Caitlin Moran's "How To be a Woman"

[ismnotwasm]

I'm thinking about reading this; I'm not sure about the quote about history though, its a turn off unless its been taken out of context or misunderstood. I can deal with the rest if it, whether I agree or disagree. Has anyone read this book, or know anyone who has?

"The Saturday interview: Caitlin Moran
"Caitlin Moran's new book, How to Be a Woman, is a no-holds-barred polemic (with lots of jokes) about modern feminism."

What Gaga's also done, Moran says now, sitting in her sunny north London garden, talking a blue streak, sentences peppered with the emphases and jokes that appear on her Twitter feed or in her prose as exclamation marks, ironic caps, sentences beginning with 'SCREAM', "is open up a space where people who couldn't get together can get together. You see her on tour – and it's anyone who's freaky or outsider: all the gays, all the fat chicks, people with wonky eyes – an amazing panoply of people – and she's just opened up this space [and said,] 'You can all talk speakeasy, it's safe here.'"

Which is exactly what Moran has aimed to do with her new book, How to Be a Woman: make a space where everyone can have a conversation in which they are not cowed, or (as is unfortunately often the case) repelled, by received notions of feminism: that sisterhood trumps all ("women should be able to bitch about other women – being a feminist doesn't mean you're a Buddhist&quot ; that a love for fashion or men is a betrayal; that serious feminist discourse comes from the academy. A conversation in which anything can be said, as long as it's civil, and kind, and where the guiding principles are, "Does this apply to men, too?" and "is it polite?" – if not, call time on it. This is not to be in the slightest bit lackadaisical – Moran's is a rallying cry to a "broken windows" or zero-tolerance philosophy of feminism, in which the whole point is to sweat the small stuff – "OK! magazine, £600 handbags, tiny pants, Brazilians, stupid hen nights or Katie Price" – in order, as she puts it, paraphrasing Rudy Giuliani, to stop squatters breaking in and taking over the whole building. To discuss it, laugh at it, treat it, above all, with as much common sense as it is possible to muster.

This takes Moran to some interesting places: porn is fine, she likes porn – it's the porn industry that's the problem, being "offensive, sclerotic, depressing, emotionally bankrupt" and entirely geared to men. "Ban it? Feminism doesn't need to start BANNING pornography. It needs to start MAKING it." Lap-dancing is not fine, but pole-dancing and burlesque are. Heels are not empowering – they are silly and impossible to walk in. Brazilians (the wax jobs, not the people) are a horror. She teaches her daughters to pity the girls on MTV, and that there are consequences to dressing like them when you're too young: "Even if you're not getting raped, but you have some bloke who's not listening to what you're saying, he's just looking at your legs – you don't necessarily realise, when you're still a little kid in your head, that that's what's happening. So, you know, you have the option to put your legs away and simply engage this person in conversation by smiling instead." Having a cleaner is not anti-feminist, children do not have to be had, abortions do not have to be regretted, and "I don't think that women being seen as inferior is a prejudice based on male hatred of women. When you look at history" – achievements in arts, science, exploration, for instance – "it's a prejudice based on simple fact." Few feminists dare to say such basic things, on the assumption that any admission of weakness will lead to whole-scale loss of the war; paradoxically, of course, the Manichean worldview that results has led to a consistent 71% of American women and 58% of British women who won't describe themselves as feminists at all.

And Moran has set out to woo them back. Common sense will do a good part of the job, she hopes – the abiding tone of the book is one of amused, somewhat hectic reasonableness, deliberately designed to take the heat out of things and drag the disaffected, and especially the young (get them before they have children and they're too tired to fight), back to basics without making them feel that they're being dragged – "not to go, 'You should be into feminism because it's good for you, like fibre.' It should be as exciting as rock'n'roll, you know? All the little checks and things that you do in a society where you're judged by the way you look – that's just knackering. You should have the same liberation as rock'n'roll about it – fuck it! It's amazing! Brilliant! Yeah!" – and above all, funny. "The main thing I'm interested in is making jokes, really. The main thing I'd define myself as is as a humourist, and there's so many jokes to be made that haven't been made, because we haven't talked about this stuff, you know? I think there are brilliant jokes to be made about abortion, and we should be able to talk about this in the way that we make jokes about death – you should be able to make jokes about everything." She says she doesn't mind that her book is classified, for bookshop purposes, under humour (far better than travel, where, bafflingly, it ended up first). "But you know," she adds, some rapid-fire sentences later, "I would rend my garments if anybody said that the humour was to the detriment of the polemic."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/jun/18/caitlin-moran-interview-book-extract

