Caitlin Moran in the Guardian today

[RoyalCorgi]

I promise I'm not trying to start another argument about Caitlin Moran. It's just that I want to record my annoyance and despair at her rewriting of history. Apparently in the 1980s there were no female role models for girls apart from Mrs Thatcher and Miss Piggy. And no one ever wrote about female masturbation until Caitlin wrote about it in her 2011 book. Plus more in that vein.

I remember back in the 80s reading Dale Spender's marvellous book "Women of ideas and what men have done to them" where she painstakingly writes in detail at the lives of amazing historical women - scientists, philosophers, writers, campaigners - and looks at how they were simply forgotten about and written out of history. Thanks in part to Spender's work, female historians went about the business of researching more forgotten women and writing their biographies.

Now it seems as if all the work of feminists in the 70s and 80s on, for example, female sexuality or in political campaigning has just been forgotten about. Feminists hadn't achieved anything of note until Caitlin Moran wrote How to be a Woman.

Once again, women's achievements are being written out of history.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/29/caitlin-moran-reread-how-to-be-a-woman-marvel-what-i-got-wrong

@merrymouse

Re: sex, periods etc.

drum roll:

JUDY BLOOM!!!!!!!!

That is what I was going to say!

Yes the world was different then but she didn’t invent writing about women. Yes much feminist writing was heavy weight and was sold as being feminist and not for young girls and women but Judy Bloom was very much out there.

If she was joking about being the first person to write about any of this then she could have just acknowledged that it was a joke.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0054743/
The Children's Hour (McClaine & Hepburn)

This film came out in 1961 but I only saw it around 2007.

We have always had some independent women portrayed in cinema - Bacall, Hepburn, etc

I read that too! I was excited that someone else had read it. No other reason for quoting/replying to you.

@Blackcurrant66

Yes but there is no attribution, that's the problem. Bringing stuff down to a pulp fiction level is great but you have to keep the space open so that people can move up and explore - else it is just fast fashion. There was always a narrative that you could follow that led you to something more substantial and it is that narrative that has been severed - now everything has been put on this one dimensional, superficial level it is easy to dismiss. People have got a mental picture of the content, can put it in context and move on - it isn't the thought provoking stuff that actually changes you. It has no substance and instead is written in a throw away, magazine style manner rather than a grounded, clear analytical slice through complex theories and perspectives.

I have said this so many times but this stuff just makes it harder for the real intellectual jumps to be made in one's mind. It is synthetic in quality and leaves people feeling temporarily satiated but, ultimately frustrated with the topic so that they give up.

My friends and I devoured Deenie & Forever and discussed in detail!

I remember us at 13 passing Forever round the class, back in 1986.

I'd forgotten all about the book Kinflicks until mentioned on here , read it when I was about 17 in the 80s.

I’m exactly the same age as CM.
I first heard about Germaine Greer when the Female Eunuch was mention in Adrian Mole.
Although I’d not read the Female Eunuch I’d heard of it and knew enough about it to understand the comment.
I knew about the women of Greenham Common. I remember the showing and later cancelling of Miss World.
As a teen we read Mizz, Just 17 and More. We read Judy Blume and discussed it. I remember it becoming socially unacceptable to pinch a woman’s arse and I clearly recall calling a man out for it in a pub when I was about 20. I remember the change in the law to criminalise rape within marriage.
I recall a lot of things that aren’t acceptable now that were common place, like not walking into a pub on your own and if you did getting quite a look if you ordered a pint (some pub had special lady beer glasses).
Because of AIDS there were a lot of conversations around safe sex, as a generation we were more open about sex.
Also we didn’t care about our pubes. The only women who removed them all were porn actresses, and then it was specialist porn.

Yes Thatcher was a huge female presence and often used as a ‘look what happens if you put a woman in power’, but there were other women about doing great stuff, not as many as there could or should have been but they were there.

