TRIGGERnometry - Ella Whelan on Brexit, Feminism, #MeToo, Grooming Gangs & Abortion

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

00:00:10.040 I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:00:11.040 And this is a show for you if you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing about.

00:00:17.380 At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts, we ask the experts.

00:00:21.500 Our fantastic expert guest this week is a Spike columnist and the author of What Women Want, Fun, Freedom and an End to Feminism.

00:00:28.680 And Ella Whelan, welcome to Chickenometry.

00:00:30.940 Hi, thanks for having me.

00:00:40.560 It's a pleasure. We really look forward to speaking with you.

00:00:42.980 And as always, before we get into the show itself,

00:00:45.200 tell us a little bit about how you are, where you are today.

00:00:47.680 What's been your journey?

00:00:49.220 Well, it was a bit of a weird one, so I never wanted to be a journalist.

00:00:53.120 In fact, I finished my university degree and my master's

00:00:57.700 and thought, I never, ever, ever want to pick up a pen again, ever.

00:01:01.360 I was sick of it.

00:01:03.180 But the politics is what got me in.

00:01:04.960 So I was sort of flirted with student politics,

00:01:07.480 and then I found Spiked,

00:01:09.260 and they were just saying something that no-one else was saying.

00:01:12.520 And I went to a few meetings, held a meeting myself,

00:01:15.020 and then got into it that way.

00:01:17.100 So it was the politics that really drove me to journalism,

00:01:20.680 rather than the writing.

00:01:22.140 As anyone who's ever subbed one of my articles will know,

00:01:25.500 despite an English degree, my grammar's still pretty poor.

00:01:27.700 and what was your like kind of political evolution because a lot of the things you talk about are

00:01:33.060 quite it's fair to describe as I'd spoken I think on many issues what's been the journey that's led

00:01:38.660 you to hold these views and to be willing to express them in public well I would previously

00:01:45.020 always call myself left of the left but the problem is now I think the left is so kind of

00:01:51.360 bastardized that I can't link myself with it anymore because I don't recognize it as anything

00:01:56.240 left-wing inherently but so people kind of wince when I say I'm a traditional old school lefty in

00:02:02.200 terms of I hold certain views on equality on money on class but I suppose what's made me

00:02:11.140 outspoken today is that things have gotten so mad I really think what I say a lot of the time

00:02:15.880 is common sense and I get accused of being general for saying most people will think this and then

00:02:21.900 give my opinion but i do think that most people on the whole are looking at politics today and

00:02:27.540 just completely alienated by it don't understand how it's gotten so mad don't understand how it's

00:02:33.820 or not don't understand but can't fathom how we're having discussions about um the you know

00:02:39.780 political ramifications of people's hairstyles or um you know the significance of um what a

00:02:47.840 politician had for dinner or any of these ridiculous things that are now kind of hot

00:02:51.540 topics like me i think most people are just sort of wanting to get back to looking at the big real

00:02:57.680 issues well it's interesting we spoke to tom slater who you'll know from spiked as well a couple of

00:03:01.820 weeks back and he was talking about the fact if you look even at something like brexit and by the

00:03:06.140 way both francis and i vote remain because we're good people he always likes to throw that into

00:03:11.360 piss off i guess i don't know why anyway uh when we talk about brexit the majority position is the

00:03:17.740 one that's demonized, which is quite incredible in and of itself. So when you talk about most

00:03:22.560 people think this, I think there's so many issues in which most people think something,

00:03:26.280 and that is the position that is demonized, which is an incredible place to be in, isn't it?

00:03:30.240 Yeah, but it shows how completely out of step the political establishment and to a certain degree

00:03:35.760 the media are with public opinion. So the fact that, I mean, I was a Brexiteer, and I see that

00:03:42.740 is a pretty standard left-wing position um but the fact is the vote was announced and then i think

00:03:49.360 it was probably about 45 minutes afterwards we got to celebrate in the spiked office for about

00:03:53.280 half an hour and then we were like right we're on the defensive and yeah the biggest political

00:03:58.220 mandate in british history has been systematically demonized and like viciously demonized for two

00:04:04.340 years straight or whatever point we're at now uh and i think that isn't coming from people

00:04:10.040 people aren't stopping leavers in the street and hurling eggs at them

00:04:14.020 and saying, like, you've put the country to hell.

00:04:17.380 It's MPs and it's political commentators

00:04:20.820 who are really viciously against Brexit.

00:04:23.820 I think that tells you about the separation

00:04:25.440 that's going on, the kind of big lines in the sand

00:04:27.740 between those who are the rulers and who make the laws

00:04:31.300 and those of us who are ruled, to a certain extent.

00:04:33.940 What I find interesting about Brexit is this.

00:04:35.980 We get quite a lot of comments, and in particular,

00:04:38.800 comedians who are sort of uh that sort of very the left so corbynite left and they the criticism

00:04:45.800 that they always put to me is you never get any left-wing people on and i say actually we do

00:04:50.000 but a lot of them uh support brexit and it a lot of people seem to think that in order for you to

00:04:56.760 support brexit you need to be on the right but that's obviously a fallacy because there's a lot

00:05:01.620 of people on the left especially what you consider to be the old school tony ben-esque left they all

00:05:06.840 support Brexit or a large majority of them do.

00:05:09.040 Corbyn does as well. Yeah, he does.

00:05:11.320 He's just not honest about it.

00:05:14.120 No, he isn't

00:05:14.980 honest about it. He's kind of sold out

00:05:16.980 his side of the left in relation to Brexit.

