A Bite of the Apple

by Lennie Goodings

  In fact, both The Beauty Myth and Backlash were dire warnings against the idea that women’s empowerment was an easy win and nearly achieved; that feminism was now mainstream. Both demonstrated—in different ways—that society’s fear of women’s gains meant that the battle had become more subtle, more nuanced, and therefore harder to identify and struggle against, not least because at times ‘the enemy’ was within.

  Naomi Wolf, reflecting many years later on the time of writing her book, says: ‘I realised that in every generation in which there was a great push forward by women, some ideal arose to colonise their energies and thus make sure that they did not get too far. And then, I saw, in every generation that had seen such an awakening, the next generation was told to go home—it was “post-feminism” time—the battles had all been won.’ She describes how in the 1990s the media were saying that young women did not want feminism.

  Susan Faludi’s Backlash, a bold and impressive book, revealed the deep fear of powerful, successful women and what some parts of society would do to put women back in their place. She wrote, for example, about how the media embraced belittling scare stories such as the infertility epidemic and the man shortage. Based on specious surveys, these articles were the harbingers of what we now know as fake news.

  However, even though both these books were very successful in their day, the commercial tide was beginning to ebb on this moment of feminist polemic. Eve Ensler’s eye-opening The Vagina Monologues play (later a Virago publication) opened in 1996, but it was the same year that Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding became the single girl’s bestseller. Career, self-image, friends, lovers, and downfalls—they were all brilliantly revealed. Many independent working women in their twenties and thirties lapped up Bridget Jones, saying, ‘This is my life.’

  Was this the new female empowerment? It was freed of what feminist Natasha Walter called ‘excessive attachment to a politically correct idealism’. Her view was that there was a new spirit propelling young women who had come of age in a time when it looked like women could achieve what they wanted. Natasha believed that feminism was thriving—it just didn’t call itself feminism and it belonged to men as well as women; and she, along with others, felt that women should turn their attention to political and economic inequities, and stop policing behaviour. She called her book The New Feminism and it was acquired by Philippa Harrison at Little, Brown the year before Virago arrived in the fold. Little, Brown published the hardback and I published the paperback at Virago in 1999.

  The cover copy was bright and breezy:

  A major polemic on British feminism which sets the agenda for the 21st century. The New Feminism is a breath of fresh air. Where has British feminism gone? Has it retreated into the academy, did it burn out at Greenham Common, has it emigrated to the United States? . . . In defining this new feminism, Natasha Walter celebrates women’s growing power, casts aside the dogma of previous generations, and argues that the old adage ‘The Personal is Political’ does more harm than good. Because above all, this new feminism is frankly materialist. Who cares about how women dress, how they talk, how they make love? First, feminism must deliver political power and economic equality. With tremendous wit, verve and intelligence, The New Feminism marks out fresh ground in feminist debate.

  The British response to the book spoke volumes about the messy, frustrated, fragmented state of feminism on the eve of the twenty-first century. Older feminists, on the whole, were not kind, unhappy as they were to see—as they thought—their style of feminism disparaged. Recognized as being a figurehead of the third wave of feminism along with Naomi Wolf and Rebecca Walker (author and daughter of Alice Walker), Natasha Walter did get a few of the older feminists on side: ‘At her spirited best, she is a symbol ... of power and confidence, and a hopeful sign of new feminist stories in a more egalitarian future,’ said Elaine Showalter in the Guardian, but the reviewers who really liked it had already decided that old-style feminism has had its day: ‘Better than a dose of Paglia any day.’

  The press, and many young women too, said feminism was passé. To older feminists, porn culture was looking frighteningly mainstream, but for some of the young, empowerment was defined as girls enjoying sexy behaviour and pole-dancing classes.

  The upshot was—in so many quarters—that feminism was out of date. The mainstream said women ‘had it all’ and it was time to stop moaning. Within radical politics, the conversation fragmented into identity politics: lesbian, black, ecological, disability; the umbrella term ‘feminism’ could not easily encompass them.

  So how do you publish politically? When you know all is not right, as Susan Faludi pointed out, when feminism seemed to have lost its broader goals of social change, responsible citizenship, the advancement of human creativity, the building of a mature and vital public world.

  But though there were feminists who felt this way, we were up against the tide of opinion that naysayed feminism, and that belief lasted until the mid to late 2000s. In 2006, Susan Faludi bewailed this:

  We live in a time when the very fundaments of feminism have been recast in commercial terms—and rolled at our feet like three golden apples. The feminist ethic of economic independence has become the golden apple of buying power . . . The feminist ethic of self-determination has turned into the golden apple of ‘self-improvement’—an improvement dedicated mostly to one’s physical appearance, self-esteem, and the fool’s errand of reclaiming one’s youth. And the feminist ethic of public agency has shape-shifted into the golden apple of publicity—the pursuit of a popularity that hinges not on how much one changes the world, but on how marvelously one fits into its harness.

  I can chart this period of feminist polemic publishing with Natasha Walter’s books: the time between The New Feminism of 1998 to 2006, when Natasha, though still bruised from her early publication, came to see me with the idea for a new book, Living Dolls.

