TRIGGERnometry - Are Women Safe on Our Streets？ Emma Webb & Ella Whelan

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:08.020 I'm Constantine Kishin.

00:00:09.240 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:14.840 We have two brilliant guests for you today. Emma Webb, commentator, and Ella Whelan,

00:00:20.320 journalist, commentator, and author of What Women Want, Fun, Freedom, and an End to Feminism.

00:00:25.020 There we go. I got that all right. Not the first time, I'll be honest.

00:00:29.320 Welcome both.

00:00:30.160 Hi, how's it going?

00:00:30.680 It's good to have you back.

00:00:31.820 And Emma, we've been meaning to have you on the show for a long time.

00:00:34.540 Not necessarily the best circumstances to have you on the show.

00:00:38.300 There's been some tragic events,

00:00:39.580 and that was one of the reasons we wanted to have you on the show,

00:00:42.760 the abduction and murder of a woman here in London.

00:00:45.560 Our international audience may not be familiar with it.

00:00:47.960 And the conversation that has ensued from that,

00:00:50.660 vigils, protests, policing, we'll get into all of that.

00:00:54.460 But we wanted to talk about the broader issue of women's safety,

00:00:58.140 first and foremost uh and it's this thing that you know as two guys in particularly when we talk

00:01:03.060 to women in our lives who may be not feminists or not you know almost every woman has some

00:01:08.180 experience of being harassed being followed being mistreated in some way what is what is the

00:01:15.340 situation in terms of women's safety in 2021 emma uh well i so i personally as you say you know

00:01:23.460 most women have at some point walked home with their keys between their fingers at night or

00:01:27.680 um had someone harass them in the streets but usually the person who in my experience is you

00:01:33.160 know nutcase could be a woman could be a man um I think that the women's obviously women's safety

00:01:39.540 is something important and we should talk about it but I think the way that we have been talking

00:01:45.580 about it since the murder of Sarah Everard is just completely off the wall and unrelated and

00:01:51.280 to do with many other things other than the actual murder itself so yeah I think it's not

00:01:58.080 an issue necessarily to do with sort of men particularly it's not as people have been

00:02:05.400 calling it an epidemic of misogyny it's not systemic misogyny I think that you know women's

00:02:12.040 safety is something definitely worth discussing but the hysterical overreaction to the Sarah

00:02:18.200 Everard case that case is quite unusual in the scheme of the sorts of like homicides against

00:02:26.820 women people have been calling them femicides usually tend to happen from someone that the

00:02:32.760 woman knows and women are less likely to be murdered in public than in the public space

00:02:40.300 than men so I think those are two very separate issues and they're all of these different things

00:02:46.440 to do with everything from catcalling to murder and kidnap have just been clumped together recently

00:02:51.000 so i think there's a there's an awful lot to unpick ella what's your take on it i mean it is

00:02:56.540 a complicated picture and i think you have to be honest and brave enough to say that it's a

00:03:00.340 complicated picture and there are many people today who won't just want to package it up very

00:03:03.840 neatly whether that be saying there's no problem this is a hysteria or saying like emma says that

00:03:10.200 you know femicide is on the rage and we all should you know we should entertain ideas like curfews

00:03:15.180 I mean, the fact is, girls are told from a young age by their parents, in particular, in a different way that boys are told, to be careful on the way home.

00:03:23.560 You know, my parents told me to think about what I was wearing, not because they had some kind of misogynistic view of controlling women, but, you know, out of a sense of safety and care.

00:03:35.520 and you you know most women do and all the women I know anyway have experiences of not necessarily

00:03:41.740 being assaulted but having your heart rate quicken of think you know thinking twice about taking

00:03:46.480 the quicker route home which is darker or the longer route home which is along main roads

00:03:50.680 all that is a truth and it happens but at the same time you have to acknowledge as Emma has

00:03:57.340 said that statistically the likelihood of any of us ending up like Sarah Everard you know which is

00:04:02.760 our worst nightmare to end up like that, is incredibly low. So of 1,500 women that were

00:04:08.300 murdered in the last 10 years between 2009 and 2018 by men, it was about 8% of them were

00:04:15.180 murdered by strangers through kidnapping or someone on the street attacking them. So that's

00:04:20.540 a really small percentage. So the likelihood of one of us going out on the street and being

00:04:25.800 attacked like Sarah is statistically incredibly low. But that doesn't quite answer the question

00:04:31.660 of why women are feeling afraid and for me the concept of safety isn't just about what is the

00:04:37.300 physical threat that you that that might happen to you but it's also about how do you feel yourself

00:04:42.200 how confident are you and the tragedy the continuing tragedy of what happened to Sarah

00:04:46.560 is that what or what I think a lot of contemporary feminists are now kind of given into is the idea

00:04:52.360 that women should feel deeply terrified that actually that their fears their greatest nightmares

00:04:57.340 of ending up like Sarah Everard are reality and what that really is doing is you know giving into

00:05:04.300 the MO of men that want to hurt women is allowing is kind of asking women to live in fear which is

00:05:10.520 what these men want they want women to be afraid that's why they commit these crimes it's not just

00:05:15.320 it's not just coincidence they didn't just do it for the hell of it they do you know most of them

00:05:18.240 do it to make women feel afraid and so you know safety it's you know statistically you are going

00:05:24.040 to be very safe on the street and as much as most women are afraid also most women fall home out of

00:05:29.580 clubs and walk home on their own and you know I can imagine numerous situations that I put myself

00:05:34.980 in as a teenager that would make me wince now but I did it without a thought when I was younger

00:05:38.580 because that's you know you you live freely when you're young but the question is you know what's

00:05:44.580 what is better to compound women's fears that are in some cases irrational or to say actually we

00:05:50.460 want to reclaim the streets we want to you know reclaim the night and be as comfortable on a

00:05:56.880 on a public spare as a man is from 3 p.m to 3 a.m i take i think the latter is far more progressive

00:06:02.440 than the former and why do you think this the murder of this of sarah everard sparked this

00:06:09.020 particular movement why do you think was it was it lockdown was it because it was a police officer

00:06:14.000 who's been who's been charged with this crime although he hasn't been convicted as of yet

00:06:18.400 Well, I was thinking about it in relation to the murder of George Floyd, you know, in a similar situation in which there is a longstanding problem with police brutality and racism in America.

00:06:27.720 And George Floyd is certainly not the first black man to die at the hands of a police officer.

00:06:31.760 Why did it particularly take off in relation to him? And why was there such mass movements with Black Lives Matter?

00:06:37.400 Why has Sarah Everard hit a chord? And I think because we, you know, it's a tricky point to make.

00:06:43.080 but I think politically we've moved further into a realm of extremes which is not to get kind of

00:06:48.800 wishy-washy liberal about it but to say that you know you immediately that people have a kind of

00:06:54.160 knee-jerk reaction that they immediately jump to the kind of worst case scenario so we're not even

00:06:58.780 talking about sexism we're talking about misogyny at the moment that doesn't you know that we've

00:07:02.760 have people on the radio saying the police are institutionally misogynistic you think okay I'm

00:07:07.900 not a fan of the police but the police institutionally hate women i mean misogyny is about

00:07:13.360 a deep-seated visceral and violent hatred of women no there's no evidence of that in the

00:07:20.320 sense it's very similar with the kind of the idea of white privilege that came out of those black

00:07:24.920 lives matters movement in the wake of george floyd's murder the idea that all white people

00:07:29.480 you know have a kind of innate violence within them that just exists as an abstract thing

00:07:34.080 we've now got this sort of conversation that all men no matter what their sensibilities or their

00:07:38.860 behavior or their track record or their beliefs have an innate violence within them that exists

00:07:44.380 abstract to their individual individuality that poses a threat to women and you know at the same

00:07:51.260 time i'm also not surprised that it's kicked off because in the past we've had of course me too

00:07:55.940 movement we've also had everyday sexism which was laura bates pet project and has kept her in

00:08:01.060 columns and books for years which is the you know the idea that we women live under everyday sexism

00:08:06.000 and live under fear the kind of holler back movement which was about reclaiming the streets

00:08:10.100 there's been so many different kind of hashtags and you know and campaigns um around women's

00:08:16.260 safety that i it again this is kind of a sore point but it can feel like there are lots of

00:08:22.380 people who've been campaigning around this issue for a long time and now they kind of have their

00:08:27.600 they have their evidence of, you know, one murder, but it's a terrible murder. They have their

00:08:32.460 evidence to say, look, look at what happened to Sarah Everett. We told you that there is an

00:08:36.420 epidemic of femicide. And of course, most sensible people can see that that's not the case.