00:05:19.220 I guess it's because the main leave

00:05:20.940 campaign, the main faces of it

00:05:23.000 were Tory

00:05:24.880 MPs, or I don't think you can necessarily

00:05:27.120 call them rabid right-wingers,

00:05:28.720 but there wasn't a vocal left

00:05:30.760 for Brexit other than spiked.

00:05:32.960 We had our sort of, as big as we could be,

00:05:34.840 campaign and you had some Labour left people who campaigned for Brexit but on the whole there

00:05:42.420 wasn't a coherent left-wing movement for what I thought was this great opportunity to break

00:05:49.640 through years of mush and status quo and not moving anywhere in politics then you have this

00:05:56.680 moment where lots of working class people are saying we want to change in politics and we want

00:06:03.180 to have a greater say and we want to shake things up and the left's nowhere to be seen.

00:06:08.260 And so not that I revel in the fact that that is the case, but I think it tells you a lot

00:06:12.640 about where the left is today, if they were so blind as to not see this as an opportunity

00:06:17.340 to change politics quite dramatically.

00:06:21.000 I mean, I remember in the two weeks after the vote, you had news about how the Tory

00:06:26.960 party was going to disintegrate, about how Labour was going to disintegrate, Westminster

00:06:30.480 was crumbling everyone was falling apart and I was like yes like this is what I vote for this is

00:06:37.260 great I mean you know I never have voted in general elections when I was younger used to

00:06:42.460 spoil my ballot and then my mum was said they never read the like essay that you write you know

00:06:48.240 they just see that you haven't ticked the box so anyway um I and that was a conscious decision

00:06:53.900 because I thought none of these people represent what I want in any way shape or form I'm very

00:06:58.840 very against picking the best of a bad bunch but Brexit was the first thing ever in my political

00:07:04.300 career I was like right this is something I definitely know that I care about I'm 100%

00:07:09.000 behind this let's go and that was I think that was a lot of people's experience I mean the

00:07:14.760 voter turnout for Brexit was ginormous in comparison to general elections and you just

00:07:19.640 see then the general election after it numbers completely tanked again which tells you what you

00:07:24.640 need to know about how important this thing was and how tragic i think it is that it's being

00:07:30.640 slammed to such a great extent i think that is also first past the post doesn't really engage

00:07:35.480 voters in the same way do you know what i mean like it's certainly where i live for example

00:07:39.440 there's absolutely no point voting for anybody i could vote for any party it would make no

00:07:43.860 difference whatsoever i could vote for the party that's going to win which always wins which is

00:07:48.160 in my case the conservatives i could work for the bnp if they still existed it wouldn't make any

00:07:53.080 difference you know so i think first past the post is definitely a part of that

00:07:56.600 but anyway uh i wanted to ask you your book is called what women want uh fun freedom and

00:08:10.080 end to feminism what's your beef with feminism sometimes on some shows i get them to just read

00:08:15.240 out the first bit without the sum title saying that's the bit that always freaks people out

00:08:19.620 my beef with feminism is long-standing and really though that sounds really controversial

00:08:26.680 and to feminism I think that is the most sensible way to go for women and for women's liberation

00:08:32.980 because I think feminism has become something that doesn't help women at all actually in the

00:08:39.200 book I argue it's something that is the main thing that's hindering women's freedom today

00:08:43.820 I think it's become a kind of what I call a middle-class girls club it's extremely elitist

00:08:49.500 It doesn't have really any interest in the political desires of most working class women.

00:08:57.880 It's actually quite disdainful of working class women.

00:09:00.720 It's sort of very hectoring, very patronising.

00:09:03.440 It dictates to women how they should feel and how they should act,

00:09:07.840 but never asks women what they want.

00:09:11.100 And after I wrote the book, this really brilliant survey came out from the Fawcett Society,

00:09:16.740 which is kind of champion of feminism

00:09:19.060 and they did this survey that showed

00:09:22.880 that only 7% of women in the UK identify as feminists.

00:09:27.760 And it was just such a brilliant moment

00:09:29.060 because the headline they ran with the press release was

00:09:31.520 women in the UK don't know that they're feminists.

00:09:36.480 It was like, who came up with that fantastic piece of spin

00:09:39.940 to turn a terrible stat into an affirmation

00:09:44.140 of your necessity as a feminist organisation?

00:09:46.740 What they really were saying is that women don't get it.

00:09:50.760 Feminism is about equality, and everyone likes equality,

00:09:54.100 because they also ran another survey which was about

00:09:56.320 do you believe in equal rights for men and women,

00:09:58.640 and surprise, surprise, pretty much everyone said yes.

00:10:02.500 But so they said, see, people just aren't matching this up.

00:10:05.060 They don't get what feminism's about, so they're wrong.

00:10:06.980 We need to teach women about feminism, and then they'll like it.

00:10:10.920 And that is exactly what's wrong with feminism today, I think.

00:10:13.940 It treats women like they don't get it,

00:10:16.560 and they need to be re-educated.

00:10:17.960 You get a lot of discussion about internalised misogyny,

00:10:20.440 about being sort of brainwashed to the patriarchy,

00:10:23.260 when actually most women are saying,

00:10:26.000 I know what this is about, it's been about since the 70s and 80s,

00:10:30.260 I'm not into it, actually, move on.

00:10:33.360 And I think that's why I'm saying an end to feminism

00:10:35.180 and a beginning of something a bit better

00:10:38.220 and a bit of a better discussion

00:10:39.500 about what it is women actually need in the 21st century.

00:10:42.680 And do you think a lot of women are worried about coming out

00:10:45.560 and saying that they don't identify as feminists

00:10:47.860 or they don't believe that they're a feminist.

