to really dislike Caitlin Moran's 'How to be a Woman'

[RiverCity]

I know that this book has been out for a while...but I have only just read it. I found this rant insulting and so far off my view of feminism. I thought this a negative book - I don't understand how people find it 'hysterical'. I confess that I didn't know anything about it beforehand...but for me it was too much information from some shouty distasteful woman.

I am a few chapters in. I have a kindle but I bought a paper copy of this as I had heard it was really fabulous, so I thought I might lend it to a friend.

Well, I am enjoying it. Sort of. However I do find that what is funny in a newspaper column is somewhat exhausting in book format. The see-how-many-different-funny-invented-words-for-vulva I can get into one passage (geddit!), etc are a bit wearing.

Re the lending it to someone else... I am not sure I will now. It might feel to her like one of those times when a pal goes on and on and on about a friend: how amazingly clever they are, how screamingly funny, then you meet them and think they are just an ordinary, rather shrieky, loon.

The book was very much publicised as a feminist book. She was a child prodigy from north london, not much has changed. She doesn't speak for me or reflect any of the experiences I have had. She is still playing the ingenue (sp) but i don't get it. Why do we have to dress up feminism for women today as non scary etc. The whole point of feminism is that is runs counter to the accepted restricted views of women that have existed for so long and take very little slacking off for them to reappear. I give you Jordan and the dull list of hairless, botoxed lookelikes that teeter around in her wake. Bra burning and all those brave souls before us deserve better. We deserve more than feminist lite or sugar free.

Seems a bit blinkered, if its not full on hardcore feminist kets not have anything at all? Youre not making sense.

Did I say full on hard core feminism? No. The point of feminism is that it challenges preconceptions, and that is not always comfortable. And because a concept is uncomfortable you consider it hardcore? Academic feminist tracts are not what I mean. A book that does what it says on the tin i.e: interpret one's life from a feminist point of view is another thing altogether. She has failed to do this yet that was what was implied in much of the publicity leading up to its release.

Lets not have books directed at us misleadingly as feminist. From what I gathered, CM set out her stall from a feminist point of view. I personally could find no sign of that in what I read of it.

She's from wolverhampton not north london. We do have child prodigies in the midlands yunno.

I am waiting for Ray Mears to write How to Be A Man. And when he does I bet there won't be lots of handwringing on Dadsnet about it.

thats cos ray mears clearly knows what of he speaks. cm is merely posturing. erm, sorry about the geographical error there.

I dunno, I thought some of what she said about teenagers getting in touch with their sexuality was quite strongly feminist and also quite thought provoking.

I agree the publicity was not matched well with the content, but she probably didn't have complete control over that.

I did find Greer's comments on it pretty funny though - essentially she said (very politely) that, erm, Moran seemed to think she was inventing new ideas and they had actually been said before in her (Greer's) books ... it was quite restrained really when one of the things I disliked about the book was it made a cheap shot about Greer and sex.

thats the point of YOUR feminism maybe, theres no one size fits all. If its her brand of feminism and others read it that way, who are you to tell her it isn't?

I found it a bit hysterical in parts, but a found bits of it thought provoking (the clothes industry, Botox etc)and so did my daugther (15)

Agreed, that is what I think feminism amounts to, and so do lots of others. I am allowed to disagree and find it dilutes the progress made? That it takes feminism of any description in any important direction and to create the expectation that it might as cynical.