Laurie Penny

Pop culture, politics and feminism

Lena Dunham, Caitlin Moran and the problem of unexamined privilege

There are many ways “to be a woman”, and we should try to show more of them, says Laurie Penny.

By Laurie Penny Published 09 October 2012 18:02

Lena Dunham. Photo: Getty

Caitlin Moran “literally could not give a shit” about the representation of people of colour in Lena Dunham’s show Girls. She said as much on Twitter on Friday, when queried over her interview with the up-and-coming American director and screenwriter. One can’t help but suspect that the subsequent avalanche of righteous rage and hurt feelings wouldn’t have been so thunderous had we not spent six months being told, as we so often are, that the stories of privileged white, middle-class women writers like Moran and Dunham are not only important in their own right - but they are the definitive stories, the only necessary stories for a generation of young women struggling to articulate a politics of liberation that starts with honest storytelling.

Let’s start with the basics. I have a great deal of respect for Caitlin Moran, and I’ll have more when she owns her mistake. White middle-class women who manage to grab attention for what they have to say have a responsibility to lady up and take the criticism when they slip up and forget that they represent only a small section of women's experience. Moran fucked up this time. It’s easy to fuck up, especially when you live in a world that tells you, repeatedly and often, that as a white, straight middle-class woman, yours is the only story about women worth articulating. I know this - I live in that world too, and when I write about women's issues I'm constantly checking my privilege in the manner of an anxious homemaker constantly checking that the gas is off, and I still fuck up. As my friend Roz Kaveney says, “It's no fun taking a kicking from angry sisters you've snubbed by being momentarily clueless, but sometimes it goes with the territory of sisterhood.”

That said, the chief problem with the oeuvres of both Moran and Dunham to date is a problem not just of representation, but of presentation itself. Both Girls and Moran’s autobiographical feminist tome How To Be A Woman are extremely subjective, touchingly honest stories, sweet and silly and provocative, and that should be enough, it should be more than enough, without both of them being plugged as the last word in feminist writing.

As I wrote in my rather gushing Guardian review of How To Be A Woman, Moran’s book isn’t the barnstorming summary of the feminist zeitgeist that it's been sold as - and that’s great, because if it were, it’d detract from what the book is actually trying to do. Which is to tell a simple, joyful, inspirational personal story from a feminist perspective, with a lot of knob gags and racy bits and laugh-out-loud cracks about wanking that throw the serious discussion of reproductive rights into sharp relief . It’s an aspirational book, an alternative to the sterile, deodorised sparkly-fairytale stories of Kate Middleton and Katie Price, the story of a working-class girl from Wolverhampton who fought her way to a brilliant, glamorous career by sheer dint of wit and talent, who met and married the love of her life, and who, along the way, took all the painful bits of the female experience - childbirth, abortion, weight worries, fear of aging - in her power-booted stride. It is, one suspects, the book that Lena Dunham might write in ten years' time, when she's progressed from the anxious territory of being a writing prodigy in her mid-twenties to the status of grande dame of clever comedy.

Just like Girls, there’s not a great deal in How to Be a Woman about the experience of poor women, or women of colour, or, indeed, of any woman who doesn’t happen to be a professional writer in a major Western metropolis, but that’s probably an accurate representation of Dunham and Moran’s respective lives. Of course Moran loves Lena Dunham - she’s probably the closest thing out there to Moran’s younger self, prodigous and talented and feminist and celebrated. And that’s good. The world needs more ambitious, egotistical creative women who don’t apologise for being who they are. Nobody should ask Dunham and Moran to apologise for being who they are. It only becomes problematic - and profoundly so - when they are expected to represent everybody else as well.

No, it's not fair. Male writers and directors are usually permitted not to “give a shit” about representation and diversity without the entire internet jumping all over their output. Moran is absolutely right that no man would be castigated for not including characters of colour in his life story, if part of the story of that life was that there weren’t actually many people of colour involved. He would, however, be criticised- and rightly so - if he chose to call that life story ‘Boys’ or ‘How to Be a Man’. There is a metric fuckload of unexamined privilege at play in Moran’s Twitter diatribe, the obvious retort to which is: if you don’t want to be criticised for not speaking for all women, don’t write a book claiming to do just that.

