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 have no idea how Yosser Hughes turned up there...but y'know. Enjoy

This is the Bim Adewunmi article...

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/08/girls-twitter-feminism-caitlin-moran

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.

She definitely is, but my objection is that the book is called "How to be a Woman" and it's hailed as a feminist guide of some kind.

If it was "my autobiography" then fine.

I started reading How to... then quickly realised it was dire and returned it to the shop.

Love her stuff. She's a similar age to me and I don't agree with her on everything but I think she's a brilliant, evocative writer and you're all just jealous!
Wish she didn't write for Murdoch though.

Why should she be obliged to care about intersectionality? It's just one school of thought within feminism, not the only one. Why should a show about four women be more likely to include non white characters than shows about men? I didn't watch girls (in fact I'd never heard of it) but why did it come in for so much criticism when it sounds like lots of other shows with all white casts? I totally understand the issue that Hollywood and popular entertainment in general has insufficient diversity, both behind and in front of the camera, but why was girls specifically called out? Was there an assumption that because it specifically was about women that it should also be somehow about every woman, rather than just a story about a group of specific women?

I like her writing, though possibly it helps that I'm not on Twitter. She does spread herself massively thin though - nobody has that many opinions, surely? Not surprising it rather sounds as if she has run out of things to say, she's producing some ridiculous number of words per week for gorgeous pouting newly engaged Murdo.

britta what a lazy argument. You obviously haven't read the 100+ posts critiquing her work for a wide variety of reasons.

Yeah we're all just jealous. Couldn't be that we have our own thoughts and reasoning.

Nooka your right no one is obliged to care about intersectional feminism, but then you should label your feminism accordingly if you only focused on women having equality then you should be upfront.

I think Girls came into so much criticism is because the media labeled Lena Dunham and the show a voice of this generation when in reality it was only about upper middle class white girls in New York which is fine just don't call her or the show the voice of a generation.

*only focused on white women having equality

I have to come back, having been critical earlier up the thread to say I do love some (a lot even) of CM's columns. She wrote one about poverty that I still have saved on my computer somewhere, and one recently she wrote about women/girls who are struggling I sent to a friend battling self-harm and MH issues because it said things I just couldn't articulate, and it did so wonderfully. My friend was very touched by it. And that's just two I can think of off the top of my head.

I hated the abortion bit of HTBAW for exactly the same reasons as previous posters have cited. BUT for all that I do think that was a brave and important bit of writing.

I just wish CM would decide "now is the time to stop writing books/TV series/ more than one article a year about my unconventional childhood."

So She should write an autobiography called How to be a white woman?

It is depressing that feminists who voice their opinions in public are immediately shot down by other feminists for not being *ist enough.
[ insert your own particular preoccupation]

It's a form of internalised misogyny that women feel obliged constantly to police other women and it is hypocritical- imagine the furore if CM or Lena Durham had claimed to represent the experience of black/gay women. The feminist Twitter police would have been straight on to them for cultural appropriation or something . Sometimes modern feminism does feel like a play date when you are 9 and you spend 90% of the time arguing about the rules of the game you want to play and only 10% playing it. That's an important developmental stage for 9 year olds, but it feels like time for feminism to move on Twitter seems to have made it worse.

I didn't like CM's response to the Lena Durham thing because it was trite but I understand her frustration. OK, she did call her book HTBAF, but it was clearly ironic.

I don't get intersectionality. It seems to be run on a points system.

Reminding the media that white women's experience of feminism often differs from the experience of black women and that people can be doubly disadvantaged is important. Blaming individual feminists who happen to be white (or straight/middle class) for not representing a broader experience of feminism is daft and counterproductive- it doesn't create space for more diverse voices, on the contrary, it makes all women reluctant to have a public voice.

she definitely is, but my objection is that the book is called "How to be a Woman" and it's hailed as a feminist guide of some kind.

But she says in the intro (iirc) that it's how to be her - how she 'made' herself a woman. And she didn't hail it as a feminist guide, the media did. And actually, I found it useful and can definitely trace an element of my feminist re-awakening back to reading that book. So the media hailed it as a feminist guide and I did too. Not CM.

I actually think she's pretty good at owning her privilege and one way you do that is by not pretending to represent all women. Because how can you? We need more voices, not fewer voices representing more people. While I would say I'm working hard to get to grips with intersectionality, I can't possibly claim to speak for anyone else other than myself.

Shinynewusername YES!!! I wish I could add but your post summed it up for me.

I enjoy her work.

I don't enjoy Lena Dunham's work.

I know that other people do. I am happy for both of them to be paid for their work and have a platform for it.

How To Be A Woman and Girls were both massively over-hyped and mis-advertised, IMO.

That doesn't make them bad. Or make it wrong to like them.

shiny I love your play date analogy. Now when DS and his friends are enacting that exact 90/10% scenario I'm going to say 'this is just like the intersectionality debate in feminism'

I don't think Caitlin Moran has to speak for everyone and I also think it's unfair to ask her to defend or criticise Lena. Caitlin's experience of 'being a woman' is completely different. She doesn't have a privileged upbringing and the calls for her to 'represent all women' seemed connected to a desire to belittle or silence a working-class female perspective. It's enough for her to try to articulate that experience (albeit from her middle-class/media-class present).

Breakfast I shared a room with siblings; lived in a council house; etc; etc; am I poor enough to comment?

I'm a big CM fan and feel obliged to defend her! Loved HTBAW, HTBAG and found Raised by Wolves hilarious - one of the few comedies I've watched again within weeks of first seeing it. It probably helps that I had a relatively low-income (although not in poverty) upbringing in the Midlands.

Many writers base their work on personal experience and re-use themes throughout it. No-one slags off James Joyce for banging on about the Dublin of his youth! As for the intersectionality stuff (which I don't know that much about but seems to be some way of saying some women are not proper feminists enough because other women have it harder) remember she's not writing an academic treatise (called "Exactly How Oppressed Am I as a White Working Class Woman Who Now Nevertheless has a Big Income and Prominent Media Profile?"). She's writing funny books with a pro-feminist angle.

And finally, whoever said it, there's nothing wrong with DMs, shorts and tights!

No its has nothing to do with a points system just an understanding that we often don't live single issue lives.

I didn't criticize Lena my issue and lots of other women's issue was the media and that they had framed girls as the voice of a generation when it really isn't not even close to be honest.

I do find it very telling that you view black women who voice their critiques of feminism (which is vital if we want to create a meaningful and powerful movement) policing. Black women almost do not exist in public life, in the civil service, media etc one of the few platforms where black women are vocal is twitter.

My issue is that these women are framed as the voices of feminism which is not fair to them. I take umbrage with the fact news publications will happily regurgitate the same old CM story rather than feature Bell Hooks, Panashe chigumadzi or Sylvia Wynter.

I do find it very telling that you view black women who voice their critiques of feminism...policing

Actually I don't think that at all. One of the ironies of the way intersectionality is debated is that it is often white, middle-class, straight women telling other white, middle-class straight women to 'check their privilege'.

I totally agree that black women's voices need to be heard. I just don't think that a privilege-off on Twitter is the way to achieve that.

I like her.

What she said about TV comedy panel shows is that they are created in a male way to showcase male funniness. ( interrupting, piss taking). Why should she get a babysitter to go on those when she can be funny at home on Twitter in her pyjamas?

To add to my defence of CM... The reason she may spread herself thinly (as some have said) is based on something Russell T Davies said to her - she said in an interview. When you get offered work, just take it. Worry about getting it done later as you never know when you'll be out of fashion and it will dry up. May also be a result of being brought up in a family where income was sporadic and unreliable.