Have you tried with the developer tool?

Is this on a webpage or in an editable text area ?

If that email text is linkified (active) then you might be able to use "Copy Link Location" without the need to select it.

Thanks cor-el. The email isn't in an editable text area and it's not a link. It's in the "To:" box at the top of the email.

I can find a workaround to getting the email address (including just reading what it says and typing it myself) but the big problem here is that I really don't want websites to know when I'm selecting text, that has nothing to do with them. It annoys me that they can see where my cursor is. Too intrusive. I just want websites to be pages of unchanging text, not have all these interactive features!

Can you use the keyboard (possibly Tab and Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C)?

Cor-el to the rescue! You really are a superhero! :-)

Using the keyboard to select the text WORKED!

Though I'm still bummed out with the fact that websites have so much power, and there's so much javascript these days. You can't even save a web page any more as what you save typically looks like garbage without all the online scripts running!

You can take a screenshot of the page or print the page to PDF if you need an exact copy.