Boy was I surprised to wake up this morning and read this in a Welsh newspaper:
When John Cleese, in the film Life of Brian, posed the question, “what have the Romans done for us?”, he was quickly disabused of his take on things – nothing – by a long list of benefits their regime had bought. It could be argued that some feel the same about feminism; one post on a blog in response to the NY Times article reads “feminists made their bed. Now they have to lie on it, alone, with their cats.” Ouch.
You might be surprised to know that this was not written by a misogynistic male, but a female called Jill with sound feminist credentials, who blogs entertainingly at feministe.com. Which, apart from the meow factor, lends it a little weight. If the research is to be believed, all the advances the bra burning generation have bought us – equal rights, equal pay, independence and choice – have actually, emotionally, left us worse off.
Confused as to how I could have possibly written anything along those lines, I went back and read the post she’s quoting. And whaddaya know — the quote she attributes to me is, in fact, me quoting a misogynistic male.
She also got the website wrong.
I wrote an email to the news editor asking for a correction. We’ll see if anything comes of it.
UPDATE: They fixed it.