Caitlin Moran article 1 Jul in Guardian

I don’t think she’s vastly interesting by the way, and agree she has limited tricks.

But she’s a popular columnist, I don’t expect her to be Marina Hyde, she can still have worthwhile things to say in her lane. And at her best (eg about her daughter’s eating disorder, or walking through a deserted lockdown london) she’s a really good writer.

I don’t see anything wrong with it. She’s made the point many times that she’s been concerned about women’s stuff because men should be concerned about men’s stuff.

What’s she’s saying here is not that women should fix men’s problems, or that men don’t overall still have huge advantages, but simply that there are some areas where our awareness of men’s and boys’ concerns lags behind our understanding of women’s and girls’.

Given the fact that men are still not doing 50% of home graft, work places are still run for men, and rape culture and misogyny being such a fucking worry, it’s not a bad time to look openly at what’s beneath that from all angles.

Obviously she needs to sell her next book, but it seems a useful topic. I’ll read it like I read Why I’m not talking to white people about race, because it showed me a different perspective to my own, and is a handy check on when my behaviour could be more helpful. It won’t change my fundamental priorities.

'She’s an absolute lightweight when you compare her output to Hadley Freeman, for example.

God yes. Chalk and cheese

I think she is stuck, intellectually, in her mid-teens. She is clearly bright, but had no formal education. Of course, home-schooling, done properly, can be just as good as school, but she seems to have been left to drift with no supervision and no one to help her develop critical thinking. Then she got a job with Melody Maker, and was the bright young thing, with everyone flattering her, and no challenging her.

If these vaguely amusing style in their 20s and thus set for life somehow- columnists from the 90s had any intellectual curiosity it wouldn’t be hard to stay relevant. Read books, talk to people outside your bubble, be brave. Appreciate that’s a bit like hard work though

Moran is exactly that sort of person. I can't stand her, and never could. I very occasionally read her Times column and then vow never to do so again.

She has nothing to say but rehashes her inanities endlessly.

I am not really very interested in men's problems, tbh. They can fend for themselves. Caitlin strikes me as a very third wave feminism types, and that's fine, but in most of the world, women are still fighting very basic battles. Well, even in the UK, really.

She's said what she thinks of trans issues though. For her, TWAW and it's in her books.

She totally lost me though when she wrote about her brother whining that nothing has been done for men in the last hundred years or something and how she agreed with him. Has she never heard of voting rights, labour laws, health and safety and so on?

It must be difficult when you've made an entire 30 year career out of a particular style and set of experiences, and find that the well has run dry. Like others I enjoyed HTBAW but have not bothered with her since bar reading the odd fun but forgettable column over breakfast.

Perhaps I am being unfair- after all I don't know her- but she seems to be the kind of person who describes themselves as "mad" or "free spirit" .

I liked How to be a Woman and Raised By Wolves, but Moran has no new material to draw from which makes her remotely relatable to ordinary people as she’s been a part of the London media bubble since her late teens. She’s an absolute lightweight when you compare her output to Hadley Freeman, for example.

I previously liked Caitlin Moran's main thing of 'are the men doing this too?' to work out if something was a feminist issue.

Agree her upbringing was interesting to a point, obviously cripplingly poor in a monetary sense but rich in cultural capital.

I'm interested in her new book and will be buying it to see what she says. I've heard a few men talk eloquently on similar subjects of raising our boys better and giving them credit for doing things differently to men from previous generations. I think there's a point somewhere in there and am interested in where she goes with it.

Agree she should say where she stands on trans issues. It's relevant when you're talking about men and women.

Should read You're Wrong About!

I am not a CM fan, but for anyone looking for a very moving take on abortion, in which the right not to be traumatised by it is centred, listen to the episode of the podcast You're Wong About called Your Abortion Stories. (I don't generally support that podcast as they are very much TRA, but that episode specifically is very good).

I really liked the way she wrote about her abortion too. It's always presented as something traumatic and dreadful and regretted so to read about one without guilt or shame was v refreshing.

She's not written anything mich worth reading since.

I did enjoy her first book, but she only has about 6 ideas, which she has recycled endlessly for the last 20 years.

And, if I ever hear another word about her childhood, it will be too soon. It's fundamentally dishonest too, as her parents blatantly were not a classic working class family, living in deprivation, whatever she pretends. She tends to gloss over exactly why they were all living on benefits and home-schooling, but I think her parents were hippies, consciously pursuing an alternative lifestyle - which is fine (obviously, as a child, she didn't have a choice in the matter), but it feels like she now cos-plays having had a deprived childhood.

