The Female/Male Stoat Beguiler

Embrocation Disingenuous first became professor of Semi-Beguiled Stoat Contemplation in 1968. Back in those heady days of the late sixties, it seemed that the Summer of Love could almost belong to anyone with a tattered paperback of Blake's Complete works, a brace of Doors albums, a 10% deposit and, of course, a semi-beguiled stoat.

But, inevitably, the wide-eyed optimism of the sixties fell headlong into the comedown of the mid-70s. By then, it seemed obvious that Disengenous's - now seminal - work, The Female/Male Stoat Beguiler, an in-depth study of the relationship between the underwear of accountants and the price of eggs, became - to many - the work that most influenced the rise of what later became known as Feminist Theory.

It was not easy in the Sixties - despite the very generous grants available at the time - to find an adequate theory that would link all the then cutting-edge and vital social sciences. Feminism, Stoat-beguiling theory, accountancy and the study of the habits and practices of the tribes, groups, sub-cultures and so on that exploded onto the youth and teenage scene in the sixties all seemed - to the commentators of the time - to have nothing in common. It took a scholar of Disengenious's erudition, and blind disregard of the facts and evidence, to come up with a theory that could link them all, no matter how tenuous and flaky.

Of course, it was the Mods and the Rockers and their bank holiday rampages around the coastal towns of Britain who got all the tabloid publicity. But it was the secrecy, the underground nature of the accountants and the clubs where they practiced double-entry bookkeeping well into the early hours of the morning, their briefcases, and in some case very early examples of uninhibited calculator use that Disingenuous found fascinating. She was particularly fascinated by the fact that all the male accountants were men, and the female accounts were - on the whole - mostly women (except – of course – those specialising in corporate taxation). This became even more apparent to her when the craze for total stoat-beguilement swept through those underground accountancy clubs in the late summer of 1969.

Disingenuous was fascinated to discover that the female accountants in those secretive clubs would use methods of stoat beguilement that were very different to those utilised by the male accountants. Eschewing the need for any further research -as she said in a interview after the publication of The Female/Male Stoat Beguiler - 'in case I came across anything which would have contradicted my precious and wonderful theory' - she immediately began to formulate a synopsis and publicity material for the work that was to make her name.

In The Female/Male Stoat Beguiler, Disingenuous made the now commonplace - but then startling claim - that the methods of stoat beguilement used by the male accountants was not only in itself a manifestation of the male accountants’ domination over the female accountants, but that it was also symptomatic of the wider society as a whole and an expression of that society’s contempt for women. Claiming that her theory proved that the phallocentric male hegemony was demeaning and dismissive of all women, Disingenuous stated that women would never be free until they symbolically burned their stoat-beguiling mittens and refused to ever take part in 'such degrading spectacles ever again!'

From that day, forward the relationship between the sexes would never be as straightforward or unquestioning ever again, and it is Embrocation Disingenuous, and her The Female/Male Stoat Beguiler, that we can thank for the current state of harmonious equality and greater mutual understanding shared by both sexes in our modern world.