Only 30 years, and the revolution is dead, not because of the enemy but because of ourselves. (After all, the plantation owners — read men — would be unlikely to send away willing slaves. Why would they?)
We just gave up, and now to describe yourself as a feminist has almost the same effect as if you had farted in a crowded lift.
And I blame women because winning equality and respect was always going to be our fight, wives and mothers, sisters, friends and colleagues, but we seem to have walked away before serious battle was even joined.
[…] Women can say no to sexualisation but they don't because the boys won't like them if they do, and besides, they say, they enjoy it.
Maybe they do, but at what cost?
The feminist revolution was serious, important, but now it's just a joke.
Let's face it — the sleazing of society, where pornography has become mainstream, could not have happened without female participation.
We hear so many stories now of men getting addicted to pornography, of relationships under threat, but nothing about the hundreds of thousands of women willing to demean themselves in the delusion that they are being glamorous.
It is heart-breaking.
Still, we do not have parity of wages, women are still over-represented in the low-paying, highly casualised workforce, still our female politicians are judged by their maternal instincts over their political ones.
And now we are meant to be some kind of weird amalgam of Linda Lovelace, Martha Stewart and the Madonna, while bringing in a wage, propping up the local school and operating as a psychologist, nutritionist and environmentalist.
And, by and large, we have done it to ourselves and to each other.
Years ago, when I first went into the world and embraced feminism as an equalising movement, not one based on hatred, resentment or superiority, my mother expressed doubts.
She said that she foresaw a time when women would be under more pressure, rather than less, with less respect rather than more, falling further behind rather than stepping out in front.
Then I thought her fearful and reactionary.
Now I think her wise.
I have no doubt that I will offend countless women by this story, but I don't care.
Countless women have offended me.
You would think that after millenniums of being treated as second-class citizens we could have put up a better fight. The revolution is dead — bring on the fluffy handcuffs.