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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Caitlin Moran in the Guardian today

434 replies

RoyalCorgi · 29/08/2020 11:17

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

OP posts:
Deliriumoftheendless · 29/08/2020 13:49

Annabel Lwin, Neneh Cherry, The Belle Stars, most of Amazulu, We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Going To Use It, Siouxie Sioux, Toyah, Sheila E, Wendy and Lisa...

Antibles · 29/08/2020 13:49

The Vagina Monologues!

Marilyn French's The Women's Room.

I said on the other thread that to me she writes like she's just doesn't bother researching much or reading previous feminst analysis.

Deliriumoftheendless · 29/08/2020 13:50

Fatima Whitbread, Tessa Sanderson...

PhilSwagielka · 29/08/2020 13:55

@sleepyhead

I'm near ages with CM. There's no fucking way that she wouldn't have been aware of, if not read, The Female Eunuch.

Yes, the late 80s/90s were a time when a lot of young women decided that feminism was a dirty word and the second wavers were all braless, hairy man-haters, but they were still aware that feminism and feminists were a thing that existed.

And yes, Judy Blume, Nancy Friday, Cosmopolitan and endless smutty bits in popular women's fiction were doing a fine job of demystifying masterbation.

The Spice Girls had a lot to answer for. I got so fed up, even as a 12-year-old girl, with them simpering on about how Girl Power was just like feminism, except you didn't have to burn your bra, and how Geri was empowering women by shoving her tits in middle-aged record company execs' faces. I mean, I like their music but in no way were they comparable with someone like Bikini Kill.

Also The Women's Room is my favourite book of all time. One book that really did change my life.

transdimensional · 29/08/2020 13:56

She made a fair point though about how women shame each other on Twitter for being insufficiently right-on, and young feminists are scared to say what they think in case they contravene the accepted groupthink:
"So many young feminists I meet are in such a state of anxiety about accidentally saying the “wrong” thing – so terrified of making a mistake on social media, despite wanting, desperately, to be kind and good – that they would prefer to remain silent on various subjects."

notasportymum · 29/08/2020 13:56

I’m a little bit older than her and have always found her brand of feminism pretty toothless, fine if you’re in the mood for reading a bit of ‘girl talk’ while your intellect is taking a snooze I guess but nothing that’ll ever change the lot of women for the better.

greyisagoodcolour · 29/08/2020 13:57

she came from a background of being quite poor according to her biography

Yes, I know she likes to promote her working class credentials, but she didn't really have much of a working class experience. She was homeschooled, by her own account had nae pals and buggered off very quickly to start working in music magazines. living the media life since.

She may have lived in a working class area but if she wasn't actually living amongst other working class kids and families she won't really have understood what working class life, or education, was like.

justasking111 · 29/08/2020 13:59

What were those soft porn films Emmanuelle back in the 70`s but a wake up call that women were entitled to enjoy sex.

Who was the author who wrote about sex and enjoyment something to do with helicopters. Sorry my old brain cannot recall. Was back in 70`s

DianasLasso · 29/08/2020 13:59

I wonder if it's simply that Moran is having some sort of Peter Pan style midlife crisis.

I mean, it's normal to think, aged 16, that your generation has discovered sex, drugs and rock and roll for the first time ever.

Less so aged 45.

But maybe Moran is just suffering from an extreme case of arrested development.

porcelinaofthevastoceanss · 29/08/2020 14:00

CM is excruciatingly embarrassing. She also has a total inability to have her photo taken without her mouth gaping open. She is ridiculous.

NewModelArmyMayhem18 · 29/08/2020 14:00

I would have expected CM to be a politicised teen, so very surprised she was not aware of more of the feminist movers and shakers of her youth and who paved the way in earlier decades. Heck I started reading Cosmo at 14 and had a good handle on most of the feminists mentioned above. And read The Mirror Within as a teenager too Wink.

PhilSwagielka · 29/08/2020 14:00

Moran is to feminism what Naruto is to anime.

BabyLlamaZen · 29/08/2020 14:02

Honestly? She's a good writer and very relatable 🤷‍♀️

comingintomyown · 29/08/2020 14:02

I’m a Times reader and for years skip her columns, I’ve noticed she’s getting more of her stuff in. Much prefer Camilla Long who is funny without being so try hard

BabyLlamaZen · 29/08/2020 14:02

that's why!

notasportymum · 29/08/2020 14:02

"So many young feminists I meet are in such a state of anxiety about accidentally saying the “wrong” thing – so terrified of making a mistake on social media, despite wanting, desperately, to be kind and good – that they would prefer to remain silent on various subjects." astonishing insight, who’d have thought 🙄.

ChattyLion · 29/08/2020 14:03

In the new film of her book loosely based on her life, the young Caitlin gets her copy of The Female Eunuch thrown at her by scary teenage lads on her way home from secondary school..

lottiegarbanzo · 29/08/2020 14:03

I don't usually read CM but did read her 'book promotion piece' in The Times magazine last week. She's clearly a gloriously self-absorbed opinion-piece writer, who lives completely in the moment and writes from her own experience. No more, no less.

She's amusing enough as a light read. I certainly wouldn't be looking to her for popular or semi-academic feminist critique.

I was particularly astounded and amused by the self-absorption and lack of basic general knowledge and common sense in by the part where she talked about sex. How at 45, with youngish children, it's a matter of grabbing quick shags when possible but she and her husband look forward to resuming a full and leisurely sex life - maybe in about ten years time. (The joke apparently being 'we may really have to wait that long! Rather than the punchline being 'and by then I may not want to do it any more!).

Oh, Caitlin. In ten years you'll have gone through the menopause and lost your natural sex drive. You'll be promoting another book about your discovery of the former terra incognita of the menopause and female ageing, which no-one else had ever heard of or experienced until you came along to tell us about it.

Deliriumoftheendless · 29/08/2020 14:04

@justasking111

What were those soft porn films Emmanuelle back in the 70`s but a wake up call that women were entitled to enjoy sex.

Who was the author who wrote about sex and enjoyment something to do with helicopters. Sorry my old brain cannot recall. Was back in 70`s

Do you mean Erica Jong? Fear of Flying? Coined the term “zipless fuck”?
DidoLamenting · 29/08/2020 14:04

Heck I started reading Cosmo at 14 and had a good handle on most of the feminists mentioned above

Me too but that was in the 70s. Cosmo is rubbish compared to what it used to be. I'm not sure at what point in time it became rubbish but there's nothing in what Moran writes about which wasn't in 70s and 80s Cosmo.

Deliriumoftheendless · 29/08/2020 14:06

Sue Townsend, Jackie Collins, Shirley Conran, Fay Weldon...

Judashascomeintosomemoney · 29/08/2020 14:07

What the jeff is she on about? I guess if you want to get published in the Guardian Feminism section (who knew?), that is the kind of tripe you have to go with.

justasking111 · 29/08/2020 14:07

60`s novels

The feminine mystique 1963 Betty Friedan
Valley of the dolls
Who`s afraid of virginia wolf

No daft woke millenial will convince me that they invented feminism, I was there back in the sixties. We fought hard.

justasking111 · 29/08/2020 14:08

@Deliriumoftheendless

Yes that was it Erica Jong, thank you.

ChattyLion · 29/08/2020 14:08

Angela Carter
Maya Angelou
Alice Walker
Virago Press
Spare Rib