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

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

@lucylocketspockets

Yes!
My brother is actually a bit of a maths prodigy and is absolutely on this about maths and girls. I realised I had fallen into that stereotype and let that side of myself flounder so have also actively tried to fill in the gaps.

But what scares me most is that those women are in teaching and perpetuating this idea when for me, Education was the neutral space I never expected to encounter it post primary.

I also wasn't sure if the first paragraph was an actual joke, because it reads like one? It sounds like a really bad fiction writer who has never met a teenage girl imagining one:

One day, back in 2011, I was on the train going into central London, when a big group of 14-year-old girls ran up to me, like a gang of giggling meerkats, shouting, “Are you – are you CAITLIN MORAN? You wrote How To Be A Woman? Oh, my God! We learned about masturbation from that! Dude, it’s amazing! We’ve all started doing it now! We’ve formed a gang! At school! It’s called wank club! And we come in every morning and say how many times we did it last night – and then high five each other! In the playground! Shouting Wank Club! Can we shake your hand?”

This review from The New Statesman makes the point about her acting as if she invented feminism.

Now , having got half way through The Female Eunuch a couple of years ago I have as much interest in reading feminist theory as I have in reading about say the history of the fuel injected engine, yet "stuff" for want of a better word, has permeated in to my brain. So how can she an actual self- proclaimed feminist be so ignorant?

www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/07/hasty-rehash-frances-wilson-caitlin-moran-s-new-novel?amp

@Floisme

Lady Penelope!!!! Emma Peel!!!

Who was the actress in Hart to Hart?

Also, Charlies's Angels had one who looked like she wouldn't take any s**t from anyone, especially not Charlie!

There were lots of minor characters in TV shows that were realistic portrayals of women, too. The background they occupied wasn't overly sexualised or unrealistic.

But what scares me most is that those women are in teaching and perpetuating this idea when for me, Education was the neutral space I never expected to encounter it post primary.

Yes! I went to a school careers day to talk about my job a few years ago, some of the girls wanted to be nurses so I suggested that they consider being a doctor, cue raised eyebrows from the young teacher and one of the girls saying "Boys are doctors, girls are nurses". I swear there was steam coming out of my ears as I commented on it to the teacher.

Stephanie Beecham.

Also adding Kate O’Mara.

That was for Serenada.

@Hardbackwriter

I also wasn't sure if the first paragraph was an actual joke, because it reads like one? It sounds like a really bad fiction writer who has never met a teenage girl imagining one:

One day, back in 2011, I was on the train going into central London, when a big group of 14-year-old girls ran up to me, like a gang of giggling meerkats, shouting, “Are you – are you CAITLIN MORAN? You wrote How To Be A Woman? Oh, my God! We learned about masturbation from that! Dude, it’s amazing! We’ve all started doing it now! We’ve formed a gang! At school! It’s called wank club! And we come in every morning and say how many times we did it last night – and then high five each other! In the playground! Shouting Wank Club! Can we shake your hand?”

Or, they were taking the piss out of her and she didn't twig.

@ArabellaScott

'You're getting old", that's what they'll say
But don't give a damn I'm listening anyway...

...So many rules and so much opinion
So much shit to give in, give in to
So many rules and so much opinion
So much bullshit but we won't give in'

genius.com/Le-tigre-hot-topic-lyrics

The lyrics are annotated! With wee bios of some of the women mentioned.

I love that song! I had to google who most of the people in it were. Was dead chuffed that it mentions Sleater-Kinney, who are one of my favourite bands.

@Deliriumoftheendless

A fellow child of 80s daytime TV, I see.

Yes @lucylocketspockets

It is frightening. I know for some, The Spice Girls were liberating but I remember that time very clearly. We had girls who drank pints labelled as ladettes and a space, areal, tangible space had opened up to be filled with real material and people that could lift girls forward and it got filled instead with a media, image based idea of what a girl is - the Spice Girls incorporated that so we had instead caricatures of identities: sporty, posh, etc. They were defined so much by an idea that a girl/women doesn't have a real identity therefore can be used to hook a fantasy on. This was also the time of lads mags and 'normal' girls doing pinups and the start of violence with women in ordinary TV shows being normalised. By that I mean, this was teh first tiem you saw a woman in a TV show fighting another woman and being hit back(other than In Prisoner Cell Block H tyope stuff). So, we had Buffy and Charmed and all these other cutesy girls getting absolutely punched and kicked and the subtext was 'you have to learn to fight back' but physically so the girls kicked back in high heels without breaking a nail. It was really noticeable to me, as I had never seen women fighting like this before and it was sold as empowering but didn't convince me for a second. It struck me then, as now, as normaliseing violence on and to, women's bodies.

I mean compare the Spice Girls to this lot.

How can The Guardian, of all papers, publish such rubbish? (Presumably because they think it sells...)

Do Guardian editors/sub-editors not remember their own glory days when they published the wonderful Jill Tweedie columns and the equally wonderful Posy Simmods cartoons?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Tweedie

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posy_Simmonds

As young feminist women, they were some of the highlights of our week!

serenada 😁 guilty was charged

Jackie Fleming cartoons.

Or Blondie who really understood about creating an iconic image

And lastly, (because it is so good) someone mentioned Stevie Nicks

The Guardian has opened up comments on the article, they are very similar to the ones on here.

We had girls who drank pints labelled as ladettes

The label was 'butch lesbian' in my day.

@DidoLamenting

In the past, whether you had studied formally or not, this knowledge was in the air - we had it and somehow, we have now got a situation where by if it wasn't born digital, it doesn't exist

That's no excuse for Caitlin Moran. She was born in 1985 - well before everything went digital.

She was born in 76 I think.

@lucylocketspockets

Well, I guess it was progress of a sort . I remember my mum complaining about us wearing DMs as they weren't feminine and my grandmother astutely pointing out that my mother's feet were ruined from wearing stilettos as an adult and that we had more sense!

@pelleas I wonder if it reflects the fact that because she went into an adult world very young and after being homeschooled, she never actually spent much time in a group of teenage girls? I can't imagine anyone who had a) thinking that they needed a book to discover masturbation and b) that that was a plausible social interaction in any way.

I actually really enjoyed 'How to be a woman'. I didn't take it as an instruction manual on how to perform womanhood, but an exploration experiencing womanhood (although if it were new out now in the context of TRA and radfem debates it would probably come across differently). I thought it had some feminist ideas in a funny mainstream accessible way and actually straddled libfem and radfem.
But - it did not invent feminism. CM did not invent feminism and was not the first to write about feminism. And her work since then has gone downhill and a bit overly woke. I didn't even bother finishing 'how to build a girl'.

@Beamur ditto, I balked at reading 'How to be a woman' probably my issue entirely but I take umbrage at someone else's generalisation of what it takes / means for me to be a woman.

(I've never read the book so maybe I'm missing the point).

Also who reads their own books 'every few years'? I can understand reading it if a new edition is coming out or even I guess if you're writing a follow up, but that just sounds like narcissism.

And also why does she always make a stupid face in her photographs?

And finally, no self-respecting teenage girls would idolise Caitlin Moran, and certainly wouldn't need her permission to masturbate. That story sounds like sheer (creepy) fantasy.