1. Caitlin Moran in the Melody Maker was just about as far as anyone could be from being a feminist - standard 'aren't we so clever' and/or 'get drunk party have a good time' music journalism. The Melody Maker at the time itself was pretty sexist - constant underhand references to women celebrities. It used to sneer at Chumbawamba and other explicitly anti-sexist groups. After Labour won in 1997, it sort of said Chumbawamba are out to ruin everyone's party. (Hate their music, but their stand and efforts speaks volumes). Now carving a role as 'feminist figure' Caitlin Moran

2. sees it appropriate to consider Lady Gaga a feminist figure (because Gaga took her on a private visit to a sex club in Berlin... and er... oh and she supports gay marriage.) Millions of sexists support gay marriage. Members of the explicitly anti-feminist 'men's rights movement' that organise against post-divorce child maintenance payments, support gay marriage. Czech church figures are in favour of it, Iranian liberal ayatollahs have spoken warmly of it. There's got to be something more otherwise feminism does become 'hey, all women who've ever had a job are feminists, because making choices as a woman is feminist' - the road to nowhere.
But 3. Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman is like an insult of feminist manifesto. In the first chapter it says racism to foreigners now basically doesn't happen, but women haven't yet achieved what foreigners have. It reduces any discussion of women workers being screwed versus women professionals succeeding to 'hiring cleaners is OK'. It's a wilful way to avoid discussing class oppression. Set up a straw man and attack it with verve and humour. Feminism ought to push for equality between women otherwise it's empty fluff. If it doesn't mobilise its base it has no punch. What use is a sex or housework strike, if the lower half don't take part? How will equality in marriage happen if there is no equality within the workplace and equal economic rights, allowing divorce to be meaningful for everyone? Serious feminists push for equality between women. Caitlin Moran in general doesn't, so it's not surprising "she doesn't give a shit about" the absence of any black characters in a borough that's mostly black. (Like doing a show about Southall but not having a single Sikh appear).

4. I hate the word 'intersectionality'. I wish it wasn't used. But I get the idea.
Sooner or later wedges will be driven de-mobilising and weakening any struggles for socialist, feminist and immigrants' rights. (Feminists will not get immigrant women or working-class women on board. Each of these groups will think 'what's in it for me? You talk all nice but at the end of the day you'll still be on top slightly higher having used me in the process. No thanks.)

Some wings of feminism trumpet the struggle (if you can call it that, more like individual sound and fury) of women in the boardroom as a big boost. Unsurprisingly it's a turn-off for working-class women. Some issues that feminism takes up like advertising portrayals and sexist photo-shopping are issues that allow professional women to shine (by having non-photoshopped pro-women fashion magazines - a limited defensive 'victory'). It should take up the issues but link them directly to why they make women weaker and allow others to participate meaningfully.

Some immigrant females are suspicious of feminism because some wings of it want to completely ban circumcision for boys. Look at how few Turkish women are in the German feminist movement. (There is no barrier of 'colour' there proving it's not all about colour, it's about if you're 'foreign' or not). Often settled women don't get involved in immigrant or anti-racist work because it's been presented as giving rights and benefits to uncivilised, uncultured foreigners who probably beat their wives anyway.

No one in the media really listens to us anyway. The media is not for the likes of us. So it doesn't suprise me when a middle-class journalist is defended by another middle-class feminist journalist.

In this article, Rhiannon and Holly come off as incurious, partial, and rather tin-eared.

Where was the New Statesman on the issue of the Labour reimagining gender equality, so that the accidental rolling back of equality for working class women, could continue if they won an election with Blue Labour........

I've heard the way the boys at the NS treat the girls on staff. This article is little more than Stockholm syndrome...

Where was the New Statesman on the issue of the Labour reimagining gender equality, so that the accidental rolling back of equality for working class women, could continue if they won an election with Blue Labour........

I've heard the way the boys at the NS treat the girls on staff. This article is little more than Stockholm syndrome...

BY calling out media feminists who dont give a shit about Black Women? Or the ones who provide the justification for equality being rolled back for working class women?

Loving the feminism coming out of the magazine that whitewashed what has happened to women in the last few years.