If our notional male writer allowed the story he was telling to be framed and celebrated as some sort of universal answer to the problem of masculinity in the modern age then, yes, there would be a slight issue with the utter invisibility of people of colour therein. Not that it’d actually come up, of course, because men are rarely asked to speak on behalf of all other men - their gender experience is assumed to be the default, women’s the abnormality. Women are so rarely invited to tell the truth of our gendered experience, with all the messy bits hanging loose, that when we do it’s mistaken for the last word in creative empowerment.

Women of colour have written personal histories in the past, too, but so far none of them has presumed to extrapolate from her own narrative any sort of universal female truth. If she did, she'd be laughed out of the publishers’ office.

The problem is presentation. Both Dunham and Moran are writers with a knack for finding the universal, the emotive, the intimately political in their own stories and turning it outwards. Between them they have done much to inspire a generation of women writers to tell their own stories and tell them boldly. If Moran’s book had been called My Life As A Womble (read it, you’ll understand), if Dunham’s show had been called Broke in Brooklyn, there wouldn’t have been so much of an issue.

Of course, if they’d been called that, not as many people would have paid attention, and not just because I’m absolutely the shittest person in the world at titles, but because there really is a hunger for stories that touch on universal truths about womanhood today. People want to know what it’s like to be a girl, because being a girl is confusing. People want to know how to be a woman, because being a woman is bewildering and traumatic.

In a climate like this, no woman writer can tell her own story without immediately being expected also to tell everyone else’s - and that’s part of the way women writers are dismissed today, by the publishing industry, by the television industry, by everyone with a stake in packaging the truth of women's lives so it fits into neat little saleable boxes. We are expected to collapse the political into the personal rather than allowing the personal, if that’s what we choose to focus on, to speak for itself. It's almost as if we still live in a world where real subjectivity is considered the exclusive territory of men, and all women are more or less interchangeable.

The real travesty isn't just one writer fucking up on Twitter - that, after all, happens every day of the week. The real travesty is that the few overwhelmingly white and middle-class women like Lena Dunham and Caitlin Moran who are permitted to tell their stories truthfully today are expected to speak for everyone, and the rest of us are informed the that that is what they are, in fact, doing. It is disappointing to those of us who admire both Dunham and Moran but, more than that, it abnegates the existence of a spectrum of female creativity and a multiplicity of female experience which is - more than anything else - what it means to be a woman.

Tags: feminism

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53 comments

Sun, 2012-10-21 01:40 — Jadzia626 (not verified)

When I got recommended a book titled "How to be a Woman" by a friend, I, as a trans woman, was a bit worried. People like me are often told that only a certain kind of experience makes you a 'real' woman. This is usually the experience of a fertile white cis woman. There are many types of privilege.

I am only half way through the book, but so far I find a lot of things I can identify with, and lots I don't. Ignoring the title, the book itself is entertaining, funny and insightful on the things it actually covers. It is pretty obvious this isn't a "How to ..." book. It could simply have been titled "How I Became a Woman", I suppose it'd sell less then though ...

Thu, 2012-10-18 08:04 — Diana Trimble (not verified)

I can't stand Caitlin Moran. Lots of young girls are talented writers - she also happened to be exceptionally lucky. Being born white and in the UK, even if female and on benefits, already makes you extremely privileged. Some of the commentators on here sound blissfully unaware of this reality and seem to think that the fact Moran had nearly as many siblings as fingers is akin to growing up on a rubbish dump in Soweto or something. Wake up. Anyway. if she's such a great writer then perhaps she could have phrased herself a bit more creatively, with subtlety and wit. Because it is obviously either deliberately provocative or just dumb-ass arrogant to say "I don't give a s**t" instead of making an intelligent response to the very valid point regarding limited representations of, not just women, but people in general on TV. While I agree that Lena Dunham's work shouldn't be expected to reflect a cultural experience alien to herself, and equally despise the Guardian writer who kicked up all this fuss it is definitely a problem that TV's representations don't match up with the demographics of reality. How many single men actually raise families without a female co-parent IRL? Not many right? Which doesn't stop this set-up from being one of the most popular sitcom premises of all time. A producer of the British TV show Midsomer Murders was recently forced to quit because of his admission that he didn't want to bring in ethnic minorities as it would alter the bubble-world of the pristine English village that he was purposely creating on the show. So the last time I watched it there was a new Indian family. Not "family" exactly, this being TV naturally it was a single father raising a daughter alone. The Indian Dad was both town pharmacist and yoga instructor while the Indian daughter was a scientific prodigy in astronomy. Oh well, at least some stereotypes turn out to be quite nice...

