00:11:46.260it allowed a lot of people to go, yes, Me Too,
00:11:48.200and maybe their experiences were not as bad
00:11:50.960as someone who might be a victim of Harvey Weinstein.
00:11:53.540or whatever but it was a movement that exposed a lot of uh bad behavior terrible behavior and it
00:12:02.220allowed a lot of people to have validation that something they were unable to speak about up to
00:12:07.420that point they now were able to speak about why are you critical well you say it exposed as if
00:12:14.360this has been as if these people have been proven are found guilty and i actually think i'm sure
00:12:21.640Again, I'm not naive. I'm sure bad things have happened. And I'm sure people like Harvey Weinstein have no doubt behaved incredibly badly, if not illegally, in the past. But they need to be tried in courts of law. You know, they need to be found guilty in a court of law, punished and sentenced appropriately for what they've done.
00:12:41.920and the problem with the Me Too movement is it shifts the debate away from a court of law
00:12:47.540and it takes it on to social media so these become Twitter campaigns and Facebook campaigns
00:12:54.160and what you have then is allegation, counter-allegation, you get all kinds of blurring
00:13:01.620of different experiences all put into the mix together all contributing to this narrative
00:13:07.500that to be female today is to be quite uniquely oppressed and abused um and meanwhile the likes
00:13:15.280of harvey weinstein are just seen as as one among many and i think they actually get let off the
00:13:22.600hook you know they need they need to be taken to court and we need to see these allegations
00:13:28.340tested well actually why is he not why has he not been prosecuted i don't know were any of these
00:13:33.980people who've got in trouble right apparently based on allegations justifiably so why have
00:13:39.900none of them been prosecuted sex addicts mate have a bit of respect all right france is speaking up
00:13:48.080for the sex addicts of the world doesn't help with this voice does it either just got the wrong
00:13:52.600accent for that why haven't they been well i think somebody like harvey einstein i think there
00:13:57.580probably are proceedings underway and i'm sure we'll no doubt see him in court before too long
00:14:02.480but I think the problem with the movement like I said it does drag in a lot of other people
00:14:08.480so you mentioned Aziz Ansari where there are simply no there's nothing about that story
00:14:15.140that could stand up in a court of law there is nothing that he did that was in any way illegal
00:14:22.140so you just get this kind of general sense of yuckiness of this was not a nice thing that
00:14:29.940happened to this woman and you have men and you know i'm i'm not somebody who generally goes
00:14:37.000around saying let's feel sorry for men i've got no time whatsoever for the men's rights movement
00:14:41.280um but you you do have men who've had their jobs lost reputations shattered on allegations rather
00:14:51.180than actually having been found guilty of any particular crime i mean i think there's been a
00:14:56.900huge shift and I think if you go back 20 years ago and more you know women were routinely not
00:15:04.000believed women could take stories and did take stories to the police or not even stories took
00:15:10.620accusations to the police and were not believed and and justice didn't operate in their favor
00:15:18.100and I think that's terrible and that's not a time that I have any desire to return to but I think
00:15:26.340the pendulum has swung so far the other way now that we have this assumption that women should
00:15:31.760always be believed that women who make accusations of sexual harassment or sexual assault never lie
00:15:39.900and actually i think that's just as unhelpful as saying women should never be believed so i'm a
00:15:47.140woman and i'm quite capable of lying i do tell lies women are better at it actually i'm not very
00:15:54.620good at it but it doesn't stop me from trying every now and again um but i think if we have
00:16:01.500this assumption that women never lie that women must always be believed i think it actually
00:16:06.480reduces women to the status of children that were put on this kind of special pedestal as a kind of
00:16:13.100this rare breed apart and it actually doesn't do women any favors at all do you think a large part
00:16:19.220of the me too campaign was based in the frustrations of women when it came when it comes to things like
00:16:25.520conviction rates for sexual assault rape which are notoriously low and it's incredibly difficult
00:16:31.360to prove so for some women the only option they felt they have the only power they have is to go
00:16:36.620on social media and go this happened to me yeah not completely convinced i'm afraid um i think
00:16:46.260Conviction rates for sexual assault, it's very, very difficult to say they are low because what you're assuming then is that there's a lot of cases where they should have been found guilty but weren't found guilty.