They can't take part in our debate, they aren't heducated enough,. oh no they got heducated ....you may as well have used the word 'uppity'.

This article, especially its closing paragraph, is straight up ridiculous and a disgrace to the New Statesman's journalistic standards.

Intersectionality, first off, is not incomprehensible. If it is to the author of this piece, then they either have an elitist, purely academic understanding of the term themselves OR it's just never been explained to them in a clear way. Now, if they'd bothered to Google the phrase they quote - "my feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit" - they would have encountered a very simple explanation of what it means, including very clear imagery (sh*t puff pastry) and all. The writer who coined this vaguely attributed phrase, Flavia Dzodan, makes it very clear in her introduction what it means: it means that her feminism is, and indeed all feminism should, be informed and influenced by other kinds of power structures which are at work in today's society. It means that I, for example, as a white woman from a European country need to acknowledge that my problems are not the same as, say, problems of Muslim women who are from the same country. That, as a white woman, I need to acknowledge that and work to understand what these differences mean.

It's truly not that hard. It shouldn't be hard, moreover, to obey one of the basic rules of journalism (indeed, writing) and make it very clear where you get your quotes. Not only because it's fair play (rather than, you know, plagiarism or, the way I explain it to my students, fraud), but because only THEN are the people you are writing your piece for fully informed of the background of your piece and the ideas with which you are engaging. It is very clear that the author of this piece did not wish to engage with the ideas of Ms Dzodan but instead just wanted to throw a temper tantrum.And, you know, sometimes throwing a temper tantrum is a valid life choice. But keep that stuff on your personal blog and don't bother the rest of us with it.

Shame on the author and shame on the New Statesman for publishing this (and the editor for defending the author's choice not to explicitly cite Ms Dzodan's original post on Tiger Beatdown).

I am a coloured woman who has spent her life reading books and watching tv and often wistfully thinking, I wish there was someone like me on screen. I know that if there were a lot of black people it wouldn't be representative of the country at large; I know that a lot of my problem relates to the time and place where the books I read etc are written.

I get all that and I don't want to attempt to dictate to others how they do art, but I would really like it if they at least admitted they could understand that I might like to see coloured people on TV who I can relate to sometimes, and that it's fine that there's a reason why there might not be (eg it's autobiographical and the author didn't know any black people) rather than just saying I don't give a shit about you.

There is omitting to consider intersectionality and then there is outright discrimination, for example saying you literally couldn't give a sh*t about POC, and one stand out line from her book ,'I have all the joyful ebullience of a retard'. Feminism very very rarely even recognises disabled women, let alone women with learning disabilities. The word 'retard' has been used countless times to ridicule, mock and abuse people with learning disabilities and it is abhorrent to see it used in this way in a book. Does she not think that women with learning disabilities are feminists too? The fact that most people (Moran included) fail to even notice this suggests that it is an acceptable insult. It is ignorance that leads someone to make fun of one group of oppressed people to in order to highlight the cause of another. Today, the despicable people who abused people with learning difficulties at Winterbourne View are standing trial, but how can we claim to find their actions so repugnant when it is ok for Moran and others to laugh at her lame joke?

Very disappointed in the Vagenda writers for writing something like this. I expected better of them; this kind of writing does nothing to contribute the discussion of feminism, it just muddles the waters for the sake of a banal, news-y angle.

Intersectionality IS the idea that feminism is for everyone, regardless of class status, ethnicity, sexuality etc. It's not meant to be scary or off-putting, it's meant to help understand why, for example, a working-class black woman in Wolverhampton might be subject to a different form of sexism than a middle-class white woman in London.

I'm not a white middle-class woman who was born in the UK - I found feminism middle-class, overwhelmingly white and snobbish. Then I read authors like bell hooks and Audre Lorde, who helped frame feminism in ways that a non-middle-class-white-British-woman could understand. THAT'S intersectionality. The reason why so many people go on and on about it? Just a thought - maybe it's because it appeals to more of them.

Don't just assume that people criticising Moran are hoity-toity intellectual snobs. More often than not, they're the people marginalised by the comments Moran has made herself: ethnic minority women who were hurt and angered by her "don't give a shit" comments. Hey, I know I was.

