ABSTRACT
I can still remember with glee the first occasion on which I saw a man ejected from feminism.
The setting of the scene shall be vague-some cold hall, a large and noisy crowd. I suppose I am very young, and very lost in feminismshort, buffetted, out of it, overwhelmed through a skin too thin to fend off these loudly ebullient women jostling me to and fro. My clothes are clumsy: too softly suburban, and the weight of them makes my voice catch with a self-conscious insincerity that I wish I didn’t feel. Sinking, I hang grimly to the edge of some little group and try to join in with jokes, slogans, and stories that fall flat as soon as I form them in the unctuous tones of insecurity. Then deliverance, fresh air: the crowd settled, a woman took the stage, began to speak, and stopped. A couple of men had sneaked through, and now stood quite close to the front. In the long prickling silence, panic tightened my chest and strangled my cowardly pulse. Now there’d be a brawl. But the speaker laughed-would they go quietly, or would they like a little help?… And as all movement elsewhere ceased, she walked alone off the stage towards them. To a slow rise of clapping and hooting, they backed off and out of the hall.