Thu, 2012-10-18 08:02 — Diana Trimble (not verified)

I can't stand Caitlin Moran. Lots of young girls are talented writers - she also happened to be exceptionally lucky. Being born white and in the UK, even if female and on benefits, already makes you extremely privileged. Some of the commentators on here sound blissfully unaware of this reality and seem to think that the fact Moran had nearly as many siblings as fingers is akin to growing up on a rubbish dump in Soweto or something. Wake up. Anyway. if she's such a great writer then perhaps she could have phrased herself a bit more creatively, with subtlety and wit. Because it is obviously either deliberately provocative or just dumb-ass arrogant to say "I don't give a shit" instead of making an intelligent response to the very valid point regarding limited representations of, not just women, but people in general on TV. While I agree that Lena Dunham's work shouldn't be expected to reflect a cultural experience alien to herself, and equally despise the Guardian writer who kicked up all this fuss (Bim whatsit - oh no I'm a racist because I cant be bothered to go look up her last name) it is definitely a problem that TV's representations don't match up with the demographics of reality. How many single men actually raise families without a female co-parent IRL? Not many right? Which doesn't stop this set-up from being one of the most popular sitcom premises of all time. A producer of the British TV show Midsomer Murders was recently forced to quit because of his admission that he didn't want to bring in ethnic minorities as it would alter the bubble-world of the pristine English village that he was purposely creating on the show. So the last time I watched it there was a new Indian family. Not "family" exactly, this being TV naturally it was a single father raising a daughter alone. The Indian Dad was both town pharmacist and yoga instructor while the Indian daughter was a scientific prodigy in astronomy. Oh well, at least some stereotypes turn out to be quite nice...

Thu, 2012-10-18 08:02 — Diana Trimble (not verified)

I can't stand Caitlin Moran. Lots of young girls are talented writers - she also happened to be exceptionally lucky. Being born white and in the UK, even if female and on benefits, already makes you extremely privileged. Some of the commentators on here sound blissfully unaware of this reality and seem to think that the fact Moran had nearly as many siblings as fingers is akin to growing up on a rubbish dump in Soweto or something. Wake up. Anyway. if she's such a great writer then perhaps she could have phrased herself a bit more creatively, with subtlety and wit. Because it is obviously either deliberately provocative or just dumb-ass arrogant to say "I don't give a shit" instead of making an intelligent response to the very valid point regarding limited representations of, not just women, but people in general on TV. While I agree that Lena Dunham's work shouldn't be expected to reflect a cultural experience alien to herself, and equally despise the Guardian writer who kicked up all this fuss (Bim whatsit - oh no I'm a racist because I cant be bothered to go look up her last name) it is definitely a problem that TV's representations don't match up with the demographics of reality. How many single men actually raise families without a female co-parent IRL? Not many right? Which doesn't stop this set-up from being one of the most popular sitcom premises of all time. A producer of the British TV show Midsomer Murders was recently forced to quit because of his admission that he didn't want to bring in ethnic minorities as it would alter the bubble-world of the pristine English village that he was purposely creating on the show. So the last time I watched it there was a new Indian family. Not "family" exactly, this being TV naturally it was a single father raising a daughter alone. The Indian Dad was both town pharmacist and yoga instructor while the Indian daughter was a scientific prodigy in astronomy. Oh well, at least some stereotypes turn out to be quite nice...

Wed, 2012-10-17 12:39 — William Brown (not verified)

So what - I'm with Moran. This is the next stage in tackling racism - not giving a shit about what representation was made. This is the healthy, honest and least racist path to take, rather than the tired, racist fall back line of under representation. I wonder if any of the girls in the show had green eyes....a total irrelevance. If Caitlin decides that she will deliberately include other ethnicities because of this fascist doctrine, then I'll be disappointed.

