Caitlin Moran: “Why is there no man writing about why he became a rapist? It's what I want to read. Why do you rape?"

Caitlin Moran is ready for Magaluf.

“I brought

Dr. Martens,” she jokes, showing why she has traded in her classic boots for a pair of summery sandals as she puffs on her e-cigarette on the terrace of the Innside by Meliá hotel Calvia Beach.

“I am going to give you some vital advice: always wear shoes that allow you to either run away from a stalker or dance all night,” she adds, with her back to an infinity pool and a turquoise-hued cove.

It is October, but it feels like July, and at 47 years old, the eldest of eight siblings raised by

in a council house in Wolverhampton (England), the one who began writing at age 11 and achieved her television program and column in

At 18, he visits the Expanded Literature Festival (FLEM) in Mallorca.

She is ready to take a dip (“swimming makes me feel sexy, that's how I learned to love myself and accept my body”) and present her latest book,

(translated by Gemma Rovira in Spanish and by Maria Cabrera Callís in Catalan at Anagrama ), in which she explores what happens when you become a middle-aged woman and find yourself scheduling “maintenance fuck” with your husband on Friday mornings at 8am as soon as the girls leave for school.

After a decade in which she revolutionized the publishing market by bringing feminism closer to thousands of women in a light and fun way while advocating for the right to abortion and denouncing the tyranny of beauty canons, the expansive and generous writer assures that she has closed a cycle.

She is writing two films—one to be directed by her sister about a group of mothers who turn to producing feminist porn and another about an opera singer avenging rapists.

“After adapting

Made to the cinema, I understood that I had to make a movie one year and a book the next.

This is how my life will be from now on.

Also because I have sold every possible book to women.

I need a new audience."

Between

I wrote because nobody at that time talked about feminism.

It was academic, very niche.

People thought it was angry lesbians hating men—although angry lesbians are brilliant because they're not into bullshit.

I needed to write a fun and accessible manual for all women.

And then the whole world became

Yes, luckily many of us appeared at once and the social networks helped this explosion.

We had series like

with Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Beyoncé put a giant “Feminist” on her stage.

That was incredible, but that book was feminism for young women.

In what sense?

When you get older, your feminism changes.

Now I no longer write about getting drunk or fucking the wrong guys.

Now I write about being a mother, getting old, how I feel about politics or money.

When you get old, you can't be that runaway chick anymore.

Has growing up forced you to be more than a woman?

Literally.

Loads with everything and much more.

On top of that, you have to do all these jobs for which you don't see a penny.

And you perceive more clearly the gap between men and women.

The male writers of my generation have lived very different lives.

Every woman I know who is a writer, or famous, or known on social media, invests half of her work in a feminism for which she doesn't see a penny.

We are there all the time, writing petitions to the Government, calling out campaigns, helping each other and the young people.

And they don't?

No way!

They just write.

Men don't help men.

So my next book is going to be about why I think men should start helping young men, because they're not doing it at all.

He says that on Twitter he asked men what disadvantage they felt in the world.

His conclusion is that "men have no words to say they are sad."

They don't know how to express it.

We are surrounded by big guys who will tattoo the names of their children and their mothers, whom they love so much that they will write it on their bodies, but they will never verbalize their terror of being bad parents.

And what else don't they count?

Everything that we do talk about.

They don't talk about their emotions, about caring for the elderly, about being afraid.

Their lives seem very small.

Denounce the explosion of male hate on the net.

He says that if he uploads a picture of his breakfast to Twitter on any given Tuesday, in 10 minutes he's bound to get two rape threats in the comments.

Oh yes, social media has made rape threats vague.

In the old days, rapists had to work harder.

They had to follow you down the street, make an effort.

It was, how shall we put it, a noble tradition.

Now every single woman I know receives rape threats all the time.

Why are the men so angry?

That's why I want to write that book.

We always talk about women.

We never talk about men.

I didn't think so before.

If not, she wouldn't have written four books about being a woman in her title.

If you were to say this to me five years ago, I would have told you: "I don't care in the least about them", but I have understood that this is also the work of feminism.

If men get angry, they are scared.

And that scares us.

Our job, as feminists, after helping women, is to go help men who are scared and hate women.

If we can make them less scared, it will make our lives better.

That's what I love about feminism, it makes our lives better.

Caitlin Moran, photographed in Mallorca.Vicens Gimenez

But he predicts that a feminist, today, can only be wanted on networks for six months or a year.

This is how the cycle works.

It seems that we can only have one woman that we love very much during that period of time.

In that period she will be perfect, the best.

And, suddenly, it will be necessary to look for a new one.

And to another.

We don't allow women to make mistakes or change their minds.

Women are either perfect or screwed.

Why do you think it happens?

Because we have lost the wisdom to understand the woman who is wrong, admits it and says: "I have changed my mind and this is what I have learned."

And while that will be far more valuable than the new

girl that you don't know much about, people will be gawking at that newcomer who hasn't made any mistakes yet.

