Dear Caitlin… A letter from a fauxmo

Dear Caitlin,

SCREAM! Let’s do lunch sometime. We can drink Rose out of the bottle and then use it to masturbate with. SCREAM!

But first, I would like to talk to you about a couple of things.

Much of what I read by you suggests to me that you think of yourself as an honorary ‘Gay’. You out-camp, out-dress and out-SCREAM even the screamiest of queens. So I wasn’t surprised to read your latest column in the Times, stating how ‘every woman’ needs that most vital of accessories: The Gay Best Friend.  You calculated that due to statistical imbalances, gay men must be doing double shifts to satisfy women’s need for a GBF, going on

‘ lunch dates with one straight female “best” friend, then karaoke with another from 8pm, fitting in a bitching session on Skype between 6pm and 7pm’.

So far, so mildly amusing. But your humourous observation reveals a much more serious point. Not all gay men are as camp as Christmas. Not all gay men want to spend their leisure time with screaming queens like you, Caitlin. And not all women are desperate to ‘bitch’ and preen with a character out of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Your version of both gay men and straight women is insulting to all of us. It trades on lazy gender and sexuality stereotypes, that to be honest, I thought were rather passe by now. Some of us do have friends who are not the mirror image of our own gender and sexuality identities. But this is not a matter worthy of a column in a weekend lifestyle magazine.

While I am here, I thought I’d mention something else too. I have gathered that you are SCREAM! writing a book about feminism. I am glad you consider yourself a feminist. You are a talented journalist who deserves the success you have achieved alongside your male counterparts. I want you to support the movement that has enabled you to be rewarded for your hard work.  But I don’t know for sure how much you think feminism is about gender equality for everyone. You promoted the Stranger review by Lindy west of SATC2 that labelled Samantha a ‘prostitute’ with a ‘withered vagina’. Your influence on twitter meant that article reached thousands of people’s desktops. Its misogyny and the endorsement of its misogyny by people like you made me feel despair about feminism for the first time in a long while. It certainly made me seriously doubt whether you have anything useful to say about feminism in the 21st century. I hope you prove my doubts to be unfounded.

I know you are a serious journalist, and a seriously able one at that. I am sure you are a feminist at heart. I know that women in male-dominated careers have to find strategies to survive and flourish against the odds. I expect your camp persona is just one of those strategies. But you have made it. You are respected and influential. You can take the facepaint off now, love.  Sit down. Have a cup of tea. And please, listen to some of the voices apart from the one in your head that just SCREAMs at you to act so SCREAMingly ‘Gay’. I couldn’t hear myself think if I were you. I don’t think you can either.

Yours, very quietly, and in frustrated sisterhood,

Quiet Riot Girl

Caitlin Moran on GBFs:  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/caitlin_moran/article7141683.ece

lindy West on SATC2: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/burkas-and-birkins/Content?oid=4132715