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Books: Sex without significance
This is the kind of book that gives feminism a bad name, says Minette Marrin
Sexing the Millennium by Linda Grant, HarperCollins, pounds 12.99
THERE are many books which are difficult to understand, for one reason or another, but there can be very few titles that are largely incomprehensible.
It must be admitted that Sexing the Millennium conveys very little in the way of obvious meaning, though I suppose sex for one thing and the millennium for another are quite exciting words and ought to add up to a good, brisk-selling title. But what exactly does sexing mean? And how do you do it to a millennium?
The word made me think immediately of Jeanette Winterson's novel Sexing the Cherry, which, excellent though it is, may perhaps have come to be used as a calling card for those seeking correct credentials in the area of gender and politics - a sort of authenticity by association. Otherwise the only thing that sprang to mind was the useful craft of chicken sexing, which seemed of doubtful relevance, since one can hardly determine the gender of a thousand years.
The flabby, vaguely right-on feel of the title characterises the book. It never becomes entirely clear what it is about. In part it deals with the sexual revolution and its disappointments - why female desire has not yet transformed the world, why we still suffer from phallocentrism, why prostitution hasn't withered away in the face of women's greater sexual freedom and how sad it is that men still persist in preferring to mate with young and pretty women. Why can't men be more like women, in fact.
It is also a personal quest to discover what had happened to the author and her (Sixties) generation. It looks forward in hope to an end to phallocentrism and a way in which 'real people could have real sexual lives'.
Along the way there is some interesting material, especially some medical history; the book began as a social history of the contraceptive pill, which perhaps explains its lack of clear direction. There is something likeable about the author; she is obviously straightforward in her character but hardly in her arguments. Her analysis of society is naive, as in the old howler about 'real people'. And her generalisations generally do not inspire confidence: 'There is no doubt that by the beginning of the Eighties, people were bored stiff with sex.'
How can she write that 'until women find their own sexuality, what we will have is a single, hegemonic definition of pleasure, male sexuality' (sic)?
This is the patronising, out of date and ill-educated nonsense that has driven so many women, reluctantly, to distance themselves from feminism. It is sad that Linda Grant's attack on phallocentrism tends to confirm certain phallocentric prejudices (which I do not share) about the female mind.
The Sunday Telegraph | Sunday, September 26, 1993
