Caitlin Flanagan

Caitlin Flanagan (born November 14, 1961) is an American writer and social critic.^[1] A contributor to The Atlantic since February 2001,^[2][3] she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2019.^[4]

Caitlin Flanagan
Born	(1961-11-14) November 14, 1961 (age 62) Berkeley, California, U.S.
Education	University of Virginia (BA, MA)
Occupation(s)	writer social critic
Parent	Thomas Flanagan (father)
Relatives	Andrew Klavan (brother-in-law)

Her 2004 piece for The New Yorker^[5][6] was expanded into the 2006 book To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife. Flanagan also authored the 2012 book Girl Land.

Early life and education

Flanagan was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Berkeley, California.^[1] She is white, and the daughter of Jean (Parker), a nurse, and writer Thomas Flanagan.^[1][7] In 1978, she claims to have been the victim of an attempted sexual assault by a high school classmate.^[8] She attempted suicide the following year.^[9] Her sister Ellen is married to novelist Andrew Klavan.^[10]

Flanagan holds a B.A. and an M.A. (1989) in art history from the University of Virginia.^[11]

Career

Before becoming a writer, Flanagan was an English teacher and college counselor at Harvard-Westlake School in North Hollywood, a theme she later returned to in her articles about college admissions.^[12]

Flanagan's writing and social criticism frequently explore the intersection of public and private, and seek to expose hypocrisies in social narratives of the powerful and the prominent. Although such critiques sometimes use traditionally conservative arguments, Flanagan has referred to herself as a Democrat and a liberal.^[13] Bitch magazine awarded Flanagan its "Douchebag of the Century" award for her criticism of feminism.^[14] Flanagan wrote an article in support of Dianne Feinstein's response to youth climate activists, who were mostly from a 350.org chapter, in which she placed the Green New Deal in "the worlds of magic and make-believe," which was met with objections from the activists and others.^[15][16][17]

She has written about contradictory currents in the lives of American women, including herself, who discovered later in life a joy in motherhood and social value in domesticity that ran counter to the view of women's domestic lives as oppressive. Some of her essays underscore the emotional rewards and social value of a housewife's role. Consequently, she has been criticized, for instance by Joan Walsh, for misrepresenting her life choices and then condemning other women for not choosing a lifestyle Flanagan herself did not choose either.^[18]

In her article "How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement", Flanagan challenged the narrative of economic and social liberation of women credited to feminism by accusing middle-class women of succeeding at the expense of foreign nannies and illegal workers who replaced them in mothering roles. She argued that these women, while claiming to be virtuous and concerned for others, simultaneously robbed these workers by not paying Social Security taxes.^[19]

Flanagan has appeared as a guest on The Colbert Report^[18] and Real Time with Bill Maher.

Flanagan's book To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife was published by Little, Brown in 2006.^[20][1] The book was developed from a New Yorker essay by the same title, as well as other magazine pieces by Flanagan and new writing.^[1] In 2012, she published a book about teenage girls, Girl Land.^{[21][22][23][24]}

Flanagan was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for several articles that year, including two pieces about Babe.net's story about an anonymous woman's allegation that comedian and actor Aziz Ansari's behavior during a date rose to the level of sexual assault.^[25] Flanagan was one of several commentators who argued that the woman who wrote the piece ignored her own agency, not considering her own ability to speak up and leave the situation.^[26]

Personal life

Flanagan previously lived in Los Angeles. In 1998 she had twin sons, Patrick and Conor, with her husband, Rob Hudnut.^[27][28] In 2003, when her children were in preschool, she was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer, which later metastasized to other parts of her body.^[29][30]

Bibliography

Books

• To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife. Little, Brown. 2006. ISBN 978-0316736879.
• Girl Land. Hachette. 2012. ISBN 978-0316065993.

Selected articles

• "To Hell With All That: One woman's decision to go back to work". The New Yorker: 38. 5 July 2004.
• "Cultivating Failure". The Atlantic. January 2010.
• "The Autumn of Joan Didion". The Atlantic. January 2012.
• "A heroine for our time : the pulp-fiction superspy Modesty Blaise is a woman who is always in control". The Culture File. The Omnivore. The Atlantic. 321 (2): 32, 34. March 2018.^[31]
• "The problem with HR". The Workplace Report. The Atlantic. 324 (1): 48–54. July 2019.
• "I Thought Stage IV Cancer Was Bad Enough: Then came a pandemic during the presidency of Donald Trump". The Atlantic. June 2020.
• "Private Schools Have Become Truly Obscene: Elite schools breed entitlement, entrench inequality—and then pretend to be engines of social change". The Atlantic. April 2021.