00:10:49.740 For instance, my girlfriend,

00:10:51.380 she's currently doing a doctorate,

00:10:53.760 someone who's very, very intelligent.

00:10:54.900 She ascribes those views,

00:10:57.080 but she would never feel comfortable saying that.

00:11:00.340 Do you think that's...

00:11:01.340 You just outed her on the internet.

00:11:02.880 Yeah, I know.

00:11:03.600 I know I have just outed her on the internet.

00:11:05.600 Don't worry, she denies she's my girlfriend, so it's fine.

00:11:08.740 But do you think a lot of women feel worried

00:11:12.600 about expressing those views,

00:11:14.120 or do you think that's something that's becoming more and more widespread?

00:11:16.800 I think that it's split.

00:11:18.260 So I think women who have a public profile do

00:11:20.840 because you see it all the time.

00:11:24.220 This celebrity has refused to say that they are a feminist

00:11:26.820 and then you get all the kind of pieces

00:11:30.080 in all the different newspapers saying,

00:11:33.200 how dare they, they're a traitor

00:11:34.340 and they really have a responsibility to do all that.

00:11:37.020 So it's a bit of a social marker.

00:11:39.360 It gives you kind of cultural capital.

00:11:40.800 It says you're in the right group, you're just to be trusted,

00:11:43.400 or the right person but I think most other women who don't have to worry about where their next

00:11:49.420 media gig's going to come from and have more interesting jobs than you know selling themselves

00:11:55.740 to the newspapers don't worry about it because it's kind of like I said a common sense position

00:12:01.840 you know we could go outside now to the high street and stop a woman on the street and I

00:12:06.020 would bet my life savings little as they are they would not say feminist if you ask them what

00:12:11.500 they're identified with politically they they might say conservative labor left right but they

00:12:16.540 just wouldn't say feminist because it's not it's not a coherent movement people don't have meetings

00:12:21.760 in town halls about feminism there's no party there's the women's equality party but it's failed

00:12:27.260 to get anyone elected not because it doesn't have a coherent clever campaign but because no one's

00:12:33.080 interested this isn't something that women want to organize around it doesn't mean that there

00:12:38.240 aren't still things that hold women back today but for the need for any kind of gender specific

00:12:44.160 movement i think has passed or even i think wasn't there wasn't ever a desire for it in the first

00:12:50.140 place do you think we need a new word because the way i think about it is like if if we talk about

00:12:55.620 the the definition of feminism that is always thrown out in order to convince people that they

00:13:00.880 are feminist is do you like you said do you believe in equality between men and women that

00:13:05.600 women should have equal opportunities with men i'm a feminist by that definition everybody is i

00:13:10.620 imagine 99 of people are but increasingly that is not what feminism seems to be about so is it a

00:13:19.160 matter of definitions that we need to kind of distinguish between that and whatever this

00:13:24.340 fourth wave or third wave feminism has become well as a journalist it's bad to say this but i think

00:13:31.380 we are getting hung up on words or certainly people do get hung up on words in relation to

00:13:35.680 a discussion about feminism you hear lots of people saying we just need a new kind of rebrand

00:13:39.020 and that's partly what the forces that's partly what the forces society was saying we just need

00:13:44.720 to change it up we need to reconvince people it's not just the kind of term uh it's not just that

00:13:51.080 people don't get that it's about equality it's exactly as you said it's become something that

00:13:55.460 is not about equality uh in fact it never really was so the thing that annoys me as well as you get

00:14:02.120 discussion about feminism this year is the 100th anniversary of some women some rich property

00:14:09.240 owning women um getting the vote during the suffragette movement and people talk about

00:14:14.360 feminism and the suffragettes feminism wasn't a word that was used then the suffragettes were not

00:14:18.540 feminists that's a total ignorant reading of history is factually incorrect feminism as a

00:14:25.860 kind of movement only came about really in in the late 70s and the 80s so and it was very much then

00:14:31.620 a movement that was based around critical theory it was largely middle class although it had some

00:14:40.860 campaigns that were related to um equality in the law around contraception but it was never a

00:14:49.260 um really sort of ground up movement it was net there was never a kind of coherent massive women's

00:14:58.460 movement there were reactions to things and there were protests which came in the context of the

00:15:03.140 sexual revolution in changes in relation to the civil rights movement but there's never been you

00:15:10.340 You know, people talk about feminism like it's this thing in history that's existed

00:15:14.400 and has a long kind of standing and a movement that you can kind of point to.

00:15:19.440 Actually, no, it's completely scattered, it's completely fragmented.

00:15:23.220 So I don't think it was good from the start, really.

00:15:26.400 And that doesn't mean I don't think, by the way, that paying men and women equally is bad

00:15:30.940 or the things that did come out of women's movements in that time were bad.

