I was ambushed by the Twitterati feminists who in actual fact HATE women

Angela Epstein argues that feminism has lost its meaning

Rather than campaign to help women, feminists today squabble on Twitter

As seen by the hash-tag sisters's response to her Newsnight interview



No feminist: Today's feminism is utterly irrelevant to Angela

When Newsnight's Emily Maitlis asked me during a debate on the programme this week whether I was a feminist, I hoped my blow-dried hair and figure-hugging dress would give her some clue as to the answer.

Feeling a little mischievous, I was tempted to ask her whether I looked like one of those grumpy women in bad clothes who spend their days in a state of agitation about whether it's right to let girls play with dolls.

But since I was a guest on the BBC's flagship news programme, I decided to park the sarcasm and simply say that I am not: that today's feminism is utterly irrelevant to me.

I explained to Emily and my fellow panellists, Professor Mary Beard and Natascha McElhone, that feminism has betrayed its roots and deteriorated into spurious artificial engineering.

Rather than campaigning to help women, feminists today are more likely to be picking fights on Twitter, or dressing up petty grievances as proof of rampant 'sexism'. And, needless to say, these devotees of 'equality' believe you can't be a feminist unless you're Left-wing.

Spoiling for a fight is the default position of today's chippy feminists. They've turned nit-picking into an art form - and I told Emily as much.

No sooner had I said this than I'd elicited the ire of what I call the 'hash-tag sisters' - those liberal commentators on Twitter who rushed to attack me for my unfashionable conviction that feminism has lost its meaning.

I was accused of espousing views which are 'poisonous to society', and called 'sad', 'ignorant' and 'stupid'.

Someone bitterly declared I must have enjoyed a 'charmed life' - a lazy generalisation by a socialist grudge-bearer who assumes my convictions have been created from a position of privilege.

In fact, my parents were of modest means and couldn't afford private school, but I won a scholarship to attend one.

At my all-girls' school no one sought out trite examples of discrimination. We were urged to aim high and fulfil our potential. That, after all, is what the Suffragettes did - one of whom was an alumna of my school.

Petty: Rather than campaigning to help women, feminist today are more likely to be picking fights on Twitter

Some 100 years after Emily Wilding Davison threw herself under a horse in the name of equality, isn't it perverse that those who would wish to subjugate me are the firebrand feminists who pit sister against sister, denying my view credence? How ironic, I thought, as I scrolled through my Twitter feed, that those who claim to champion women want to bully me for saying I don't believe in a cause they have bastardised.

As a university-educated woman who combines a fulfilling career as a journalist and broadcaster with my role as a homemaker for my husband and four children, I have better things to do than spend my days mirthlessly lamenting the lot of women, which is what most feminists seem to do.

Indeed, what the sour Lefty Twitterati won't admit is that all the great battles on which feminism was founded have been won - including political representation, and equality in education, the workplace and other areas of public life.

What's left is an ugly vacuum occupied by those who will only let you join the sisterhood if you agree to pander to a petty hunt for signs of oppression. Look no further than the campaign by The Women's Room, who railed against the Bank of England for the lack of women on our bank notes, citing this as evidence of discrimination.

Spectacularly pointless, surely? An emancipated, financially independent woman couldn't care less whether Jane Austen is emblazoned on a tenner. I don't: I just care that I'm being paid enough of them.



'What the sour Lefty Twitterati won't admit is that all the great battles on which feminism was founded have been won'

When I went out to splash some of my hard-earned cash on a beautiful new dress this week, I didn't take a blind bit of notice of the images on the notes I was spending. Yet today's misguided women's libbers scrabble around in search of reasons to validate their existence.

When it was announced that the Women's Prize for Fiction would be known henceforth as the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, acknowledging sponsorship by the liqueur, one sour feminist took to the internet to proclaim that it was 'a reflection of the depressing girlification of culture [as] Baileys is a sweet, sticky drink explicitly marketed at women.'

Tell that to my husband, who loves it over ice.

Today's feminists appear to be living behind a smoke screen of their own construction, blind to the reality of female achievement in the 21st century, when girls outperform boys at GCSE and in further education. Around 20 per cent more girls make it to university than boys.

Today's so-called sisters also refuse to accept that women are wired differently to men - that many see becoming a mother as the crowning achievement of their lives. Who can argue with the female executive who, after delivering her newborn, decides to give up the office and stay at home? I think today's glass ceiling is largely self-imposed, perhaps the result of many deciding to leave full-time employment to put family life first.

The sisterhood today: Contemporary feminists would loathe the fact that Angela lets her daughter play with dolls

One survey found that women who own businesses earn nearly 17 per cent more than men in the same position. That's my definition of feminism - not some spurious insistence on female quotas and women-only shortlists. How does that square with sisters doing it for themselves?

If I ever was a feminist, I can't be now - not according to those who loathe the fact I see marriage as more than a piece of paper, that I believe women have no place in a combat zone, and that I know my daughter won't be stereotyped for playing with dolls.

I will be disqualified from the 'sisterhood', too, by my hope that as well as having a career, she will meet a man who will love and treasure her.

The final irony is that feminism has brought out a touch of the misogynist in me, so ashamed and depressed am I by a once-laudable movement which has corrupted its heritage and condemns me for saying so.