The Atlantic ; June 2022; Chasing Joan Didion; Visiting the Writer's California homes, from Berkeley to Malibu. What was I looking for?

References

1. Hulbert, Ann (2006-04-25). "Mother's Hypocritical Helper: Why Caitlin Flanagan drives her readers nuts". Slate.com. Retrieved 2010-09-17.
2. Flanagan, Caitlin. "Caitlin Flanagan". The Atlantic. Retrieved 29 April 2018.
3. "To hell with all that magazine writing". Salon.com. 2006-11-22. Retrieved 2011-09-09.
4. The Pulitzer Prizes, Columbia University (2019). "Finalist: Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic". Pulitzer. Retrieved 17 April 2020.
5. "Caitlin Flanagan". The New Yorker. Retrieved 29 April 2018.
6. Flanagan, Caitlin (28 June 2004). "To Hell With All That". The New Yorker. Retrieved 29 April 2018 – via www.newyorker.com.
7. Colby, Vineta; Wilson, H. W. (1991). World Authors, 1980-1985. ISBN 9780824207977.
8. Flanagan, Caitlin (September 18, 2018). "I Believe Her". The Atlantic.
9. "A High School Assault". The New York Times. September 20, 2018 – via NYTimes.com.
10. Robinson, Peter (August 2, 2008). "That Despicable Winston Churchill". National Review. ....reminded me of an exchange I had with my father-in-law, Thomas Flanagan, brilliant guy, old school academic lefty. Flanagan, the author of a marvelous trilogy of novels about Ireland, the first of which is "The Year of the French," taught at Berkeley
11. "alumni news [graduate art history]" (PDF). News University of Virginia McIntire Department of Art Carl H. and Martha S. Lindner Center for Art History. Fall 2005. Retrieved January 16, 2018.
12. Flanagan, Caitlin (September 2001). "Confessions of a Prep School College Counselor". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2010-09-17.
13. "Making Sense Podcast #165 - Journey into Wokeness". Sam Harris. Retrieved 2019-09-12.
14. Townsend, Kevin (2018-02-27). "The Atlantic Interview: Caitlin Flanagan". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2019-09-12.
15. "Members of Youth vs. Apocalypse Defend Their Exchange With Dianne Feinstein". The Atlantic. 2019-03-01. Retrieved 2022-05-13.
16. Flanagan, Caitlin (2019-02-24). "Dianne Feinstein Doesn't Need a Do-Over". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2022-05-13.
17. "Perspective | Why Dianne Feinstein was wrong to dismiss child activists as political pawns". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2022-05-13.
18. Walsh, Joan (2006-05-02). "Yes, Caitlin Flanagan, You Can Stay a Democrat!". HuffPost. Retrieved 2021-11-09.
19. Flanagan, Caitlin (2004-03-01). "How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2019-09-12.
20. Paul, Pamela (2006-04-16). "Mother Superior". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-01-16.
21. Gregory, Alice (January 9, 2012). "'Girl Land' by Caitlin Flanagan". Boston Globe. Retrieved 2018-01-16.
22. O'Rourke, Meghan (January 22, 2012). "Never-Never Land". New York. Retrieved 2018-01-16.
23. Day, Elizabeth (2012-02-03). "Girl Land by Caitlin Flanagan – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 2018-01-16.
24. Keller, Emma Gilbey (2012). "Girl Land - By Caitlin Flanagan - Book Review". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-01-16.
25. "Finalist: Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 29 October 2022. For luminous columns that expertly explore the intersection of gender and politics with a personal, yet keenly analytical, point of view.
26. Flanagan, Caitlin (January 14, 2018). "The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari". The Atlantic. Retrieved 29 October 2022.
27. "The mother lode - Los Angeles Times". Los Angeles Times. 12 April 2006.
28. "Desperate to be a housewife". magill.ie. 25 April 2006. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
29. Flanagan, Caitlin (June 2020). "I Have Cancer and I'm Just Trying to Stay Alive". The Atlantic.
30. Flanagan, Caitlin (23 August 2021). "I'll Tell You the Secret of Cancer". The Atlantic. Retrieved 24 August 2021.
31. Online version is titled "The comic-strip heroine I'll never forget".

External links

• Personal website
• The Atlantic articles
• The New Yorker articles
• by Jen Lawrence at LiteraryMama.com
• Flanagan appearances on The Colbert Report
• Profile, elle.com