That's dangerous: I find more and more young girls terrified of being wrong.

I worry a lot.

What do they tell you?

That they are terrified of writing or saying something that will lead them to make a mistake.

That makes feminism small again.

And it is causing young women, now, only to dedicate themselves to retweeting phrases.

They will copy what another has said.

Nobody wants to ask the real questions.

You cannot say: “I don't understand this, explain it to me, please”.

You have to know what you think at all times.

And that is dangerous territory.

It's okay to change your mind.

It's okay not to have an opinion.

We must be able to say it.

Precisely, he has written about changing his mind with the use of Botox.

When you're 29, it's so easy to say, "Oh, I hate Botox, that's not feminist at all!"

But when you reach 37, you've had a lousy year, you look in the mirror and you only see yourself sad, then you think: "I don't want to look like this, I want to be seen how I feel on the inside."

That is solved with an injection that is like a repairing night.

And if you haven't had a good night's sleep in 10 years, use this gadget given to us by science.

Have you turned to him?

As you can see, my face already reveals that I prefer to spend that money on shoes and cigarettes.

But I'm not telling you that at some point I look in the mirror, see myself sad and turn to it.

Claim ordinary sex.

He is grateful that it has been normalized with series like

I learned a lot about sex watching TV, so I love that there are series that demystify it for young people.

Now, women are given lousy advice about sex.

I meet a lot of girls who tell me they never want to do it.

Why?

When I ask, they always answer: "I'm afraid they'll hurt me."

I think it's because of the influence of porn and imitating the violence of those videos in which they are drowned.

It breaks my heart.

But if we can have multiple orgasms and have dirty sex, if we have all these toys to have fun!

But, look at us, we're still screwed with sex.

And our daughters are afraid to fuck because of porn.

He has always defended self-pleasure.

Masturbation is where it all begins.

Are you anxious?

Masturbate, a quick one, and I assure you that day you will feel 50% better.

It should be illegal for girls to sleep with a guy without masturbating first.

The Government should distribute masturbation licenses like driving ones.

She vindicates the importance of having mentors, mirrors in which to reflect.

How do you see that the new European policies that succeed, from the United Kingdom to Italy, are conservative or extreme right?

These women have internalized misogyny because they have been educated and advanced in a patriarchal way.

This is something that happens quite often in England: we have the largest number of blacks and Asians in the Conservative government, but they are people who are trying to be as white as possible.

Neither Liz Truss nor Giorgia Meloni are feminists.

And what would you say to them when they defend that they are?

That they are women who have had to act like men to get their job.

I'm not going to criticize Truss for knowing how to play a certain game and winning it [interview was conducted before Truss resigned].

I won't criticize her, even though she's the dumbest prime minister we've ever had, and she sees we've had useless monkeys in Downing Street.

If Truss had talked about rape culture or family reconciliation, she would never have made it as leader of the Conservative Party.

Caitlin Moran, photographed in Mallorca.Vicens Gimenez

When she started writing for

One of the things that worries me most about young writers is that it seems like they can only write if they talk about their traumas.

Tell why they went crazy or how they became alcoholics.

But when their lives improve, they no longer find a market.

That worries me.

And you don't detect that with the writers?

No. Men don't have to sell their lives and secrets the way women do.

It's great that we get paid to tell our secrets, but why don't guys write those essays?

Why is there no man writing about how he became a rapist?

That's what I want to read.

Why do you rape?

Why have you gone to hell?

Why don't you talk about your emotions?

He experienced the smurfette syndrome in music magazines and very few have survived.

What do you think is responsible for the decline of this press?

If the music press is dead, at least in the UK, it's because there were only men reading what men wrote.

And now music is dominated by women.

They have lost that audience because they only talked to each other.

They were straight journalists saying, “Oh, this disco and pop music that chicks and gay guys like is not music.”

You don't know how I hate that.

Also, disco and pop is much better than rock.

And now the cultural conversation is dominated by artists.

Exactly, but it worries me that at a time when music made by women is so much more interesting, when we have girls like St. Vincent, Janelle Monáe or Lizzo, nobody is writing those interesting and intelligent reports like we used to do with them. uncles.

When did you have the epiphany that you no longer wanted to be like them?

When I started I thought that if I wanted to be a good writer, I had to write like a man, please him.

But suddenly, at 30, I saw the light and I was like, Oh my gosh, if I could write things that women would read for the rest of their lives, that's 52% of the population.

Also, women read more.

And they buy more books.

Why the hell was he writing for them if men didn't buy books?

I understood that writing for women was not a failure.

And now they read it too.

Half of the readers of

were men.

From the editorial they were not very convinced.

At first, they told me: "Let's hope that women buy your book, because no man will read it."

They will not have done it in public, but they did read it.

Do you think they have hidden to read it?

Oops, yes, many have told me!

They covered the cover, they carried it as a secret.

I'm lovin 'it.

I have been their emotional porn, their guide to understanding their girlfriends.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber