Caitlin Moran in today's Saturday Times

[JellySlice]

Yes.

How can any Western woman say she is not a feminist, when she takes a feminist life for granted? Women uncertain whether they are feminist, or want to be, need to read this.

(I'm reading this in the paper, and do not have a subscription to link the article. Perhaps someone else could?)

like

I think they consider her a TERF because of something in her How to be a Woman?
I remember a huge kick off about her supporting Lena Dunham (or more accurately not calling her out for the lack of white peoples in Girls) and then it spiralling from there. This must have been about 2011/12.

thedebrief.co.uk/news/celebrity/caitlin-moran-back-kick-ass-ever/

Sigh.

It’s from 2016. Let’s hope her ‘feminist girls’ have had a word with since then.

Cannot bear these wide eyed lib fems with their faux bewilderment. But WHY can’t everyone just be a cool girl like ME and let the nice trans women in the loos so we can swap make up tips?

Ritzsaltedcrackers

Thank you for that article. I occasionally worry that my dislike of Caitlin Moran is irrational but that talk of "girls in sex work" shows it isn't.

circle I also got told in an intersectional feminist group that Caitlin Moran is "problematic".
Apparently something she wrote about strippers in HTBAW was swerfy.
She got a huge kicking online a few years back, I'm not surprised she keeps quiet on trans matters

However, she spells it out to women who think feminism is all about strident suspicion of men. Makes it clear that feminism isn't all about bra-burning and fighting The Patriarchy. That there isn't a leadership, hierarchy or ideology to follow.

We take our freedoms, rights and privileges for granted, but they were all won for us by feminists. If we believe that they should continue to exist - whether or not we believe that women have achieved full equality, and that 'feminism' is therefore obsolete - if we want to maintain them, we must be feminists.

It's Feminism 101 for newbies.

(But why she had to mention trans rights...)

I was cheering her on until the paragraph at the end.

Women are not forgoing an education or giving up work. I'd say that when it comes to parental leave or looking after elderly parents, it is overwhelmingly more likely to be the woman who gives up work.

Women are not abandoning contraception or leaving politics. Given that Venice Allan and Jennifer James have been suspended from the Labour party and subjected to a campaign of personal and professional smears for defending women's rights, that's a hard line to swallow.

Women and men are not teaching their young daughters to be quiet, pliant and pretty; or their sons to objectify, or feel entitled to beat, their girlfriends. I think a significant number of them are. Subconsciously perhaps, and passively, but that's the effect of gender stereotyping, which we all know is alive and well in 21st century Britain.

Millions of women are tweeting their #MeToo and #Time’sUp stories. They’re revealing unequal pay structures at work. They’re demanding change. They’re absolutely presuming the future will be better for women. Lots of women - lots of feminists - don't 'absolutely presume the future will be better for women'. Lots of them are very fearful that the opposite will prove to be the case. But they're not allowed to talk about why, because that is transphobic and people will shut them down and call them TERFs.

She's active on Twitter, maybe someone with clear thoughts and a hard skin could approach her (ie not me )?

Most Feminists seem to be the liberal feminists who totally support every trans demand and hate any woman or feminist who is gen critical. So although i agree with the original core aims - feminism seems to have evolved mostly into something I don’t feel i really have a place in.

We're all gunning for the same thing — equality, feeling comfortable in our own skin, not automatically cringing or feeling unworthy or 'other.'

I agree on this point, but I thought I she's totally missed the point as well. Because of course TRAs are not gunning for equality.

If I'd been stopped in the street, I'd have probably said I wasn't a feminist too. I would certainly have been grateful for everything feminists in the past had done. But I wouldn't have thought of myself as a feminist.

I've not been on these boards for long. And I still don't know all of what feminism is about. But it was a real surprise that opposing gender stereotypes (something I've quietly done all my life - well, since I was about 3) is actually part of feminism (if I'd thought about it, it probably wouldn't have been a surprise. I just never thought about it).