  Philippa Harrison had left and Ursula Mackenzie was now Little, Brown Publisher, with David Young as CEO. One of Ursula’s first innovations was to change the acquisition process; she opened it up to sales, publicity, rights, marketing, and finance people, to whom editors presented their proposed books. When I presented Natasha’s new proposal I talked to a large room full of slightly sceptical people. They knew—as I did—that straightforward feminist polemic was no longer a big seller, but nonetheless everyone agreed Virago should be doing this, and of course Natasha was our author and we are loyal to writers. Our sales projection was not overly optimistic. I costed on modest figures, made my offer, and Natasha began writing.

  But there was one striking feature of that acquisition meeting. I clearly remember the young women at the table vehemently saying, ‘At last . . . someone is talking about this!’ And ‘this’ was sexism. What Natasha Walter wanted to talk about was the invidiousness of sexism; how irony and put-downs of political correctness were making invisible the fact that sexism was alive and well, and particularly how the sexualized culture encouraged the body ideal—as with the days of Fat is a Feminist Issue and The Beauty Myth—and meant that girls and women were internalizing sexism. The young women in that room knew that the need for feminist analysis had not gone away, because sexism had certainly not disappeared.

  Living Dolls took a while to write. Feminist investigation takes time. Defining the slipperiness of sexism takes great care. Finding ways to explain to readers that yes, they seem to have what they want—education, equal pay rights, a right to demand safety and a life of non-violence—and it looks like they have choice too, but do they? I remember the hours she spent trying to pin it down exactly. It wasn’t like Betty Friedan’s ‘the problem that has no name’—this problem did have a clear name, sexism, but the task was the same: making that problem visible. Showing women they weren’t ‘mad’. Showing women—and men—the work to be done. And showing the new seeds of change. It felt as if we were back in the early days of feminism once again.

  In her introduction to Liv
ing Dolls, Natasha bravely wrote how she—like so many others—had got it wrong:

  I once believed that we only had to put in place the conditions for equality for the remnants of old-fashioned sexism in our culture to wither away. I am ready to admit that I was wrong . . . Empowerment, liberation, choice. Once the watchwords of feminism, these terms have now been co-opted by a society that sells women an airbrushed, highly sexualised and increasingly narrow vision of femininity.

  Having had such a rough ride with The New Feminism, Natasha and I were braced for the media onslaught. We had a launch party for the book—with many people who knew exactly what she was revealing and believed she was right—but those were friends. I remember taking Natasha’s hand and saying, ‘Okay, here we go, and I am with you.’ We smiled grimly and were ready. But as we came up over the parapet in 2010 we saw a new world. We were no longer alone. People were ready for this message, for the truth of where we had—and hadn’t—got to. Living Dolls was an immediate hit; readers were hungry for Natasha’s analysis. They were angry and desperate for facts, stats, and ammunition. We reprinted and reprinted; it became an instant feminist classic.

  Sarah Savitt started her career in the post-feminist lull, in 2002, but began acquiring books on this cusp of change at Faber. The first book she acquired was Kat Banyard’s The Equality Illusion: The Truth about Men and Women Today. It is significant and pleasing to us both that Sarah published The Equality Illusion in the same month in 2010 as I published Living Dolls, to the same ready and waiting readership.

  In 2012 we published Vagina: A New Biography by Naomi Wolf, and followed soon after with the anthologies Fifty Shades of Feminism and I Call Myself a Feminist. These publications were certainly not without controversy; Vagina, in particular, created much heated feminist discussion in the press—but, importantly, these books won eager audiences and success. Around us the publishing world was warming up, speaking out, waking up. Caitlin Moran’s massive hit, How to Be a Woman, told retailers and publishers that readers wanted feminist books, and that led to multi-variations on books that champion women, almost a new genre even—variations on rebel stories for rebel girls. We seemed to be in a brave new world where women were not afraid to be demanding, outrageous, and even funny about feminism. And where gender politics could expand to encompass transgender and non-binary authors, such as our Trans Like Me: A Journey for All of Us by CN Lester and Darling Days by iO Tillett Wright.

  Sarah Savitt is very much part of this new feminism: ‘I see a renewed energy around publishing not just more and a greater variety of books by women but also more and a greater variety of books by other writers whose voices have been historically marginalized, whether that’s writers of colour, writers with disabilities, LGBTQ+ writers and so on. It’s exciting.’

  But she is wise: ‘It is a great time to be Publisher of Virago for these reasons and if we achieve gender equality in the future, perhaps we will no longer be necessary—though I think it would be safer to keep going, just in case things go backwards! Knowing the history of Virago is a good reminder that change is not a straight line.’

  As Margaret Busby, editor of Daughters of Africa and The New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent, cautions, ‘The aspirational mantra of inclusivity and diversity is increasingly routine, fashionable even, in today’s publishing industry, but lasting change has yet to be achieved.’

  Looking at our own industry tells Sarah how far we have come: ‘There are energetic—and sometimes justifiably angry—discussions happening about all kinds of inequality in terms of publishing staff and working conditions.’ The gender pay gap reporting in 2018 revealed significantly larger gaps than the national average at several major publishing houses, provoking many questions for her. ‘Why in 2019 are almost all the CEOs of major British publishing companies men when publishing is an overwhelmingly female industry? Why is publishing so unrepresentative at all levels in terms of race and class?’

