FEATURE:
Feminist Icons
PHOTO CREDIT: Jay Brooks/The Guardian
discussed a fair bit recently, I am including Caitlin Moran in my Feminist Icons feature. You can find her books here. I am going to bring some interviews with her. Finishing off with promotion around her latest book, 2023’s What About Men?, I want to start out with some interviews from an interview from 2012. Apologies if this is a little scattershot and random. What I aim to do with this series is introduced people to feminist writers and provide links to their work and drop in a few interviews. Published in 2012, Caitlin Moran spoke with NPR. They write how Moran “says that most women who don't want to be called feminists don't understand the term”. This is a writer, author and feminist whose words and work has really inspired me:
“GROSS: (Laughter) OK, great.
MORAN: (Reading) So here is the quick way of working out if you are a feminist. A - do you have a vagina? And B - do you want to be in charge of it? If you said yes to both, then congratulations. You're a feminist, because we need to reclaim the word feminism. We need to reclaim the word feminism real bad.
When statistics come in saying that only 29 percent of American women would describe themselves as feminist, and only 42 percent of British women, I used to think, what do you think feminism is, ladies? What part of liberation for women is not for you? Is it the freedom to vote, the right not to be owned by the man that you marry, the campaign for equal pay, "Vogue" by Madonna, jeans? Did all that stuff just get on your nerves, or were you just drunk at the time of survey?
These days, however, I am much calmer, since I realize that it's actually technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism, you wouldn't be allowed to have a debate on a woman's place in society. You'd be too busy giving birth on the kitchen floor, biting down on a wooden spoon so as not to disturb the men's card game, before going back to hoeing the rutabaga field.
GROSS: Thank you for reading that. That's Caitlin Moran, reading from her new book "How To Be A Woman." So why do you think so many people, so many women, don't want to be associated with the word feminism?
MORAN: I think it's simply because they don't know what it means. When - one of the reasons that I wanted to write a whole book about feminism, rather than just endlessly wanging on about it in a bar - which had previously been my technique in order to spread the word for the sisterhood - it was because I was meeting a lot of younger women. And I would kind of confidently say oh, well, you know, we're all feminists here.
And they would, with a look of horror, as if I had just banged them on the knee with a fork, go no, I'm not a feminist. And you go, what do you mean? And, you know, you kind of - you run through kind of, you know, what being a feminist means, sort of like voting and, you know, rape being illegal and not being a legal possession of your husband.
And they go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, we're into all of that. I said, well, you are a feminist then. Women are feminist by default. And you live in a feminist world. The first world is feminist. You are educated equally to boys. You're expected to go into equal employment with boys. In a marriage, you are legally equal. So, you know, you cannot deny we live in a feminist world.
GROSS: What made you realize that?
MORAN: I never didn't realize it. I was, I mean, I was brought up in a kind of, you know, very hippie, liberal family. And it was just always automatically assumed that men and women were equal and indeed superior. I mean, when you've got a mother who's given birth to eight children, you know, often without any kind of medical intervention - just she gave birth to one of my brothers sort of on the bedroom floor in front of all of us -you know, you see that women are fairly capable.
So that was why it was always weird kind of, you know, whenever we did have a television - our possession of a television was sporadic because we were quite poor, and they would often be repossessed. But whenever we did have a TV, and you'd see the women on television, you'd be like, why are these women kind of pretending to be stupid or just kind of - just being all blonde and giggly and kind of only operating as an adjunct to the male characters? You know, why aren't the women as important as the men?”.
The mother of teenage daughters, in 2020 for The Guardian, Caitlin Moran wrote how she marvels at some of the things she got wrong in How to Be a Woman. However, there is a lot she got right! I guess things changed and shifted in the years after that book was released (2011). I would urge everyone to read all of her books. Even if some observations are not quite accurate or Moran things they it is dated, they are essential reading. Moran speaking about her experiences as a woman:
“What are the key changes since I wrote How To Be A Woman? Mainly, they are incredibly positive: when I see what my teenage daughters are listening to, reading or watching, whether it’s Michaela Coel in I May Destroy You staring at a menstrual blood clot on her bed, Lizzo singing about body positivity, the Broad City girls hustling for their dollar in NYC, Jameela Jamil showing off her stretch marks, Janelle Monae singing about bisexuality, or Queenie hitting the clubs, living her best life and surviving the asshats, I think, with great satisfaction, how this is the the best era for joyous, mainstream feminist role models young women have ever had. In 1985, I had the choice of Margaret Thatcher or Miss Piggy. Back then, young women really had to make do.