I'm not a CM fan, but I totally disagree with that. If women do not feel traumatised by abortion, they should be 100% free to say so. It's ridiculous to ask them to censor a truthful account of their experience, because someone else has found the same life event traumatic. And it feeds an anti-choice agenda that all women are traumatised by abortion, which just isn't the case.

CM was not telling anyone else how to think about their abortion, she was just being honest about her own.

Some women experience giving birth as deeply traumatic. Would you tell women who have a good delivery to censor themselves because other women are traumatised?

The last thing men need is Moran mothering them. We have our own ways to personal betterment and it doesn't need her brand. And I say that as someone who likes her early writing and hearing of her early family experience.

If she really wants to help men, she can break the mould, and help contribute to a truthful discussion on gender, that would mean something.

No, modern man needs the right sort of positive male role models. Meaning not Andrew Tate. There's a lot of soul searching my side of the divide needs to do.

Not sure what Moran can practically offer here.

I caught her on Lorraine (which was on to reset the internet/aerial something) saying that boys were saying to her teen daughters they had it worse now and I assumed the next sentence would be “so we’ve al long way still to go” but she said that when she thought about it they were right! So weird for someone who is about supporting woman and girls. Things have come a long way but not that bloody far, I am a feminist but not over well read or up to date but even I know that some men’s problems also stem from misogyny. Anyway I stopped watching cause the issue was fixed and I had to get back to work because I work flexi to do school runs and care for elderly parents. Unlike my brother.

Men need to sort themselves out. And support women, who are under threat because of those men who can't sort themselves out.

It's really as simple as that.

Tbh, I can see why Moran would be a trans ally, as a woman, her helping them to find their authentic selves...as women.

I had the misfortune to see her being interviewed by Lorraine on ITV.
My main take was that she feels women have had all the attention for the last century, We have had Feminism and that’s meant we’re now allowed to wear trousers!
So we must now turn our attention to the men and sort them all out!

I can’t see who will buy this book. Men won’t because, why would they, and the title alone should put most women off.

I didn't read it like that. I thought it was quite refreshing to have someone in the public eye be quite straightforward and rational about the decision. I don't think it was cold. I think there's an expectation of women to be upset about having an abortion and if you're not, then there something wrong with that.

What she writes about is either repetitive

I think she’s finally got all the mileage she can out of being the eldest of numerous home-schooled children raised on benefits in a council house in Wolverhampton (i.e. large parts of ‘How to be a Woman’, a sitcom, a couple of novels and a film)

or as though she's discovered something no one else knows about

I remember reading an interview with her about one of her novels (How To Be Famous?) and she was very pleased that she had written a scene where the main character takes a man’s virginity. Because ‘you don’t read about women taking men’s virginity’. Erm, except you do, in Ian McEwan’s ‘The Innocent.’ And ‘Outlander’ by Diana Gabaldon. Two very different books, neither of which are obscure, and that’s just off the top of my head. I thought Caitlin was a big reader.

But yes, the Huge Elephant not being talked about in that Grauniad article is trans. If she’s going to be doing promotion for her new book, she’s going to be asked about it, surely? “What is a man, Caitlin?”

'Re your last comment, I thought as much. I'm afraid as a result, she's a little fake as a champion of women, yes?'

Well, absolutely. I think she's a great self promoter, but not much of a champion for women in general

'But when she wrote (in one of her books, can't remember which) that the decision she took to have an abortion was very matter of fact like choosing new kitchen units, it left me cold'

I loved that, I thought it was a really brave thing to say. Yes some women agonise over the decision to terminate, but that's not her story. I think (from memory) she had very complex feelings about the abortion but the decision itself was obvious and straightforward for her. I feel very strongly that we need to hear those sorts of stories as well as the more difficult and even regretful stories about abortion

Absolutely, that's exactly what I'm led to think by her past writing. Not on your life would she have budged up gladly.

But then again... people like Margaret Atwood have said some surprising things soooo..who knows? We live in a back to front circus mirror time so any about turn and incongruity is possible.

Having said that I like her writing and I'm sure this book would be very interesting. The fact CM says v little on the whole trans thing makes me think this is at least a tricky subject