A self-made man” – not of woman born but alchemized, through sheer force of will, by the man himself. This is what I want to be. I want to be a self-made woman. I want...

I used to fear their deaths–the car! the dog! the sea! the germ!–until I realized it need never be a problem: on the trolley, on the way to the mortuary, I would put my hands...

If you would feel comfortable going around to someone’s house at the end of a long day saying, “I’m just going to take my bra off,” you know you are intimate friends.

There’s a lot of Sherlock love in here. In many ways, this book might as well be called ‘Deduce THIS, Sexlock Holmes!’ with a picture of me licking his meerschaum, cross-eyed and screaming.

In the street below, a posh-looking drunk man is reading the card of a prostitute, Blue-Tacked up by a doorbell. He’s examining it with all the forensic care I presume he puts into reading a...

…it’s technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism you wouldn’t be allowed to have a debate on a woman’s place in society. You’d be too busy giving birth on the kitchen...

As it turned out, almost every notion I had on my 13th birthday about my future turned out to be a total waste of my time. When I thought of myself as an adult, all...

At its best fashion is a game. But for women it’s a compulsory game, like net ball, and you can’t get out of it by faking your period. I know I have tried. And so...

When the middle classes get passionate about politics, they’re arguing about their treats—their tax breaks and their investments. When the poor get passionate about politics, they’re fighting for their lives. Politics will always mean more...

I want a Zero Tolerance policy on All The Patriarchal Bullshit.

You wanted to become a doctor to help people and feel better at the end of your job, I think, watching them, as the nurse takes my hand. But I don’t think you do feel...

Feminism has had exactly the same problem that “political correctness” has had: people keep using the phrase without really knowing what it means.

I don’t want to sacrifice myself for something. I don’t want do DIE for something. I don’t even want to walk in the rain up a hill in a skirt that’s sticking to my thighs...

A library is such a potent symbol of a town’s values: each one closed down might as well be six thousand stickers plastered over every available surface, reading “WE CHOSE TO BECOME MORE STUPID AND...

Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That’s why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won’t vote. That’s why the poor are seen as more vital, and animalistic....

For throughout history, you can read the stories of women who – against all the odds – got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled or ruined, because all around them,...

And every book, you find, has its own social group–friends of its own it wants to introduce you to, like a party in the library that need never, ever end.

Feminism needs Zero Tolerance over baby angst. In the 21st century, it can’t be about who we might make, and what they might do, anymore. It has to be about who we are, and what...

And that was the point I knew I just loved this filthy, ugly, loquacious man in a fur coat, who would spend the day roaming all over town, looking for bright lights, and laughter –...

Overeating is the addiction of choice of carers, and that’s why it’s come to be regarded as the lowest-ranking of all the addictions. It’s a way of fucking yourself up while still remaining fully functional,...

But I am, personally, not a gambler. I wouldn’t spend £1 on the lottery, let alone take a punt on a pregnancy. The stakes are far, far too high. I can’t agree with a society...

we” wouldn’t accept slaggy birds, dim birds, birds that bitch, birds that hire cleaners, birds that stay at home with their kids, birds that have pink Mini Metros with POWERED BY FAIRY DUST! bumper stickers,...

We need to reclaim the word ‘feminism’. We need the word ‘feminism’ back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29% of American women would describe themselves as feminist – and only 42%...

But, of course, you might be asking yourself, ‘Am I a feminist? I might not be. I don’t know! I still don’t know what it is! I’m too knackered and confused to work it out....

I have read more about Oprah Winfrey’s ass than I have about the rise of China as an economic superpower. I fear this is no exaggeration. Perhaps China is rising as an economic superpower because...

Never feel this bad again. Never come back to this place, where only a knife will do. Live a gentle and kind life. Don’t do things that make you want to hurt yourself. Whatever you...

I’ve read de Sade, and Anaïs Nun, and Gravity’s Rainbow, and the Story of O. First you have to have pleasure—then pain.

Batman doesn’t want a baby in order to feel he’s ‘done everything’. He’s just saved Gotham again! If this means that Batman must be a feminist role model above, say, Nicola Horlick, then so be...

Galaxies of nothing are going onin her eyes.

What is feminism? Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be. Are you a feminist? Hahaha. Of course...

A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the...

And when you are being kissed like this, you are Christmas Day; you are the moon shot; you are field larks. My shoes were suddenly worth a million pounds, and my breath was the ethyl...

But deciding not to have children is a very, very hard decision for a woman to make: the atmosphere is worryingly inconducive to saying, “I choose not to,” or “it all sounds a bit vile,...

Ladies, we are at a massive disadvantage in the workplace. Your male peers are flirting with their male bosses constantly. The average workplace is like f*cking Bromancing the Stone. That’s basically what male bonding is....

Because I haven’t yet learned the simplest and most important thing of all: the world is difficult, and we are all breakable. So just be kind.

When statistics come in saying that only 29 percent of American women would describe themselves as feminist – and only 42 percent of British women – I used to think, What do you think feminism...

If I don’t keep this job, then my only future career-options are working in Argos, or being a prostitute,’ I say, wildly.’Maybe you could work in Argos as a prostitute,’ my mother says, merrily. She...

And the question is always “When are you going to have kids?” Rather than “Do you want to have kids?

But nearly every woman I know has a roughly similar story – in fact, dozens of them: stories about being obsessed with a celebrity, work colleague or someone they vaguely knew for years; living in...

Just resolve to shine, constantly and steadily, like a warm lamp in the corner, and people will want to move towards you in order to feel happy, and to read things more clearly. You will...

You can tell whether some misogynistic societal pressure is being exerted on women by calmly enquiring, ‘And are the men doing this, as well?’ If they aren’t, chances are you’re dealing with what we strident...

After all, you can argue – argue until you cry – about whatmodern, codified misogyny is; but straight-up ungentlemanliness,of the kind his mother would clatter the back of his head for, isinarguable. It doesn’t need...

Parents drinking is the reason you came into the world, and if we didn’t keep doing it then, by God, it would be the reason you went back out of it.

In the 20th century- an age in thrall to the new- women turn out to be the newest thing of all; still packed up in cellophane, still folded up in the box, having played dead...

The people around you are mirrors, I think. You see yourself reflected in their eyes. If the mirror is true, and smooth, you see your true self. That’s how you learn who you are.

Any action a woman engages in from a spirit of joy, and within a similarly safe and joyous environment, falls within the city-walls of feminism. A girl has a right to dance how she wants,...

It’s difficult to see the glass ceiling because it’s made of glass. Virtually invisible. What we need is for more birds to fly above it and shit all over it, so we can see it...

I have a rule of thumb that allows me to judge, when times is pressing and one needs to make a snap judgment, whether or not some sexist bullshit is afoot. Obviously, it’s not 100%...

It’s the silliness–the profligacy, and the silliness–that’s so dizzying: a seven-year-old will run downstairs, kiss you hard, and then run back upstairs again, all in less than 30 seconds. It’s as urgent an item on...

hearing women singing about themselves – rather than men singing about women – makes everything seem wonderfully clear, and possible