https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/16/difficult-women-history-of-feminism-11-fights-helen-lewis-review

An inspiring hymn to the feminists who fought for change illustrates why it pays to be demanding

Helen Lewis begins her book, subtitled “a history of feminism in 11 fights”, with a question. What, she asks, does it mean to be a “difficult woman”? You may not be entirely surprised to hear that I didn’t really need to read on to know the answer to this. Like many, if not most, of my closest friends, I’ve been a difficult woman for more than three decades now. Naturally, then, I find it strange and slightly alarming for a writer to feel she has to plead, as Lewis goes on to do, for understanding in the matter of the “complicated” woman. Surely this should go unsaid. If it’s entirely human to be multifaceted – for some aspects of your personality to be trickier and darker than others – isn’t it also beholden upon you to be sympathetic to such quirks and flaws in other people?

But this is where we are. Twenty-first-century culture has, as Lewis notes, a tendency – you might call it a mania – for disapproving of both contemporary and historical figures on the grounds that aspects of their lives or work are distasteful. Those considered to be too unpalatable are quickly written out of the story (AKA cancelled); others are carefully repackaged, their sharper corners having been, as she puts it, carefully sandblasted. More insidious still is the question of likability. Why do women have to be nice? When I was publicising my book about some female pioneers of the 1950s, I grew used to the moment at literary festivals when someone in a nubbly sweater and unlikely earrings would announce to me in a tight, little voice that, for all their achievements, she simply didn’t like any of the women whose lives I’d spent so long researching. I grew to despise this. I don’t even like the people I love all the time.