I don't know whether to be confused or aggravated by this piece.

The backlash Moran experienced recently was because she wrote on twitter in response to someone asking if she'd discussed PoC representation in Girls with Lena Dunham, "Nope, I literally couldn't give a s*** about it". She then went on to claim it was sexist to make such demands to a female artist (because Moran missed similar incidents with Richard Curtis, Aaron Sorkin, and the creators of Friends, Sex & The City, Bunheads, Frasier, Seinfeld, etc), and claimed to ask Dunham this was equivalent to asking ABBA why there were no black people in their band. Le'ts make a quick comparison here - ABBA are four people from Sweden. Brooklyn, the setting for Girls, is a borough in New York were 55% of people aren't white. Moran displayed a massive sense of entitlement as well as major ignorance on the issue of intersectionality. If you've read Moran's book, you'll be aware that she has a habit of making contradictory statements full of sweeping generalisations with a serious lack of fact-checking. Her brand of feminism is very limited and seems to only apply to her and her friends, which would be fine if it weren't being lauded by people like you as the new feminism for modern women in the 21st century.

Feminism doesn't need to be cool in order to be accessible - it needs to be willing to learn from its mistakes, evolve and be intersectional, which means not shutting down other women's narratives just because they don't look like our own. It's ironic that you're lauding Moran as somehow more intersectional than those who criticise her, despite Moran being guilty of blocking everyone who remotely disagrees with her or calls her own on her rubbish (such as her use of ableist language in her book for the purposes of a joke, her use of rape jokes, her complete lack of knowledge on the burqa, etc.)

If you're only concerned with your limited brand of feminism that appeals to you and only you then you are not a feminist - you are a narcissist.

Many do not find Ms Moran entertaining. She seems obsessed with product placement and her own ego. I hope I am not subconsciously phallocentrically oppressing her. As for poverty, many of us come from far worse deprivation.

Many do not find Ms Moran entertaining. She seems obsessed with product placement and her own ego. I hope I am not subconsciously phallocentrically oppressing her. As for poverty, many of us come from far worse deprivation.

Here you go, Vagenda. "Intersectionality" = "being aware that people besides you also have it tough". Does that help at all?

This piece conflates academic feminism and an ability to think about combinations of class/race/gender. That is all intersectionality is, not so esoteric is it?

I'm not actually sure what your agrument is here guys?
Is it about comprehensability? Then is that really the opposite of intersectionality?
Intersectionality is crucial but we don't have to call it that when we're doing it. There has to be cross germination from the ivory tower theories and the reality of a life lived. The two are not mutually exlusive and should never be. I had never heard the term before the Moran debate arose, yet it is what i have always understood feminist politics to be about. And also class politics surely?
If I was to go into a school I could use the theories of intersectionality to engage with and hopefully empower the young people. But I don't have to ever use the term. I just have to understand what it implies and demands of me. I would use it to mean that when we talk about what feminism means we also say how our position in life is not just about our gender it is also about our class, education, etc and that inequalities can attack us from all of these angles. I would use it to help meunderatsnd that the young people I am working with will have more than one battle to fight if they are to be empowered.
Not sure if I have misunderstood what you guys are saying here, I respect what you stand for and do with Vagenda, and I think you're just calling for us to make feminism accessible, what confuses me is that is what intersectionality is asking for too...... the word is the starting point, then it is the actions that count surely?

So according to this article:

a) working-class people are not, and can not, be well-educated;
b) all working class people are white/cis/straight/abled etc., despite the fact that when you're not one of these things, your earning power and place in the economic hierarchy is severely compromised.

There are literally thousands of bloggers and writers who are working class and manage to write about feminism without being a wilful ars*hole to people like Moran is. And for all the lauding of her working class roots, she's been well-off working in the jobs that this article decries since she was a teenager. She's much less likely to be affected by the issues you call 'working class' than Flavia Dzodan, who's work you dismiss as incomprehensibly academic (though most people seem to understand it perfectly well).

Finally, it was lovely of you to put "intersectionality" in scare quotes - because yes, when we've sorted out all the stuff that personally affects the Vagenda writing team, then we'll totally get round to helping everyone else. The 'f**k you Jack, I got mine' school of feminism.