  It spurred Sarah to acquire Equal by the journalist Carrie Gracie, who resigned as BBC China Editor over equal pay. It’s right that Virago prizes an equal pay campaigner and addresses these stubbornly deep inequalities.

  I love that Sarah knows books about feminism can be deliciously ironic as well as hard-hitting, that today’s feminists are not afraid to laugh at themselves. She ushered in The Guilty Feminist: From Our Noble Goals to Our Worst Hypocrisies by Deborah Frances-White who writes,

  Proper, dedicated, lived and breathed fuck-the-patriarchy feminism is a wonderful thing for the empowerment and elevation of women everywhere but what if we’re not there yet? What if we fear we will die at ninety-five, still wanting desperately to have smooth legs and a flawless forehead and without having read The Bell Jar? . . . What if we are at base camp, and the summit looks like it’s crowded with better feminists than us? . . . This book is about starting today . . . We don’t have to be perfect to dare ourselves better . . . Laughing at the gap between where we want to be (Maya Angelou) and where we are (My God, I Can’t Believe I Just Said That) can be cathartic, joyful, bonding . . . Learning to live with our contradictions and love ourselves anyway is a noble goal in itself.

  Younger feminists argue, correctly, that what has been traditionally white feminism must instead centre, include, support, and understand those who have been on the margins. Virago Editorial Director Ailah Ahmed says, ‘I like the adaptation of Flavia Dzodan’s quote, “if your feminism isn’t intersectional, it isn’t feminism at all”. That about sums it up for me.’ She and Sarah commissioned June Eric-Udorie to edit a book about intersectionality, Can We All Be Feminists?, in which June writes, ‘I agree wholeheartedly that building an (albeit imperfect) united sisterhood that focuses on the liberation of all women is a necessary step. But we won’t get there by abandoning our own concerns and shutting off parts of ourselves. We will only get there when privileged feminists start listening—really listening, no matter how uncomfortable it might be, to women like me who exist on the margins, and amplifying our voices.’

  June Eric-Udorie, who has been called a young Audre Lorde, sends me right back to 1984 when white feminists got so much right with the First International Book Fair, and so much wrong. I am thankful for this honesty and I warm to her sense that despite its shortcomings, she is grateful for feminism because it gave her a voice and a campaigning purpose: ‘Feminism also gave me permission to reject the notions of being a “good” girl. I like being a rebel girl.’

  I feel more optimistic than I ever have before and I am heartened and fascinated by this generation of feminists and I have seen the power we have when we support each other. But I am haunted by the fact that we name each new influx of change a ‘wave’. Waves are like tides that ebb and flow, advance and retreat, and even this period, which feels more likely to succeed because it speaks to so many women, men and non-binary people and people from all races, from the grassroots up, even this, we are calling a wave. And frankly, when one looks up and sees the way world politics is moving to the right, maybe we are just waving.

  I don’t want to believe that, but I know what to answer when we are asked, ‘Is Virago still necessary?’

  I go back to books, to the words on a page that will not be erased, so we don’t forget and so we can build on the energy and successes of this time. I return to Adrienne Rich:

  ‘In a world where language and naming are power . . . We need concrete artifacts, the work of hands, written words to read, images to look at, a dialogue with brave and imaginative women who came before us.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Why Can’t a Man Read Like a Woman?

  When asked about feminism in the 1980s, Marguerite Yourcenar, the acclaimed author of Memoirs of Hadrian, said, ‘I have a horror of such movements, because I think that an intelligent woman is worth an intelligent man—if you can find any—and that a stupid woman is every bit as boring as her male counterpart . .�
��.

  ‘I did not want to be published by [Virago]—what a name!—because they publish only women. It reminds me of ladies’ compartments in nineteenth-century trains, or of a ghetto.’

  I bet she was rolling in her grave when I published two volumes of her autobiography as Virago Non-fiction Classics in the late 1990s.

  Though there have always been many extraordinary women writers delighted to be on the Virago list, not everyone wants to be a Virago author. Some see it as a club of which they don’t wish to be a member.

  I think it is often because they are anxious that they then won’t be read by men—and in that, the meta-message I hear is: I won’t be taken as seriously.

  The Women’s Prize for Fiction (originally the Orange Prize for Fiction) has also always had its naysayers, and not only men. A. S. Byatt and Jenny Diski, for example, did not want their books entered.

  Who publishes you, what prizes you win do matter—up to a point. But only up to a point.

  With fiction, what seems to matter more is the gender of the writer; because even in this new world of outspoken writers and readers it appears that not all words are equal. Something seems to happen to a novel when it has a woman’s name on the spine.

  What Virago and the Women’s Prize continue to highlight, even after more than forty years in Virago’s case, is not that women struggle more than men to get published—though some non-fiction subjects are spotted and encouraged only by women’s presses—no, getting published isn’t the problem. What has long been the big hurdle is how women’s writing is regarded.