xii Preface Preface xiii sufficiently fractured to make me sit up and take notice when the If the number of people working to turn these principles into women of that generation mobilized in their own liberation practice is to grow into settled majorities,there have to be good movement.I read books like Shulamith Firestone's Dialectic of Sex reasons why people will accept them as principles.These reasons as well as those of the 'Freudian Left'and listened to a great need not all be the same.Sexual politics,like politics in other deal of discussion about feminist principles and programs.A fields,is a matter of constructing coalitions.For some groups the commitment to a socialism that stressed the theme of equality reasons flow straightforwardly from a collective interest in change. rather than textbook Marxism was probably important.Certainly The catch is always with heterosexual men,whose collective important was the fact of living with a woman who was working on interest-as the evidence through the book confirms-is broadly projects like setting up a women's health centre,and the fact of to maintain the existing system.What reasons for change have working in university departments alongside people engaged in enough weight,against this entrenched interest,to detach hetero- feminist research. sexual men from the defence of patriarchy?There are,in my I became convinced fairly early that the main feminist arguments experience,five. about inequality and oppression were right.Somewhat later,I became convinced that they required a thoroughgoing reconstruction (1) Even the beneficiaries of an oppressive system can come to of socialist politics and the social sciences.Later again,that gay see its oppressiveness,especially the way it poisons areas of liberation raised crucial theoretical questions that were part of the life they share. same set of issues.Finally,that this was also the business of (2) Heterosexual men are often committed in important ways to heterosexual men,who have some specific jobs to do (e.g.in the women -their wives and lovers,mothers and sisters, politics of masculinity)but also ought to be involved in the general daughters and nieces,co-workers -and may desire better analysis of sexual politics. lives for them.Especially they may see the point of creating That is not necessarily easy to do.On the one hand men's settled more civilized and peaceable sexual arrangements for their ways of thinking have to be disrupted.The slow progress in getting children,even at the cost of their own privileges. issues of gender recognized in the mainstream of academic disciplines (3) Heterosexual men are not all the same or all united,and many like history,economics or psychology,long dominated by men, illustrates the resistance.On the other hand there are currents in do suffer some injury from the present system.The oppression of gays,for instance,has a back-wash damaging to effeminate feminist thought which do not welcome men's involvement,and or unassertive heterosexuals. there is a fine line to tread between intruding on women's business (4) Change in gender relations is happening anyway,and on a and sharing the work on common problems.Even sympathetic men large scale.A good many heterosexual men recognize that writing about feminism have attracted some pretty fierce responses. they cannot cling to the past and want some new directions. I do things in this book that a purist might not do,such as discussing (5) Heterosexual men are not excluded from the basic human the strategies of feminist movements.The reason is that no one of capacity to share experiences,feelings and hopes.This ability either sex can make an extended analysis of sexual politics without is often blunted,but the capacity for caring and identification touching on these issues. is not necessarily killed.The question is what circumstances The number of heterosexual men working on these issues is still might call it out.Being a father often does;some political small.I don't think there is anything in itself admirable about being movements,notably the environmental and peace movements, a dissident.I look forward to the day when a majority of men,as seem to;sexual politics may do so too. well as a majority of women,accept the absolute equality of the sexes,accept sharing of childcare and all other forms of work,accept freedom of sexual behaviour,and accept multiplicity of gender forms, These are,at least,among the reasons for this book.It is also as being plain common sense and the ordinary basis of civilized life. motivated by personal experience.Over the last fifteen years I