The news, for the terminally declining population of women who identify as feminists, is good. According to a study by researchers at Rutgers University, New Jersey, the classic New Yorker cartoon of two women discussing relationships in a coffee shop - "sex brought us together but gender drove us apart" - is plain wrong. Feminists are happier in love and better in bed.

I'm extrapolating a wee bit optimistically, but it's cheering to come across a study about the f-word that doesn't conclude 99% of respondents think the women's movement was about unshaved armpits. What the Rutgers researchers actually found was that, in a survey of college students and older adults, all in heterosexual relationships, men paired with feminist partners reported greater relationship stability and sexual satisfaction. In addition, there was consistent evidence that male feminist partners were healthier for women's relationships, while there was scant evidence that women's feminism created conflict in liaisons.

This will doubtless do little to dispel the popular myth that the majority of feminists are man-hating lesbians and, granted, studies reporting levels of contentment are subjective. But the question the study seeks to address is an important one: how do straight women distinguish genuine, positive intimacy and its attendant vulnerabilities from the self-defeating romantic discourses they are encouraged to buy into?

It's inevitable that feminism and romantic love have been set up as being mutually exclusive. From Betty Freidan's evisceration of 50s domesticity in The Feminine Mystique onwards, the women's movement has counselled that romantic fulfilment should be a part of, rather than the sole measure of, a woman's self-worth. Though we may have advanced beyond the stage when attracting a powerful mate was a woman's only means of securing social status, our addiction to the growing beauty industry and the content of every other self-help book, would suggest that advance should be measured in yards rather than miles.