Wed, 2012-10-17 12:39 — William Brown (not verified)

Tue, 2012-10-16 10:46 — Thommo (not verified)

"If Moran’s book had been called My Life As A Womble (read it, you’ll understand), if Dunham’s show had been called Broke in Brooklyn, there wouldn’t have been so much of an issue."

Really? The show's title makes it a problem?

Read the Alan Sepinwall interview with the show's execs. Here's an extract:

Sepinwall: I'm curious: “girls” versus “women,” what specifically do you feel that says?

Lena Dunham: I think it’s a lot about how they think of themselves. I don’t think that they feel like women. It’s less about how the world views them, but I think that these are girls who will feel like girls until they’re 35 maybe. I had this experience the summer I was on the street in New York and this teenager came up to me and she was crying and she asked if she could use my cell phone and of course I gave it to her and I could hear her talking to her mom. She was like, "I don’t know whose phone I'm on, some lady" and she called me a lady and I was despondent for a day.

So there you are. Not angling to Represent All Women Of All Times Everywhere with her show... but think specifically about her characters and how they view the world. The show is called GIRLS at least in part because they don't feel grown-up enough to be called WOMEN. It's a character POV thing, not a broad statement of representational intent.

I am now going to sit down and script my pilot sitcom ALL WOMEN EVERYWHERE. As a white, middle-class male writer, you can expect nothing but the straight dope from me when my hijab-wearing Chinese-Peruvian-heritage character gets her kitten-heeled mule stuck in an Oslo storm drain and swears in fluent Australian. (With apologies to the under-represented continent of N.America)

Fri, 2012-10-12 03:14 — Madam Miaow (not verified)

Always nice to see women pulling the ladder up behind them says this Ninja Gurl. Sometimes the sistahs ain't sistahs and Laurie is right to call them on this. Do viewers and readers actually want a world where colour is bred out of the gene-pool? How limiting and limited a vision of the world that would be.

Sat, 2012-10-13 11:11 — andyg (not verified)

MADAM, of which colour do you refer too given that so many within society now feel that being sprayed orange is beautiful?

Thu, 2012-10-11 19:44 — andyg (not verified)

Moran's father is a rock musician.
She is the eldest of 8 children and has four sisters and three brothers.
She was born in Brighton and went to live in a three bedroom council house in Wolverhampton with her parents and siblings.
She attended Springdale Junior School and was then educated at home from the age of 11.
She attended secondary school for three weeks.
At 13 in October 1988 she won a Dillons young readers' contest for an essay on Why I Like Books and was awarded £250 of book tokens.
At 15, she won The Observer's Young Reporter of the Year.
Her career began as a journalist for Melody Maker.
At 16 Moran wrote a novel called The Chronicles of Narmo inspired by having been home schooled.
In 1992 she launched a television career, hosting the Channel 4 music show Naked City.
In December 1999, Moran married the rock critic Peter Paphides and the couple have two daughters.
In 2011, Harper Perennial published Moran's book How To Be a Woman in the UK.
On 13 July 2012, Moran became a Fellow of Aberystwyth University.

Now then, I can conclude from this that the girl is bright and can also write, but can she bake a cake or make a bed? Where does all this class rubbish come into it?

Fri, 2012-10-12 23:41 — katlinmoron (not verified)

indeed

Thu, 2012-10-11 17:22 — thestooshie (not verified)

I don't necessarily agree with Moran's point and especially not her tone but I completely respect her honesty in this instance. Someone asked her if she had queried Dunham regarding this issue but she said that she didn't because she didn't see it as something she was interested in delving into. It's well within the rights of a journalist to decide the focus of a piece of work she is doing. Was she supposed to pretend that this was an issue that bayed on her mind constantly? As I said, she could have addressed it with far more tact (saying you "literally don't give a shit about something" is needlessly crass) but I give credence for Moran for not falling over herself pretending to be incredibly enthused about something when she is not.

