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Caitlin Moran in the Guardian today

434 replies

RoyalCorgi · 29/08/2020 11:17

I promise I'm not trying to start another argument about Caitlin Moran. It's just that I want to record my annoyance and despair at her rewriting of history. Apparently in the 1980s there were no female role models for girls apart from Mrs Thatcher and Miss Piggy. And no one ever wrote about female masturbation until Caitlin wrote about it in her 2011 book. Plus more in that vein.

I remember back in the 80s reading Dale Spender's marvellous book "Women of ideas and what men have done to them" where she painstakingly writes in detail at the lives of amazing historical women - scientists, philosophers, writers, campaigners - and looks at how they were simply forgotten about and written out of history. Thanks in part to Spender's work, female historians went about the business of researching more forgotten women and writing their biographies.

Now it seems as if all the work of feminists in the 70s and 80s on, for example, female sexuality or in political campaigning has just been forgotten about. Feminists hadn't achieved anything of note until Caitlin Moran wrote How to be a Woman.

Once again, women's achievements are being written out of history.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/29/caitlin-moran-reread-how-to-be-a-woman-marvel-what-i-got-wrong

OP posts:
EmpressJKRowlingSpartacus · 29/08/2020 11:54

I’ve just finished Difficult Women by Helen Lewis & it was a huge revelation. Why is nobody talking about Maureen Colquhoun, the first lesbian MP? Sophia Jex Blake & the rest of the Edinburgh Seven, who led the fight for women to be able to become doctors?

Original poster
RoyalCorgi · 29/08/2020 11:52

Caitlin seems to have got 2011 mixed up with 1952.

That particular paragraph is rage-inducing, isn't it? As PPs have mentioned, all those topics were written about at length by other feminists in the 60s, 70s and 80s. I think Caitlin doesn't read other feminist writers. That's the best explanation I have for this nonsense. Someone should send her a first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves, at the very least.

OP posts:
Deliriumoftheendless · 29/08/2020 11:47

And the Greenham Common women. Just a figment of my imagination?

Pelleas · 29/08/2020 11:47

Masturbation, pornography, pubic hair, abusive relationships, wonky tits, menstruation, eating disorders, abortion, the madness of expensive weddings, sexism in the workplace, the pressure to have children, binge-drinking, the pain of childbirth, the joy of life as a modern woman: when I wrote How To Be A Woman in 2011, these were pretty novel subjects

Caitlin seems to have got 2011 mixed up with 1952.

Deliriumoftheendless · 29/08/2020 11:46

Did I just imagine Barbara Castle then?

queenofknives · 29/08/2020 11:46

God, that was painful to read. I see she's promoting her new book which will doubtless bring about the second great feminist revolution (the first inspired by her first book, natch). Not sure how women managed to achieve the vote before Caitlin Moron was born - surely a mistake.

DancelikeEmmaGoldman · 29/08/2020 11:43

Germaine Greer, Andrea Dworkin, Sheila Rowbotham, Sheila Jeffries, Kate Millet, Maya Angelou, Shulamith Firestone were all publishing in the 70s and 80s, to name a few feminist writers.

Nancy Friday, Sheila Kitzinger and Lonnie Garfield Barbach, were all writing about female sexuality, including masturbation, in the 70s and 80s.

Is it the fault of the way media is constructed, that we seem to live in the eternal now? Everything is reinvented, including, apparently, personal significance.

terryleather · 29/08/2020 11:38

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.

A while back somebody posted a link to a send-up of her writing which pretty much had the measure of her, I wish I could find it again but can't seem to..

ArabellaScott · 29/08/2020 11:34

That is erasure. And shows a staggering lack of awareness of women's history, writing and sexuality.

What about the very long history of esteemed female writers from Sappho onwards who covered these topics, did she forget them?

Did she never hear of Anais Nin, ffs? The 60s? Susie Bright? I mean, we could go on for just about ever.

I can't believe she actually thinks she was responsible for the sexual revolution in 2011 - it was practically bloody over by then, Caitlin! But you're going to ride in and pretend you started it? That's just silly.