changing opinions

Julie Bindel is easy to admire - a courageous, dogged fighter for women's rights and relentless campaigner against men who abuse women - but rather hard to like. The Guardian has been running a series of columns recently which describe the things its respective authors have changed their mind over during the 2000s. Bindel's contribution reveals that she, over the last decade, has learned that it's possible to be friends with men. It's really rather shocking that this realisation has come so late, and while I'm glad for her, it's hard not to wonder if the problem is not that, as she suggests, men are intimidated by her sexual politics, but rather that she's not a very friendly person. Towards the end of the article she reveals that she's even had a male friend over for dinner, as if this represents incredible progress. It's a world-view I don't recognise.

As often happens, she gets a bit of a kicking in the comments, which probably just confirms her distrustful attitude towards men. Nevertheless, the following comment made me laugh out loud.