00:08:40.940 See, it's difficult for us because we hear what you guys are saying, you know, obviously take it

00:08:47.240 on board. But as I said, if you speak to, if we speak to women in our lives, that's definitely a

00:08:52.820 part of their lives that they have to deal with, right? And I think you speak to any woman,

00:08:56.220 that is a concern then again the statistics are men are much more likely to be assaulted in public

00:09:00.880 in the street than women so like how do we even have this conversation yeah i think cynically i'm

00:09:07.880 very cynical about this i agree totally with everything that you've just said i think that

00:09:11.680 the way that um it obviously we can talk about how the protests and things have been

00:09:18.840 have been hijacked but obviously in the same way that happened with george floyd where

00:09:23.300 after that there were certain people who wanted us to see systemic racism everywhere now there

00:09:27.920 are some people who want us to see systemic misogyny everywhere and so you have people like

00:09:31.900 baroness jenny jones immediately coming out and saying the solution to this problem is that we

00:09:36.540 just should lock all men inside after 6 p.m put a curfew on them because that essentially implies

00:09:42.240 that there is like you say something you know inherent to men inherently violent which i think

00:09:47.700 doesn't chime at all with women's experience so when it comes to having a having conversations

00:09:53.040 between men and women and just in the public space about this I feel like this has really

00:09:57.980 has no bearing on people's real uh experience with women's experiences of these things and also men

00:10:04.960 as you know husbands fathers brothers um I think that the way that as you mentioned um

00:10:12.620 about everyday sexism boris johnson coming out and saying that you know everyday sexism is

00:10:18.000 something that's you know we have to figure out the root of it and that's why we need to deal

00:10:21.560 with misogyny in society and sorry just a thought about boris johnson talking about everyday sexism

00:10:27.120 i just we've managed to we've managed to make the debate about something completely unrelated to the

00:10:32.580 starting point and that's the same as what happened with george floyd and i think cynically the reason

00:10:37.180 why this is the case is because we have these ideas in the zeitgeist that are sort of um whirring

00:10:43.500 around and with any and as i mentioned because they believe in system systemic racism or systemic

00:10:51.180 sexism they will see that everywhere and it creates this kind of panic and when you have a

00:10:56.340 situation where policymakers are responding in a knee-jerk way to that kind of panic not only can

00:11:03.260 you not have a proper discussion about it but you also end up with ridiculous policies that are

00:11:08.440 built on the hysteria that has been which it has no no real um sensible reasonable relation to the

00:11:16.520 actual facts well you talk about the proper conversation this is what i'm trying to work

00:11:20.680 out because this is what the purpose of us for being together what is the reasonable conversation

00:11:24.940 do we all just go well look the reality of life is people get murdered people get assaulted

00:11:30.000 you know we can try and you know tinker with the criminal justice system but that's about all we

00:11:35.520 can do and some people are always gonna you know be the victims of that and that's terrible but

00:11:39.580 is is that the reason you know because it feels like we're slightly you know that's not i don't

00:11:47.180 know maybe that's true but it's like we're not doing enough that that would be the argument

00:11:51.780 some people might make well i mean you know the the it's true to say that more men are subject to

00:11:57.240 violence um particularly in the public square um than women but of course context is key so you

00:12:03.880 know it's men committing violence against other men and you know the abstract from the whole thing

00:12:09.940 uh separate from it is that women don't go around battering people you know generally

00:12:15.320 but generally women don't go around committing crimes of violence um against men or against

00:12:21.960 other women in the same in the same kind of statistics as men do so context is key i mean

00:12:26.840 you know two guys brawling outside a pub is very different from the case of sarah everard you know

00:12:32.860 that that context is key in this and i think we discussions tend to lose that i want to live in

00:12:38.060 a world in which we change the rate of rape we change the rate of murder against women i mean

00:12:43.680 in particular this part of the frustrating thing is that if you really want to have a serious

00:12:47.940 conversation about the instances in which women are in danger of murder i mean domestic abuse is

00:12:52.860 the main one and you can pass all the laws you like that we know that the problem with domestic

00:12:57.740 abuse is that police officers don't take certain cases as seriously when women initially report

00:13:02.640 that they are having problems with an ex-partner so you know implementing a new law and making

00:13:06.780 misogyny a hate crime doesn't change that fact and there's this kind of weird sort of double

00:13:12.920 thinking going on where on the one hand you have contemporary feminists saying the police are

00:13:16.860 disgusting they're institutionally sexist they're misogynist they're awful but by the way we want

00:13:20.960 to have loads of them in the bar with us we want to have them on the street watching us when we're

00:13:24.640 walking about in case someone commits a hate crime and we'd really like to have one on every street

00:13:28.660 corner and you think well which one is it are these guys evil or are they your saviors but at

00:13:32.860 the same time you know this is it's an uncomfortable conversation to have because the reality is that

00:13:40.260 women experience life different to men and you know in many cases and there are lots of people

00:13:45.500 who disagree with me on that and there's some people who I think have a have a real visceral

00:13:49.840 reaction to men being portrayed as or as you know heinous and awful which is the right reaction to

00:13:55.300 have because they're not and there are some people that want to say for god's sake this isn't a

00:13:58.640 problem let's stop the hysteria but look sexism didn't just come about like drop from the sky

00:14:04.540 historically it was about women being judged to be lesser than men you know more in need of

00:14:09.880 protection more fragile and less capable of dealing with hardship that is that was the root

00:14:15.200 of sexism that's why women weren't allowed to work that's why women weren't allowed to vote

00:14:18.580 the problem is those tendencies haven't really been challenged in the modern era despite laws

00:14:26.080 being implemented in fact they've actually been turned on their heads and now more often than not

00:14:30.680 it's contemporary feminists arguing that either women need chaperones which they you know they

00:14:35.000 have done in the wake of me too I remember David Schwimmer getting praised for saying that he'd

00:14:38.640 invite a chaperone when a female interviewer would interview him I mean that's like straight

00:14:44.300 out of the Victorian playbook or that that we need more police intervention it means take a

00:14:48.760 really specific thing you know what I've talked about this on a trigonometry beforehand in the

00:14:53.020 past you know some of us who are interested in women's freedom are currently trying to get

00:14:57.940 abortion decriminalized which is making a position which is stating a position that says

00:15:02.040 the state should have no say in women's private lives and then he's you know other feminists come

00:15:08.120 along and say actually we want misogyny criminalized we want the state invited into our lives we want

00:15:13.840 to have police involved in our everyday decisions we want to have authorities involved in the way

00:15:19.080 in which we make choices about um about how we live and you just think you're ruining you're

00:15:24.520 ruining all the progress that was ever made in the past about women becoming independent

