This Daily Mail writer is sick of being 'brainwashed' by 'vile' feminism - but then ends up accidentally supporting it

By criticising feminism for holding her back from raising her children at home, Mooney scorns the individuals who fought and died so women like her could have a say about how they live their lives

Hillary Clinton self-identifies as a feminist (Getty Images)

Bel Mooney’s article in the Mail today is a real eye-opener. Sickened by years of being “brainwashed” by the “insidious propaganda” of feminism, she has divulged that she made the choice to pursue her “very femininity” and move back into the home full-time to raise her children, as opposed to working in a corporate office.

Good for you Bel, I say – you’ve made a choice about how you wish to live your life, free of any constraints, and you’ve gone with it – bravo. However, as opposed to sticking two fingers up to the raging feminists of yore, she has actually actively endorsed feminism, and the opportunities it has afforded to women. Woops!

She details, in the piece, how she was a journalist, and then felt that she missing out on her children’s lives, so chose to move to the country and work from home, writing children’s books. How did Ms Mooney manage to do this? Through choice. She chose to pursue a career, and then chose to work from home and raise her children – this is a choice that women have fought for years to have, and by criticising feminism for holding her back from making this decision earlier on her life, Mooney scorns the individuals who fought and died so women like her could have a say about how they live their lives.

So, it’s rather rich of her to then go on and judge women who have made their own, different choices. “If you cook from scratch, you’ll be in a creative rebellion against all of the expensive ready meals your mothers shoved down your throat” – God, those women who dare serve their children something quick and easy after a long day at work! Is there anything worse than that? Meanwhile, a housewife is suggested to have time to look a lot more “attractive” than women who battle stressful and sweaty train commutes – and since an unattractive woman is barely a woman at all, what are these career harridans thinking?

This is why we have a childhood obesity crisis in the UK and most likely an epidemic of female ugliness too – it’s all down to the feminists. How dare women choose to manage their career and children as opposed to devoting their lives to cooking? The selfishness makes one’s blood boil (and then simmer for 20 minutes before serving with organic homemade bread.)

No, no, if we listen to Mooney’s piece, feminists have slowly ruined the lives of mothers and children alike through self-centred, career-focused choices, filling them with envy for the race of super-housewives who somehow escaped their clutches, and now we’re finally rebelling against this vile ideology. Not one mention that every one of these women chose to pursue a career in the first place, and might even have lived to be proud of the decision – I don’t think anyone stood next to them with a knife, wielding a burning bra, forcing tearful hordes of new mothers into the Job Centre. It is possible, shockingly, for a woman to make multiple choices in her life. It’s even possible for them to move from periods of working in the home to periods working outside it.

Feminism, for me, anyway, is all about choice. If you want to be a housewife – great. Want to work at a bank and climb the corporate ladder? Go for it. If you want to pack up a rucksack and go travelling on your own for a year– amazing. Feminism is not a cult that brainwashes women into taking over the corporate world and abandoning her children – it’s about equality, so women are able to make the same decisions for themselves just as men have been able to do since the beginning of time.

So, just as Bel had made the choice to centre her life around her home, she should appreciate that other women wish to make their own choices in life, and may not choose the same path as her. Those choices might involve a microwave meal every now and then, or a commute, or not always looking picture perfect as they relax with a glass of wine and listen to Blondie as their perfectly coiffed child plays on the living room floor (the picture of idyll she presents to us in contrast to the poor beleaguered working woman).

This makes them autonomous human beings, not an angry rabble hellbent on forcing women to work themselves to death and separate themselves from their children.

So perhaps it would be good for Bel to stop preaching to others about a woman’s “real self” or what constitutes a “proper feminist” and just let other women just get on with it – as she (apparently) did herself.