The only thing I would do, as someone who is now officially an Old Crone – these are my Hag Years, and I am proud of them – is caution all these amazing, strident young maids: don’t eat your sisters. While feminism’s online call-out culture stems from good intentions – to accelerate progress, to hold people to account – it is noticeable that there is barely a feminist of the last 10 years, whether it be a pop star, comedian, academic, businesswoman, politician or activist, who hasn’t, at some point, been brutally hauled across the social media coals for getting an aspect of feminism “wrong”.
These days, there is hypervigilance around talking about being a woman that makes “being a woman” feel like something a bit effortful, and perilous, and something you could publicly fail at – which is a miserable climate to be young in. One enduring aspect of being young is believing in moral absolutism. We’ve all done it: I remember thinking I would never be friends with someone who preferred the Stone Roses over Happy Mondays. But this is, undeniably, a far more inflexible and judgmental era than when I was a teenager, or young woman.
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. This puts the future of feminism in a risky position because online activism is, like love and care, unpaid work. And when women shame each other for free, for months on end, the patriarchy simply sits back smoking a big cigar, touching its genitals, and murmuring, “Yes, ladies, yes, keep fighting. Could some of you – the younger, sexier ones – maybe put on a bikini? And do it in this pool of jelly?”
From my 45-year-old Witch Throne, where I have seen feminism ebb, flow and ebb again, I feel I should croakingly remind everyone, once more, about the most crucial, brilliant, sometimes frustrating thing about feminism: it’s really not a science. It has no rules. It’s still just an idea, created by millions, over centuries, and it can only survive if the next generation feels able to kick ideas around, ask questions, make mistakes and reinvent the concept over and over, so we can build the next wave of feminism. And the next. And the next.
Feminism is at its best when it looks like freedom. When it remembers that you must never underestimate the importance of progress looking like it could, among other things, be fun. When it’s the place where women can feel relaxed, and hopeful in their bones. When they feel so connected with each other that, sometimes, they can go up to strangers on a train at 10am on a Tuesday, happily shouting about how they have just discovered another new, brilliant thing about being a woman”.
Caitlin Moran has started new conversation about feminism. For What About Men?, she turned her focus on men. Realising how there isn’t a positive men’s movement. It is a really fascinating book that got a lot of unfair backlash and criticism – mostly from men. I want to move to an interview with GQ. Again, I am quoting various bits from interviews to give you a broad overview of Caitlin Moran. I would urge people to read further and definitely seek out her books:
“One of the tricky things Moran has to navigate is that her talking points about why men are in peril put her in strange company with those bogeymen currently stalking our classrooms: Tate, Jordan Peterson and a thousand imitators of their psuedo-intellectual schtick who ooze down TikTok’s FYP like an oil spill, coating our teenage boys’ brains with muddled convictions about “body counts” and the “proper” role of women alongside dubious advice about stock trading and how to bench press. Anyone who has been longing to read a proper, funny takedown of either charlatan will find much to enjoy in What About Men?; Peterson in particular brings out the ferocious best in Moran’s writing.
"Whenever Peterson hits on a truth, it’s usually someone else's" In this exclusive extract from her new book What About Men, Caitlin Moran takes aim at the Canadian author and his 12 Rules for Life
“I didn’t go to university, but when Time magazine is calling [Peterson] the most important intellectual of our time, I’m reading his book going: ‘No! This is either stuff pulled from other people or stuff your Mum would say!’” she says, “undercut with the fact that he's a very depressive, fundamentalist Christian whose Twitter feed just tells you where he's at now – it's all climate denial, rampant, really awful transphobia and this belief that Justin Trudeau is somehow the Antichrist.”
We return to her original point, about who has paid the price while the conversation around men has soured. “The stakes in this are teenage boys. To men and women of my generation, it’s a recent corrective that feminism is so positive – women are the future! Beyoncé! Feminist clubs and vagina merchandise on Etsy! We don’t realise that for 15-year-old boys, that’s all they’ve grown up with. For them, they’re going ‘When was the last time anyone said anything good about boys?’”
Nothing visits misery upon the world like a young man who hates himself. In the end, if there’s a self-esteem crisis developing among men, people of all genders will bear the load of it. In the suicide epidemic, for example, which is the biggest killer of men under 50, it is often female relatives who are left to pick up the pieces. Over the past decade, it has sometimes felt like we’ve lost sight of how interconnected our fates are. Men have benefitted hugely from women becoming more empowered over the past decade. It’s resulted in better conversations, stronger workplaces, plenty of great art. If we can find a positive narrative for men – a way to make just being a man something to celebrate, without leaning into the regressive cruelty of Tate – maybe we can start to return the favour.
For what it’s worth, the dog line made me laugh out loud
Moran suggests the answer isn’t to reverse feminism but to be inspired by it: for men to get our own adjacent little thing going. “Feminism isn’t a set of rules about women,” she says. “It's a set of tools for understanding gender. So if we want to reinvent men, you go and look at these tools that we invented that allow you to go: is this because of my gender? Why is this a problem? I don't like these clichés about my gender.”
