Finola Bruton recently told a conference that the term "deeply offensive" should for the time being be banned from all public debate. It is as well that I was not present when she said those words, because I would have scrambled up onto the platform and kissed her there and then, no matter whether I frightened the horses or not. For the d.o. argument is a deadly way of foreclosing on a discussion without having to say why. It declares special victim-status for the speaker, with any further examination of the "deeply offensive" matter simply adding to the original offence. It is a self-sealing argument, intact, inviolable, undiscussable, the ultimate clincher. But it is only available to certain groups - racial minorities, homosexuals, and women.
There are many other terms which are bandied around the place when the politically correct feminist lobby sets up its stall, and which depend not so much on empirical evidence but on feelings and special pleading vulnerabilities. When Nuala O'Faolain attacked John Waters and me in her column last Saturday, she began it by a display of such feelings. She was "sharply hurt" by the way we talked about "an imaginary race called `women' ". (No, I don't know what she means by the word "imaginary" either).
Generalisations
She went on: "It's not what they say - John Waters has been a truly important voice for unmarried fathers - but the way that they say it. The rancour and even the venom behind their generalisations, and the way they use "feminist" as a curse-word is terribly upsetting".
Upsetting? Ah the poor dear. Why don't you lie down, you fragile little creature, and I'll get you some smelling salts. But of course, it's so hard being a feminist these days: some people don't actually agree with your every plaint of victimhood, and feel only nausea when you display your inner pain as a means of argument, i.e. the deeply offensive gambit.
There are a couple of other ploys in this rhetorical d.o. technique. One is to conflate feminism with womanhood; to criticise one is to criticise them both. Another, particularly in the absence of any verbal evidence to prove this species-hatred - and in both my case and John's, there isn't any - a feminist like Nuala O'Faolain can refer to "the way" something is said, or the "tone" that is used. In my case and John's she referred to the "venom" and "rancour" of our generalisations.
Generalisations, eh? So what sort of generalisations has she in mind? This one, say? "90 per cent of womenhaters in this world don't hate women at all. They just want more and better sex for themselves." Her words. She has thus progressed from effectively identifying John and myself as women-haters (because we are unashamedly critical of part of the feminist agenda) to declaring that nine out of 10 of us women-haters are in reality only motivated by sexual need. As a matter of interest, which group am I in? The witless 90 per cent who are so crippled by their sexual needs that they think they hate women? Or the 10 per cent whose hatred of women is attributable to some other, unnamed but presumably even more sinister cause?
Perspective
Let us put this kind of observation in perspective. If I attributed the feminist movement to the sexual frustrations of feminists, in a column which actually named feminists, would this newspaper even publish it? Probably not. For that, after all, was the level to which the more brutal anti-feminists instantly lowered the discourse in the early days of the feminist movement: "What they need is a good seeing to".
Now it seems feminism feels free to talk the same language, and not for the first time. When Neill Lyndon took on British feminism eight years ago, his book was, of course, given to feminists to tear limb from limb. One reviewer even derisively attributed his concern over the absence of any national health programme for prostate cancer - though thousands of men died of the disease every year - to the fact that he probably had a small penis.
I actually thought we wouldn't get that kind of talk here. Well, now I know I was wrong. Perhaps you might understand my pious hope that Irish critics of this kind of sneering yet sanctimonious feminism do not suffer the McCarthyite fate that he did: nearly a decade of professional and private ruin.
Masterpiece
Oh, I know, I know, you don't buy The Irish Times to read its columnists having a go at one another, but the issue isn't about the individuals concerned but the feminist argument, how it is presented and how one may be allowed to discuss it. And for querulous illogic, personalised abuse and selective victimhood, Nuala O'Faolain's column last Saturday was a masterpiece of the genre, and indeed would reward some study as such.
For having accused John and myself of displaying venom and rancour in our generalisations about an imaginary race called "women" - and I still don't know what "imaginary" means; having compared us with Northern loyalists - "Not very deep down, they don't believe that Catholics are their equals. Same for women"; having accused us of being blinded by "panic and chagrin", and being moved by "fear and resentment"; and having strongly implied that we are women-haters, possibly because of unsatisfactory sex-lives, she concluded with these words: "But there's a line between plain-speaking and self-indulgent abusiveness. Fellow columnists, please note".
At which point, words fails me.