Caitlin Moran: Bringing Humor to Taboo Subjects (This Time About Men)
Caitlin Moran is the eldest of eight children, home-educated on a council estate in Wolverhampton, believing that if she were very good and worked very hard, she might one day evolve into Bill Murray. She published a children’s novel, The Chronicles of Narmo, at the age of 16, and became a columnist at The Times at 18. She has gone on to be named Columnist of the Year six times. At one point, she was also Interviewer and Critic of the Year—which is good going for someone who still regularly mistypes ‘the’ as ‘the.’
Her multi-award-winning bestseller How to Be a Woman has been published in 28 countries and won the British Book Awards’ Book of the Year 2011. Her two volumes of collected journalism, Moranthology and Moranifesto, were Sunday Times bestsellers, and her novel, How to Build a Girl, debuted at Number One, and is currently being adapted as a movie. She co-wrote two series of the Rose d’Or-winning Channel 4 sitcom Raised by Wolves with her sister, Caroline.
Caitlin lives on Twitter with her husband and two children, where she spends her time tweeting either about civil rights issues, or that picture of Bruce Springsteen when he was 23, and has his top off. She would like to be remembered as ‘a very sexual humanitarian.’ Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Caitlin Moran
In this post, Caitlin discusses the main challenge of writing her latest nonfiction book, what she hopes readers get out of it, how she prefers to use Twitter, and more.
Name: Caitlin Moran
Literary agent: Georgia Garrett @ RCW
Book title: What About Men?
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release date: September 2023
Genre/category: Nonfiction
Previous titles: How To Be A Woman, How To Build A Girl, How To Be Famous, More Than A Woman, Moranthology, Moranifesto
Elevator pitch for the book: A decade of fifth-wave feminism has led to a cohort of 21st century teenage boys who repeatedly state, online, in both Incel forums and on Michelle Obama’s Twitter timeline, that “Feminism has gone too far,” “Women are winning, and men are losing,” and that “It’s harder to be a man than a woman now.” As Britain’s second-most-famous humorous feminist, Caitlin Moran asks, “Okay—what about men?,” and finds they do actually have more problems than she thought. But that she could actually solve most of them in a chapter or two.
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What prompted you to write this book?
The rise of extreme online misogyny, Andrew Tate, Jordan B Peterson, and the yearly hijacking of Twitter on International Womens’ Day by men going, “Why isn’t there an International MENS’ Day, huh?”
There is. It’s November 19th. It’s just, so far, nothing has ever been organized on that day.
Having spent the last decade writing about women, and girls, I’ve seen how much has changed in our lives simply by talking about our problems, often being very funny about them—and then working out how to solve them. During that time, I did wonder why there wasn’t a similar movement for men—and it was only when I did the What About Men? live-tour in the UK, and I did the Q&A at the end, that a man in the audience pointed out why.
“Can you imagine if a man wrote a book called ‘What About Men?,’ and said it was time to focus on the problems of men, and boys, now? He would have been called ‘attention-seeking,’ or ‘woman-hating,’ and destroyed,” he said, mildly.
Sadly, I think that might be true. Maybe it did need to be a female, feminist writer who got the conversation started. But everyone can join in now! I’ve officially smashed the bottle of champagne on the proof a yacht called “The SS Talking About Boys & Men!”
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
As soon as I had the idea, I pushed back the next project I was working on (a feminist sci-fi novel) and wrote this one in a pretty intense nine-month burst, and it was published in the UK 15 months after I wrote the first word. US publication was six months later. As a journalist—I’ve been a columnist on The Times of London since I was 18—I like working fast on what feel like current stories. I’m not a brooder, word-wise.
The main challenge, after I’d done all the heavy and often heartbreaking research on male mental health, suicide-rates, loneliness, pornography addiction, and childhood trauma, was making it a super-accessible, humorous, warm, fun book you’d actually want to take on holiday, even though there are chapters on male mental health, suicide, loneliness, porn-addiction, and childhood trauma. A combination of the book going straight to Number One in the UK, and all the responses I’ve got from readers on Twitter, suggests I managed to pull it off—touch wood.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
In the UK, before the book was published, or anyone had read it, there was a small cohort of left-wing, liberal men who flooded my Twitter timeline with two, opposing arguments. The first were men who presumed I was saying men had problems with communicating their emotions, and who were furious. “How dare you say men have problems with their emotions? This is an insulting, old-fashioned generalization. We’re fine.” (This despite the fact that, in the UK, the biggest cause of death for men under the age of 50 is suicide, which does suggest there is a problem for quite a few men.)
The other half, meanwhile, were furious that I was suggesting the problem was a problem. “How dare you say men should talk more about their emotions—we’re not biologically wired for it. You’re just trying to turn us into women.”
Of course, if these two groups of men had had this argument with each other—rather than at me—it would be the start of the kind of mens’ movement I’m suggesting they need. What is a man? Is he supposed to communicate his emotions, or not? This is a fascinating subject!
You guys debate it together, in the way women have been debating “What is a woman?” for the last couple of decades! It could be fun! Go for it! Just don’t @ me! I mainly use Twitter to look at pictures of spaniels and kitchen make-overs!
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I think the biggest one was finding that the word “heartbreaking” was the one I used the most? As a feminist writer, I feel like I’d maybe spent so long focusing on female anxiety, fear, and confusion that I’d not realized that men are dealing with a lot of stuff as well—but without the amazing resource of feminist books, movies, songs, blogs, hashtags, and movements that we have to help us out.
Half the raising of my two daughters wasn’t done by me—it was basically done by the wider feminist movement, and more specifically Beyonce, Broad City, and Kathleen Hanna. If I’d had teenage boys, I think it would have been a lot harder. There isn’t really a pop-culture movement focused on helping teenage boys right now.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
To be able to blame me for starting conversations that might otherwise have been too awkward, or weird. That’s basically my job—for readers to be able to ask their sons, “Well, Caitlin says a lot of kids see their first porn around the age of eight, nine, or 10: Is that what happened to you, and your friends?” Or say to their husband, “Well, Caitlin says men are too scared to get their early medical symptoms checked out by a doctor: Do you feel that way?”
I appeared to burn out my own Shame Glands by the time I was 20: My biggest thrill is identifying a new subject that’s taboo, shameful, or surrounded in secrecy, and then trying to find a way to write about it that makes other people, finally, feel they can talk about it without wanting to lie face down on the floor screaming “THIS IS SO AWKWARD!”
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
When it comes to subject-matter, everyone loves someone who tells all the secrets. And when it comes to writing-style, no-one ever said “It’s too funny.”