In the afternoon, following a discussion about television that focused more on culture than on politics, writer Philippa Gregory reintroduced a political note on the "Sex and the Single Girl" panel. Books like "Bridget Jones' Diary," she warned, were part of a "backlash" warning women about the perils of the independent life, rather like the 18th century novels in which the heroine who ventured out the front door was doomed to rape and early death.

"But now the warning is not don't go out the front door," interjected Jenny Bristow, "it's don't let somebody into your life, because you could get hurt." While Bristow did not put much stock in the backlash theory, neither did she buy the bleak picture of the single girl's life. "We have more freedom than ever, more choices, but instead of enjoying this situation it has been problematized with talk about miserable singletons and commitment-phobes," she said. "In fact, it's not nearly so bad or so difficult." To my delight, Bristow also challenged the clichi of male fear of commitment, suggesting that the alleged commitment-phobe may not be fleeing marriage in general but simply a particular woman.

One of the older speakers, novelist Maggie Gee, cautioned that many women who had pursued the pleasures of singleness had ended up childless and hurting. Yet, in refreshing contrast to American neotraditionalists, who are forever portraying women as hapless maidens victimized by the sexual revolution, she emphasized that "we enjoyed our sexual freedom and adventure -- not just the men, we enjoyed it too -- we just failed to make plans for having children." Gee suggested that women need a more strategic approach to go with their freedom, which some audience members found unpleasantly calculating.

On the way back to the States, I reflected on what the real differences are between English- and American-style gender politics. In Britain, the percentage of the population actively involved in any kind of gender politics is probably much smaller, but this is not to say that the politics are any less radical. It may even be that, as one female TV journalist suggested to me at dinner, the British tend to be much too complacent about political correctness and gender warfare because they dismiss these problems as American afflictions.

I suddenly realized that there is one noticeable difference: Even on the all-female panels at "Sex Wars," there was none of the "just between us girlfriends" tone that pervaded a panel on women and intimacy I recently attended in New York. Chalk one up for Anglophilia.

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