00:15:28.220 and i think that you know the the there is the problem that women have a different role in

00:15:34.100 society to men that we said there are still vestiges of sexism in some areas whether it

00:15:38.600 be in relation to child rearing or indeed in relation to bodily autonomy and you're compounding

00:15:42.880 that sexism by suggesting that we are victims uh for men well you know victims at the hands of men

00:15:48.680 that is what they said in 1910 that is what they said in the 1800s to stop us from entering public

00:15:54.200 life and it's just being reconstituted and you know slap a bit of pink glitter on it and put

00:15:58.840 a press statement out from the borset society and i'm meant to eat it up and it's just it's

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00:16:33.200 Don't you think as well, and maybe it's me being slightly conspiratorial about this,

00:16:38.820 but don't you think that we've just become, there's a creeping desire for authoritarianism

00:16:43.900 in a lot of people. We've seen it in lockdowns. And you see here, they just go, we should have

00:16:49.140 a policeman in every bar, in every nightclub. And I'm like, you know, my mother grew up in

00:16:54.700 Venezuela. That's what they have there. That's not a good thing. Yeah. I mean, in particular,

00:16:58.800 sorry in particular the undercover cops thing I mean Andrew Marr um the weekend after the the um

00:17:05.840 news of Sarah Everard's death came about Jess Phillips Labour MP was on and she was talking

00:17:11.180 about the fact that you know she said something like there are so I go out and I see so many

00:17:16.420 wardens giving parking tickets you know to cars and I think why can't there be the same level of

00:17:21.520 attention given to women so you think one parking ticket attendance tends to be so universally

00:17:27.900 accepted as one of life's greatest menaces is really not a good example but also you know the

00:17:33.420 the idea that i would want more men watching me because most police officers are men or that

00:17:40.360 we've just had the scandal with the spy cops of police officers being revealed to have not only

00:17:44.900 had sex with women in the green and the environmentalist movement but families with

00:17:48.920 them undercover cops it's been a huge scandal and so now you want to put stick these undercover

00:17:53.740 bastards in the club i mean will a woman ever be allowed to sneak off to the smoking area to

00:18:00.500 kiss someone that she hasn't met before without someone looking around the corner

00:18:04.440 i mean it's disgusting i've just got this image of coming out of a like a bar of someone and

00:18:09.860 policeman going excuse me have you left your girlfriend outside there's a ticket on her

00:18:12.980 yeah treat treat women like cars great idea uh was not problematic enough let's let's take it

00:18:21.800 up a notch which is this whole conversation about not all men which is essentially i think people

00:18:27.180 some people quite reasonably going well look educating me about not raping people isn't going

00:18:32.780 to reduce the number of rapes in the country because i'm not a rapist right do you know what

00:18:36.120 i mean yeah so how do we have that conversation without looking like a dick basically is what i'm

00:18:40.360 trying to get i don't think it's easy to have that conversation or without getting in trouble

00:18:44.900 particularly as a man um but i do think that it's it's because obviously the people who are going

00:18:53.200 to commit the crimes like the guy who potentially we don't know because it has he hasn't been

00:18:58.100 convicted of anything yet the guy who cop met who may have murdered sarah everard um you know

00:19:04.380 people like that are going to commit crimes no matter what you do you can pass legislation and

00:19:09.340 you can try to deal with people who are catcalling and wolf whistling and you can clamp down on

00:19:13.820 people's freedom of speech and destroy the relationships between the sexes in the process

00:19:18.820 of trying to do that and to as we've seen in so many other areas of hate crime raise the temperature

00:19:24.500 so that everybody feels increasingly restricted which is quite ironic because they're talking

00:19:29.280 about like the over policing of the protests but at the same time they also want to over legislate

00:19:35.340 in areas like that I think that that is a bit of a weird um double standard that they've got going

00:19:40.280 on there but I do think that you know it's it's pretty much nigh on impossible for a straight man

00:19:46.500 to talk about this subject because you've already been demonized as we saw with the you know you

00:19:51.940 need to be locked inside after six o'clock it's there's not really anything that you can say

00:19:57.240 because it will be viewed in that particular framework that's already being promoted

00:20:01.480 so yeah I think one of the reasons why it's important for us to see things in a slightly

00:20:08.620 more complicated way and there is no nuance in the debate we need to move away from that

00:20:12.820 the understanding of these things as being systemic so that you guys can have a voice

00:20:18.340 and we can have a reasonable discussion and we can talk about you know the wives and brothers and

00:20:23.900 um you know who who care very much about women and who are not shouldn't be talked about as if

00:20:31.260 they are somehow complicit in the crimes of a very very small minority of men who would commit

00:20:37.720 those crimes regardless of what you do about misogyny in society it's also a complete

00:20:41.900 misunderstanding of what is happening when someone like the alleged murder of sarah everard commits

00:20:47.100 those crimes or when someone rapes a woman there's particularly in relation to rape there's been this

00:20:52.420 sort of real blurring of the specificity of his in terms of consent classes and things like that

00:20:58.040 people now see rape as just this thing that someone happens to kind of fall into because

00:21:02.440 they're not educated about i mean it's that's it's perverse it's completely not you don't have

00:21:07.120 to kind of get into the graphic ins and outs of what happens in rape but if the person who's doing

00:21:11.460 it knows what they're doing is wrong either that or that everyone is completely inebriated and it's

00:21:16.300 still wrong so it's you know it's it's quite clear to know when when you are committing immoral acts

00:21:21.880 and the idea of putting as emma says you know everyone through a consent class as if it's as

00:21:27.140 if it's like kind of health and safety training and you just need to know not to step over the

00:21:30.960 red line I mean it's just a it's it's a real dumbing down of actually human relationships

00:21:35.340 and what is involved in that but also you know to the kind of not all men thing I mean look if I'm

00:21:41.520 walking home you know from Whitechapel late at night and I hear a footstep behind me that's too

00:21:46.220 close I'm not going to say to myself he's probably just an accountant he's got two kids and everything

00:21:51.420 I'm probably going to think oh who's that but then you know you that that's the instinctual reaction

00:21:57.220 and it's taking personal responsibility yeah which is a good thing yeah but and you know that's

00:22:01.460 that's the instinctual reaction and we can talk about that we have talked about the rights and

00:22:04.660 wrongs of women feeling afraid sometimes out of necessity sometimes but but politically that's

00:22:09.600 different so when you're on your own and an individual we feel all kinds of things because

00:22:13.540 we're subjective we're emotional beings some people like me are able to you know wear steel

00:22:19.580 toe caps and kick people that get in our way some people are not and i would never

00:22:23.520 i would never demonize uh or put shame on a woman who was afraid or timid or anything like that but

00:22:35.020 politically when you are talking about a collective response to something that's outside

00:22:40.280 of our subjective opinion you have to take a firmer stance and so you kind of get called

00:22:45.360 it's like you're an asshole now if you say we should start standing up for ourselves i mean

00:22:50.120 this is what you know I wrote about this recently in the 70s when Peter Sutcliffe was you know

00:22:55.840 routinely murdering and raping women Yorkshire Ripper and I mean talk about terror when there

00:23:01.260 was that you know particularly in Leeds and you know the towns and areas around that women were

00:23:06.160 absolutely terrified rightly so the police were useless the police were not only saying that all

00:23:11.380 women should stay inside they were saying that the women who had been murdered who were prostitutes

00:23:15.140 were asking for it because they were prostitutes some of them not all of them and the feminists

00:23:19.640 at that time came out and said we're going to reclaim the night and we and you're going to get

00:23:24.800 out of our way or we're going to trample on you and it was a real assertion of I have lots of

