Sofia the First: A Mermaid Tale is a favourite with my daughter, who is entranced by the moment when Sofia is magically transformed into a mermaid and dives underwater. And you only need to browse the girls’ clothing selection in a high-street shop to find countless cartoon girls with fish-tails, sequinned and sparkly, smiling at you from t-shirts, dresses, wellies, duvet sets, pencil cases and the like.Īs a parent of a four-year-old, I’m more familiar than I’d like with mermaid content, and Disney is a rich source. And it is an obsession: mermaids are everywhere. Monique Roffey’s novel The Mermaid of Black Conch: A Love Story recently won the Costa Book Prize, while “mermaiding” - swimming in the sea wearing a “mermaid tail” - has gained a cult following in Australia. Something about this sense of crossing an uncrossable threshold surely also powers our obsession with mermaids. For a short while it’s possible to pretend that you have the freedom of such an alien world, but in truth you’re only ever a tourist, granted safe passage thanks to technology, training and self-discipline. In the glory days Before Coronavirus, I remember diving through the clear waters of coastal Turkey, drifting on warm currents and rolling to stare at the sunshine playing on the surface, from underneath.īut even as I rippled through the deep, marvelling at flashing schools of fish, there was a trade-off: constant self-control. Put on your gear, slip under the surface, and find yourself freed from gravity. Scuba diving is both magical and terrifying. Continue reading “The Right To Sex: Srinivasan’s cry for help” →

Yes, commissar, the statement says, the definition of “woman” in my book about women is “anyone who identifies as a woman”. This originary division determines what social purpose a body will be assigned.” “At birth, bodies are sorted as ‘male’ or ‘female’, though many bodies must be mutilated to fit one category or the other, and many bodies will later protest against the decision that was made. I was reminded of Havel’s greengrocer when reading The Right To Sex, a much-lauded new book on women and feminism by Amia Srinivasan - the holder of Oxford University’s prestigious Chichele professorship of social and political theory, a position previously held by luminaries such as Isaiah Berlin.ĭespite - or perhaps because of - her standing, she opens the book with a statement typically found in the preface of any contemporary woke writing about women I’ve come to think of it as a direct equivalent to the greengrocer’s poster: As Havel puts it: “If he were to refuse, there could be trouble.” Havel’s greengrocer probably never thinks about that slogan, let alone believes it he puts it obediently in his window to signal compliance with the regime. If you were a greengrocer in Soviet Czechoslovakia, it would be prudent to display, in your window, a poster proclaiming: “Workers of the world, unite.” This is the famous example Vaclav Havel used, in The Power of the Powerless (1978), to illustrate mass conformity to Communist dogma.

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