Depressed about Caitlin Moran

[shinynewusername]

I loved How to be a Woman but all her work since seems to have recycled the same ideas and it sounds as if her "new" book will be more of the same.

AIBU to feel she is ripping her public off?

I agree about The Guardian Family section. it's a job creation scheme for twats.

We need many more women like CM writing positively about feminism. Good for her.

I'm adding Lauren and leaving Victoria in until last orders I'm afraid couch but she doesn't need to stay for the lock in. Is Katie joining them in the hilarious feminist love in?

The Guardian is apparently in serious difficulties. Maybe they will hire Moran (and sink )

Oh god alright This thread is not bitchy AT ALL.

Perfectly fine to start thread about one single person and talk about how shit they are at their job, slate how they look etc

Not bitchy. No.

I do agree that the pithy tone of the abortion chapter could come across as insensitive.

But personally, I'd never seen that angle before, and to me it makes a great (if solitary) counterweight to the overwhelming pile of 'Fine, have the abortion. Just know that the guilt will eat you alive and destroy any chance of future happiness, and you'll wonder every single day what your child would have been doing' emotional blackmail women are subjected to and affected by. So I think it's good.

Lucy Mangan used to write beautifully in the Guardian about books. Then she too got 'promoted' to a lifestyle column for which she only had 2 weeks' worth of funny material. See also Joanna Moorhead - used to write about human rights, now it's tedious reflections on her kids. Ditto Zoe Williams. It's so regressive. If the Times sidelined all its serious women journalists into writing whimsical puff pieces on family life, the Guardian would be the first to complain.

Polly Toynbee gives me the rage, but at least she spares us, "Aren't babies hard work when they wake you at night but it's all ok when they smile" tedium.

The whole Guardian lifestyle section (including the family section) is pretty much a job creation scheme for twats.

I really like Marina Hyde

And the one that does Sam Cam

And the really rude food writer ..can't remember her name. Reviews art too.

I don't mind pithiness, it was more the slightly desperate hilarity and facile jokes. Absolutely say you had an abortion and you are fine with it - that is important. But some women will have been through that and found it heartbreaking. Some will have been unable to conceive and it's massively insensitive to them to make the story of an abortion into a kind of "what larks" joke fest.

I think maybe this is clarifying the problem for me actually - it's that she doesn't come across as caring about her female readers, or understanding that her way might not be the only way. To be a woman.

I like the inspect a gadget column. In fact, it's the only bit of the guardian that doesn't make me cross.

I really like Marina Hyde

and the one that does Sam Cam

and I LOVE Zoe Williams

don't make her go in the Room

I put How to be a Woman in my top 5 worst books! But was scared to post any reviews because apparently her and her 'team' annihilate anyone who dares to do that

Thehiphop - we dislike all the same people! I love it when I find someone like you

I like her writing and have often found it insightful and funny. She's not always consistent in her views and I've not always agreed with her take on things, but that's ok. ... She's not in charge of feminism.

I couldn't have put it better, and I am surprised at how upset people get about a writer, she's not our Prime Minister...and at least she gives a shit about people.

Rachel something...?

I said this years ago. She's so tedious. I don't get the love.

Her writings on abortion - what a total cop out !

Well I like her humour and her writing so there. She's about the same age as I am and I had an oddly similar childhood so I enjoy her cultural references.

It's quite a few years since I read HTBAW, but I found the abortion chapter quite refreshing. I'd always been pro choice, but definitely in a 'it's ok to have an abortion if you really need one, as long as you feel really bad about it forever' kind of way - the way we are told to think, basically.
It opened my eyes a bit and stopped me feeling secretly and rather unfairly judgemental about a friend.

Also, I suspect those of you that are irritated by her references to growing up poor didn't grow up poor

Oh god I can't stand her writing. I read How To Be a Woman, thought it was a pile of self absorbed, trying too hard wankery.
More power to her if it sells I suppose...

I really liked Raised By Wolves, thought it was hilarious!

Her whole 'point' is that she's not writing about other women's experiences, other women's feminism, other women's abortions. She's writing about hers. Now fair enough, take it or leave it, agree with it or disagree with it, feel you have something in common with her or don't. But don't criticise her for simply reflecting her own truth.

If she wants to be flip and facile and make shit jokes about her abortion (although I didn't read it that way) then that's ok. That's kind of the point.

I don't like her at all. She basically admitted to not being bothered about intersectionality in feminism. (The quite brilliant Bim Adewunmi dissects it better than I ever could: )

Also I heard her reading from one of her books on the wireless (I think it was How To Be A Woman) and she was going 'oh I'm to read something really shocking now...I'm going to make all yr middle-class middle-aged listeners SQUIRM'...and then she read some relatively tame stuff about periods and not ALL THE STUFF ABOUT FEMALE MASTURBATION. Which is a massive cop-out in my opinion.