Good morning and welcome to An Irishman's Chatshow, and our first guest is the renowned feminist Germica Jeer, whose latest book, A Burden Grown Greater: The Tribulations of Woman in the New Millennium, is published this week. Good morning, Ms Jeer. It's nearly 30 years since your first book, Fear of the Flying Eunuch, first appeared. Have you ever in all that time experienced a remotely critical interview?
"The world is a deeply misogynistic place. Hatred of women is everywhere. Governments not merely tolerate rape as a social means of controlling women, but approve of it. It explains why there are no female generals in the US Marine Corps, no women in the soccer World Cup or the baseball World Series. There's a lot of anti-womanness out there, and after more than three decades of feminism, it's time to confront the massed anti-feminist movement head on."
You've visited Ireland many times during those past three decades. Has a radio or television interviewer ever given you a difficult question? Has one, just one, ever disputed any of the many modish fatuities from which you have made your fortune?
Good question
"That's a good question. Let's put it this way. Far from the feminist movement actually breaking through the patriarchy which has stifled woman's creativity, which has chained us to the sink, which has prevented us from expressing all our commercial, sporting, military, sexual and artistic selves, the oppression has actually grown worse. In many US states, courts regularly sentence women to be gang-raped. Female circumcision is now mandatory in Canada. In Britain, the army uses women for live target practice. In Spain, matadors practice sword strokes on orphan girls who are then beheaded. The Finnish parliament has outlawed the female orgasm. In Italy, they're so afraid of women even discovering their sexuality that by law they must sleep with their hands manacled behind their necks. Here in Ireland, women may not be seen in public without written permission from their husbands or fathers. In France, women found on bicycles are summarily strangled by special police. Things have got worse, not better."
Listen. Does no interviewer anywhere ever say you're talking rubbish, inventing oppression where it doesn't exist and creating a wholly fictional victim-hood? Or are they all coiffed and fawning cretins who agree with your every witless utterance?
"Right. In the States that's what we call the glass-ceiling syndrome. Women can see the higher positions in society, but we can't reach them. Why can we see them? Because we're allowed to. And why are we allowed to? Because it's an extra torment devised by the patriarchy, like a starving prisoner in a cell being shown food through the window, but not being allowed to eat it. Being allowed to see the highest positions in society, but not being able to get near them - just another cruelty among the many torments women must suffer."
Feminist politics
Do these simpering buffoons who interview you never say, look you stupid cow, what you're complaining about is called life, and every five years or so you visit upon this poor unfortunate bloody world your particular discontent with whatever stage of life you're at, only dressing it up in the guise of feminist politics?
"Exactly. Women know oppression in a cultural and institutional way that men cannot understand. Our lives are threaded with loss, with suffering and with feelings that men do not know. It's a well known fact, for example, that women are more prone to mental illness and suicide throughout the Western world because of that."
You what? What's that organ you're talking out of? It's certainly not your mouth. Mental illness is predominantly a male phenomenon. Nearly 90 per cent of all suicides in this country are male. When one columnist - chap by the name of Waters; don't always agree with him, but he was spot on with that one - attempted to highlight this, he was, of course, promptly vilified.
Political establishment
"That's a valid point. I agree with you. So long as the political establishment denies women access to the highest powers in the land, what hope is there? I look across Europe; where do I see an elected woman head of state? Where do I see a woman party leader? I see sexual oppression, marginalisation, and you know, outright hatred of women everywhere. It is perhaps the single most potent feature of Western culture."
What tree have you just fallen out of? We're on our second female president here in Ireland. Our deputy prime minister is the leader of her party. What drivel are you going to come up with next?
"Precisely. And as you've just pointed out, while women are treated as slaves, we cannot fulfil our true potential. This what my book is all about. It's about the violent male conspiracy against women in all its forms."
Christ alive. OK. So will you do me one tiny, tiny favour? Will you please not tell me that women are survivors?
"But you know, we women are survivors."
AAAAaaaarrrggghhh.