As for the issue of the show itself, I have never seen it but from what I understand it is a semi-autobiographical piece presented in the most entertaining and true-to-life manner that Dunham can manage. What bothers me about the accusations thrown at her is that if she is trying to present something as true to her own life, and presumably the characters are based on people she knows, then why is she supposed to modify the story for the sake of being inclusive? For example, i'm a member of a pub quiz team. Every member of this pub quiz team is white. If I were to write a television programme based on my experience of being in this pub quiz team, I would not deliberately change the ethnicity of any of the characters based on my friends for the very sake of it (though there is every chance that a PoC could audition for the part and be the best for the role, but I wouldn't deliberately set about doing this.) If this show was broadcast with non-white characters, would I be accused of "latent racism" in the way Dunham has been simply for reflecting the supposed reality of the situation? As a woman, I wouldn't be offended if someone wrote a sitcom based on a real life all-male quiz team that they were a part of. In that instance I wouldn't see the point of the writer modifying his story to include a female character who wasn't involved in the experience at all. It just reeks of tokenism.

Thu, 2012-10-11 12:24 — theoeditrix (not verified)

This article is more thoughtful and considered than most attacks on Dunham and Moran, but misses some crucial points.

For me, the problem is Penny blaming these women for how they "allow themselves" to be perceived by the public. Most artists, male and female, don't have a great deal of control over the titles and advertisements for their books, movies, and TV shows, much less how their works are perceived by the public and media once they are released. I would guess that men in the industry have marginally more control over these factors, though not much.

It's the media, not Dunham or Moran, that continues to peg their experience as universal despite their protestations. The pilot episode of Girls revolves around the joke that despite this character's delusions, she is not in a position to speak for her generation, or indeed anyone but herself. Moran's title (while I don't think it's great) is also tongue-in-cheek. Penny seems to acknowledge that Moran and Dunham are not entirely in control of their images, but then goes ahead and blames them for it anyway.

Moreover, Penny's claim that people would be equally upset if a man named his show "Boys" or his book "How To Be a Man" is just wrong. There is currently a flood of retro-kitsch out there addressing the "masculinity crisis" by handing out advice on how to be a man, usually cut from the Hemingway or Don Draper cloth. It's usually tongue-in-cheek - like Dunham and Moran! - but on the more sincere side, there's also the Good Men Project and Joel Stein's recent book, Man Made: A Quest for Stupid Masculinity. The extent to which these men acknowledge non-white experience is unknown to me, but to claim that they don't attempt to speak for their gender on some level while Moran and Dunham do seems odd.

Thu, 2012-10-11 11:30 — xxx-Nixon-xxx (not verified)

But Dunham isn't middle-class and white, she's rich and Jewish. Why do people keep on calling her white?

Tue, 2012-10-16 20:28 — Jon Bon Jovi (not verified)

If I had to guess, it would probably be because she's white. "Jewish" is a religion and a culture/heritage. It is not a hue.

For example - Stephen Fry is white. He is also gay. He is also Jewish. I doubt he would dispute being labelled as white, because it is true.

Thu, 2012-10-11 01:16 — Random poster (not verified)

First off, good for you to be back with the NS, good old-fashiond leftism.

"People want to know....People want to know how to be a woman, because being a woman is bewildering and traumatic."

Try being trans, go on, do something on that, because it isn't so simple now. Not as even right-on feminists would think it.

Biggin you up even though sometimes I don't agree with you.

yush!

Wed, 2012-10-10 22:36 — Spiggott (not verified)

Caitlin Moran was brought up on a council estate and was home educated.

Laurie Penny was educated at Oxford and at Brighton College, where the fees are 30K.

One of these two has a bad case of unexamined privilege. I don't think it is Caitlin Moran.

I'd guess the reason Caitlin Moran "couldn't give a shit" about this issue is that - unlike Laurie Penny - she doesn't suffer from middle-class guilt.

Wed, 2012-10-10 16:42 — JimmyEatWorldly (not verified)

Hmm. It seems that this writer has completely misinterpreted the title of Caitlin Moran's book. I wasn't under the impression that the book was an actual guide on 'How To Be A Woman' - it's pretty obvious that this is a dry and playful nod to all the many mixed messages women receive about how they should be/act/behave. I don't think Caitlin's book purports to speak for all women, and she should be applauded for at least having strong and accessible opinions on feminism and getting them into the mainstream media. Writing a book that speaks for every single woman in the world (white, black, gay, straight, poor, wealthy) would surely be a completely impossible task.

