Caitlin Moran article 1 Jul in Guardian

[funnelfan]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jul/01/caitlin-moran-whats-gone-wrong-for-men-and-the-thing-that-can-fix-them?

I’m still not sure how to respond to this. I love Caitlin's writing and I find it hard to disagree with anything she’s written here, so I’ll probably buy the book as I have most of her others.

However, however, one thing jumped out at me. Why is it up to women to tell men they must fix the terrible issues they have with homophobia, bullying, loneliness, suicide etc, and show them how to do it? There’s great groups out there like shed clubs etc that are trying to get the message out that “it’s ok to be not ok”. Isn’t it a bit patronising to be saying mean should be using the women’s examples of support as the way forward for men?

Of course women who are sisters, mothers, daughters, friends etc will always be concerned about their male loved ones in distress. But the overall theme of the article as I read it leans towards women being the default support-human in showing them the way and I’m uncomfortable with that. On the other hand, we also see what happens when men start campaigning for rights on their own and it isn’t very pretty.

so I’m not sure how to reconcile my thoughts at the moment. Interestingly, “trans” issues did not even get a sniff of a mention in the article, and I don’t know whether that’s because Caitlin seems to avoid the topic entirely anyway so it’s not in the book, or whether it’s because it’s the Guardian and what she wrote in the book may not fit with their current thinking.

Maybe it's because I'm old, but I find her style really hard to get along with, it just seems disjointed.
There's also a chunk of me that's wondering how she feels entitled to make pronouncements to women about what they should be doing. What is she? I see nothing in her that makes me think her opinions of any value.
But mostly I don't want to hear anything from a woman who has ignored trans issues. It's a flipping big elephant in the room.

I think she's gone off the boil.

Yes I can't get on with her articles in the Times, though she seems popular

I know in school we were discussing most of those issues 15 years ago relating to boys achievement as were lots of other people. She doesn’t seem to have done her research. There’s loads of info out there - there’s just the lack of resources to implement it. Sports and clubs are the traditional way men communicate - loads of studies have discussed the importance of this - but school days and budgets are being squeezed.

I think it is changing for the better in some aspects. There was a period where men were to be taken the mick out of on all the adverts. I love the advert on recently with the girl talking to her dad about bullying. There finally seems to be a shift against men always being ‘fools’ in the home in ads.

She has obviously come round to differences between the sexes. Now if she could see that boys/men can wear makeup and glittery clothes and it’s fine and they will still be boys/men. Then being a boy/man is fixed however much you change body parts. And those fixed sex differences mean there should be different sporting, social care and medical services for males and females. And laws and services shouldn’t be changed to alter single sex provision as it’s there for practical and ethical reasons. And then she’s got it.

She is v didactic opinionated and bombastic - and a performative grifter but then mist ‘opinion columnists ‘ are like that of necessity - only saving grace is she doesn’t drone/bang on about her perfect family/life 👍🏿☘️

I think I read her first book (all that "we lived ten to a bedroom, I was always the one to get the lukewarm bath after my seven siblings, and ooh, what's this, boys are interested in me, sod that!" schtick).

I actually found it quite refreshing, she didn't take herself too seriously, and it's apparent she has very close family bonds.

I hate to bring every story around to trans, but I believe I've read comments alluding to her being a TRA ally, maybe not overly vocal, but she seems fine with our addled male friends considering themselves female.

To my mind, this disqualifies her Strong Female Advocate part she's created for herself.

I guarantee you all there was no chance that had a boy snuck into the girls loo at her school, or the TopShop changing room she'd have used as a teen, or in the football team or cycling event at school, that she'd have been a trans ally.

Do we really think the Strong Female Advocate in that first book, her struggles with puberty, her efforts to get a career, reconcile her family poverty upbringing, would have countenanced letting any boy or man unfairly ahead of her in the queue of life, or take her (or female siblings, schoolchums, mates) chances in sport and work, and those places she'd only ever expect to see any other females?

Not on your life.

She doesn't have anything new to say. One of the big problems is that she never references work by any other feminists, so she imagines she's the first person to notice that men have higher suicide rates or are a bit emotionally repressed. She's an amusing and gifted writer, but while that carried her a long way when she was young, it doesn't really cut the mustard when you're pushing 50. In my humble opinion.

Style over substance? Tbh I'm not sure why that first book would be sufficient evidence of a commentator with a career in this area decades later.

Quite early in this article, she says that she's never been your average man-hating feminist (paraphrasing). And she can sod right off after that to be honest. We get it Caitlin, you're 'not like the other girls' 🙄

I read her first book and thought some of it was great, especially the chapter about the decision to have an abortion. Brave stuff

On the whole though, I find the contrived 90s teenager-y persona extremely tiresome. And she has been totally shit on the gender critical front

Her writing style is brilliant, clever and funny.

What she writes about is either repetitive or as though she's discovered something no one else knows about. When she did the column on getting a dog I stopped reading her.

Re your last comment, I thought as much. I'm afraid as a result, she's a little fake as a champion of women, yes?

You can't forge a whole career about being a woman, what it is to be one, if you're going to deconstruct the whole category.

What is she gonna say, that Suzee Edee Izzard really was a girl when his teenage incident in the girls loo happened in the 70s?

That would have been the time that she was soon to become a teenager and negotiate the sex class based issues she's documented. You can't moan about those if anyone can be in your sex class.