00:23:29.500 problems with feminism throughout the ages but in particular that assertion of women's freedom

00:23:33.300 was one of the most inspiring things because it was about saying whatever we are individually

00:23:38.160 collectively we are strong and that's where men come in because if I am in trouble on the tube

00:23:44.520 or somewhere where I can't you know physically as a woman I can't battle this this threat to me

00:23:49.500 i want to know that other members of society are willing to step in for me you know big woman big

00:23:55.720 man doesn't matter but you what in driving these wedges between the sectors what we're actually

00:24:00.140 breaking is social solidarity which is you know in a different conversation we could talk about

00:24:04.140 the dystopian fact that anytime a crime happens now everyone takes out their bloody phone and

00:24:08.220 films rather than getting stuck in and it's that similar drive to be isolated from you anatomized

00:24:13.280 from each other that this kind of discussion about men means i want men to feel empowered to

00:24:18.340 you know feel free to interact with me to come on to me to flirt with me and also to step in and

00:24:23.300 save me sometimes to be free individuals who look out for each other and if you're telling demonizing

00:24:28.640 men and saying you know tim stanley said this on the politics live the other day on the bbc you

00:24:34.220 know actually he said i think men have an innate kind of violence inside us i mean what does that

00:24:39.220 mean women have an innate do i have an innate weakness yeah exactly it's like you were saying

00:24:43.360 earlier it's basically creating this culture of like fragility that women you know we're not big

00:24:48.740 girls and we can't look after ourselves which is just not healthy it's the absolute opposite to

00:24:52.940 empowerment it's made it's telling women that they are the victim and if you believe in systemic

00:24:57.480 sexism then you believe that so long as men exist women will be the victim and that the only way to

00:25:03.640 to change that is to change the law is to have the state intervene to try and liberate you from

00:25:10.120 this like inherent masculine violence and it just it's a kind of um like you were saying about

00:25:16.180 george floyd earlier it's a kind of mythology that we have that we've created a kind of

00:25:21.060 post-modernist mythology that is seeping into every area of life and you know we saw this with

00:25:26.260 the um protest movements in response to sarah everard that they latched themselves on whether

00:25:32.600 consciously or unconsciously onto this cause and like with the misogyny bill that um misogyny

00:25:38.660 amendment that has been um discussed in parliament recently that bill doesn't actually mention women

00:25:44.980 it doesn't mention women or misogyny it's being referred to as a misogyny amendment

00:25:50.740 and the government said that they're going to get the police to start recording misogyny as a hate

00:25:55.520 crime um but the bill itself doesn't actually mention women it mentions sex and gender and

00:26:02.140 it's the same as with the maternity bill recently it didn't mention motherhood so at the same time

00:26:06.760 as we're having these conversations about misogyny,

00:26:08.920 we're disempowering women and erasing them.

00:26:11.520 And so you have people who are protesting ostensibly

00:26:15.720 for women's rights in response to the Sarah Everard case,

00:26:19.600 whilst at exactly the same time diminishing women's sex-based rights.

00:26:24.400 It's just completely the math.

00:26:27.360 Yeah.

00:26:29.760 Do you watch problematic content online?

00:26:32.740 Of course they do. They watch trigonometry.

00:26:34.340 Many ISPs log your internet activity and sell that data on to other big tech companies or other advertising companies.

00:26:43.100 I know, that is why I use ExpressVPN to hide my browsing activities.

00:26:47.860 I bet you do.

00:26:49.680 ExpressVPN is a simple app which you can have on both your computer and your smartphone,

00:26:54.680 which hides your traffic into one channel and directs it through a VPN server,

00:26:58.820 which means your ISP can't see anything that you're doing.

00:27:01.000 Look, the question I want to ask is...

00:27:03.140 No!

00:27:03.200 Will it slow down the videos that I watch?

00:27:05.900 Definitely not.

00:27:06.880 That is one of the reasons it's been rated as the number one VPN app by Cinec and Wired.

00:27:12.680 I don't read those publications because I'm not a nerd.

00:27:15.500 Stop handing over your personal data to ISPs and big tech companies,

00:27:19.400 which are just going to use it and sell it on.

00:27:21.340 Visit expressvpn.com slash trigger.

00:27:25.160 That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash trigger

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00:27:44.820 to learn more

00:27:46.040 But don't you think part of the problem is

00:27:49.880 is that we've stopped having good faith conversations

00:27:52.280 Totally

00:27:53.380 And you can really see that by the solutions that come out of it.

00:27:58.420 And every solution to this particular issue has been terrible.

00:28:02.400 And that's just a reflection of the conversation we're having.

00:28:04.880 Well, I mean, the Jenny Jones suggestion of a curfew,

00:28:07.340 she initially made flippantly as a kind of a joke.

00:28:10.860 Yeah.

00:28:11.500 And then within...

00:28:12.860 Mark Drakeford was like...

00:28:13.600 Yeah, within hours, Mark Drakeford decides this is his moment

00:28:18.700 to kind of virtue signal.

00:28:20.280 And then it hits the papers.

00:28:21.960 and then it's and then it becomes and then she kind of doubles down and writes this article saying

00:28:26.020 the response to it tells you what you need to know about sexism in the world and you know how

00:28:30.780 disgusting that people laugh at this idea and suddenly it becomes reality and suddenly it's

00:28:35.780 you kind of are not laughing about it you're I mean despite the ridiculousness of having a curfew

00:28:40.660 in lockdown anyway it's like no one thought of that but suddenly this thing that was a joke and

00:28:45.480 was flippant is now potentially going to be made law I mean the thing about the misogyny amendment

00:28:49.620 is that it's not that you know if there was this tussling with it and claire fox makes a great

00:28:54.080 point about this that there was tussling with it about whether it was going to be part of the

00:28:57.660 domestic abuse bill that's going through the house of lords at the moment whether or not it

00:29:00.800 was going to be part of the police the anti you know the police crackdown bill that you know

00:29:05.380 priti patel's brainchild um or whether it was going to be its own law and basically what's

00:29:10.520 happened is there's been maneuverings in behind the scenes stella creasy's had a word in some

00:29:14.500 minister's ear there's been some handshaken across the parties and the minister now has

00:29:18.580 assured the House of Lords that they don't need to talk about this amendment, misogyny amendment,

00:29:23.060 because what's going to happen is they're going to roll out, the government is going to roll out

00:29:25.860 the program that happened in Nottinghamshire to make misogyny a hate crime. So that's it. It's

00:29:30.280 done. It's done. And it doesn't matter how much you or I say, criticise it. It doesn't matter

00:29:35.500 how we feel about it. Meaning even the undercover cops in bars, I mean, it's probably been happening

00:29:42.080 for years and the government can now just come out and say that that's what they've been doing

00:29:44.840 for years but that was that was government saying we're going to throw funding at a particular

00:29:49.980 position to put cops in bars you think when did you consult me about that when you know these

00:29:55.400 they're able to justify in the same way that they justify the covid measures because they say it's

00:29:59.720 an emergency we have an epidemic of misogyny we must act now and if people start saying you know

00:30:05.040 we have to do something someone will be like well here's something yeah okay we'll do that it's not

00:30:10.400 a good idea and it's not going to fix the problem but sure we'll do that Sadiq Khan put out a tweet

00:30:14.060 saying you know this is amazing we're going to have safer streets for women and someone a young

00:30:19.580 female black commentator commented underneath and saying are you going to do something about

00:30:23.680 misogynoir which is misogynoir is misogyny particularly against black women and then I

00:30:29.620 saw someone else tweet saying well aren't we going to make hate misandry a hate crime and

00:30:34.640 hatred against men but this is the logical this is what happens anyone who has a gripe I mean when

00:30:40.360 i was at school loads of people used to make fun on the color of my hair and called me copernob

00:30:43.940 and stuff you know whatever the female equivalent of that and um but uh you know and i could have

00:30:49.240 said that was damaging to me and i wanted to be made a hate crime because the whole thing about

00:30:52.980 hate crime but the whole thing about hate crime is and they admit this themselves it's based on

00:30:59.920 the perception of hate from the victim right so if i get boxed in the face by a man and i think

00:31:06.600 that it's because he hates women

00:31:08.040 rather than he hates what I was wearing

00:31:11.560 or whatever it is,

00:31:12.480 then it gets registered as a hate crime.