00:17:02.740so you're kind of reading something in then to non-statistics you're looking at a lack of
00:17:10.900allegation or a lack of successful conviction and reading into that something that we can never
00:17:18.920ever know whether it's actually there or not you know I'm not really explaining that very clearly
00:17:25.180but we're saying that this is a huge problem because there are no statistics to back it up
00:17:32.580and i'm always very very doubtful about doing that i'm also very doubtful about women who say
00:17:39.060they are so completely powerless they had to spill all in the front page of the times you know
00:17:45.720my only option so if you look at this woman in the lift in san francisco you know what essentially
00:17:52.220what she's saying is that she felt so exhausted is the word that she actually she's actually used
00:17:57.940she was so exhausted by having to deal with sexism on a routine basis that she was completely unable
00:18:04.660to say there and then in the lift actually that's a really crap joke it's not even funny and I find
00:18:11.900it offensive which personally I think would have been an overreaction anyway but she was so exhausted
00:18:16.960by sexism that she couldn't say that uh yet she was able to go off making an official make an
00:18:23.000official complaint and drag the whole thing through pages of newspapers should have had
00:18:28.320my girlfriend in the list she's got no problem telling me my jokes are crap and she's bored of
00:18:33.040me so well how much of this do you think joanna is about people's lack of understanding of
00:18:37.880statistics because i know from speaking to many women my wife included that many many women i
00:18:43.760would i would argue probably the vast majority of women have experienced some form of harassment
00:18:48.380of one shape or form or another but that does not necessarily mean that the majority of men
00:18:54.440are doing the harassing the 80 20 year old would tell us that actually probably it's a small
00:18:59.320minority of men who are doing a lot of the harassment which many women experience and then
00:19:05.460but the picture then becomes men are harassers women are being harassed and there's this conflict
00:19:10.700do you think that we are it's just a misunderstanding of statistics basically what i'm asking no i don't
00:19:16.040think it's a misunderstanding of statistics because I think people interpret and even look
00:19:21.020for statistics that back up a particular narrative that they want to present to the world. I think
00:19:26.360one thing that has happened is that definitions of harassment, and you see this with domestic
00:19:34.720violence, even with rape itself, definitions change over time and they expand and they are
00:19:43.300very subjective definitions so the one thing that i think the me too movement's really thrown up is
00:19:49.480that the definition of harassment according to the proponents of me too is unwanted behavior
00:19:56.340it's it's anything that you don't want to happen is labeled as harassment so this is why you get
00:20:02.640things like winking and whistling being interpreted as sexual harassment particularly by younger
00:20:08.540people so there's nothing objective i i don't think there's anything in a wink that is objectively
00:20:15.940abusive or harassing to you it's how you feel about that wink and how you feel about the person
00:20:25.440who's winking at you so you've got these kind of very subjective very elastic definitions so then
00:20:33.920when we come out with statistics like you know sometimes I've seen 85 90 percent of women have
00:20:40.180experienced harassment and if you're a young woman especially like oh my god that's appalling
00:20:45.520you know this you must just walk down the street and it's just like a barrage of harassment from
00:20:51.300the moment you leave your house and if you read 90 percent of women that is what you're going to
00:20:56.680think but then dig down and like I say if harassment is being winked at you know or being
00:21:03.300whistled at then you know really is this really such a big deal well here's something sorry
00:21:08.540francis let me just ask this one um this is something i really wanted to ask you because
00:21:13.180and it's a bit of a complicated point so let me lay it out how much of this about is about the
00:21:19.580biological differences between men and women and here's my point men are bigger stronger more
00:21:24.880aggressive more prone to violence on average right than women are do we can we agree on that
00:21:42.260But I don't think that necessarily means more prone to aggression and violence.
00:21:45.820No, but testosterone levels and statistics tell us men commit way more violent crimes than women.
00:21:50.680Yeah, but I think perhaps women just perhaps use aggression and violence in different ways, let's say.
00:21:59.340okay physical aggression physical aggression can we agree on physical aggression and violence
00:22:03.060yeah just for the purpose of right but i don't think men are controlled by their testosterone
00:22:07.140and i think to say that i'll take it back i'll take it back so if we if we start off with men
00:22:12.320on average are bigger stronger more prone to physical aggression and violence right as i'm
00:22:17.640putting that out there and you don't have to agree but if we take that for the point of this argument
00:22:22.400right if you then look at if i put myself in that position say i'm i don't know five foot
00:22:29.200nine or something right i'm not particularly strong or big or whatever if a guy another guy
00:22:34.260who i knew was sexually interested in who was much bigger much stronger who i perceived as being
00:22:39.820prone to way more aggression than i am prone to could you stop looking everybody just looks at me
00:22:46.160what the man with the south London accent and the tattoo suddenly is the aggressor in this situation
00:22:51.680so let's say i would never be sexually interested in you yes yes i have standards
00:22:56.160carry on well let's just pretend that francis was big and strong and not woefully out of shape yes
00:23:02.420so if that was the scenario and say we were in an isolated environment right if francis was to
00:23:10.080wink at me in a dark alley if he was bigger and you'd have very good eyesight let's say let's say
00:23:17.040i would my reception of that would differ based on the comparative size and strength difference
00:23:24.380between the two of us so how much of it is that women tend to be smaller they tend to be weaker
00:23:30.540and therefore less able to defend themselves you add on top of that the fact that given the
00:23:34.760historical situation men tend to be in positions of power more than women are at this point in time
00:23:39.620so then you've got the potential situation where someone who's bigger stronger and in a position
00:23:44.480to influence your career is making what might be perceived outside of that context as relatively
00:23:52.360innocuous suggestive you know winking whatever but if you put all that together it's hinting at
00:23:59.340a problem which is you're not really fully able to defend yourself and stand up for yourself in
00:24:03.460that situation yeah not convinced i'm afraid i'm open to be convinced but i wanted to lay that out
00:24:09.540because a lot of the people who may be watching this will be having these thoughts and that's
00:24:13.900what we'd like to do at trigonometry we like to bring in interesting controversial people
00:24:18.160and then pose questions to them that i think a lot of people would want to have definitely
00:24:21.960No, well, I mean, you were asking right at the very, very beginning about my kind of political background and what motivates me politically.