I'm very pro choice for any woman who wants to have an abortion for any reason.
But when she wrote (in one of her books, can't remember which) that the decision she took to have an abortion was very matter of fact like choosing new kitchen units, it left me cold. Many women have abortions and don't feel a thing about it and that's fine, but her comments were incredibly insensitive to
women who've experienced this as a difficult or traumatic event. Just felt it was a very shock jock comment and I stopped reading her after this.

Absolutely, that's exactly what I'm led to think by her past writing. Not on your life would she have budged up gladly.

But then again... people like Margaret Atwood have said some surprising things soooo..who knows? We live in a back to front circus mirror time so any about turn and incongruity is possible.

Having said that I like her writing and I'm sure this book would be very interesting. The fact CM says v little on the whole trans thing makes me think this is at least a tricky subject

'Re your last comment, I thought as much. I'm afraid as a result, she's a little fake as a champion of women, yes?'

Well, absolutely. I think she's a great self promoter, but not much of a champion for women in general

'But when she wrote (in one of her books, can't remember which) that the decision she took to have an abortion was very matter of fact like choosing new kitchen units, it left me cold'

I loved that, I thought it was a really brave thing to say. Yes some women agonise over the decision to terminate, but that's not her story. I think (from memory) she had very complex feelings about the abortion but the decision itself was obvious and straightforward for her. I feel very strongly that we need to hear those sorts of stories as well as the more difficult and even regretful stories about abortion

What she writes about is either repetitive

I think she’s finally got all the mileage she can out of being the eldest of numerous home-schooled children raised on benefits in a council house in Wolverhampton (i.e. large parts of ‘How to be a Woman’, a sitcom, a couple of novels and a film)

or as though she's discovered something no one else knows about

I remember reading an interview with her about one of her novels (How To Be Famous?) and she was very pleased that she had written a scene where the main character takes a man’s virginity. Because ‘you don’t read about women taking men’s virginity’. Erm, except you do, in Ian McEwan’s ‘The Innocent.’ And ‘Outlander’ by Diana Gabaldon. Two very different books, neither of which are obscure, and that’s just off the top of my head. I thought Caitlin was a big reader.

But yes, the Huge Elephant not being talked about in that Grauniad article is trans. If she’s going to be doing promotion for her new book, she’s going to be asked about it, surely? “What is a man, Caitlin?”

I didn't read it like that. I thought it was quite refreshing to have someone in the public eye be quite straightforward and rational about the decision. I don't think it was cold. I think there's an expectation of women to be upset about having an abortion and if you're not, then there something wrong with that.

I had the misfortune to see her being interviewed by Lorraine on ITV.
My main take was that she feels women have had all the attention for the last century, We have had Feminism and that’s meant we’re now allowed to wear trousers!
So we must now turn our attention to the men and sort them all out!

I can’t see who will buy this book. Men won’t because, why would they, and the title alone should put most women off.

Men need to sort themselves out. And support women, who are under threat because of those men who can't sort themselves out.

It's really as simple as that.

Tbh, I can see why Moran would be a trans ally, as a woman, her helping them to find their authentic selves...as women.

I caught her on Lorraine (which was on to reset the internet/aerial something) saying that boys were saying to her teen daughters they had it worse now and I assumed the next sentence would be “so we’ve al long way still to go” but she said that when she thought about it they were right! So weird for someone who is about supporting woman and girls. Things have come a long way but not that bloody far, I am a feminist but not over well read or up to date but even I know that some men’s problems also stem from misogyny. Anyway I stopped watching cause the issue was fixed and I had to get back to work because I work flexi to do school runs and care for elderly parents. Unlike my brother.

The last thing men need is Moran mothering them. We have our own ways to personal betterment and it doesn't need her brand. And I say that as someone who likes her early writing and hearing of her early family experience.

If she really wants to help men, she can break the mould, and help contribute to a truthful discussion on gender, that would mean something.

No, modern man needs the right sort of positive male role models. Meaning not Andrew Tate. There's a lot of soul searching my side of the divide needs to do.

Not sure what Moran can practically offer here.

I'm not a CM fan, but I totally disagree with that. If women do not feel traumatised by abortion, they should be 100% free to say so. It's ridiculous to ask them to censor a truthful account of their experience, because someone else has found the same life event traumatic. And it feeds an anti-choice agenda that all women are traumatised by abortion, which just isn't the case.

CM was not telling anyone else how to think about their abortion, she was just being honest about her own.

Some women experience giving birth as deeply traumatic. Would you tell women who have a good delivery to censor themselves because other women are traumatised?

I did enjoy her first book, but she only has about 6 ideas, which she has recycled endlessly for the last 20 years.

And, if I ever hear another word about her childhood, it will be too soon. It's fundamentally dishonest too, as her parents blatantly were not a classic working class family, living in deprivation, whatever she pretends. She tends to gloss over exactly why they were all living on benefits and home-schooling, but I think her parents were hippies, consciously pursuing an alternative lifestyle - which is fine (obviously, as a child, she didn't have a choice in the matter), but it feels like she now cos-plays having had a deprived childhood.

I really liked the way she wrote about her abortion too. It's always presented as something traumatic and dreadful and regretted so to read about one without guilt or shame was v refreshing.

She's not written anything mich worth reading since.

I am not a CM fan, but for anyone looking for a very moving take on abortion, in which the right not to be traumatised by it is centred, listen to the episode of the podcast You're Wong About called Your Abortion Stories. (I don't generally support that podcast as they are very much TRA, but that episode specifically is very good).

Should read You're Wrong About!