00:15:34.960 I think that what we need now is a very clear headed look at what it is that women still need

00:15:42.580 so we still need better access to child care we still need abortion rights we still need

00:15:48.400 better access to society's resources in some cases what do you mean by that so we still

00:15:53.840 have a situation in which rightly or wrongly women are still seen as as I call it the chief

00:16:02.260 nose wipers the ones who are going to remember the doctor's appointment the ones who are gonna

00:16:06.680 you know in my house know that you've got to unroll the socks before you put them in the

00:16:10.820 washing machine all that kind of stuff which you can laugh about and i'm not saying that that's

00:16:16.060 you know i'm not like oh we're oppressed kind of mental load or whatever yeah no but but it's it's

00:16:20.940 it's women's position society still is the caregivers and that's reinforced by in some

00:16:27.020 ways the way in which work work is operated you know child care means that because women are seen

00:16:32.680 as the main caregivers they're the ones that have to take the time of work which means then when

00:16:35.860 they go back into work you have the motherhood gap in contrast to the gender pay gap which we

00:16:41.980 might talk about a bit later you know very small things like this is one of my favorite examples

00:16:49.400 there's a law which says that you it's an eu law actually brexit um which says that you can't

00:16:56.080 advertise formula milk as the same or equal to breastfeeding that might sound like a very small

00:17:03.740 point but actually what that is saying is that women should be breastfeeding all the time when

00:17:11.580 they are when the baby is first born and there are sort of health campaigns suggest that breast

00:17:16.220 is best and all that kind of thing well that's really saying is you can't have a life because

00:17:20.200 anyone who's breastfed knows that it's 24 hour on the hour job that's reinforcing women as the

00:17:25.500 primary caregivers and that has knock-on effects so that's what I mean and and you know how do you

00:17:33.060 fix that can you pass a law saying men have to look after the kids no that would be stupid who

00:17:39.140 would want to do that do you have awareness raising campaigns no it's about thinking more

00:17:45.940 clearly about what are the practical things that could help that situation removing that EU law

00:17:50.660 It might be one. Getting better access to childcare might be another.

00:17:54.200 But you never have that.

00:17:55.700 You have people opining on the television about how, you know,

00:17:59.380 it's so sexist that they have to wear this dress code or whatever to work

00:18:04.300 or how it's so sexist that they're told off for breastfeeding in public

00:18:08.900 or all this kind of crap, really,

00:18:10.820 which is just attention-seeking in my point of view,

00:18:13.900 not a kind of real serious look at what it is that women need.

00:18:17.300 I read a very interesting article that you wrote

00:18:19.900 in the Sun where you were talking about International Women's Day

00:18:22.540 and actually how annoying you found it.

00:18:25.520 And I did actually find it very, very funny.

00:18:27.720 Could you just explain to us why you find that entire movement...

00:18:31.180 Because I think the words you used were patronising.

00:18:33.520 Why is it that you find these kind of initiatives patronising

00:18:36.740 and also not particularly helpful?

00:18:39.000 It's because it positions women as weak and oppressed.

00:18:44.480 So the kind of...

00:18:46.240 In reality, we can say that on the whole,

00:18:49.480 in the uk and the west women are not oppressed we have equality under the law it's illegal to

00:18:55.620 treat us differently you can bring someone to court if they do while there might be sort of

00:19:00.940 nuances in the way in which men and women are treated differently in certain social situations

00:19:05.020 on the whole we have it pretty good and that is because of the fights of women in the past so i

00:19:11.520 have a good life because women of my mother's generation my grandmother's generation stood up

00:19:16.240 to injustice so we got it good but just as we get to a position where we are you know enjoying

00:19:23.180 relative freedom and it's all going pretty rosy we've now got this narrative that things are

00:19:28.300 terrible so you're telling young women that even though in their day-to-day lives they're seeing

00:19:33.420 that they're not being stopped by their gender there's nothing that's because their women is

00:19:37.300 telling them that to hold themselves back or anything and you've got the political narrative

00:19:41.840 of saying no no you are oppressed you are a victim and you need international women's day

00:19:47.340 because that will be the day where we will you know raise your plight to the world and I don't

00:19:54.840 think there's anything more patronizing than telling someone who thinks everything's fine that

00:19:59.340 they actually don't get it that no they really are oppressed and pushing that victim narrative on

00:20:04.180 them it's essentially like saying that we can't get along on our own I also think international

00:20:11.380 men's day is a load of bollocks as well i disagree i think it's brilliant i don't even

00:20:16.940 know when it is every day okay but there's that that's what i mean that's that's the kind of the

00:20:23.960 the terrible low the tone of that kind of identity politics that the idea that you need an

00:20:29.980 international day for each gender it's like what i mean who even buys into that and you look at who

00:20:37.280 does buy into that it's you know the un's women's department who put out a campaign with wonder

00:20:44.420 woman the other year i mean i'll talk about insulting uh or the faucet society or you know

00:20:50.840 every journalist including me under the sun who wants to get a column out of it and that's about

00:20:54.840 it i mean isn't it also you could argue that it's you know although women in this country are

00:21:01.540 you perceive to be equal whatever the case may be but in lots of other countries i mean

00:21:06.960 there's still a lot of inequality and women's rights are not where they should be, surely?

00:21:13.460 Yes, definitely.

00:21:14.740 And it doesn't mean that you don't show solidarity with those campaigns,

00:21:18.620 but I don't think that Western feminism is something for women

00:21:22.640 who are struggling for freedom in different parts of the world to look up to.

00:21:26.520 Because if you take, for example, not too far away,

00:21:30.220 where I'm from in Ireland, just across the pond,

00:21:32.780 there's been a long-standing women's movement for abortion rights,

00:21:35.820 which actually, interestingly, hasn't been that coloured by feminism.

00:21:42.340 So there are feminist groups who have been campaigning for abortion rights,

00:21:45.740 but on the whole, it's been a discussion about bodily autonomy.

00:21:49.740 It's been a discussion about what Ireland wants the Constitution to mean.

00:21:53.960 It's been really, you know, the conversation has been of such good quality.

00:21:58.940 It's been so political. It's been so serious.

00:22:01.820 And that's been hugely successful.

00:22:03.660 And that was fighting against some serious injustice.

00:22:07.180 I mean, women were dying because they weren't being allowed the basic medical care

00:22:11.600 if they couldn't fly to England to get treatment.