Oh, and there is a world of difference between having hippy parents who home educated you while you lived on a council estate and having parents or a parent who worked their fingers to the bone to try and scrape together enough for you to eat and then going to bed hungry themselves.

Oh, and there is a world of difference between having hippy parents who home educated you while you lived on a council estate and having parents or a parent who worked their fingers to the bone to try and scrape together enough for you to eat and then going to bed hungry themselves.

Yes.

Leaving aside anyone well-known, I went to a GDST school in the 70s and 80s. Sexism simply didn't exist there. The idea of not doing something because we were female was never, ever mentioned. We didn't need big-name role models. We were taught, by well educated and capable women (and a couple of men). The curriculum was entirely academic - no sewing, cooking, or anything "female" (the local school had cooking and sewing for girls, and woodwork for boys). We were expected to become doctors, engineers, vets, lawyers, company directors, etc, etc.

I like her. I was a teenager in the mid and late noughties and have only vaguely heard of the women mentioned on this thread.
At the time I'd never heard of them at all.
I certainly wouldn't have taken it upon myself to read Germaine Greer. Feminism wasn't "fashionable" in the 00s and 10s but CM was one of the women who made it so. She certainty didn't invent it but her writing introduced many young women to it. Plus, she's funny.

You may not have heard of the women but you should look into them. It's great to be inspired by someone funny and contemporary. And even better when you find out that women have been writing these things for decades.

@Thripp

I went to a Convent - I remember clearly our HT (a nun) telling us that everything second of our lives was accountable - to make our lives worth something significant.

She was inspiring then and still is now. There were no barriers in her eyes, for what we could achieve in terms of our role in the world and the school echoed that - very academic, high standards, very interesting trips abroad - Russia, Lebanon, etc

@Thripp

Leaving aside anyone well-known, I went to a GDST school in the 70s and 80s. Sexism simply didn't exist there. The idea of not doing something because we were female was never, ever mentioned. We didn't need big-name role models. We were taught, by well educated and capable women (and a couple of men). The curriculum was entirely academic - no sewing, cooking, or anything "female" (the local school had cooking and sewing for girls, and woodwork for boys). We were expected to become doctors, engineers, vets, lawyers, company directors, etc, etc.

I went to a GDST primary and it was much like you describe but it was also horrendous in terms of the pressure put on girls to be academically brilliant at all terms. 'Average' was not enough, you all had to be above average (early shades of Michael Gove there) and if you weren't then you were made to feel extremely uncomfortable. I left and went to the local school which had cooking and sewing for girls and woodwork and metalwork for boys. I wrote a letter to the headmaster explaining why it was sexist and unacceptable and got summoned to his office. I expected a detention and being told off but instead got told he hoped his daughter would grow up the same way and agreed I could do woodwork and metalwork instead of cooking or sewing. Maybe he was just being nice because he'd heard from the cooking and sewing teachers about the level of my incompetence and thought there was nothing to lose

Exactly this, Serenada. I can only think that Caitlin Moran didn't have this kind of education if she thinks that Mrs Thatcher and Miss Piggy were the only role models around in the 70s and 80s.

She is, however, a bit prone to think that she invented feminism herself.

@Thripp

Exactly this, Serenada. I can only think that Caitlin Moran didn't have this kind of education if she thinks that Mrs Thatcher and Miss Piggy were the only role models around in the 70s and 80s.

She is, however, a bit prone to think that she invented feminism herself.

She was home 'educated' after three weeks at a girl's high school (not GDST, state I think) in Wolverhampton if Wikipedia is to be believed. From what it says the home education was in the loosest possible sense of the word.

In the 70s and 80s - and maybe early 90s before the reformatting - The Guardian used to have a Women’s Page which was feminist and informed and informative. My mother and all her friendship circle would read that and get their daughters to do so too. There seems to be dumbed down, empty content nowadays which is such a waste.