Moran’s attempts to kickstart this positive narrative around men make up the bulk of the book. While some sections feel more aimed at providing eureka moments for middle-aged mums – chapters on “The Cock and Balls of Men” and pornography cover ground we’re pretty familiar with, thanks very much – What About Men? ends with a list of characteristics she has decided, with the help of her Twitter followers, are typical of men when they are at their best. It includes things like “nonjudgmental”, “protective”, “brave”, “joyous” – before Moran realises she’s been describing a dog.
This passage – which recently ran as an extract in The Times – has already attracted a backlash to the book, an early sign of the choppy water Moran is about to swim into. For what it’s worth, the dog line made me laugh out loud, and realise how much we’ve desperately needed some levity in the conversation around masculinity. It’s all become so loaded, so tense, so joyless.
Since How To Be A Woman, Moran has, in her own words, been “cancelled 20 times”, her politics found wanting by younger generations. Others this week have already pointed out that not all well-meaning men have spent the past decade sitting on their hands – many have started organisations and charities aimed at tackling the crisis facing young boys. Moran is not inventing the idea of a positive conversation around men any more than she invented feminism in 2011. But what her book does, I think, is give a green light for the discourse to get a little lighter, a little more human, a little less po-faced and uptight and – frankly – scared.
“Women are at peak ‘Don't give a fuck’ at the moment,” Moran says. “You are so richly rewarded if you find a taboo and bust it. Women have found the perfect tone to that, which doesn’t hurt anyone. Men haven’t found that yet”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Tim Lane
I am going to end with an interview from TIME. I am going to write more about Caitlin Moran in future features. Do her proper justice. However, as a modern feminist icon and one of our most important writers, I did want to revisit her work. In terms of where she goes next, I am fascinated to see what she will cover. I think Moran will focus on positivity and serotonin. Writing about women and their experiences but bringing joy into the mix:
“How worried should women be about plight of modern men? What with overcoming the imbalance in leadership, eliminating the gender wage gap, and figuring out how to address sexual assault, women have quite a lot on their plate already. Then again, it's hard to deny that men are struggling. They are more likely to be imprisoned, to be homeless, and to be unemployed and less likely to graduate from college. Recently a new (and unexpected) champion added her name to the list of people officially concerned about men's predicament: the feminist writer Caitlin Moran.
“You just described something as feminism which feels more like just women being supportive of each other. Are they the same?
The feminist movement goes, "Let's collectively not just change our own lives and solve our own problems, but let's change legislation. Let's change business. Let's change the structure." Each chapter in my book is a problem that men face that is specific to their gender. About half of their problems are things that could just be solved by brotherhood, you know, talking to each other and helping each other. But the other half do need some kind of systemic change, whether it be an education, in employment, in medical care, in mental health.
Moran's Rule No. 2 is that the patriarchy is screwing over men as hard as it's screwing over women. Is it patriarchy or is it changes in technology and global trade?
I think all men presume they're in the patriarchy, and they're winning. And it's like, no, no, no. There's 10 guys at the top of this tree, who are doing OK, but you're being f-cked over as well because you're the guy that’s scared he’s about to be punched when you go to school. You're the one that's been told not to cry. You're the one that doesn't have paternity leave. The advantage women have is that we talk about the patriarchy, and we know how it disadvantages us. Men haven't yet started the conversation. So they're only about 50 years behind us in terms of talking about gender.
Did writing this book you change your mind about men?
If you're a 15-year-old boy, in the last 10 years, [female empowerment] is all you will ever have heard. Their dads know that this is a very recent and mild corrective to 10,000 years of patriarchy because they can remember a childhood of rampant sexism everywhere. The boys just don't have that perspective. And so they are angry.
I'm wondering what you think your chances are, as a noted feminist, of getting young men to read your book?
My favorite thing is to find an area that's taboo, shameful, dark, difficult, and awkward, anything that's usually hard to start a conversation about, and to find a way of starting a conversation about that, where you can basically blame me. Mums can read this and they can find a sort of modern, relaxed, humorous, realistic way to talk to their sons about things like violence and extreme online pornography, which would otherwise be a difficult topic to raise in the middle of Christmas Day”.
Someone whose work I really love and someone whose books I think everyone should own. If you are not familiar with her work then go and seek her out. I am going to end things there. An incredible writer whose work has touched and inspired so many girls and women, I also think many men have connected with her words – I most definitely have! I cannot wait to follow her career going forward. Even though she is a journalist who writes regularly for The Times, there is something about her books that is especially compelling. I love the way she writes. For those with very little Caitlin Moran in their collection, go and…
ADD her to your bookshelf.