go or go ahead.

Call me old-fashioned but where feminism has failed is that we never made the caring virtues desirable or sexy. A woman with a gun is more thrilling than a woman with a baby. A woman who hacks into computers, has no real personal life, knows how to shoot and is prepared to do anything is a very male kind of woman. The dysfunctional superheroes Batman and Spiderman are the template for Lisbeth Salander. As with Kickass and its murdering miniature anti-heroine, it seems that as long as a woman is ‘strong’, she is a positive role model.

It isn’t strong to be unable to form relationships. It isn’t strong to be a loner or a misfit. It isn’t strong to separate sex from intimacy.

As women – gay or straight – I hope we can go on make better role models for ourselves than compulsive women for whom sex and violence have become identical to the male stock in trade.