[seabeyond]

1. this was hard to read. i do not think i am into her humor. a couple things popped out

Last edited Sun Jul 22, 2012, 01:17 PM - Edit history (1)

about this. it was interesting. i also read all the replies on this article to try to better understand. i guess she is a column writer for a paper and so known. i have never heard of her, or read her stuff

she seems to set feminism back. and is all over the map, allowing personal preference, instead of reason and thought to dictate the right and wrong. that in itself was interesting. claiming that we should be all accepting of women, as she was not thru out this piece i read, one way or another. it was certainly divisive.

porn is good (cause she likes it) without any consideration for all the issues with it, lap dance bad, strippin good, high heals bad.

did i get that right?

teach daughters to feel "sorry" for those girls on mtv. seemed to be a poor way to call out destructive behavior so her own daughters would not be influenced by a behavior she obviously had an issue with not to mention what she creates for the girls on mtv in a condescending manner and is teaching the daughters.

and lastly.... you know, since the tosh thing, i have been listening to a lot of comedians. to get a feel of what is out there. there was a lot of push to equate what tosh did with acceptance of male rape and how we think it is funny. the only thing i can do before discussing is educate myself. so i have been listening to blue collar comedy and raw dog comedy. generally we listen to a lot of laugh u.s.a. that is more family oriented comedy. even the many hours... lots of hours, trips ect., i have found that after a while it is ENOUGH of the damn snide jokes about women in all ways. so many comedians (males) over and over and over using women as a continued, repeated, never ending butt of the joke.

here lately, listening to blue collar and raw dog, it is dissing women thru raunch.

the "cunt" .... ya i said c. what of it. c. see i can say c.

laugh laugh.

like wtf? what comedy or joke is that. acting like a little boy calling a woman c. see, i can say the word. oh, wow. that is so fuckin funny.

so when we have another comedian claiming that what we really need is more jokes about women, i am not right there with her.

and i have yet to hear a comedian degrade men on the comedy shows. a lot of elbowing men like see who we are, but really these jokes are all about badge of honor of men never growing up. wink.

[ismnotwasm]

2. That was my initial impression

I like the idea of making feminism more , I don't know, 'acceptable' to women i guess? I like humor when it's skillful and I that the approach is a good one. BUT, this woman seems to fly all over the map. Like I said, I would read her if I thought whether I agree or not on the issues you mentioned if somehow there was a greater good kind of message in the book.

Feminists making porn? It would be called something else, erotica or what have you and the acid test for its success would be that the men who see women as a conglomeration of body parts and orifices would hate it.

Another turn off is that the book is a new release from Apple for the iPad, the same people who have had the "Fifty Shades of Grey" trilogy as a bestseller for weeks now. Ugh.

I'll hold off see if some feminist blogs review her.

Thank you. Very good points, by the way. I didn't read the comments. It's a rare comedy that can tackle the topic of gender without degrading women in that way so common most people think its 'normal' and therefore harmless as well as actually funny.

[seabeyond]

3. well, see and with the 50 shades, tattoo girl, with me spending so much time reading,

and seeing a pattern of conditioning.... to bring degradation of women as a norm, and fun.... yea, lol. that even bothers me more.

if somehow there was a greater good kind of message in the book.

i can do that. and some kind of a basic, consistent message she is going with. i cannot do all over the board, seeing contradictions or i am going to spend all my time calling out the hypocrisy.


IF there is feminist porn, then the lens would have to SHIFT from the male gaze to the female gaze. this would have to be the porn. the only real example i have seen.... ever. even the old spice has to do it verbally.

except the underwear not so pulled down, going up the ass, lol lol. but, the porn would have to be that gaze on the man exclusively, with the women as irrelevant.

[ismnotwasm]

4. See, that was erotic

For heterosexual women anyway. Womens bodies are so objectified it would be damn near impossible, not completely I think, but damn near to do a similar ad using a woman. It's really sad when you think about it, we lose so much through the eyes of contemporary porn.

[redqueen]

5. Lap dancing is not fine, but pole dancing and burlesque are?

What's really amusing is that she (and sadly, many others) seem to think she's actually discovered something new. Some new, revolutionary message about feminism. No, she's just saying some of the same things that have been said for decades, interspersed with sexist 'comedy' and nonsense like the above.

As y'all said she's all over the map. There may be more good than bad in the book, but I'm not wasting any time on it either way.