Wed, 2012-10-10 13:53 — Wondermare (not verified)

White women castigating other white women for not writing about women of colour (ugh, hated phrase). Seriously, New Statesman, this whole article would have felt a lot less patronising and, yes, colonial, if you'd had one of the actual natives speak about it. And perhaps paid them for it. There are lots of non-white women out there. Some of them can even write.

P.S. I am a woman of colour. Currently unemployed. Gizza job.

Thu, 2012-10-11 08:02 — New statesman Reader (not verified)

Exactly! Middle class whites need to stop trying to further their own careers by expecting a, ego-boosting pat on the back for being 'inclusive' and STEP ASIDE and give a marginalised group a job and a voice to tell their own stories! But we all know they will NEVER do that! They're particularly terrified of giving black and the working class a voice, because they will be called out on how very not-holier-than-thou they are. A lot of the time 'liberals' and 'activists' will do all they can to silence such voices, fearing they will be publicly called out for the nonsense that comes out of their mouths, thereby losing their liberal halo that makes them feel so good.

Thu, 2012-10-11 11:49 — Sam Gisoad (not verified)

"Middle class whites need to stop trying to further their own careers by expecting a, ego-boosting pat on the back for being 'inclusive' and STEP ASIDE and give a marginalised group a job and a voice to tell their own stories! But we all know they will NEVER do that! "

I can see this message working really well. I reckon that's how you sell it to people; go out and tell them to "STEP ASIDE!"

In fact, I can' t think why they "never will". Not when you couch it so persuasively.

Fri, 2012-10-12 04:48 — New statesman Reader (not verified)

If it might ever happen, I might couch it more persuasively.

As it's never going to happen I can couch it however I like.

Thanks for playing

Fri, 2012-10-12 10:33 — Sam Gisoad (not verified)

Ok that's okay. If you've accepted the situation then I guess no one need feel guilty anymore.

Sat, 2012-10-13 11:16 — New statesman Reader (not verified)

I look forward to your victim-blaming book, where you outline how minorities can end oppression, by realising they should be nicer to the white middle-classes and not make so much noise.

I'm sure nobody will read it except the straight white middle-classes.

Wed, 2012-10-10 13:48 — jankaas (not verified)

"People want to know what it’s like to be a girl, because being a girl is confusing. People want to know how to be a woman, because being a woman is bewildering and traumatic."

whereas being a bloke is beer and skittles all the way Penny, hence our suicide rate being triple that of women.

your suggestion that Ms Moran and you share some sort of similar upbringing is equally laughable.

and you left this article unfinished, your parting words being "what it means to be a woman" yet failing to provide any insight whatsoever. care to have a go one of these days?

Wed, 2012-10-10 12:15 — Venusandserena (not verified)

If nothing else, this whole debacle has should how defensive the sychophantic hero worshipers of Moran tend to be.
The fact that they all tend to be white feeds straight into the heart of the issue.
As white women, you occupy a priviledged position even within feminism, and a lot of you dont even see that and refuse to relinquish your elevated position.
Laurie Penney's piece here is pretty spot on but I do not see the need for the attacks upon her when she is just stating the obvious. You dont like what shes saying because its a frontal assault upon your priviledge as white women. You like your position, just like white men who run the world like their's.

I think incidents like this just highlights and reveals something dark in the heart of our liberal society, the racsim thats not overt but covert, to the extent that theres a flat out denial it exists.

If anything Moran showed naivete for her glibly made comment and I dont think she is racist in the traditional sense, but she's simply prey to her owen situation in which she revels within in to the detriment of the 'others'. She has reinforced this 'othering' something feminism for what she is a vocal proponent of, needs to look at directly and challenge today.

Wed, 2012-10-10 12:03 — nickfrankfurt (not verified)

A s the saying goes "Gaffes are when people tell the truth in public that they shouldnt have".

