Caitlin Moran is the author of How to Be a Woman and other books.From the transcript of her interview with Terry Gross for Fresh Air:
GROSS:...Caitlin Moran, ... why do you think so many people, so many women, don't want to be associated with the word feminism?--Marshal Zeringue
MORAN: I think it's simply because they don't know what it means. When - one of the reasons that I wanted to write a whole book about feminism, rather than just endlessly wanging on about it in a bar - which had previously been my technique in order to spread the word for the sisterhood - it was because I was meeting a lot of younger women. And I would kind of confidently say oh, well, you know, we're all feminists here.
And they would, with a look of horror, as if I had just banged them on the knee with a fork, go no, I'm not a feminist. And you go, what do you mean? And, you know, you kind of - you run through kind of, you know, what being a feminist means, sort of like voting and, you know, rape being illegal and not being a legal possession of your husband.
And they go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, we're into all of that. I said, well, you are a feminist then. Women are feminist by default. And you live in a feminist world. The first world is feminist. You are educated equally to boys. You're expected to go into equal employment with boys. In a marriage, you are legally equal. So, you know, you cannot deny we live in a feminist world.
GROSS: What made you realize that?
MORAN: I never didn't realize it. I was, I mean, I was brought up in a kind of, you know, very hippie, liberal family. And it was just always automatically assumed that men and women were...[read on]