00:31:14.160 But that's no accurate way of understanding

00:31:16.420 whether or not he actually does hate women.

00:31:19.420 I mean, just because someone shouts bitch,

00:31:21.320 does that mean that they hate women?

00:31:22.600 Or is there something more complicated going on here?

00:31:24.460 So in terms of we're told that it's this like

00:31:26.180 means of accruing accurate data about misogyny,

00:31:30.880 I mean, can't a police officer fill out frigging form

00:31:33.620 without passing a law?

00:31:34.920 Well, you're into thought crime territory because you're trying to work out what the person thought when they committed the crime.

00:31:40.660 From the perspective of the victim.

00:31:41.900 Right, exactly.

00:31:42.920 And even if it's not on the lighter end of it, where it's just speech being restricted,

00:31:48.020 if it is trying to ascertain the motive of a person who has committed a crime in itself,

00:31:53.760 like kidnapping somebody or domestic violence,

00:31:56.380 And then you ascribe a misogynist motive to that on the basis of someone's perception that can't, you can't prove that objectively, because as you say, it's entirely based on perception. And it's the definition of hostility, which is just ill feeling towards, you know, to be hostile to something in the way that you would understand it in a normal conversation, rather than any kind of like restricted legal sense.

00:32:22.200 And so then you end up with the police essentially

00:32:24.120 sort of prying into men's souls,

00:32:26.540 which ends up going down the Orwellian thought crime.

00:32:29.620 Yeah, that sounds great.

00:32:31.740 But guys, I wanted to go back a little bit.

00:32:34.580 We've got into the legal side of it,

00:32:36.080 which is very interesting.

00:32:37.700 But I just wanted to come back to one thing

00:32:39.560 because I feel there's one thing

00:32:40.760 that we're not actually talking about

00:32:43.040 that maybe is true,

00:32:44.660 which is, you know, Ella,

00:32:45.980 you talked about the fact that,

00:32:48.640 well, if you say that men are more aggressive

00:32:51.060 and this, and then that means that women are the opposite of that.

00:32:55.260 But isn't it true?

00:32:56.260 Isn't it true that, you know, guys are more aggressive,

00:32:58.680 guys are stronger, guys are more likely to commit crime,

00:33:01.800 and therefore women are more vulnerable to that

00:33:04.400 because they're, on average, smaller and weaker and all of that?

00:33:09.000 Like, we're not accounting for that in this conversation, are we?

00:33:12.380 Well, I'd always reject any kind of move towards seeing things

00:33:16.060 in a kind of biologically determinist way

00:33:17.860 because I think that while it is obviously the case,

00:33:20.600 although i say obviously i reject it but it's true no obviously okay i was just i was laughing

00:33:26.480 because actually now the question of sex you know biological sex difference has been called

00:33:30.280 into question but yeah completely different yes we've covered that pretty well as you know but

00:33:35.300 that you know it's obviously the case that most women are physically less able to hold their own

00:33:40.480 in a fight than men um but that doesn't i think that you know natural instincts i'm much more

00:33:45.960 i think i'm much more subject to context environment so i'm i'm you know much more of

00:33:51.640 the kind of philosophical view that people make decisions because of the situation that they're in

00:33:56.380 and because of the context that they live in and the circumstances they find themselves in you

00:33:59.800 know it's my great mark's quote um but but you know how do you do if you take ideas of you know

00:34:06.580 what's macho or masculine or feminine um there are you know this is the whole thing of kind of

00:34:11.940 criminalizing making problematic toxic masculinity because there are some good things about being

00:34:17.660 aggressive and you know aggression can be a driver of progress hate can be a driver of progress as

00:34:23.880 well actually politically particularly um but then also there are things you know femininity gets

00:34:28.860 just passed off as this kind of you know wishy-washy fainting couch kind of um scenario

00:34:34.220 but obviously you know there are different conversations about women being much more

00:34:37.480 emotionally intelligent than men and and actually as i say many times i would far rather sit on the

00:34:43.440 top deck of a bus with a bunch of teenage boys at the back than i would with a bunch of teenage

00:34:46.840 girls at the back teenage girls can be mean really mean and they can you know they're actually far

00:34:52.040 smarter far quicker um than boys and so i think we get into these that we kind of get into the

00:34:57.840 woods about what people naturally are like rather than actually celebrating this it's kind of tells

00:35:03.000 you where we're at politically today, rather than celebrating the concept of agency, which is about

00:35:07.780 saying it actually doesn't matter what I am innately, that because I can use my rational

00:35:11.820 agency, and my mind and my decision making capabilities, I can override my nature. So

00:35:18.000 my, you know, that my nature might be to run when I'm in danger, but I can override that and make

00:35:23.600 decisions about what I'm going to do in that situation. And of course, you know, I just

00:35:28.480 categorically deny and reject the idea that men are an innately, you know, that there's some kind

00:35:35.220 of predator instinct to make them want to be violent against women. I just don't think there's

00:35:40.340 proof of that. And I think it's nonsense. It's like treating people like monkeys. But whatever

00:35:46.000 kind of, you know, instincts that we have that we either pick up from the environment or nature or

00:35:50.460 nurture, we should be championing the fact that people have the confidence to use their rational

00:35:55.960 capabilities to make decisions that sometimes break from the norm which is why you know yes

00:36:02.380 the the kind of explanation for sexism in the past was that women were less able for contemporary

00:36:08.060 life because we were more fragile but of course we've said whether or not that is true and I'm

00:36:13.220 sure you could have a brilliant debate with biological determinants about that I don't care

00:36:17.040 I'm going I don't care you're not going to get to close those doors for me on the basis of that

00:36:21.320 So it's pushing forward the idea of agency, which has been kind of sorely lost in the

00:36:26.620 contemporary discussion. Emma, what do you think about this? Because I wasn't suggesting that men

00:36:31.080 are more likely by nature to be violent against women, but men are more likely to be violent than

00:36:37.060 women. Well, it's a hormonal thing, isn't it? Testosterone. But what we never talk about when

00:36:43.080 we talk about masculinity is virtue and character. So we'll talk about masculinity and toxic

00:36:48.520 masculinity and about men's strength as if it's somehow inherently a danger not just to women but

00:36:53.920 to everyone around them um but we never talk about the way that that strength and masculinity and

00:37:01.920 the sort of trappings of being biologically male uh can be a good thing the fact that you know my

00:37:08.880 male friends often walk me at home or walk me to the station because probably they can better

00:37:14.120 protect i mean you pointed at me because i really can't fight and so people you know will often walk

00:37:20.660 me home because um you know they can use their strength to protect um and that's a very traditional

00:37:26.560 way of looking at things um but i think you're right about the agency point um i i do think

00:37:32.160 though that it's um it's important not to talk about people as groups full stop so talking about

00:37:41.020 you know obviously you can make generalizations about groups of people but if you're making

00:37:46.060 unmitigated negative generalizations not just about a group of people but about something to

00:37:51.880 do with them that you know that is completely immutable like a man's masculinity or um as we

00:37:58.580 saw with the black lives matter um protests about whiteness and trying to find whiteness in in

00:38:04.240 everything um because i think when you think like this you start seeing it everywhere and the effects

00:38:10.220 that that has other than denying people agency and actually in a strange way almost denying

00:38:14.920 criminals of their moral responsibility because you say well you know they did it because they

00:38:18.780 they have this violence in them because they're male which is just completely absurd when you

00:38:23.640 think about it in that sense um i think that you know that to deny people their agency but at the

00:38:32.300 same time you know i think that seeing these things everywhere in society is bad for the people

00:38:39.380 who are told that they're fragile,

00:38:41.320 who are told that they are somehow, you know,

00:38:43.360 weak in relation to that.