I like Laurie red's articles, but the truth is that if a male white British journalist had used Moran's "couldnt give a s..." line he would now be in hiding. Laurie Red does a good job of context, but the uncomfortable (for some) fact is in modern day UK, income, class and race are far more powewful blocks to mobility, equality and asparation than gender that is why Moran's comments seems so ill advised and why many are scurrying to some "intellectualise" it. The debate about whether feminism is (still) about progressivism, postive social change and equality or if it is about celebrating and advancing successful women is one that has been avoided as its hopefully assumed that these are not mutually exclusive. The reason why Moran's comment are making people so uncomfortable and why the otherwise wonderful Laurie is dancing gingerly around the issues is that these two elements have long since become uncoupled.

Wed, 2012-10-10 09:21 — StrangeDayz (not verified)

No, the world does not need any more egotistical women. Because the world does not need any more egotistical PEOPLE. That's what intersectionality really means at its core.

From their choices, comments, reactions and explanations, it's 100% obvious that both Dunham and Moran are ignorant, othering, insensitive and racist. Dunham has admitted that she didn't hire any actors of colour because she can't write for them, and Moran's Twitter reply could be made only by someone who is completely indifferent to anyone who is not exactly like her, i.e. white.

All this analysis is interesting as an intellectual exercise, but it does not change the fact that the backlash outrage has been completely well-founded.

Wed, 2012-10-10 04:12 — PrettyPenny (not verified)

I don't understand why black people want white people speaking for them and are angry when they aren't. Isn't that the sort of colonial coddling women of color don't actually want? So asking why Caitlin Moran doesn't bring the issues facing black people is asking why she isn't playing her role as the great white hope. NuFeminism is just old racism in a brand new package with a shiny bow. F*** it.

Wed, 2012-10-10 14:13 — Sam Gisoad (not verified)

"I don't understand why black people want white people speaking for them"

I'm not sure they do, it's more that there's a huge queue of middle-class white people falling over themselves trying to.

Not that that's in any way patronisingly racist.

Wed, 2012-10-10 00:11 — Roboco (not verified)

Although i agree with the sentiment of your article, there is a question that arises. The industry is not dismissive towards women, but it's even MORE dismissive towards women of colour. So shouldn't there be some role for white women to help out the women of colour? Without necessarily having to speak for them, but using the relative advantage they have to help those that don't benefit from that? ie- not dismissing their comments, and rather actually promoting their issues?

Tue, 2012-10-09 22:46 — Belinda Harman (not verified)

So Laura you state that Caitlin Moran is a middle class woman but was a working class girl, which is it? Are they interchangeable? Jemima, Thank you for that I have been wanting to know what Caitlin Moran's real background was for ages! Her fairy tale version made no sense at all. So she is the daughter of a rock musician. I do find it insulting to our intelligence that she expected us to believe she got a top writing job and a flat in Soho all by her self at 16? Women like Laure Penny and Caitlin Moran have big connections and we are supposed to believe their success is just down to incredible luck and their mediocre talent...Really?

Tue, 2012-10-09 23:13 — katiejosephs (not verified)

She is NOT the daughter of a rock musician. She grew up on benefits in Wolverhampton. Her "top writing job" most certainly did come from her own hard work. She won a junior writing competition run by a national broadsheet newspaper at the age 0f 14 or something. The "rock" JOURNALIST is her husband.

God, people should really take a few seconds to check their facts before slagging people off with such confidence.

Wed, 2012-10-10 11:49 — Venusandserena (not verified)

Nice to just clear up a few facts and not actually contribute to the debate.
You seem to miss or not care about the main thrust of the argument....

Tue, 2012-10-09 20:38 — Sara Haldane (not verified)

"There's not a great deal in How To Be a Woman about the experience of Poor Women."

I don't get it. Laurie really would seem to have read the book. She wrote a great review of the book. And yet she repeatedly claims it here as a book that only covers the middle-class experience. Did you read the bit where Caitlin starts her periods and there's no money for proper sanitary towels or knickers of her own to mop up the blood? The bit where they've never been abroad? The bit where she gets chased with stones for being a fat no-mates loser from a council house? The bit where she's helping raise her seven younger siblings and trying to find enough food money out of her dad's disability benefit? No, it's not the experience of every poor woman, but... middle-class???

