Raunch Culture

Ariel Levy’s ‘Female Chauvinist Pigs’ does not actually hit on a new idea, create a new body of intellectual thought or bring back feminism; at least, not on its own.

This book depicts an America where young women fall prey to men wanting to photograph them taking their clothes off, fake lesbian encounters and where the strength of a woman is determined by how much of a man she is. Clearly none of this is particularly new, Thatcher being the archetypal man-woman, and men wanting to see women without their clothes since men were invented. However, she does make some more specific points about sex education, and the growth of abstinence-only education in America.

Now there are those among the left who once you mention American will roll their eyes and say, well what can you expect, but this is not just an American phenomenon. Rachel Bell’s article in the Guardian (http://education.guardian.co.uk/students/news/story/0,,2009472,00.html) on university feminists shows that in the middle of raunch culture attempting to fit all women into the stereotype of sex objects, there are people fighting back. There a number of people out there who see these kind of women as spoilsports, those who want to restrict the fun of others, but these are female stereotypes in themselves. Women and indeed human beings should quite clearly be campaigning to stop a nation of boys growing up thinking that women are only sexual objects and have nothing further to contribute to society. We have fought too long and too hard to let lad’s mags and raunch culture take away what feminism fought for.

Charlynne Pullen