00:38:45.280 So, yeah.

00:38:47.640 I mean, it's not to get all kind of Judith Butler about it,

00:38:50.760 but there is, you know, there is biological reality

00:38:56.420 in terms of the physicality of our existence.

00:38:59.120 But then I do...

00:39:00.040 I was staying away from saying explicitly.

00:39:02.360 But I do, you know, I am open to the conversations

00:39:05.360 about the fact that gender is in many ways a construct to go

00:39:09.300 to the down the judith brother right but that you know they're they're the cousins is part of the

00:39:14.540 interesting thing about us and the women's role is different today than it was 20 years ago than

00:39:19.780 it was 120 years ago and the same with men i mean we talk about the you know men have changed over

00:39:26.060 the last sort of 30 40 years drastically i mean my father's generation is completely different to my

00:39:31.300 husband's generation now you know there will be some places particularly among you know working

00:39:35.720 class guys who've been doing for example the same jobs for years where the behavior is relatively

00:39:40.380 the same and people still have those kind of very positive masculine which actually as it happens

00:39:45.400 women can adopt as well I tend to go down the macho route too often more often than I should

00:39:50.120 but that you know actually men have changed they become more open to their feelings which a lot of

00:39:55.720 the time kind of makes me sick because there's a you know there's the whole fetishization of

00:40:01.260 being open with each other and I tend to think people should shut up more than they do

00:40:05.000 But we are, you know, we react to the world in which we live in. And if you really believe that we are hemmed in by the trappings of our physical existence, then what's the point of politics? What's the point of any belief in any kind of change?

00:40:22.420 We are malleable, you know, creatures.

00:40:25.820 We can get outside of us and shape ourselves in the process.

00:40:29.100 And so denying that flexibility by saying that men are innately

00:40:33.840 and have always been the enemy and women are always the, you know,

00:40:38.520 the damsel in distress, just, you know, give up, go home,

00:40:42.220 don't ever engage in public life ever again because what's the point?

00:40:45.500 Sorry, Frances, I would disagree with Ella, but she'll knock me out.

00:40:48.280 Go ahead.

00:40:48.700 the fact that we've all just lost our minds over lockdown so we've stopped being able to

00:40:55.900 have a rationing conversation because we've all gone mad and i include myself in that well i mean

00:41:00.480 yeah the the atomization the look she gave you was brilliant without any comment on the state

00:41:07.080 of your mental well-being that i think i think that part of the trend of lockdown to be you know

00:41:12.480 in in a previous lifetime before we ever talked about coronavirus i'd be very critical of people

00:41:17.980 that said that you know being online all the time on your own affects you that you become more of a

00:41:24.460 kind of keyboard warrior all that kind of thing I'd say oh people are more intelligent than that

00:41:28.400 and I still think people are more intelligent that but we've had a mandated a mandated isolation for

00:41:33.380 a year now and you know I've just waxed lyrical about what kind of malleable creatures human

00:41:39.280 beings are we're also social creatures and when you end up being in isolation for too long you

00:41:43.620 lose perspective it's this it's it's a similar thing that politicians who stay in london too

00:41:48.040 long have no idea what the lives are like of people in wakefield it's the same thing if you're

00:41:51.780 in your four walls for too long and you don't know what life is like for your neighbor you don't you

00:41:55.380 don't have conversations with people i mean you know that i work with the academy of ideas and

00:41:59.920 we do the battle of ideas festival that was cancelled last year but it is on this year thank

00:42:03.520 god um and part of the part of the importance of public events like that of actually rubbing

00:42:09.340 shoulders with someone physically with being in the same room with someone is that you pick up on

00:42:14.820 on you intuit things and you know especially in relation to personal relationships between the

00:42:20.380 sexes so much more happens in our understanding of each other between the lines of what's not said

00:42:26.220 so I can say to you you know um you know a man came up to me yesterday and he and he said to me

00:42:32.460 hello beautiful and you could think oh that's a lovely thing you know and that could be a really

00:42:37.140 wonderful experience and I could have really enjoyed that or if we but if he was saying it

00:42:41.120 to me that close to my face then it would be a completely different context it'd be a completely

00:42:44.820 different feeling and if we aren't actually not to fetishize kind of physical interaction but if

00:42:50.780 we're not actually in a in the public space in the public sphere interacting with each other

00:42:56.360 all of that nuance and context gets lost and that's why you said why are we kind of jumping

00:43:01.740 to extremes of passing laws it's because all of these politicians that are pushing for these laws

00:43:06.280 are doing it on zoom they're not even like you know it's so true it's it's ridiculous yeah i

00:43:10.960 can't i can't remember where i'm stealing this from but um someone said that um that does the

00:43:16.660 thing that reigns in people with an authoritarian instinct is that they'll be sitting like a

00:43:21.580 revolutionary in their in their room and then they'll go downstairs and they'll speak to the

00:43:26.340 shopkeeper and they'll have an exchange and that simple interaction of negotiation where they

00:43:31.580 realize that the shopkeeper isn't this horrible capitalist enemy but is just a nice neighbor that

00:43:37.280 you you know interact with every day that that makes a big difference it actually i think that

00:43:41.840 um and like you said not to fetishize interaction but i think that actually seeing people in the

00:43:48.180 flesh forces us into a nuance that we were already not inclined towards it was the like the last

00:43:54.400 bastion of there was the last resource we had for giving us that nuance and then as soon as we were

00:44:00.240 shut inside all of these ideas these slightly authoritarian instincts that were bubbling away

00:44:05.460 underneath the surface just immediately got their claws into everyone's brain and so any opportunity

00:44:10.180 then to actually get out of the house for the last year really has been protesting to go out with

00:44:17.320 other people who are hyped up in exactly the same way that you are and then to as we saw like with

00:44:22.820 the protests over the last couple of days the black lives matter guys came out they were then

00:44:27.820 joined by Extinction Rebellion with their bongo drums you know everybody wants to come out and

00:44:31.980 sort of like join in with this kind of um it's a it's the thrill of being in the crowd and the

00:44:38.060 carnival atmosphere of it and and I think that if you don't have those day-to-day interactions with

00:44:43.820 people that are different from yourself either at work or if you're religious you know like at

00:44:48.440 church or somewhere where you you're able to come face to face with people that are not exactly like

00:44:54.560 you without that you're just going to be naturally bent to an extreme extreme position and i don't

00:45:01.020 think there's there's anything that can sort of like get us back on kilter it's also been very

00:45:06.560 interesting the way it's exposed people's biases like you see people going black lives matter

00:45:11.140 fantastic anti-lockdown disgusting women's vigil brilliant do you see what i mean and it it doesn't

00:45:16.940 seem like people are consistent anymore well i mean anymore i mean in relation to the i mean

00:45:23.780 there's been so much fuss, positive fuss, about Priti Patel's moves to criminalise protests,

00:45:29.080 essentially, by, you know, saying that the basis of whether a protest can go ahead is if it makes,

00:45:34.680 you know, a safe enough level of disruption, noise disruption. I mean, there was shock and

00:45:41.380 horror, I think rightly so, at the way in which women were treated by the police at the vigil,

00:45:45.660 Sarah Everard's vigil, on the weekend. Four people were arrested at Clapham Common that night.

