I made the mistake of taking a political tome (Backlash, by Susan Faludi) on vacation with me last week. I also read it, much to my surprise.

I find that I must eat some of the words I wrote in my earlier rant on feminism, although I do still stand by my conclusion, which was that feminists - and most groups with any kind of socio-political agenda - cannot afford to tightly define themselves or to get caught up in revenge, because they will then just be ignored, both by the powers that be and also by people that they should be trying to recruit as members. But in the process of coming to this conclusion, I also attacked feminism as a pointless exercise and said that I do not call myself a feminist, statements that, having read this book, I regret.

I would like to restate my opinion, having new information. I am a feminist, and am willing to call myself such. I believe that there is a predictable in the United States of rejecting the gains that women make, one that can be tracked, as Faludi does, through the Victorian era, the twenties, and the fifties. I do still believe that the movement towards equality has gotten sidetracked on a principle of revenge against men, but now that looks a lot more like the product of believing the backlash bullshit than an inherent attribute of feminism itself.

And one of the reasons that I'm taking the opportunity to retrod the feminist ground is because of something on the radio the other day. The (female) announcer said - if I can read my note - that it was poppycock that only men should sleep around, (basically meaning that women's biology is not destiny, I guess) and something that I can't interpret about women who are something are not competing for men's jobs, attention, etc.

Now, other than the fact that I should take more care when writing notes, I'd like to kindly poke a few holes in the biology idea.

Biology may or may not be destiny. There are certainly plenty of statistics out there to confirm that women have just as much of a biological drive to sleep around as men. The theory is that women desire marriage with men of average appearance, since the less attractive someone is the better a caretaker they are - beautiful males and females of many species including humans are poor caretakers, being more caught up in their own attractiveness. So this woman is married to this man, and she - in the interests of her genes, whether she knows it or not - has an affair with the hot stud around the corner, getting pregnant and ensuring superior genes and excellent care for her children. The last time I looked at the statistics was 1994 - I'm sure more have been done - but the rates of illegitimacy in a number of areas of Liverpool bore this theory out. And if you'd like more detail, it's all to be found in The Red Queen by Matt Ridley.

In other words, biology is in fact destiny.

I believe firmly that it is possible for women to choose how much of "all" they want - family, career, whatever. I believe that women should not be limited by the fears of men. I believe that women can, if they organize, be an effective voice in national discourse. I believe that there is a ways to go on equal rights for all - not just women - and that we need to go that ways.

But I also realize fully that biology is destiny.

Your body plays tricks on you. We wouldn't have a civilization today if women went into estrus the same way that most mammals do, where every male can tell. We also wouldn't have sex lives, since the idea of sex among humans is that - on a biological level - the man is taking the chance that he will be able to impregnate the woman at that time, and thereby pass his genes on to the next generation. Which actually explains a lot about anti-abortionists, actually - women would have the freedom to prevent their genes from reaching the next generation, and a lot of them seem to be such sad, desperate losers that one child's probably all they can hope for.

But the fact remains that, no matter what achievements of civilization we come up with, no matter how elaborate our social structures, how great our mental achievements, we all still live in these bodies. And the that fact is predicated on the idea that everyone that you are directly related to, all the way back to the apes, wanted to procreate.

So let's dump the bullshit argument that biology is not destiny, shall we? Let's make it something a little more reasonable, like "Destiny is not only biology". This makes much more sense - it allows pseudo-feminists to fuck all they want to; it allows non-feminists to have kids and stay home all they want, and it allows me to take over the world, because I realize that I'm intimately attached to my body and I've got a better chance of understanding the US tax code than I do of overriding certain imperatives, especially concerned with reproduction, that my body communicates to me.

An example: You screw someone. Pregnancy results. This is biology. You have the option or not of having the child. Now you're deciding whether to allow your biology to be your destiny. Therefore, no blanket statement can be made that biology is destiny, but your destiny is certainly going to have to take into account your biology.

Ergo, it is bullshit to say that biology is totally irrelevant to your life.

And I still think that fucking the way women perceive men to is not a great blow for equality. Sleeping around, though fun, does not make you an automatic feminist statement. So let's cut the crap about sex and start working on something a little more real - like the fact that most households in poverty are women-headed because women don't get paid as well as men do. Or the idea of federal daycare. Or any one of the countless ways in which men decide to demonstrate their disregard for women.

Evolving at a faster rate than the rest of you lazy bastards,

Channon