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

I find it hard to believe CM didnt know about this.

Even if she didn't, shouldn't journalists research their pieces before publishing them? The question of what resources/role models were available for women at different times prior to 2011 could very easily be researched on the internet.

Of course CM knows about all of these people. She has made at least one TV programme on the 'Queens of British Pop' which according to IMDB featured many of the people discussed on this thread.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1431549/

However, their existence doesn't suit the purpose of the story she is trying to tell in this particular column.

(BTW, I would like to apologise for my earlier misspelling of Judy Blume's name!)

It’s because of this thread that I have learned She Bop is about wanking, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this. I had only remembered the chorus, but the full lyrics had me in stitches.

Cyndi Lauper, absolute goddess.

@Pelleas

I find it hard to believe CM didnt know about this.

Even if she didn't, shouldn't journalists research their pieces before publishing them? The question of what resources/role models were available for women at different times prior to 2011 could very easily be researched on the internet.

I think you, among others, may be taking this too seriously.

She’s a popular journalist, she’s not an academic.

She’s a popular journalist, she’s not an academic.

That doesn't give her a free pass to write nonsense, though.

In your view it’s nonsense.

It’s entertainment. Let’s face it the Guardian article is an advert for her book, that’s all. It’s pretty much the same as the one in the Times a week ago. I, for the most part, like CM and her columns on a Saturday make me smile. Plus the photos for this book do seem to have lost the zany expression.

In your view it’s nonsense.

Well, there's been an abundance of evidence on this thread to show that CM was not the first or even one of the first to write about masturbation etc. in her 2011 book, so I don't think it's just a 'view'.

Even if it was just my view, though, would that matter? I don't think journalists should write without doing some research first.

I'd have no problem with CM saying that her 2011 book had brought those topics to a new audience, because it might well be the case that her book happened to be the first one that people who were teenagers in 2011 picked up.

But saying that those subjects were taboo and rarely written about before 2011 is sheer, unadulterated nonsense.

@IfNotNow123

Love and Rockets comic books ❤️ about a group of young Mexican-American punk girls. That was 90s, I think. Loved that!

Me too!

Interestingly Love and Rockets were written by two men - the Hernandez brothers - but their female characters are both iconic and somehow real and relatable.

I can see you are a fan by your username!
Yy, although I always preferred Jaime's stories (the Maggie and Hope ones) to Gilbert's, which I probably didn't really understand as a teen come to think of it..

Couldn’t we say similar about Fleabag?

@NeedToKnow101

Fizzy knickers

I think the difference is that Phoebe Waller-Bridge doesn't - from what I've seen - try and pretend that no-one ever did this stuff till she came along. In fact, as I recall, she's careful to give credit to older feminists.

Yes, when people write lies they should be pulled up for it as we have done here. However she can certainly write what she likes and the fact she brings feminism to a younger audience is not a bad thing at all. I support her and she has done very well after a very difficult start in life.

Marilyn French wrote The Woman’s room in 1977. I was sixteen and I read it.

Yes, same here - I read it just after it came out. I have all those various books still upstairs with the date I bought them on. However Caitlin m's mother did not and CM probably did not get to the feminism section of her local library despite the hours she spent there I presume so perhaps just does not know. At least she is putting out a feminism message for younger people. That is not a bad thing. Also most new generations think they have the new best way of being. It was always like that.

I want to add that I am critical of the persona not the woman, herself. Don’t want to attack someone personally.

Unless they are a Coldplay fan.

I could understand, and I'd be inclined to overlook it, if Moran were 25. But I don't have a lot of time for a middle aged woman who won't acknowledge the groundwork laid by writers and performers before her.

However Caitlin m's mother did not and CM probably did not get to the feminism section of her local library despite the hours she spent there I presume so perhaps just does not know

Oh come off it (again) I've never been in the feminist section of my local library, a feminist section of any bookshop or a feminist bookshop. The stuff Moran apparently knows nothing about is basic cultural knowledge.

Moran's apparent lack of knowledge is either due to stupidity, laziness or arrogance.

I like her work.

I don’t mistake it for serious feminist theory. It’s nice and light. Good beach holiday reading.

If it’s being taken seriously by some sections of society we’ve gone wrong.

Moran's apparent lack of knowledge is either due to stupidity, laziness or arrogance.

Again, she knows all this stuff and has written about many of the people mentioned in this thread at length.

The Miss Piggy/Thatcher line is for the purposes of that particular column.

The point of the column is not to deliver any kind of definitive message about feminism, it is to amuse and sell a book. Fundamentally Caitlin Moran is a columnist and, however irritating, that is what columnists do.

Molly Parkin was writing proper sauce in the 70s which covered an eye opening range of sexual practices (or so it seemed to my virginal teen self anyway.)

I wouldn't object to her work on its own. It's not my thing and I roll my crinkly eyes at the idea that Botox is liberating, but I can see that she can be entertaining. It's refusing to acknowledge all the women who went before her that sticks in the craw. She's old enough to know better than that.

But saying that those subjects were taboo and rarely written about before 2011 is sheer, unadulterated nonsense

Exactly. As as are all the excuses being made for her that she didn't have access to feminist theory/ wide circle of contacts.