Caitlin Moran in the Guardian today

Jill Gascoigne The Gentle Touch.

Stephanie Turner Anna Carteret Juliet Bravo.

I do think she has done well in writing for a living as a woman from a background that isn't comfortably middle class, not that many people doing that.

Well, I am very concerned that feminists like Germaine Greer and well,now, JKR are being denied a voice because they are giving alternative opinions.

And then women trying to talk about women only spaces are labelled "TERFs". So discussion isn't possible.

We should value our votes and our voice and our space.

When I was younger I didn't want to be seen as "just " a woman, but now we are being told we are supposed to accept the label of being "cis", which as a term really doesn't appeal. Women often have not had very much equality or financial autonomy, but this feels Orwellian.

What strikes me is that she's someone who learns through direct, first-hand experience, not through knowledge, empathy and insight. So basically the opposite of most writers.

She's the person who backpacks to India / has children / loses a parent and says 'OMG it changed my life! I had no idea this sea of experience was out there, what I could learn from it, or how it could make me feel!

Whereas writers, generally, are people with powerful observational skills, insight and imagination, who can write about other countries, times, people of different ages, sex and social class, convincingly.

Admittedly that's fiction writers. The academic and journalistic sort might not need so much imagination but their ability to apply knowledge, extrapolate and understand wider implications is pretty strong. They don't generally rely upon first-hand experience, as the 'all about my life' opinion-piece writers can get away with doing.

CM has never struck me as anything other than a lightweight fun libfem who wants to be liked/cool while claiming she doesn't care if she is - fine, she can have at it but I continue to be mystified as to why so many women are fascinated by her.

Same here. I don't get the attraction.

How embarrassing for her! You should tweet her op.

Fear of Flying was written in 1973. Also Lisa Alther's Kinflicks in 1976 which was also pretty explicit.

I recall both books making a big impact, despite only being 14 in 1973.

She’s so up herself it’s unreal

Angela Carter
Maya Angelou
Alice Walker
Virago Press
Spare Rib

@Deliriumoftheendless

Yes that was it Erica Jong, thank you.

60`s novels

The feminine mystique 1963 Betty Friedan
Valley of the dolls
Who`s afraid of virginia wolf

No daft woke millenial will convince me that they invented feminism, I was there back in the sixties. We fought hard.

What the jeff is she on about? I guess if you want to get published in the Guardian Feminism section (who knew?), that is the kind of tripe you have to go with.

Sue Townsend, Jackie Collins, Shirley Conran, Fay Weldon...

Heck I started reading Cosmo at 14 and had a good handle on most of the feminists mentioned above

Me too but that was in the 70s. Cosmo is rubbish compared to what it used to be. I'm not sure at what point in time it became rubbish but there's nothing in what Moran writes about which wasn't in 70s and 80s Cosmo.

I don't usually read CM but did read her 'book promotion piece' in The Times magazine last week. She's clearly a gloriously self-absorbed opinion-piece writer, who lives completely in the moment and writes from her own experience. No more, no less.

She's amusing enough as a light read. I certainly wouldn't be looking to her for popular or semi-academic feminist critique.

I was particularly astounded and amused by the self-absorption and lack of basic general knowledge and common sense in by the part where she talked about sex. How at 45, with youngish children, it's a matter of grabbing quick shags when possible but she and her husband look forward to resuming a full and leisurely sex life - maybe in about ten years time. (The joke apparently being 'we may really have to wait that long! Rather than the punchline being 'and by then I may not want to do it any more!).

Oh, Caitlin. In ten years you'll have gone through the menopause and lost your natural sex drive. You'll be promoting another book about your discovery of the former terra incognita of the menopause and female ageing, which no-one else had ever heard of or experienced until you came along to tell us about it.

In the new film of her book loosely based on her life, the young Caitlin gets her copy of The Female Eunuch thrown at her by scary teenage lads on her way home from secondary school..

"So many young feminists I meet are in such a state of anxiety about accidentally saying the “wrong” thing – so terrified of making a mistake on social media, despite wanting, desperately, to be kind and good – that they would prefer to remain silent on various subjects." astonishing insight, who’d have thought 🙄.

that's why!

I’m a Times reader and for years skip her columns, I’ve noticed she’s getting more of her stuff in. Much prefer Camilla Long who is funny without being so try hard

Honestly? She's a good writer and very relatable 🤷‍♀️

Moran is to feminism what Naruto is to anime.

I would have expected CM to be a politicised teen, so very surprised she was not aware of more of the feminist movers and shakers of her youth and who paved the way in earlier decades. Heck I started reading Cosmo at 14 and had a good handle on most of the feminists mentioned above. And read The Mirror Within as a teenager too .

CM is excruciatingly embarrassing. She also has a total inability to have her photo taken without her mouth gaping open. She is ridiculous.