Caitlin Moran: For me, and I suspect a lot of socially awkward people,...

When I talk to girls, they go, 'I'm not a feminist.' And I say: 'What? You don't want to vote? Do you want to be owned by your husband? Do you want your money from your job to go into his bank account? If you were raped, do you still want that to be a crime? Congratulations : you are a feminist.'

Caitlin Moran

money girl jobs

A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold, rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen, instead.

Caitlin Moran

space imagination islands

I told my girls, 'Look at Rihanna: She's one of the biggest pop stars in the world. She's really famous, really powerful, really rich. Yet in every single video she can only wear panties. Poor Rhianna! We'll know when she is properly powerful and successful when we see her in a lovely cardigan.'

Caitlin Moran

girl powerful stars

The world is difficult and we are all breakable. So just be kind.

Caitlin Moran

be-kind kind world

What is feminism? Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be. Are you a feminist? Hahaha. Of course you are.

Caitlin Moran

feminist nuts men

My core belief is that if you're complaining about something for more than three minutes, two minutes ago you should have done something about it.

Caitlin Moran

should-have complaining two

I always give three pieces of advice to all the teenage girls when I do my talks: long country walks - it's important to get some fresh air in your lungs, and be in contact with your body; masturbation - it takes the edge off, it'll get you through; and the revolution - believing in changing the world.

Caitlin Moran

teenage girl country

When a woman says, ‘I have nothing to wear!’, what she really means is, ‘There’s nothing here for who I’m supposed to be today.

Caitlin Moran

fashion today mean

I like a little bit of revolution. I think it's a very good hobby for a young woman. Better than squash.

Caitlin Moran

hobbies squash thinking

But deciding not to have children is a very, very hard decision for a woman to make: the atmosphere is worryingly inconducive to saying, "I choose not to," or "it all sounds a bit vile, tbh." We call these women "selfish" The inference of the word "childless" is negative: one of lack, and loss. We think of nonmothers as rangy lone wolves - rattling around, as dangerous as teenage boys or men. We make women feel that their narrative has ground to a halt in their thirities if they don't "finish things" properly and have children.

Caitlin Moran

teenage mother children

You can always tell when a woman is with the wrong man, because she has so much to say about the fact that nothing's happening. When women find the right person, on the other hand, they just... disappear for six months, then resurface, eyes shiny, and usually about six pounds heavier.

Caitlin Moran

eye men hands

When I hear women talking about how their wedding is going to be/was the best day of their life, I can’t help but think, You just haven’t taken enough MDMA in a field at 3 a.m., love.

Caitlin Moran

taken talking thinking

If you are lying down to give birth, gravity is not helping you. You know, you stand up and, you know, a baby will basically kind of fall out of you, if you keep walking 'round.

Caitlin Moran

baby lying fall

It's always sunny above the clouds. Always. Every day on earth - every day I have ever had - was secretly sunny, after all.

Caitlin Moran

always-sunny earth clouds

I have a rule for working out if the root problem of something is, in fact, sexism. And it is this: asking 'Are the boys doing it? Are the boys having to worry about this stuff? Are the boys the centre of a gigantic global debate on this subject?

Caitlin Moran

work-out roots boys

You just wanted to be normal. It wasn't even being beautiful. I just wanted to be smooth and thin and have, and you know, have beautiful glossy hair and lovely clothes and be able to walk in heels. And I thought that once I did all of that stuff that my life would begin.

Caitlin Moran

clothes hair beautiful

For throughout history, you can read the stories of women who - against all the odds - got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled or ruined, because all around them, society was still wrong. Show a girl a pioneering hero - Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Frida Kahlo, Cleopatra, Boudicca, Joan of Arc - and you also, more often than not, show a girl a woman who was eventually crushed.

Caitlin Moran

girl odds hero

When you say you're not a feminist, if feminism hadn't existed, and you didn't live in a feminist world, you wouldn't be saying that, because you'd be too busy scrubbing out the toilets in back while cooking up your husband's tea and dying in childbirth at the age of 34.

Caitlin Moran

feminist husband cooking

We must recall the most important of humanity guidelines: Be polite. Being polite is possibly the greatest daily contribution everyone can make to life on Earth.

Caitlin Moran

feminist important humanity

Batman doesn’t want a baby in order to feel he’s ‘done everything’. He’s just saved Gotham again! If this means that Batman must be a feminist role model above, say, Nicola Horlick, then so be it.

Caitlin Moran

baby order mean

For me, and I suspect a lot of socially awkward people, dealing with people face-to-face seems really traumatic. Particularly if you have massive sweating issues, and particularly if on top of that you have quite smelly sweat that smells like onion soup.