I'm no fan of the Socialist Workers' Party, so I won't be losing much sleep over the fact that it is currently imploding under the weight of two sex scandals. But I do find it intriguing that this intellectually moribund organisation is having the final nail pounded into its coffin, not by the state or by the right, but by feminism.

I almost hesitate before typing, but I must openly confess to something that is increasingly becoming a hard thing to articulate, let alone admit: I am, and shall likely remain, a Labour Party supporter.

Gender, rather lifelessly, has been defined by the FAO as "the relations between men and women, both perceptual and material. Gender is not determined biologically...but constructed socially". The beginning of all studies into gender, then, must also be a study of social relations.