Tue, 2012-10-09 20:27 — alisondo (not verified)

Some of these commentators appear not to have taken the trouble to find out anything about Caitlin Moran before giving their opinion on her. She may well now be middle class, if it matters, but her upbringing was extremely tough and she has written eloquently about her family's reliance on benefits. Educated? She barely went to school and owes most of her education to the local public library. She is funny, passionate and articulate, the very opposite of a polly filler. She is, however, undoubtedly white.

Thu, 2012-10-11 17:36 — andyg (not verified)

Alisondo, do you consider that Caitlin Moran can bake a cake? What do you mean when you write "middle class"?

Tue, 2012-10-09 21:08 — jemima101 (not verified)

Daughter of a rock musician who was home schooled, yup, normal working class experience there, right down to getting a writing job at 16, I mean that is just like the lives of so many people.

Thu, 2012-10-11 20:33 — andyg (not verified)

Jemma dear, so many people's lives are not alike, they just appear or are percieved to be so.

Tue, 2012-10-09 23:21 — katiejosephs (not verified)

She entered and won a writing competition run by at national paper whilst in her teens. This led to her job at The Times. Its not her fault that neither you nor i BOTHERED to enter such a competition at such a young age. You sound envious and biter but for all the wrong reasons.

Wed, 2012-10-10 11:57 — Venusandserena (not verified)

No, your petulant posts are *all for the wrong reasons*

You can defend Moran if you like but please stop with the ad Hominen attacks on Penney

Thu, 2012-10-11 12:42 — Hmmmm (not verified)

Pointing out that Penny has a hyperactive imagination filled with red herrings is not an ad hom attack. It is pointing out something which seems to be true.

Sorry.

Fri, 2012-10-12 16:18 — Venusandserena (not verified)

errrr, yes it is.
All I see is a blind defence for Moran and pure snide directed towards Penny.

I guess you want to skirt over the race issue and just get down with vilifying the author of this piece right?

No I'm Sorry but it doesn't work like that

Tue, 2012-10-09 20:42 — McMac

that's not 'extremely tough' that's normal for millions in the UK, and still more comfortable than 80 percent of the world.

It is however, extremely tough from a middle class perspective, yes. and not the identi-kit private school, Oxford grad upbringing of most of so many of the NS staff .

Tue, 2012-10-09 21:10 — jemima101 (not verified)

But she lived in a council house, don't you know that makes her authentic! It is exactly the point about class privilege (which has nothing to do with income) I was making. Various commenters have merely proved my point, in a very amusing manner.

Thu, 2012-10-11 20:38 — andyg (not verified)

So class has nothing to do with income? Ok, so in this class structure where shall we place the say 'housewife' or 'house-husband'?

Wed, 2012-10-10 19:40 — McMac

This is priceless. In what is a story about women, talking about women, talking about women, our LP has to make up some imaginary men to be the villains of the piece.

And as for "The world needs more ambitious, egotistical creative women who don’t apologise for being who they are..." Yeah, female columnists like this are so rare aren't they?

Tue, 2012-10-09 19:25 — Kateybleh (not verified)

This is a terribly confused column - far too many words, an unclear central point and takes an undeserved pop at two creative people who, as far as I can tell, have never claimed to be representing all of the women, all of the time. Pointless and silly.

Tue, 2012-10-09 19:17 — Wondermare (not verified)

Oh and Laurie, are you SURE you wrote that Guardian review of How to be a Woman? Only because I was under the impression it was Zoe Williams.

Tue, 2012-10-09 19:02 — Wondermare (not verified)

I read the Twitter exchange, and really feel that Moran was goaded into saying, "I literally couldn't give a shit". She was being harangued by someone who was blaming her for not challenging Lena Dunham's non-use of WOC. Well big whoop. Why should Caitlin Moran have to speak for all women? I'm of Anglo Japanese heritage, and I'd be waiting a long time for someone to factor my racial background into their writing.

Caitlin Moran, I think, was saying she couldn't give a shit about the pressure to speak for ALL women of ALL backgrounds. She had already defended her position by saying no-one asks men for that kind of representation. So it seems to me that she's been taken out of context, deliberately so.

I don't read Moran because she's a woman. I like her writing because she's passionate about music and she's messy and she's chaotic and she's real. I literally couldn't give a shit about not having her represent my experience as a minority.