@lucylocketspockets That's interesting. I don't at all remember it as an academic pressure cooker (went there from 5-18). However, I do know they were very selective, even then. There were something like 80 girls competing for 20 places at the age of five. Though I didn't realise this at the time!

Feminism wasn’t “fashionable” in the 00s and 10s

I think this is, sadly, true.

Feminism - at least in mainstream popular culture - went from Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin singing “Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves” to Rihanna singing “Rude Boy Are You Big Enough?”

Somewhere along the line being a strong woman became all about dancing in little clothing provocatively because you choose to and making men salivate being a form of female power. Conforming to the shallow gender stereotype (you must like pink, you must obsess about handbags and shoes) became a feminist action.

I think it's fair enough for every generation to want their own icons - and incidentally I can't believe I'm not seeing any name checks for Emma Peel and Lady Penelope.
I think though that by the time you're 45, you should have realised that your parents' generation were no slouches either. Otherwise you're in danger of sounding like a parody of that Philip Larkin poem.

[quote Thripp]@lucylocketspockets That's interesting. I don't at all remember it as an academic pressure cooker (went there from 5-18). However, I do know they were very selective, even then. There were something like 80 girls competing for 20 places at the age of five. Though I didn't realise this at the time![/quote]
I remember being tested, I had to count from 20 back down to zero and read something from a book. I can't remember what else we had to do now though

I just wasn't their type of girl, I'd do irresponsible things like stop at the sweet shop opposite the bus stop where I changed buses and buy American cream soda and a licorice stick which apparently was appalling behaviour. Then there was the most unladylike piling up the autumn leaves between the wall and the trees to set up hurdles and run and jump over them. That combined with my academic inadequacy which they made sure I knew about meant I wasn't welcome and an alternative school was suggested at the end of primary.

I've wanted to talk about this for a while but I have noticed (in teaching of all places) a real learned uselessness in some of teh women I have met. Particularly my last SLT who just hung around waiting for the largely incompetent overgrown school boy who also worked in a senior capacity to take the lead. It is as though they feel it is inappropriate to be in control. In the staffroom, the talk somehow ended up on baking and I was asked how I prepared my meringues. Well, I thought, I pick them off the supermarket shelf and when I get home I unwrap them and drown them in cream. There's not much to it. But that wasn't what they meant. They were scoring points on who made the best meringues a la Mary Berry-, their idol. I felt like I had walked into the 70s we had managed to avoid growing up. Like an alternative universe that you knew existed but used all your strategic skills to avoid.

I've wanted to talk about this for a while but I have noticed (in teaching of all places) a real learned uselessness in some of teh women I have met.

Tell me about it...it's really annoying. It's right up there with the women who think it's OK to be bad at Maths and almost boast about it. I could easily claim to be crap at Maths as I was useless at it at school and it's never going to be my main subject in any quiz but I was sick of feeling bad at it so did a 3 month long Maths module at uni and passed, I've never let myself say I'm bad at Maths since even though it was bloody hard work and cost me a fortune in Kleenex

And younger staff are lapping it up. One graduate I knew would bust a gut baking for her job only she couldn't bake so she would buy very expensive filo pastry and stress herself out the night before trying to follow a recipe.

It was so clear to me that she was following a role of making herself useful at work by what she could bring in rather than the skills that related to her job. Seems very retrograde to me.

I'm so glad I found this thread. I read CM's piece this morning and genuinely felt like perhaps I had lost all sense of time because how could she be talking about 2011, the 2011 that was nine years ago? I was 24 in 2011 and absolutely nothing she was talking about was new to me or any woman I knew. I did read The Female Eunuch when I was in my teens (finding it on a book shelf at home, reading it and then realising my mum must have read it was probably the first moment when I realised my mum was a person), and a lot of feminist works after that, but I was the only one of my friends who did but absolutely all of them held opinions on everything she mentions as 'unspoken about' back in those dark days.