A well-worn and tear-soaked origin story, vaguely reminiscent of biblical incarnation, tends to accompany press reporting on new fertility ventures. Once upon a time there was an ordinary Californian woman with great LinkedIn connections who was trying for some particular …
In defence of Miss France
It seems that things are going to the dogs across the Channel. It’s not just that the French birth rate, educational standards, and the homegrown car industry are all in decline; nor even that the homicide rate, Americanisms, and fast-food …
The NHS cult of natural birth
One of the riskiest things you can do in an NHS hospital is have a baby. Two thirds of NHS maternity units are not “safe enough” for women giving birth, according to the Care Quality Commission, while a quarter deliver …
Should you hedge your romantic bets?
Feminism 30 years ago was busy raging against the glass ceiling; today it’s more likely to be discussing maternal instincts. Where women were once told they could enjoy hook-up culture for as long as they liked, now they are being …
MeToo unless you’re a Jew
After accompanying British troops as they liberated Bergen-Belsen in April 1945, Richard Dimbleby produced one of the most viscerally horrifying — and powerful — dispatches in the BBC’s history. “I find it hard to describe adequately the horrible things that …
The climax of the Vagina Monologues
Let me take you back to 1996, and an important year for life-changing discoveries. In Scotland, scientists at the Roslin Institute were cloning Dolly the Sheep. In the US, human DNA sequencing was just getting going. Meanwhile, all over the …
Why should women write like men?
Books or babies? It’s a choice that has presented itself to women writers for centuries. And it was a favourite theme of Ursula K. Le Guin who struggled, successfully, to balance the two. In her lecture, “The Fisherwoman’s Daughter”, published …
The problem with beautiful women
A group of little girls sit in a circle and play a game called “Honestly”. It’s a sort of crowdsourced truth-or-dare, except it’s only “truth”, and there’s only one question: Am I beautiful?
The asker closes her eyes, and the …
Should women learn to love pain?
Reflecting on the subject of pain in his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein concluded that the grammar of the concept had an essential relation to publicly recognisable forms of “pain-behaviour”: wincing, saying “ow”, yelping, crying, and so on. He thought that it …
Does menopause madness really exist?
The menopause had a “MeToo moment” the year I turned 45. It was 2020 and women were finally speaking out about their hot flushes and sleepless nights. The roots of this revolution could be tracked back to a 2017 interview …
How disastrous births haunt women
The third time I went into labour, I was determined to avoid getting told off. With both of my previous births, I had somehow managed to get things wrong. My errors the first time: going to hospital too early, then, …
Big Fertility profits from women’s pain
The female reproductive experience is an endless morality tale. To try for a baby is to watch yourself constantly, knowing each stage of the process involves a judgement, if not on the performance of your body, then the legitimacy of …
The perversion of lesbian envy
Of all the footnotes to Kathleen Stock’s recent trip to Oxford, perhaps the most unedifying was the sight of me and my friends — ranging in age from 30 to 70 — exclaiming “Phwoar!” in private chat groups. But as …
The perils of reproductive extremism
Across the world, lawmakers and activists are moving towards increasingly absolutist ethical and legal stances on pregnancy. In particular, social conservatives seem locked into draconian purity spirals. Roe v. Wade fell a year ago this week, and since then 14 …
Women are pawns in the contraception war
Davina McCall’s new special, Pill Revolution, starts with an eye-catching visual: McCall, wearing a red dress and a megawatt gameshow host’s grin, spins a giant roulette wheel labelled with all the potential side effects of hormonal birth control. A dizzying …
