenage girls would consider a career as a glamour model and that a new generation of young women has arisen who think nothing of whittling their bed post to kindling with the notches of multiple lovers. What was most interesting about Walters' research were the interviews with these young women, in which they articulated their contentment over roaming from bed to bed and their frustration with any man who tried to corral them into a monogamous relationship, which was dismissed as "girly". For some of them, pornography was viewed as an elevation of women not a denigration.

Yet surely these Cassie-novas are to be celebrated: are they not the epitome of woman's lib, seeking their pleasure where they wish without paying heed to the tut-tutting constraints of society? Or is it a new slavery to patriarchy, with an ouroboros-like need of devouring man after man?

One thing is for certain, the Marquis de Sade would adore our new generation of female libertines, for he doffed his hat and dipped his quill in gallons of ink in celebration of strong, aggressive women. The Belle de Jours and Jordans of the world are like the French author and sexual sadist's character, Juliette, who found liberty and pleasure in debauchery. De Sade believed women could equally be the masters and men the slaves to their desire for the female form, and in the Sixties he was even hailed as a sexual liberator. Yet De Sade's Eden is truly a Dionysian Hell.

Yet I would argue there is a simple biological argument against promiscuity, especially if it involves unprotected sex, and it is that women will always come off worse than men. Let us push to one side the issue of pregnancy and the life-threatening dangers that still exist today, and instead focus on how the female body has responded to such behaviour. It is a clinical fact that high levels of unprotected sex with multiple partners will raise the chances of a woman contracting cervical cancer. Then there is bacterial vaginosis, caused by the sperm of multiple partners, which can make a woman more susceptible to gonorrhoea, syphilis and Aids.

So, does this mean women are biologically designed to be monogamous?

Well, there is an intriguing twist in that argument. If it is correct, then why would Mother Nature design men's bodies in such a manner as to assume that his partner is promiscuous? When it comes to sexual partners, evolution has placed Eve somewhere in the middle, between the monogamous gorilla, who mates only with the dominant silver-back, and the chimpanzee, whose promiscuity, while in heat, is akin to an Essex girl on her maiden Club 18-30 holiday in Faliraki.

We know this because the size of men's testicles are, in terms of body weight, four times larger than gorillas', but only a quarter of the size of a male chimpanzee's, and that is because each species requires a certain amount of sperm, whose job is not to fertilise an egg but to "seek and destroy" the sperm of other men. In humans, 99 per cent of sperm are non-fertile; many of them have the sole function of annihilating the sperm of other suitors or functioning as blockers, denying other men's sperm access to the uterus. As Terry Burnham and Jay Phelan, the authors of Mean Genes, explain: "Big balls and anti-sperm indicate that the prevalence and universality of human infidelity have deep biological roots."

But let us push aside any innate biological drive and focus instead on modern women's hard-earned freedom of choice. Young women may now prowl pubs in search of their sexual prey and choose to dress like the denizens of a cheap bordello, but surely this is preferable to a return to the previous millenniums of being little more than chattels, whose very existence was for producing progeny and providing sexual pleasure; unfortunately, not their own? We may cringe at the sight, but they appear to be having a marvellous time, and isn't that the point?

Perhaps, but if society is to accept the new female sexuality, then women, in turn, should heed the path of even the most well-worn rous. There comes a time when everyone, regardless of sex, must exchange the hurly-burly of the chaise-longue for the deep, deep peace of the marital bed. Middle-aged men who act like goats gorged on Viagra do appear slightly pathetic, and, in this new age of equality, the same must be said for a woman.