I've never known a season like it. Women's shoes are higher, strappier and more impractical than ever, and they're walking (excuse the pun) out of stores as fast as shop assistants can wrap them. Last weekend's queues for limited edition Jimmy Choos at UK branches of the Swedish fashion chain H&M puzzled ordinary mortals (mainly men) who don't get the shoe thing, but I understood them perfectly. I yearned for the cage heels which enclose the foot and ankle in delicate black straps, but I happened to be in a city where, maddeningly, the local branch of H&M didn't stock them. So I went to a party in a pair of black satin ankle boots with four-inch gold heels I found in a department store.

There is a school of thought which holds that women who wear impossibly high heels are dupes of fashion. Stiletto heels are supposed to diminish us, exposing us as creatures who are prepared to endure torture to please men or advertise our boyfriends' wealth. In fact, most of the women I see in shoe shops (and believe me, I spend a lot of time in shoe shops) are buying shoes for themselves. Unlike Linda Grant, who wrote recently about the secret pleasure of comfortable shoes, I don't see any need to choose between heels and flats; if I'm setting off for a party by public transport I take my stilettos with me and change into them when I arrive.

High heels are empowering, and not just because they add inches to my height. If you love them – and I accept some women don't – high heels make you feel terrific. They're a form of display, accentuating the natural curves of the leg and drawing attention to a woman's sexuality. After decades of deconstructing traditional femininity, they're a means of embracing aspects of it – but through choice, not a passive acceptance of cultural norms. And choice is what matters here, which is why the TUC was right to object to women being forced to wear high heels by their employers. It's also important to point out that many of today's high heels are versions of the platform shoe championed in the 1930s by Salvatore Ferragamo, who wanted to make heels easier to wear. Platform shoes used to be mocked mercilessly, not least when Elton John took them to ridiculous heights, but these days they don't raise an eyebrow.

Women's heels seem to get higher in recessions, and it's pretty obvious that this season's fantastic shapes are an act of defiance against economic gloom. But the argument about what they represent – female empowerment versus male domination – has being going on for decades, if not centuries. The fashion historians Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil point out in Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers that the suffragettes wore heels in the early 20th century as "a means of establishing femininity"; they wore button boots and high-heeled sports shoes to demonstrate that getting the vote would not "defeminise" women.

"The transformation of signifiers of commodified sex into respectable attire was a trend that would increasingly define women's fashion of the 20th and 21st centuries," they say.

They're right: high heels are sexual, and those of us who wear them are making a statement about women's right to be sexual on our own terms, without being taunted as "whores".

With so much political theory behind them, high heels declare that there's no contradiction between being serious and decorative; that's why my website is about human rights, feminism and shoes. Even though I missed out on a pair of Jimmy Choos, I absolutely love the fact that this winter's heels are art for feet.