00:24:31.200And I think one belief that I've had for 20 years, as long as I can remember, or I don't know about a belief,
00:24:39.360but one thing that I've instinctively reacted against is any form of determinism, whether that is a social determinism.
00:24:48.580so I am how I am because my mother dressed me in pink baby grows and I was given a doll to play
00:24:55.120with or at the same time a biological determinism I am how I am simply because of my hormones and
00:25:03.440you know I instinctively react against both of those things because both of those things are
00:25:08.620saying that I'm not in control of myself you know I am who I am because of either things that
00:25:13.540happened to me or what i happen to be born with and i think the problem with the argument that
00:25:19.900you've put forward is that it suggests that it's it's premised on this idea that men are ruled by
00:25:27.600their testosterone that men are potential aggressors let's take that out of the equation
00:25:33.020no no but simply because men are men women should be fearful of men and i have to say you know i
00:25:39.500I know men of all different shapes and sizes who are more or less aggressive
00:25:45.900and there's no connection between physical size and power and aggression.
00:25:53.340You don't think there's a connection between someone being bigger and stronger
00:26:00.940I mean, I really don't think that people are programmed in that way.
00:26:07.180I don't think, I mean, perhaps if we were living back in caveman times and we were carrying on in society as if our kind of animal instinct was coming to the fore, then perhaps.
00:26:21.100But if you think about the way we encounter other people nowadays, it's not in the raw like that.
00:26:27.920It tends to be in offices, in workplaces, on transport, et cetera.
00:26:33.240And I don't think women are kind of automatically shying away from men based on their physical appearance.
00:26:40.620Do you think that one of the positives of the Me Too campaign, because of course there are positives and negatives to every campaign,
00:26:46.140is that it certainly exposed a certain boorishness in some men's behaviour, such as catcalling, for instance.
00:26:53.140The argument would be, why should a woman walk down the street and be catcalled?
00:26:57.140I mean that is intimidation isn't it really having a group of men leering and shouting at you
00:27:01.860do you know I mean I wonder what kind of world this happens in I mean building sites which is
00:27:10.160always the kind of stereotypical argument that this is where this goes on you know that poor
00:27:14.980women can't possibly walk past building sites without men leaching at them and whistling at
00:27:20.380them building contractors actually have written into their contracts nowadays that they are not
00:27:27.120allowed to do this and this has been the case for many a year and uh you know maybe it's just me
00:27:34.620well hold on you're a beautiful woman are you saying you've never experienced i wouldn't say
00:27:39.540never but it's a lot less usual than it once was and you could say well i you know i'm 10 10 years
00:27:45.860older obviously than i was 10 years ago but i think this idea that to to be a woman is just
00:27:51.920just to confront this constant barrage of harassment you know i don't think that's true
00:27:57.980well because not every woman hates it you know i can certainly well i can certainly say that
00:28:05.660there have been times when i've walked down the street and somebody whistles at you and this is
00:28:10.140probably a terrible thing to admit but it puts a spring in my step and a smile on my face and i
00:28:15.600walked down the street feeling a bit happier than i did but essentially what you're talking about
00:28:20.220is interaction between men and women and you think well where do we go then if we want to
00:28:26.680stamp out these spontaneous interactions so I know Labour MPs have proposed a new law in the
00:28:33.240Houses of Parliament that catcalling in the street should be outlawed as a misogynistic hate crime
00:28:38.980so what do you do then how do you police that how much police time energy money do you put into
00:28:47.420having a policeman or woman standing on every street corner kind of spotting the rogue whistler
00:28:54.620and going up to give him a slap around the wrist you know that's not something I would I particularly
00:28:59.380would see as a priority I'd rather they were out catching people with knives who were going to
00:29:05.020commit knife crime than than random wolf whistlers so then people say well it's not a question of
00:29:09.900having police standing on the corner it's a question of education so again you know what do
00:29:14.700want do we want teachers in schools to say well i could teach you about the history of the judas
00:29:20.380and the stewards but actually i'm not i'm going to sit down and we're going to re-educate you all
00:29:24.540now about the correct way for boys and girls to behave in relation to each other you know
00:29:31.180actually i think having spontaneity is not a bad thing and letting men and women have free speech
00:29:38.700interact is not the worst thing in the world on the whistling on the catcalling you know i actually