00:22:14.240 So none of the kind of victim narrative that I'm talking about

00:22:17.680 in relation to the kind of feminism we see in the UK,

00:22:20.920 although it does happen in Ireland a bit more,

00:22:23.040 we tend to be a bit more screwed on in Ireland,

00:22:25.540 it didn't really touch it.

00:22:28.060 And that's what I mean by saying you can say that

00:22:30.440 women being forced to cover their heads in iran is wrong women being uh you know in some countries

00:22:36.980 used as sex slaves and all that kind of stuff is wrong but that doesn't mean that you need to buy

00:22:42.260 into this um very unproductive very sort of self-absorbed feminism that we've got in the

00:22:49.000 west i mean it's a particular brand in the us and the uk of uh feminism that just kind of asks women

00:22:55.600 to stare up their own backsides and and make something political out of that it's like all

00:22:59.420 about how you feel it's all about how you value yourself as a woman it's all about um you know

00:23:04.720 how you should be represented it's it's so so so boring and you've actually argued that this

00:23:12.340 excessive introspection leads to mental health problems like particularly with the young girls

00:23:16.560 i read an article that you wrote for spiked where you were talking about this can you elaborate on

00:23:19.960 that a little bit yes so i saw some shocking stats you shouldn't always trust the stats that

00:23:24.460 you read because often they've got a kind of political motive behind them but it is the case

00:23:28.740 that we've got quite a large uptick in numbers of young girls self-harming.

00:23:33.280 Now, I'm sure that what's classified as self-harming

00:23:36.640 isn't all people very seriously hurting themselves

00:23:40.260 and putting their lives in danger.

00:23:41.940 And I don't think that all means that all these women

00:23:44.460 have serious mental health problems.

00:23:46.620 Teenage girls tend to flirt with that kind of thing a little bit,

00:23:49.440 rightly or wrongly.

00:23:50.200 It doesn't necessarily mean they have a long-lasting problem.

00:23:53.140 However, that's a bit weird.

00:23:55.460 Young women, and not young men, but young women,

00:23:58.020 are deciding to hurt themselves and the reasons that they're giving is that they don't feel

00:24:03.380 good enough, they don't feel valued enough, they feel you know under pressure from the image that

00:24:09.160 women are seeing in society. When I was young we still had models, we still had you know we didn't

00:24:18.100 quite have the internet, we were just on the cusp of it but we had magazines, I knew of beauty

00:24:22.780 standards there was a desire to be thin when you're at school all of that stuff still existed

00:24:27.980 but we weren't troubling ourselves with it too much and yes there was the odd person that would

00:24:32.720 let it get to them but today you have in contrast this huge push to tell young girls that they might

00:24:41.300 have a problem so you've got initiatives of i used to work in a school you've got initiatives of

00:24:46.160 he for she which is the un kind of campaign going in and talking to girls about their body image and

00:24:51.520 about how they should be respectful of themselves

00:24:55.140 and how they should value themselves.

00:24:57.560 And it's really just giving teenagers problems.

00:24:59.680 I mean, one way to make a teenager have a complex

00:25:02.720 is to tell them that they could possibly have a complex.

00:25:06.120 It's like feeding them the problem.

00:25:08.300 So if you're saying to young girls,

00:25:10.520 society is stacked against you,

00:25:12.560 society is telling you you've got to be thin,

00:25:14.240 you've got to be beautiful,

00:25:15.700 you've got to have 70-plus likes on your Instagram post,

00:25:19.240 or you might self-harm.

00:25:21.520 which is everything that I see in the news all the time,

00:25:24.020 is these stories, and they get these poor girls

00:25:27.300 in front of a camera,

00:25:28.760 just going to talk about how they haven't felt very good

00:25:31.100 about their body image.

00:25:32.180 It's so exploitative.

00:25:33.800 And you're just giving them a problem,

00:25:35.360 whereas I've gone into so much trouble in the past

00:25:38.700 for saying the best way to deal with a self-absorbed teenager

00:25:41.960 who doesn't have a serious problem

00:25:43.820 is to say, get over yourself,

00:25:45.880 and this is not an interesting thing to be worried about.

00:25:48.240 and yet we're just sort of indulging this rubbish

00:25:52.240 and this kind of teenage fantasy

00:25:53.620 and it's having some dark consequences.

00:25:55.920 Lo and behold, talk about teenagers have a problem

00:25:58.600 and you suddenly have lots of teenagers having a problem.

00:26:02.040 No, I mean, it's a very interesting point.

00:26:04.660 I mean, there was the whole Me Too movement

00:26:07.600 which happened obviously last year

00:26:09.120 and I read some really fascinating articles

00:26:11.320 on your opinion of Me Too.

00:26:14.200 Where do you stand on it?

00:26:15.520 Do you think it was by and large a positive thing

00:26:17.940 or do you think it was negative or, like everything,

00:26:21.640 there were positives and negatives to it?

00:26:24.000 I think, from the start, it wasn't a good thing.

00:26:27.040 I'm not of the opinion that it was a good intention thing that went bad.

00:26:30.840 I think, from the off, it had problems

00:26:33.040 and it was pretty much completely based on the problematic idea

00:26:38.100 that you would use social media

00:26:41.080 and you would use these public platforms

00:26:43.820 to kind of essentially do show trials.

00:26:47.460 So, yes, Harvey Weinstein, I think we can all agree,

00:26:50.720 is not a pleasant man, and that's putting it lightly.

00:26:54.800 I'm not a lawyer, I don't know the cases,

00:26:57.020 but if we were having a bet in a pub,

00:26:59.300 I'd say that he did do those things to those women.

