The nerve of Caitlin Moran

[RoyalCorgi]

I've just read an interview with Caitlin Moran in the Radio Times.

This is one of her answers to a question about feminism: "The feminist movement is a bit quiet now, but I'm a born optimist."

A BIT QUIET? Where the hell have you been for the past 10 years? The feminist movement has been more active than at any time since the 1970s. Among the many, many feminist organisations that have been active in the past few years are Women's Rights Network, Fair Play For Women, Woman's Place UK, FiLiA, Let Women Speak, Sex Matters, For Women Scotland, Merched Cymru, the ReSisters, Labour Women's Declaration and many more.

Those women have held huge public meetings, conferences and rallies. They've published petitions signed by hundreds of thousands. They've written countless letters to politicians and policymakers. They've published reports. They've engaged, most significantly - and most successfully - in numerous legal actions, funded through donations by ordinary women. One of those legal actions went all the way to the Supreme Court, resulting in probably the most important landmark decision on women's rights in the last 50 years.

"Bit quiet" my arse. What is wrong with the woman?

Well exactly. Obviously TERFS don't count as proper feminists. 🙄
So anything they do isn't feminism it's just transphobic bigotry or something.
Gah!

IIRC in her book ‘How to be a Woman’ Caitlin Moran referred to Katie Price as ‘Vichy France with tits’. Which is ironic.

Look what Janice Turner, Julie Bindel and Suzanne Moore did, and faced as a result of their early forays into this topic (I believe at least one of these women is friends with Moran).

Not everyone can be as brave as them, and Caitlin Moran certainly isn't. But to have the gall to say this as well as being cowardly. Pffft.

I found feminism (proper makes-you-unpopular feminism) as a result of this.

I'm sure I'm not the only one. I now see what Moran and what I thought was feminism was decidedly not.

She’s nowhere near as smart as she thinks she is and just wants to appear ‘down with the kids.’ Sad really.

I always liked Caitlin - I'd credit her 'How To Be A Woman' with making me think it was OK to be an actual feminist, having been imbued with faux-feminist ladette culture in the 90s and the over-arching idea that "You don't want to be a feminist, men won't like you'. I also really liked her CelebWatch column.

But now I just cannot get past how much she - like other 'gobby feminist' types (Jo Brand, I'm pointing at you, Sophie Cunningham-style) - ran away and left the rest of us to fight, when they had voices and influence that could have made such a huge difference.

We won't forget.

“Stealing things from men” what a shite take.

I'm reading The Group by Mary McCarthy about the feminist pioneers back in the 30s. She should go back and read it.

I agree.

Caitlin is capable of being a very good writer when taking on serious topics - I remember her article when Thatcher died. But even that article has her weak point of always talking about herself and her own experiences.

I approach her in the same way I do Eddie Izzard. Early stuff was great and in some ways pioneering. Not so much now. I don’t think she’s full on GI/TRA as she’d have said so by now. I strongly suspect she is a sex realist but for whatever reason she’s decided to stay quiet in public, whether that’s for the sake of her career or her family or some other reason.

I totally get ordinary women staying quiet if they are working in a captured organisation and they have mortgages/rents and kids and commitments and can’t afford to lose their jobs. The kind of women that JKR said she is standing up for in their behalf because she can. While Caitlin is not as good a writer as JKR, I doubt very much she’ll be facing a housing crisis if she got a bit of pushback on socials. Maybe it’s the threats/violence that’s the deterrent? Given her self proclamation as feminist, she could well have already had abuse from MRAs and wants to avoid the attention of bash back etc, especially of against her kids.

I agree, if she was a genderist she’d be hunting with the pack. She clearly isn’t a full on one.

I agree re: her motivations. I think little of her now for taking the money for saying the's a feminist and letting her friends take all the crap. If it's too scary (and it is) write about something else, Caitlin.

She was so focused working on her "I'm crazy me" face she failed to notice the rise of gender woo.

Fgs. This ‘women supporting women’, shite. Again.

I can’t stand Caitlin Moran. She’s a hypocrite and is significantly less interesting than she thinks she is.

She's annoyed me for 20+ years. There was always something vapid and shallow about what she had to say - catchy on the surface, but not a lot of depth. We read a book of hers at my bookgroup and I wasn't impressed by the contents.

I have nothing but utter contempt for this woman. She has betrayed women entirely at their hour of need, whilst getting rich from pretending to be a feminist. Much like Deborah Frances-White.

Women like Caitlin Moran, who left the hard yards for other women to do, challenge my inner Dworkin.
Increasingly so.

She’s just so…disappointing as a feminist

Stealing our shit back more like - the shit they’ve stolen from us is incalculable

Oh, come on, we all know Caitlin just wants an easy life where she can churn out the occasional fluffy opinion piece and men everyone likes her and thinks she’s, like, really cool.

The last ten years of feminism has been a noisy, messy, scary shitshow and altogether a hard fucking graft. Some brave women have lost jobs, lost friends, lost reputations and sacrificed their own safety standing up for other women.

Thats not Caitlin’s type of feminism.

It’s not fun.

It doesn’t involve a bit of a giggle about periods and tits and silly-but-loveable boys.

It involves more work than quaffing a few glasses of vino in bed and typing some shite about grrrl power on your iPad before tuning in to watch How To Be A Woman…sorry, I mean Ru Paul’s Drag Race.

I lost respect for her during the trans debate, but to say feminism has gone quiet is unbelievably head-up-your-own-arse.

This

Precisely this.
To paraphrase Logan Roy, she's just not a serious person.

Funny how these people who made their money being a "feminist" struggle to have empathy with women.

Its an issue with people who are so focused on being on the cutting edge of culture that they lose their idea of reality.

My favourite saying is "its great to have an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out"

Zoe Williams is the worst. Honestly nothing she says makes any sense or ever has.

NB I have never stolen any man’s trousers. Nor, come to think of it have I been to space. And as for women having sex - pretty sure that has been going on for a long long time before the last century and that it is almost the only occupation men don’t feel women steal from them.