Caitlin Moran: Women have won nothing

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 13:30:00 +0000

I first fell for Times of London columnist Caitlin Moran when I read her memoir-cum-feminist-treatise “How to Be a Woman” — laughing out loud as she evoked the experience of growing up working-class in England. I felt an instant kinship with her since my working-class parents had fled with me in tow to the United States to escape a system that kept them bound to their class status. Reading her book gave me a sense of what my life might have been like had we stayed. But I was also taken with her raw candor, a feminist who just told it like she saw it, in a world so determined to shut women up.

So I was eager to interview her about feminism, with her new book publishing here on Nov. 6 (it’s already out in the U.K.): "Moranthology," a collection of essays from her columns at the Times, where she has been writing since 1992. Our conversation had been commissioned by Bitch magazine. And then, in a strange turn of events, Bitch's editor-in-chief Kjerstin Johnson killed it when Moran tweeted, on Oct. 5, something that would bring opprobrium — from all corners — down on the writer's head. Moran is no stranger to controversy — she has more than a few detractors, namely Katie Roiphe and Heather Wilhelm, who've both derided her interpretation of feminism as being crazy, jaded, embarrassing and mortifying — but still, I was astonished that a feminist magazine would censor another feminist. Another woman, period.

Salon.com > Bitch magazine

Caitlin Moran: Women have won nothing