00:27:01.600 I don't think it's hard to believe that that was the case.

00:27:05.500 However, it began with this accusation of Harvey Weinstein,

00:27:10.640 which only came out because the New York Times did an expose,

00:27:13.300 let's remember, not because a group of women

00:27:15.580 and suddenly decided they wanted to, you know, do something about this.

00:27:20.480 And then immediately became something that wasn't just about Harvey Weinstein,

00:27:25.500 wasn't just about one case, it became Me Too.

00:27:28.080 And what that was, when that hashtag hit the internet,

00:27:31.480 was saying, tell us about your experiences of abuses,

00:27:35.560 or not even tell us about the details of your experiences of abuse,

00:27:39.080 just say Me Too.

00:27:40.200 And then immediately after that, you had, you know, serious surveys and think pieces and, you know, political analysis using this, you know, very unsubstantial way of measuring, you know, people tweeting the words Me Too to say that there was this onslaught of abuse, that there was this kind of tidal wave of sexual harassment.

00:28:02.460 We had this serious problem.

00:28:05.480 And, you know, for anyone who's very serious about, you know,

00:28:09.160 thinking sexual harassment is something terrible and wrong,

00:28:12.160 that is a very bad thing to happen

00:28:14.440 because you have the blurring of lines.

00:28:16.400 You have people talking about, oh, me too.

00:28:18.800 My boss once asked me out on a date.

00:28:21.220 That's not sexual harassment.

00:28:23.160 That's, you know, inappropriate behaviour, perhaps,

00:28:25.560 if you don't fancy him.

00:28:26.940 But it's not sexual harassment.

00:28:30.000 You have people...

00:28:30.680 Sorry to interrupt. The conversation here often, it becomes difficult because isn't there a power issue there?

00:28:36.800 To take your example, right, let's say your boss asks you out and you say no, potentially there are consequences to that depending on how that relationship works, where your refusal to go on a date with him is then connected to your opportunities for promotion, your salary, pay rises, whatever, right?

00:28:58.940 So isn't it about power, this whole conversation?

00:29:01.680 And that's why it can be an issue when your boss asks you out on a date.

00:29:05.700 No, I think that is a power issue, and that doesn't happen very often.

00:29:08.820 It isn't the case that bosses are asking out their pretty young secretaries, left, right and centre,

00:29:13.620 and then, you know, giving them the boot when they don't go out with them.

00:29:17.180 We have pretty strict laws in place that regulate the workplace.

00:29:21.520 I think most workplaces actually have clauses that say you can't have relationships within the office.

00:29:27.860 which I think is kind of a bit dystopian as you spend most of your working life in an office with people.

00:29:33.220 It's kind of terrible to tell them that you can't get off with a Christmas party with them and let it all out.

00:29:40.180 That's one of the things that's really annoyed me about the Me Too movement

00:29:43.040 is that it's just a given now that, oh, yes, there are abuses of power in workplaces

00:29:48.740 and, oh, yes, bosses are doing this and it's terrible for women and it's a very dangerous situation.

00:29:53.040 It's not happening.

00:29:53.820 it might have happened and it did happen actually in the kind of 60s and 70s and you've had these

00:29:59.420 older feminists Anne Robinson, Dame Anne Leslie come out and say when I was a young reporter when

00:30:06.920 I was a young worker people were grabbing my backside people putting their hands up my skirt

00:30:11.880 people were you know pinning me in corners that doesn't happen now it did happen then and then we

00:30:17.260 had you know equality objectives come into workplaces we had legal you know parameters put

00:30:25.140 in relation to how people can relate in the workplace we have all these things in place

00:30:28.660 the idea that we now need more that we now need uh you know to have affirmative consent in the

00:30:35.500 workplace or that you need to have investigations into the power relations is is just completely

00:30:41.080 unfounded it isn't happening the me too movement is not a movement it was a moment and it's

00:30:47.240 got no substantial evidence to it if you know i think i'm i feel it's not a scientific analysis

00:30:53.500 but i feel pretty confident in saying we do not have an epidemic of sexual harassment in the

00:30:59.000 workplace in the west because i think if we did women would be doing something about it

00:31:03.960 like we did something about it 30 40 50 years ago you think this is the thing that really gets to me

00:31:10.420 Do we think women are just sort of staying quiet and being mouses

00:31:15.320 and not doing anything when bad things happen to them in the workplace?

00:31:20.800 And all it took was a hashtag from this celebrity to suddenly break us free.

00:31:26.060 I mean, I can't be the only one who thinks that's pretty insulting.

00:31:30.160 I do know a lot of people whose argument to that would be,

00:31:33.040 well, that's exactly what's happened.

00:31:34.860 Women were keeping quiet about these things

00:31:36.620 because they felt like they had no power to express themselves,

00:31:39.660 to share and this hashtag and the movement that came with it was the opportunity that allowed them

00:31:44.840 to go actually yeah me too I've had that experience I didn't talk about it because I was scared I was

00:31:49.720 worried I didn't know what to do I felt I might get fired whatever and I know people who would say

00:31:55.440 well this was an opportunity this to social media for women to see that actually for the first time

00:32:01.820 they had a chance to speak out and be heard I don't buy it I just don't buy it because I think

00:32:08.100 if you look at the history of women's movements uh and you know one of the great examples i always

00:32:13.160 use is the four dagenham strikers that wasn't about sexual harassment but it was about an

00:32:17.100 abuse of power in the workplace um that internet wasn't invented then they didn't have celebrities

00:32:23.280 backing their cause and in fact they were demonized for wanting to be paid and valued for

00:32:30.020 their work in the right way those were working class women they didn't have a great education

00:32:34.480 They didn't have a great wealth. They didn't have any of the stuff that these celebrities and columnists have at their disposal who are, you know, pushing the Me Too argument.

