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

@RoyalCorgi

Actually my link was to a completely different article. (I didn't read the one in the OP because I try not to give the Guardian income via clicks. )

I hate to break it to you, but the article you linked to was not only the same article, as has already been pointed out, but it was from a news aggregator, who will have paid the Guardian for the right to publish it.

But the Guardian don't get click income if you read an article on another site, as I understand it? So the number of readers the article gets via the aggregator makes no difference to the Guardian's income from it?

And I'm not judging anyone who does read the Guardian - I used to be a huge fan. But these days, I try only to click on articles that support a truly feminist viewpoint, to avoid the Pink News effect of inadvertently supporting transactivism by clicking on articles with a pro-TRA viewpoint.

Not really sure what the big issue is here anyway. I posted a link that - as it turns out - links to the same article as in the OP, just on a different site. My bad, but so what?

I'll be honest and say it read as patronising that you came in to tell us about the same thing the entire thread was about ("check out his article!", as if you'd just handwaved away everyone else's comments to get yours in.
Sorry if that sounds harsh and I'm sure generally we're on the same page! I feel the same way in every thread where people comment without reading the thread or OP, so not meant personally.

Then to be told I was wrong, and to spend time checking myself again what I'd written, when you could've checked but didn't, just wound me up.

@DeaconBoo

I'll be honest and say it read as patronising that you came in to tell us about the same thing the entire thread was about ("check out his article!", as if you'd just handwaved away everyone else's comments to get yours in. Sorry if that sounds harsh and I'm sure generally we're on the same page! I feel the same way in every thread where people comment without reading the thread or OP, so not meant personally.

Then to be told I was wrong, and to spend time checking myself again what I'd written, when you could've checked but didn't, just wound me up.

Blimey - thank you for explaining, but I do feel you are over-thinking this and attributing motives to me that just weren't there. I simply didn't see the later pages of the thread (where the masturbation quote was first quoted, as opposed to the link in the OP) because I was reading it on my phone, and thought I was already at the end after the first couple of pages.

As the thread is about CM and I had just read the masturbation quote on the integrator site and thought it was hilarious, I thought it would be fun to share. My post was a very light-hearted one that I thought people would enjoy (not knowing they had already seen the quote) - it's not like I was weighing in with some in-depth analysis that disagreed with you all.

And I didn't say that you were wrong about the two articles being the same - I said I hadn't read the Guardian and that my quote came from a different article. But I wasn't making the point to contradict you, but on the assumption that CM had told the same patently bogus story elsewhere. Again, it really wasn't about you or disagreeing with you. You are taking personally something that wasn't about you.

Now can we go back to laughing at CM?

OK, but the entire thread was about that article, as per the OP so - in my opinion - to contribute to the discussion about the article without having read it - and deliberately not reading it as a point of principle yet still wanting to discuss it - seems at best pointless.

You posted the same article without realising, I pointed this out with a grin emoji and you replied "Actually my link was to a completely different article." and said she'd clearly recycled it.

I genuinely can't figure out if I'm wrong to have thought this was a contradiction, but you've said it wasn't, so I'm left thinking my communication and understanding skills are worse than I thought.

I know it looks like I'm picking this apart but somewhere I have misunderstood agreement for the opposite, so I'm trying to work out where to avoid making the same mistake again.

Anyway yes I can see I'm driving this thread into the ground so happy to go back to making an extremely sceptical face at various CM anecdotes...

I firmly believe she can and will produce better work than this. I recently heard her in an interview with Alastair Campbell and she’s an impressively fast thinker.

Incidentally she also had a very high tolerance for being cut off by him mid-flow. Very frustrating to listen to, at one point he asked her to define the patriarchy and leaped in with another question before she started

one point he asked her to define the patriarchy and leaped in with another question before she started

Sounds like he did a good enough job of answering his own Q then!

Good point!

But the Guardian don't get click income if you read an article on another site, as I understand it? So the number of readers the article gets via the aggregator makes no difference to the Guardian's income from it?

You're right in a sense, though of course the aggregator will only buy content that people want to read. So everybody who clicks on a Guardian article shared by a news aggregator encourages the aggregator to keep on paying for it.

Similarly, the Guardian doesn't derive any money when you click on one of their articles. But it improves their numbers, which they can then show to advertisers to encourage them to advertise.

So in both cases, the Guardian benefits, but only indirectly.

By the way, I know how things get out of hand online, so just to clarify, my original comment wasn't intended as aggressive, more as an observation.