Jackie Danicki

Seriously, what has happened to India Knight? After telling us how women are so daft that we need legislation to protect us from making stupid choices like the ones she (failed to mention that she) has made herself (heavy smoking, binge drinking, getting pregnant in middle age), she writes in today’s Sunday Times that there really is no such thing as happy cohabitation without marriage.

A friend who recently became pregnant says that her “partner” said to her, with a snigger: “I hope you don’t expect me to make an honest woman of you.” They both laughed knowingly at the old-fashioned words and the old-fashioned absurdity of the supposition. Except that my friend didn’t think it was at all funny or old-fashioned or, indeed, absurd. All she kept thinking, she says, was: “Why not? What’s wrong with me?”

I think the country is filled to bursting with cohabiting women who think exactly the same thing.

The tiny minority that doesn’t is composed of women who know that they are with the wrong person but are not doing anything about it quite yet; or of women so deeply into their sexual politics that they genuinely equate marriage with slavery. Everyone else, I would suggest, is miserably waiting to be asked.

First of all, Miss Knight’s friend is a stupid woman if she thinks that getting knocked up by a man who wouldn’t lower himself to marrying her is a splendid idea - to say nothing of not having the rocks to tell him that it isn’t funny. No further explanation necessary.

Second of all, Miss Knight herself is a divorcée who has children by her first husband and a child by her, ahem, boyfriend. Is she still working through her own personal demons and guilt by attempting to thrust shame upon the female population of Britain?

Finally, what about those of us who live with a partner and have been asked to get married, have accepted the proposal, and have let the logistical nightmares of life get in the way? Do we hate ourselves and our lives, too? Please, India Knight, explain to me the full horror of how miserable I am. The way you tell it, there are no happy women living in Britain, and those who fancy themselves content are just too dim to realise that their lives are a transparent shambles to you and the rest of the world.

All that, and she has the nerve to slag off the Daily Mail for being misogynistic. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was angling for a job there.

Filed under: Life