00:45:50.520 in january 16 people were arrested in clapham common on an anti-lockdown protest so abstractly

00:45:56.840 if we if the thing we're horrified about is police with their their kind of elbows and their knees

00:46:02.740 on people's backs arresting them on the basis of protest it's been happening all year see this is

00:46:07.520 the thing where i disagree with you and maybe this comes back to our little discussion about

00:46:11.820 biological determinism what you call it i don't think most people will ever be comfortable with

00:46:17.220 with a picture of police officers and blokes

00:46:20.280 kneeling on women's backs.

00:46:21.940 It's just a look that...

00:46:23.020 Well, I'd just tell you that at an anti-lockdown...

00:46:25.660 Talk about coincidence.

00:46:26.740 At an anti-lockdown protest,

00:46:28.540 I don't know whether it was in January,

00:46:29.620 but certainly previously in the year,

00:46:32.200 there was a red-headed woman

00:46:33.920 who looked very much like Patsy Stevenson,

00:46:36.640 who was punched, pushed to the ground by a police officer

00:46:41.040 and very violently arrested.

00:46:43.100 And it was...

00:46:43.740 Yeah, but she had the wrong opinions, didn't she?

00:46:45.560 But this is what I'm talking about.

00:46:46.760 it's you know it was the there have been I've been on arrests about the student movement when

00:46:51.260 I was one of those people that you know went out a drop of a hat about you know serious things like

00:46:55.580 at the time um you know there was there were mass arrests there were mass kettles there was kind of

00:47:01.620 you know and there was a sense in which people especially at that time students you kind of

00:47:06.480 wanted to be arrested and there's this sort of there's this there's this push and pull which is

00:47:12.520 Because there is this, you know, that people seem to be there has been a chipping away at the right to protest for a very long time for various reasons.

00:47:21.240 And, you know, from government, but also people giving in to the idea that you should have just a one day strike with the nurses or trade unions rather than cause disruption.

00:47:29.980 But that doesn't, you know, if we are outraged because the cause we like is the one that's being trampled on by the police officer, then you're doing it wrong.

00:47:37.880 Because actually you need to support the right of far right people to protest.

00:47:41.480 you need to support the right of climate you know climate emergency protesters as annoying as i find

00:47:46.060 them of of feminists of you know flat earthers of whoever it is because the this is like the

00:47:52.360 issue of freedom of speech which you guys have covered so many times on this um on trigonometry

00:47:57.460 is that it is i was going to say podcast but i forget that we're being filmed

00:48:02.120 it is an inalienable right that has no ifs and no buts that you have to either defend

00:48:08.900 for everyone or you defend for no one no i agree you were talking about the far-right flat earthers

00:48:14.380 i'm like oh it's our audience no an extinction rebellion scene we just had the the co-founder

00:48:20.560 on the show but emma i wanted to ask you because you've done some great work on covering the

00:48:25.000 protests that followed the vigils uh i'm assuming you went at the vigils itself in clapping i wasn't

00:48:30.720 at the first one yeah but i went to the protest but you went to the ones afterwards and this is

00:48:34.620 what i want to i mean it's you've changed my mind on that point actually about the the people not

00:48:40.680 being comfortable with women maybe it was the way it was covered or maybe well no i think you're

00:48:44.620 right on that that it was particularly yeah yeah uh but what did you make of all of that and and

00:48:50.000 just how it happened how people responded then the protest and you talk about other people coming

00:48:55.500 along and jumping on board just give us your thoughts on that in the last five ten minutes

00:48:59.100 Yeah. So I wonder, actually, in relation to what you were saying about the footage of the women being nailed on, I think obviously that's quite shocking because of the gender dynamic and also because of what happened to Sarah Everard.

00:49:11.920 But I wonder whether that is partly to do with we almost seem to be sort of obsessed with stories and telling ourselves stories at the moment.

00:49:22.280 And that really played into what happened at the protest. So I noticed that at the vigil from the footage, obviously, I said I wasn't there.

00:49:29.100 the footage of that and some of the photographs

00:49:32.240 showed some people with Aqab or Cops a Bastard signs

00:49:37.100 and defund the police signs.

00:49:38.440 So they went to the vigil with their placards in hand.

00:49:42.740 They already had them clearly when they got there.

00:49:44.480 I'm guessing they didn't just sort of spontaneously score them.

00:49:46.920 And Aqab, by the way, sorry to interrupt,

00:49:47.700 is an Antifa slogan, basically.

00:49:49.140 It is, yeah.

00:49:49.720 And there were also some suggestions

00:49:52.000 that there were some people there

00:49:53.020 identifiably in Black Block, the Antifa Black Block.

00:49:59.100 And so now the police have come out and said that I think it was 26 officers were assaulted, including one female black officer who was racially abused.

00:50:10.520 So maybe that vigil, I initially came out condemning the police's aggression towards the women because I don't think that vigil should have been illegal in the first place.

00:50:19.580 I'm totally in favour of the right to protest. So I don't think any heavy handed interaction with protesters is ever a good thing.

00:50:26.840 um but maybe there was more into what was going on there than necessarily was initially reported

00:50:34.000 and that really played out the next day because people mobilized like that um as soon as i arrived

00:50:40.480 it was quite clear that it had no longer had anything to do with sarah everard it was like

00:50:45.300 the whole crowd was absolutely strewn with these akab all cops are bastard signs they were shouting

00:50:50.740 no justice no peace the socialist worker were there um the revolutionary communist group big

00:50:57.880 imperialism banners it turned into a kind of like far left rally that was a bit like blm with a bit

00:51:02.760 of women's rights sprinkled into it um and going back to my point about the stories i think that

00:51:08.180 to some degree because of the natural resonance that that had for people with what happened with

00:51:13.420 george floyd the footage of the woman being kneeled on by the police the fact that the person

00:51:18.460 at the center of the investigation is also a cop that it played into the stories that people were

00:51:23.860 already obsessing about and so the mobilization of people coming out with those signs I don't know

00:51:29.600 whether those people you know were the same guys who came out to protest in the Black Lives Matter

00:51:34.160 rally or not but they had um people who I presume were the organizers reading out um an Assata

00:51:41.120 Shakur poem um which the the crowd was then repeating back to them and Assata Shakur was

00:51:47.840 from the Black Liberation Army she's on the FBI's most wanted list for being convicted for killing

00:51:54.320 a cop and went on the run to Cuba and so I don't think the crowd necessarily realized that they

00:51:59.900 were basically echoing the words back maybe even the police didn't realize it so it was quite clear

00:52:05.560 that the protest had been hijacked by at least far-left ideas whether or not the entire crowd

00:52:14.260 had turned up for that particular reason i don't know um and then obviously in the subsequent days

00:52:20.220 you had like the extinction rebellion guys turned up and sister sisters uncut which is a whole other

00:52:24.720 story broadway's smash hit the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise is coming to toronto

00:52:31.940 the true story of a kid from brooklyn destined for something more featuring all the songs you love

00:52:37.260 including america forever in blue jeans and sweet caroline like jersey boys and beautiful the next

00:52:43.680 musical mega hit is here the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise april 28th through june 7th

00:52:50.200 2026 the princess of wales theater get tickets at mirvish.com um yeah i mean i don't have much

00:52:57.660 of a problem with far left rallies i don't either when you said uh revolutionary communist party i

00:53:03.360 was i mean the thing it's funny you know the thing about these as you're describing the