00:29:45.120think women are quite capable of giving as good as they get and certainly in the past yeah i made
00:29:51.720a joke and i said there's been time it wasn't a joke it was true that there's times when it's put
00:29:55.760smile on my face and i've walked down the street happy there's also been times i've been quite
00:29:59.640capable of turning around and telling someone just to fuck off and leave me alone and they have done
00:30:05.460and they've been quite shocked and they have left me alone and i don't think i'm like some rare type
00:30:10.740of special woman who's got these magic powers because i'm capable of telling a man to fuck off
00:30:16.040you know i i know plenty of other women who are just as capable of doing that
00:30:20.060um so i mean that was all very very interesting um now you would you mentioned a little bit about
00:30:27.760the gender pay gap and you said that it isn't as large as has been intimated by some feminists
00:30:33.880could you go into that a little bit more for us yeah definitely so the gender pay gap i think is
00:30:38.560a really really good example of how statistics can be used to prove anything that you want them
00:30:44.000to prove at all because it all depends on what we measure so if you want to make the gender pay gap
00:30:50.700seem massive then what you do is you look at the earnings of all men and the earnings of all women
00:30:56.480and you compare them with each other and surprise surprise you find out that women earn less than
00:31:02.000men but obviously what that's not taking into account is the hours that men and women work
00:31:07.240the jobs that men and women do and this fact that we've already mentioned you know in the past men
00:31:13.620and women weren't as equal as they are today so if you look at the top rungs of careers where people
00:31:19.720have been working for 30 40 years they've reached the absolute top of their profession you are more
00:31:25.360likely to find men in those positions so if you do that you take all men's wages all women's wages
00:31:31.580you find a very very big gender pay gap but basically the more we compare like for like
00:31:36.920so the more you look at men and women doing the same jobs for the same number of hours for the
00:31:42.980same level of experience then the pay gap gets narrower and narrower and narrower and eventually
00:31:49.220comparing like for like it disappears altogether there's no gender pay gap if you look at men and
00:31:55.980women who are both doing the same job same length of time same number of hours each week
00:32:00.580and of course that's the case when you just think about this for like a minute or two because for
00:32:07.140one thing it's illegal so if you took two people who are doing the exact same job exact same hours
00:32:12.020exact same level and the man was being paid more the woman could take this company the boss to
00:32:18.500court you know it would be illegal they would be breaking the law but but there's an even more
00:32:22.820common sense argument as well if if bosses could get away with paying women substantially less
00:32:30.840for doing the exact same work as as men do but but just cheaper you know why would any boss
00:32:37.920anywhere ever employ a man you know why would you get a man to do the job well it's interesting that
00:32:42.980you say that because uh we are recording this and by the time this goes out it will be a couple of
00:32:47.040weeks from today probably uh the the guest whose episode we've just released is uh a lady called
00:32:53.220dr pippa malgram who's a good friend and a wonderful uh person she is a former advisor to
00:32:58.660an american president founder of her own company etc and when we talked to her we asked her about
00:33:03.560the pay gap as well and she said that as a speaker after her political career and all the rest of it
00:33:08.880she actually had her own agent speaking agent say to her your metrics are great you're getting
00:33:13.940better performances than your male counterparts but we cannot get you the same fees because you're
00:33:18.740a woman so there is there is some i mean not everyone is rational not everyone i mean you say
00:33:26.240it's illegal and it is but people do illegal stuff all the time right so there's probably a small
00:33:31.440element um of of discrimination that is part of what causes the gender pay gap i totally hear your
00:33:36.960argument about these averages being useless essentially in measuring the real gender pay gap
00:45:07.100But I think part of growing up and maturing is that you realize that you can't just make bad ideas go away by wishing them away or by telling people just to shut up.
00:45:17.380You know, you have to engage. You have to take place in the arguments.
00:45:20.360and I think the problem for young people nowadays is that they're not allowed to go through that
00:45:25.220maturation process because people are just saying oh yes you're absolutely right if you don't like
00:45:30.180these bad ideas you're totally right we should just make them go away and if you want to ban
00:45:35.380them that's right we'll let you ban these bad ideas. Do you find it quite worrying that the term
00:45:42.360free speech is now being associated more and more with the far right with people like Katie Hopkins
00:45:47.080and Tommy Robinson and so on and so forth.