From the Guardian: "Russell Brand's 'love of a good woman' is not what feminism needs" [View all]

On Thursday night, with all the solemnity of a foreign correspondent announcing a ceasefire, the Facebook account for the No More Page 3 campaign posted: "Twitter. Tonight." And here was a photograph of Russell Brand holding a "No More Page 3" T-shirt and tweeting: "And finally, through the love of a good woman, teenage, sexist me was slain." The reaction on Twitter was ecstatic. Dozens of feminists – including the No More Page 3 account itself – sent messages of congratulations to Russell Brand for renouncing sexism.

Hmm. Is that how feminism works now? A man announces he's not a sexist and we all applaud? I ask because I have a slight problem with Brand's apparent motivation for giving up sexism: "the love of a good woman". The trope of a man being redeemed by a woman's virtue is as old as the hills. It may be superficially complimentary to the woman in question, but ultimately it holds her up as a Madonna figure who is not permitted the complications and imperfections that men are. In effect, it suggests that the woman is not human, which – as every feminist knows – is the basis for all sexism. It also suggests that ending the man's sexism is the woman's job: if she doesn't work hard enough at being perfect, he might just revert to his old ways.

I don't expect Brand to have thought about his comments in that way. I'm a firm believer that one's politics is a journey, and that level of thorough feminist analysis probably comes a bit later on for someone who – by his own admission – is at the beginning of his patriarchy-smashing voyage. But I do think Brand's tweet suggests he's got a way to go before he can say he isn't sexist. I do think that if he is going to renounce sexism, he must start by renouncing it in himself. I do expect my fellow feminists to insist on that from him, rather than take his support of an anti-sexism campaign as evidence that he is, in himself, any less sexist. For example, I've never heard him acknowledge that, in joking about Georgina Sachs's sexual foibles and menstrual cycle, he was demeaning to her. It's not enough just to accept that other people – in this case Page 3 readers – are sexist.

I also insist that if he's going to start a revolution against structural inequality – as he famously told Jeremy Paxman he wants to – he needs to understand his own part in it, by listening to women's experiences of sexism and thinking about how his past actions may have impacted upon the women around him. Gender inequality isn't just some side issue that can be picked up and dropped when men like Russell Brand feel like it: it is an issue that affects half the population every day of their lives. If someone who wants to help the oppressed to cast off their chains hasn't been treating 50% of them as equals, that's a pretty big problem.