Talking to men about women
Francis Wheen
SINGULAR ENCOUNTERS by Naim Attallah Quartet, f15, pp. 628 Long before the phrase 'positive discri- mination' had been coined, the owner of Quartet Books, Naim Attallah, devised the admirable employment policy which he follows to this day: he would hire a dozen women for every one man. The only slight qualification was that the women must be called Sackville-West, Bonham-Carter or Heathcoat Amory. No, I'm being unfair. Several women with no more than a single barrel to their surnames have been re- cruited in recent years. And who are they? Oh, Anna Pasternak, Sonnamara Sains- bury, Jubby Ingrains . . . What is it with Naim and these young things? There are two schools of thought. One holds that his females-only rule is proof that Naim, unlike most men, 'actual- ly likes women'. The other is hinted at by Arthur Schlesinger in this book. In reply to a question about President Kennedy's womanising, the historian of Camelot says to Attallah: 'I was not aware of anything undue going on. If you went to the Kennedys' for dinner, there were always pretty girls, but I'm all in favour of that. So, I understand, are you.' Poor old Naim. He tells us that when he conducted the 29 interviews whose trans- cripts make up this book, 'I set out to be as invisible as possible.' Try as he may, however, his subjects (all of whom are men) will insist on turning the questions back on him — especially the great A.N. Wilson, who knows a thing or two about interviewing. 'What a moral philosopher you are, Naim,' Wilson teases after one rather earnest inquiry. A couple of pages later, Attallah suggests that sex is addictive and therefore harmful. 'Wouldn't it be true,' he asks, pressing the point, 'that, if you suddenly had three or four women, and you started having sex with them, you'd want to have more and more?'
`What an adventurous life you must have led, Nairn,' Wilson replies sweetly. 'I'm not qualified to answer that question.'
Attallah's book — the vastly superior sequel to his 1986 production, Women — reveals what hilarious rot most men talk on the subject of the opposite sex. 'Women don't like each other's company, don't 'It's a souvenir tea-towel featuring all the Royal Family's speeding tickets'. form clubs,' Monsignor Alfred Gilbey announces confidently. 'They don't like that to be said, of course, but the fact is plain to see.' Plain, that is, to an unmarried priest living in the Travellers' Club who has apparently never heard of the Women's Institute. 'The major part of your leisure hours must be spent with men,' Nigel Dempster warns, as if disclosing an Eleventh Commandment. Why? Because `you can't play squash with a woman, or golf with a woman, or tennis with a woman . . . women are not very good at it.'
When Attallah asks about feminism, many of his interviewees react to the very mention of the word by screeching and flapping like demented fruit-bats. de- plore the feminist movement,' Sir Gordon White rants. 'These women are crazy. The whole lot of them are absolutely crackers . . . Cosmopolitan magazine tells you how a woman should have multiple orgasms, how she should do this, do that, do the other. It's full of bullshit.' After this tirade, he modestly adds: 'The secret of my success with women? I don't know. I love to spoil women. I appreciate women. I respect women.' As long as they're spoilt ones, presumably.
Auberon Waugh — that rare thing, a male employee of Naim Attallah — says that women are at a disadvantage 'because once a month they suffer from pre- menstrual tension and go slightly wonky'. There is, he reveals, 'a sort of female logic which is based on feeling rather than reason, and it can be quite frightening if ever it is allowed to govern what happens in the world. Mrs Thatcher is not typical since she is probably more male than many men, but there is always a madness in women that one should be aware of.' More eccentrically still, Sir Fred Warner seems to suggest that cheap Spanish holidays may be responsible for the inadequacy of Eng- lishmen. 'Sometimes,' he explains to Attal- lah, 'when you're driving along the Spanish coast and you go through Benidorm, you see these vast hotels, and they're torture machines in a way, because everybody who has gone there thinks that, if they're on holiday, they've got to perform. The women are expecting a tremendous per- formance every night and the men are too tired and sunburned to give it.'
According to Colonel Townend, the founder-headmaster of Hill House school, men are natural leaders. The woman's task is to be 'a kind creature who puts you wise, tells you you're a stupid fool when you say something you shouldn't say, makes you comfortable, sits you down and makes you relax'. But she shouldn't bother her pretty head with political ambitions. 'Men are streets ahead of women when it comes to politics,' he declares. 'They're used to saying "You stupid little idiot, sit down you fool". Women are touched by it and they haven't got this masculine bang, bang, bang.'
In his foreword, Attallah writes that he always felt 'curiously detached in male society, despite being gregarious at heart'. The evidence of Singular Encounters is enough to make any sane man share his detachment. In the words of A.N. Wilson, one of the few people in the book to talk sense on the subject: 'We all know, if we're honest, that women are better off without men in many ways.' Or, as Willie Rushton puts it: 'I'm sorry for women who have anything to do with Englishmen.'
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