Actually, Mike, gotta say, I don’t really use the word “victim”,’ Kate said, ‘particularly when describing a woman who’s suffered as assault. It disempowers her and diminishes her humanity.’ Sometimes, however, it seems that it is a dizzying forest of hash tags driving the novel forward. If one moral or political position is acceptable this week, the death of another marginalised group member or the exposure of another predator changes the conversation next week. It’s all too easy to find oneself on the wrong side of history or to become toxic. And it’s not just the perpetrators (alleged or real) who suffer. There’s quite a touching story somewhere in the middle of the novel of Cassie Trinder, a hopeful actress who finally lands her dream position playing the young Princess Elizabeth in a movie, The Royal Closet. She even undergoes the humiliating casting couch charade of a final reading with Harvey Weinstein to land the role, just before Weinstein is exposed as a sexual predator and the whole project becomes too ‘toxic’ to proceed. Years later, with her career yet to take off, a new production of The Royal Closet is announced, except she’s now deemed too old to play the part. Cassie fights for a role in the production, yet her success is once again frustrated when Rodney Watson (a serial predator himself who has revived his career by playing the role of the ‘woke’ male) is exposed. Cassie ‘s career seems to be once more stalled when the production is cancelled a second time.

Someone who intends to stir trouble, usually on social media, and relies upon their anonymity to escape reproach in their everyday lives a heterosexual man, usually of the city, who enjoys some pursuits traditionally attributed to women. A term used to describe the wide spectrum of human sexuality. The Rainbow has long been used by the gay movement, but is not exclusive to gay people. A powerful Hollywood executive whose sexual predation on women for many years was the main catalyst for the #MeToo movement.The book is certainly up-to-date and despite some slightly dodgy accents Ben's performance was good and made me want to keep going. The funny part is that I'm not sure whether he was highlighting the issues and problems with today's 'social media' world or bolstering (some of) the ideas presented. There is plenty of well-thought view and perspectives from the side of those considered snowflakes as well as the dinosaurs (like me apparently) that think there is a massive movement toward being over sensitive because nobody ever died of being offended. I'd love to sit and chat with him about it to try and find out where he, Ben, himself falls on opinions offered because the story is woven so well I can't tell... Which I assume has been done on purpose but also adds to the entertainment. Reading is a good time to get a break from politics, and there are so many big hitting subjects here, I couldn’t fathom how they could all be written so well within one standard length piece.

I found this book to be remarkably contemporary in a way very few authors even attempt. Ben Elton navigates the convolutions of modern society quite adeptly. Feminist who wrote The Female Eunuch. In her later career she came under fire for critisising transgender identity. I've always liked Ben Elton without ever being his biggest fan but in this book, he genuinely spoke to me. This is relentlessly bubbly, irreverent (of course) and often very funny. No target is safe in this very-near-future world of Elton's and he fires shots seemingly indiscriminately. While most politicians have made up names it's obvious who is being sent up, for example, Bunter Jollye and Plantagenet Greased-Hogg - can't imagine who they are modelled on . . . A movement against the sexual harrassment and exploitation of women. The movement gained momentum after the revelations that Hollywood executive, Harvey Weinstein, had used his position f power to take advantage of women for many years.

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With the view that all this right wing “hate” somehow drives up the desire of the stupid, racist, uneducated English to want to vote for English to leave the UK (???!!). But we’re so easily manipulated. Sigh.

A later wave of feminism that advocates the use of internet tools like social media to help advocate gender equality and an equal voice for allMovements like #MeToo have challenged patriarchal entitlement, usually characterised as an amoral or immoral abuse of women by men by using their social or professional power to manipulate them. It also just describes a failure to understand that women also have choices, and are not merely there for the benefit of men Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. The term is used to describe feminists who do not support trans-sexuals, particularly biologically male females, and advocate excluding them from areas designated for women. Comfortable in skin. The term denotes a person whose gendered identity matches their biological sex. But my insight, the one I had but didn’t express, was that although we live in an era of instant communication, the world Elton describes is one in which we are no more accurately informed than the French citizens who overthrew a king. Greer was once on the right side of history and like her fictional counterpart, Giffard, could not have foreseen the ground shifting beneath her feet. Many French citizens who lost their heads during the French Revolution may have been equally surprised when what started as a revolution for equality became a bloodbath at the foot of the guillotine. In Elton’s novel, time and again, chronicles the same process of the shifting tides of opinion, and the variable fortunes of protagonists, some horrible, some of whom are moral, well-intentioned people. Yet both can be deemed toxic and find themselves on the wrong side of history in the combative arena of social media. That was my insight. How is it possible to be so trenchant and angry when we know that history alone will judge us? If Elton’s novel is about anything it is this: the need for perspective and conversation, not abuse.