00:32:44.440 And yet they still stood up and fought for their rights and won their rights to, you know, not not immediately, but eventually they did.

00:32:53.740 And why do we think that women today don't have that kind of power? Because it's not true.

00:32:59.480 they do why do we think that women you know will stand for bad behavior or stand for injustice

00:33:06.260 that we haven't ever in the last kind of 60 years it's been history has shown us movement upon

00:33:12.540 movement moment upon moment of women standing up and fighting for themselves that's why I am

00:33:17.260 totally comfortable today sitting here saying that and talking about it because it's not

00:33:21.780 controversial so it just really rubs me the wrong way and I think it's actually a disservice to

00:33:27.860 women to say that we were waiting for the permission of a very wealthy woman in Hollywood

00:33:36.180 to allow us to speak I think you know as as someone who really believes in women's liberation

00:33:42.740 that rubs me the wrong way as someone also actually who's a left-winger that rubs me the wrong way in

00:33:47.660 all ways I think wow that I don't think you realize what a big statement you're making when

00:33:52.440 you say that's the case, that women's silence was broken by Alyssa Milano.

00:33:57.740 One of the arguments that we've put forward to me by a lot of women as to why Me Too is necessary

00:34:02.120 is conviction rates of sexual assault and crime site rape

00:34:06.640 and what women have to go through in order to report them,

00:34:09.920 and then it gets taken to trial,

00:34:11.800 and that a lot of women are simply either intimidated by the process

00:34:15.160 or just cannot bear to go through and then be cross-examined about what is a horrendous experience.

00:34:20.660 this is a difficult one and we need to have more discussion about our rape laws and how

00:34:28.120 situations of rape and sexual violence are dealt with but i think the conversation about it has

00:34:34.640 gone too far the other way now and that sounds terribly unsympathetic but what i mean is that

00:34:39.040 we've got movements like believe the victim which was centered around a case in ireland of two rugby

00:34:45.380 players who um were eventually acquitted of uh charges of rape and people came out and said

00:34:52.160 that they believed the victim that they thought that this ruling was wrong uh there's been calls

00:34:57.080 linked to the me too movement but actually it came beforehand of uh liberalizing the way in which we

00:35:02.820 treat rape victims now it's it's pretty much um universal that people are called rape victims

00:35:10.120 instead of complainants before a case is, you know, finally decided.

00:35:15.980 Yeah, so we have a complete destruction of the presumption of innocence.

00:35:19.480 And that is no good for women.

00:35:21.460 I mean, that's no good for either party, but that is no good for women

00:35:23.680 because that's not treating your case seriously.

00:35:26.100 If you are coming to the police and you have been raped or sexually abused,

00:35:31.560 you've got a very serious charge against someone.

00:35:34.440 And if you want justice, you have to take that very seriously.

00:35:38.060 and that means going through quite a difficult process

00:35:40.760 and that's not fair and that's not nice

00:35:43.220 and I have never been raped

00:35:45.020 but I can't imagine that it's in any way pleasant

00:35:47.560 to have to relive that experience in front of strangers

00:35:50.280 but if you are trying to put someone in jail

00:35:52.880 for something wrong that they have done

00:35:54.360 you have to be able to be strong enough to do that

00:35:57.340 because it's a very serious thing to do

00:35:59.140 the other problem is that this is not rape

00:36:03.100 but sexual abuse, sexual harassment, sexual violence

00:36:06.940 are terms which have become so woolly.

00:36:10.600 So you have, for example, the new law in Nottinghamshire,

00:36:16.460 which came out, I think, about two years ago,

00:36:18.340 which turned misogyny into a hate crime.

00:36:20.940 And that meant that, technically, under the law,

00:36:24.820 men who wolf-whistled at or made comments at women in the street

00:36:28.740 could be penalised under sexual harassment.

00:36:33.640 Now, if we're talking about how to treat sexual violence,

00:36:37.420 sexual harassment and rape and police resources

00:36:40.380 and how seriously we take women,

00:36:42.000 I think that's pretty damning to say that you expect the police officers

00:36:45.880 to watch women as they walk down the street

00:36:47.620 in case someone says, hey, sexy legs.

00:36:50.220 And to put that on a spectrum and to put that in the same grouping

00:36:55.500 as having to deal with someone who's been brutally raped

00:36:59.700 is fundamentally wrong.

00:37:00.880 No, I totally take that point.

00:37:01.780 But I think what Francis is getting at is if you're a woman and you have the perception, whether it's accurate or not, that your rape accusation is not going to be dealt with seriously, it's not going to be treated seriously, you're unlikely to succeed, you're going to go through a tremendous amount of trauma, relive your horrible experience, then something like Me Too is an opportunity to do it anonymously, perhaps, or to join your voice with others to get attention for the fact that something happened.

00:37:31.380 that you're not going to get justice for

00:37:32.960 through the criminal justice system.

00:37:34.840 And I think that's kind of what Frances is getting at.

00:37:38.540 So that's maybe an issue where something like Me Too

00:37:41.900 or Time's Up or whatever do come in and play a useful role

00:37:44.220 because it gives women who feel like

00:37:46.080 otherwise they don't have a chance at justice.

00:37:49.380 Well, I think that's where it plays the most damaging role

00:37:51.320 because that's where you have people accusing rape

00:37:55.760 and calling people rapists without a fair trial.

