Julie Burchill

I have experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from men, but I have also experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from women, usually when I failed to respond to their advances.

There’s something brave and touching about game girls of all ages keeping themselves smart in hard times – one thinks of those wonderful women during World War II drawing stocking seams in eyebrow pencil up the back of legs stained with gravy browning because nylons were so hard to get hold of.

I don’t really care what people tell children – when you believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, one more fib won’t hurt. But I am infuriated by the growing notion, posited in some touchy-feely quarters, that all women are, or can be, beautiful.

Can I just say here how much I hate the word ‘pamper’? While pretending to celebrate and indulge women, it actually implies that their bodies are so revolting that even their ‘me time’ must be dedicated to turning them into living dolls if potential suitors are to be prevented from running screaming in horror.

Lots of women love to accuse men of being immature when the fellow in question displays a reluctance to ‘commit.’

I am firmly of the opinion that women who make a lot of effort to hang onto their looks in middle age (unless they are beauties, entertainers or prostitutes) are rather sad, as one should surely have something more substantial to recommend one by this time, such as kindness or cleverness.

Big women do themselves a disservice when they attempt to become the Righteous Fat (the Righteous Thin are bad enough, all that running around and sweating, somehow believing it means anything).

As with most liberal sexual ideas, what makes the world a better place for men invariably makes it a duller and more dangerous place for women.

Women, more often than not, do things which aren’t remotely relaxing but are all about preening, which is just another sort of work.

Show me a frigid women and, nine times out of ten, I’ll show you a little man.