SOURCE: Kenny, Mary. “Created, Not Begotten.” Spectator (10 May 1997): 36.

In the following review of Promiscuities, Kenny commends Wolf's personal observations and provocative questions, but concludes that her assertions are undermined by a dogmatic view of gender as a social construct.

The trouble really began when Simone de Beauvoir announced, ‘One is not born a woman, one becomes one.’ From this single sentence comes most of the discourse, over the past 40 years, on the feminine condition. If one becomes a woman, how does that process occur?

In the 1960s, some very clever feminist writers dissected this process of becoming a woman: works like Eva Figes' Patriarchal Attitudes (a brilliant book), and Kate Millett's Sexual Politics profoundly influenced me at this time. I was also hugely impressed by Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, which was simply smart journalism, but none the worse for that. Mrs Friedan showed that many American women...