Caitlin Moran: 'Every few years, I reread How To Be A Woman and marvel at what I got wrong'
One day, back in 2011, I was on the train going into central London, when a big group of 14-year-old girls ran up to me, like a gang of giggling meerkats, shouting, “Are you – are you CAITLIN MORAN? You wrote How To Be A Woman? Oh, my God! We learned about masturbation from that! Dude, it’s amazing! We’ve all started doing it now! We’ve formed a gang! At school! It’s called wank club! And we come in every morning and say how many times we did it last night – and then high five each other! In the playground! Shouting Wank Club! Can we shake your hand?”
“Well, if your wrists aren’t already too tired – then, yes,” I said.
As the girls got off at the next stop, my two daughters, then 10 and eight, were silent for a moment, then said, “Mum, what’s wanking?”
“A very pleasant and constructive hobby for a young lady, which I totally recommend,” I said. “And which is much cheaper and more accessible than inline skating. Now do your shoelaces up. We’re at Euston.”
Of course now, almost 10 years later, in 2020, women masturbating is old news. In many ways, I don’t know why I’ve opened with it. Peak lady wank was probably way back in 2016, when essentially reworked the intent of the slogan “Yes we can” while watching videos of Barack Obama. There’s barely a prominent female figure who hasn’t cheerfully mentioned her happy rummaging: Chrissy Teigen, Emma Watson, Rihanna, showing Jemima Kirke and Adam Driver doing it together on a sofa, and Michaela Coel’s Tracey in having a fiddle while pretending to be Beyoncé. If there is such a thing as a lady wank bank, it’s pretty solvent right now.
