LESBIAN GENIUS

To emancipate a woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she has to men, not to deny them to her.” So wrote Simone de Beauvoir, the existencialist godmother of French feminism, in “The Second Sex” over 70 years ago. Not all French feminists today would agree, although this book is often regarded as a major work of feminist philosophy and the starting point of second-wave feminism.

A new book, “Lesbian Genius”, suggests that women should banish men from their lives. Its author, Alice Coffin, a lesbian activist and Paris city councilor, says she no longer reads books by men, nor watches films made by men, nor listens to music written by men. No more Voltaire, Truffaut or Daft Punk, then. We need, she declares, to “eliminate men from our minds”