00:53:09.580 protest well i went to the one on sunday with my uh with my sign about freedom of protest because

00:53:15.280 that as the days have gone on it's become more about the about they're using the slogan kill

00:53:20.240 the bill not the police as some people on twitter have suggested but the anti-protest bill um but

00:53:26.240 it is like it's like a kind of everything but the kitchen sink type protest where there was

00:53:29.860 there was um uh speeches from people about uh the nurses strike which is you know let's talk about

00:53:36.760 it but at a protest about Sarah Everard maybe not there was one speaker talked about women

00:53:41.940 Muslim women's access to resources again you know the relation to Sarah Everard is very tenuous

00:53:46.800 tenuous there there were Labour MPs getting up and grandstanding about getting Cressida Dick

00:53:51.640 resigned I mean it's just it was everything it was and there were people holding placards saying

00:53:56.380 we're intersectional or we are nothing you're like well this is a protest about women anyway

00:54:00.380 the whole thing was it was confused but I think and you know in particular you mentioned the SWP

00:54:06.460 um i mean the swp when i was at university were were broken apart by a rape scandal because one

00:54:13.100 of the the head guys in the swp raped a woman and they've they dealt with it in the kangaroo court

00:54:19.180 within the party and that's why masses of people including my husband left the swp in the um in

00:54:25.200 this sort of uh around 2014 so when i saw their placards at this particular protest i was like

00:54:31.540 what the fuck why are the fwp here well there is a bit of an iron rule with these things the guys

00:54:37.120 who bang on about women's rights usually have something well it was the same with the with the

00:54:41.700 sisters uncut they had a a list of people that they said that they'd like which were remembering

00:54:47.720 or paying homage to in some way and in that list were people that had transitioned from

00:54:52.640 male into being female but before they had transitioned they had raped and murdered women

00:54:58.480 uh so yeah it's a bit of a mess sorry i i i have been critical of sisters uncut in the past but

00:55:06.840 one thing they did well at the protest that i was at was that um zara sultana the labor mp made a

00:55:11.660 massive grandstanding speech about you know crest of the dick and how evil she was and this that

00:55:15.280 and the other and then sisters uncut got on the megaphone and said this is not an opportunity for

00:55:19.160 labor grandstanding this is our protest this is not labor's and i was like yes because obviously

00:55:24.380 Labour had abstained on the police bill up until now.

00:55:27.540 And so the whole, you know, there's so much hypocrisy going on.

00:55:30.220 There's so much opportunism going on.

00:55:31.640 But the main question is, what are these protests trying to achieve?

00:55:35.480 And you have to look at the, in the same breath, they say the streets should be free for women.

00:55:41.800 And they also then say, but we need to educate, educate and legislate,

00:55:46.620 educate boys and decriminalise misogyny and bring in new laws.

00:55:51.020 So this is the central dichotomy of everything we've been talking about today, is that there is a toss-up between women's safety and women's freedom.

00:55:59.080 And the contemporary feminist movement has gone down the route of women's safety, which means protection, which means restriction, which means denying all risk.

00:56:06.720 And what we've lost is the real F word, not feminism, which is what I talk about in my book.

00:56:12.240 but freedom which is freedom to as Camille Paglia says and I quote it every time I talk about this

00:56:17.560 and we'll do it every time in the future the freedom to risk rape the freedom to risk danger

00:56:22.680 the freedom to do all the things that men do with the the kind of potential and the understanding

00:56:28.740 as an adult that those things might come with the with harm in the future for you but that being

00:56:33.640 free with all its costs and all its consequences is always going to be preferable to being

00:56:39.180 cosseted to being safe and the fact that so many women so many prominent professional

00:56:45.060 you know women today can't see that and instead buy into this incredibly craven um whinging

00:56:53.120 middle class crap that i think contemporary feminism is um that gets me so irate is depressing

00:56:59.180 and i think there are many many many many many more women out there who are watching this thinking

00:57:03.480 what in the hell are they going on about?

00:57:06.220 A men and A women.

00:57:07.580 A women.

00:57:08.400 Well done, mate.

00:57:10.360 Yes, A women indeed.

00:57:12.280 Guys, we've run out of time, unfortunately.

00:57:14.220 Thank you so much for coming on.

00:57:15.600 I'm sure this issue is something we'll continue talking about.

00:57:18.860 But in the meantime, we've got one more question for you.

00:57:21.260 Which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society,

00:57:24.400 but we really should be?

00:57:25.180 We'll start with you, Ella.

00:57:26.560 My bugbear at the moment is LTNs,

00:57:29.440 which you might think are a very specific local issue.

00:57:34.000 Low-traffic neighbourhoods.

00:57:34.840 Low-traffic neighbourhoods.

00:57:36.240 Mainly because my life in Hackney has been made a misery

00:57:38.740 because of, and I love driving around in my little white van

00:57:41.820 and shocking people, particularly if I'm wearing lipstick in the van.

00:57:44.880 But I can't do that anymore because of LTNs.

00:57:46.960 But actually, the reason why it's interesting,

00:57:48.480 people should talk about it,

00:57:49.600 not just because it's being rolled out across the country,

00:57:52.180 because the central question of low-traffic neighbourhoods

00:57:54.400 is what we've been sort of talking about this evening,

00:57:56.860 is who gets to decide on political decisions?

00:57:59.020 Is the climate emergency, as people call it, reason enough to make people's ordinary working class off in people's lives of misery in their own neighbourhoods?

00:58:07.260 Who gets to decide who owns our streets?

00:58:09.440 Is it the councillors who don't give really a fig about local residents or is it the residents themselves?

00:58:15.420 So, you know, if you're interested in democracy, if you're interested in environmentalism, all that kind of thing, look up low traffic neighbourhoods and look up where they're happening.

00:58:23.960 It's not just in Highbury and Hackney. It's across the country and it's really pissing me off.

00:58:29.020 if you will permit me to be very predictable um i think uh the thing that people are talking about

00:58:37.740 it but not as much as they should be is nchi's non-crime hate incidents um so recently harry

00:58:44.020 miller is obviously going through the court of appeal at the moment um trying to get non-crime

00:58:48.720 hate incidents removed from the guidance of the college of policing and so really i think the

00:58:53.860 thing that we should all be talking about is these unaccountable quangos who seem to be making a kind

00:58:57.960 of um parallel law for us all um particularly in relation to free speech so the um college of

00:59:04.580 policing created these nchis wasn't something that was passed as a law through parliament

00:59:09.980 and so i think that is the thing that we should all be talking about because there are unaccountable

00:59:14.820 quangos that are surpassing the uh proper parliamentary scrutiny and the legal system

00:59:21.220 as it should be and they have no democratic accountability so that's what we should all be

00:59:24.760 talking about.

00:59:25.220 There's quite a bit

00:59:25.800 of that going all

00:59:26.500 around, isn't there?

00:59:27.440 Parliamentary scrutiny

00:59:28.180 and all the rest of it.

00:59:29.400 Ella Whelan,

00:59:30.460 Emma Webb,

00:59:30.800 thank you so much

00:59:31.320 for coming on

00:59:31.860 and thank you

00:59:32.460 for watching at home.

00:59:33.360 We will see you very soon

00:59:34.480 with another brilliant

00:59:35.300 episode like this one

00:59:36.160 or a live stream.

00:59:37.040 And they all go out

00:59:37.700 at 7pm UK time.

00:59:39.200 Take care, guys,

00:59:40.040 and see you soon.

00:59:54.760 We'll be right back.

TRIGGERnometry - March 21, 2021

Are Women Safe on Our Streets？ Emma Webb & Ella Whelan

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