In the Company of Men
Go into a place where there is men and booze and after a while the conversation will get distinctly nasty. Men will make light of rape, domestic violence and even child abuse if they know their words will go unchallenged. The tone will be the same in a working-class pub in Dagenham, or a Hampstead gastrobar. Men know that to pull they must appear to be sensitive, they must wear wooden necklaces and have had a gap year and talk vaguely of setting up a band: but underneath the FairTrade moisturiser lurks a familiar set of perceptions and priorities.
Max Dunbar reviews Natasha Walter‘s Living Dolls.