00:37:59.220 And as we know what happens on social media

00:38:01.340 rightly or wrongly sticks and you can have people making false accusations the cps in this country

00:38:07.280 is currently reviewing a great many rape cases because there have been so many young men wrongly

00:38:13.920 convicted there was um guy liam recently who was released and taken off mail because they hadn't

00:38:21.180 looked at his text messages which you know the cps is it's kind of mired in these mistakes and

00:38:26.220 that's not saying that women lie actually it's a tiny tiny tiny minority of women who lie it's you

00:38:33.080 know inconsequential but the fact is if you don't have a system which fairly treats both complainants

00:38:40.040 and the accused which treats justice seriously and is sort of beyond politics to a certain extent

00:38:47.060 not that the criminal justice system is beyond politics but the kind of political realm of

00:38:51.440 Twitter is not something that can be trusted

00:38:53.920 to deal with something like a rape accusation seriously.

00:38:57.540 I mean, I don't think any of us would believe a tweet as fact, would we?

00:39:02.500 So the problem is, I think, today is that that does happen.

00:39:07.120 You have had, for example, Aziz Ansari,

00:39:10.780 the young American actor who had this sexual experience with a woman.

00:39:17.240 He sounded like a bit of a, you know...

00:39:19.240 A bit of a dick.

00:39:19.740 A bit of a pig, yeah.

00:39:20.480 I mean, he's clearly...

00:39:21.880 An actor being a dick? Surely not.

00:39:23.780 Acting comedian.

00:39:25.500 Either he's been with too many women to care

00:39:27.880 or he hasn't been with very many women at all

00:39:30.220 because the way he treated her wasn't very nice,

00:39:33.640 wasn't very gentlemanly, but it was consensual.

00:39:37.400 She was very, very up for it because he was a star

00:39:40.100 and she was pushing it,

00:39:41.400 and in the morning she decided,

00:39:43.540 I didn't like what happened, she texted him,

00:39:45.460 he was actually profusely apologetic, whatever.

00:39:49.160 She then uses this as an example of Me Too,

00:39:52.640 and it gets taken into this conversation about sexual harassment.

00:39:56.680 He gets completely lambasted on social media.

00:40:00.500 I think he pretty much lost most of his work.

00:40:04.020 He's now tried to come back to work and has been rejected,

00:40:06.580 and people have mounted campaigns to stop him from ever working again.

00:40:10.140 He didn't do anything.

00:40:12.220 He was bad in bed,

00:40:14.880 and he needs a lesson on how to treat women politely.

00:40:17.920 If being bad in bed is the right, we're all screwed.

00:40:20.340 No, but so that is, that's what happens when you leave it up to...

00:40:24.400 I missed that myself. Accidental pun, Ella.

00:40:26.960 Sorry. Sorry.

00:40:29.060 But, you know, we can laugh about that, and we should,

00:40:32.340 but I don't think Aziz Ansari's laughing.

00:40:34.340 No, no, no.

00:40:34.900 And, you know, it does a disservice to what we see as justice.

00:40:40.080 You know, if you want, if you have been raped as a woman,

00:40:44.700 And this is the other point that I think matters most to me more than anything else.

00:40:50.780 And that's something that someone did to you that was completely out of your control.

00:40:55.680 Actually, it doesn't have very much to do with sex at all.

00:40:58.180 It's about power and it's about violence and it's the removal of your agency.

00:41:04.020 I think what the Me Too movement in its almost, and I'm picking my words really carefully here,

00:41:10.860 the glorification of being a victim in its celebration of victimhood in the kind of like

00:41:18.480 me too which you can see is a good thing in terms of women should be able to speak out about this

00:41:23.540 for sure I'm not up for silencing anyone but the kind of badge wearing of it that doesn't sit right

00:41:30.300 with me because if you're telling women that we should interpret this act that someone did to us

00:41:36.340 that was against our will and we didn't want to be part of our identity that you've got to kind

00:41:40.660 of slap that on like a scarlet letter on your back and wear that for the rest of your life

00:41:45.140 I don't think that's how we should be dealing with rape actually I think that we should as much as we

00:41:50.440 can encourage victims of rape men or women to go beyond and get over that experience and live their

00:41:58.140 lives as if it never happened because you know screw the guy or whoever did that to you and

00:42:03.180 don't let him beat control you outside of that you know 10 minutes hour whatever it was that

00:42:08.580 time frame that's the thing that i think gets me most about the me too movement is the celebration

00:42:13.960 of victimhood which i don't see as healthy do you think it's also quite hypocritical as well

00:42:19.180 in that when we see the asia argento case and then when she was accused of this uh by uh it was a

00:42:26.120 minor i know he was 17 but in terms of the united states and the law he was he's seen as a minor

00:42:30.980 and i think it was rose mcgowan tweeted something about we don't know the full facts be gentle i

00:42:36.100 think were her words and I'm and I was like I agreed with certain with with parts of the meter

00:42:40.800 and I'm but when I read that was like well no you can't really say that you can't that's

00:42:46.420 hypocritical you can't go after one person with teeth bared and all of a sudden just because

00:42:52.560 somebody's your friend or connected with you always a certain gender gender gender we have

00:42:57.680 to in inverted commas be gentle yeah I think that was she's deleted that tweet which you know

00:43:04.340 because she's been so hounded by it, by people rightly, I think.

00:43:08.480 The Asia Argento story was a real moment

00:43:10.760 in which you could have been like, ha-ha, hypocrites,

00:43:14.840 you know, told you so, this whole thing is a load of crap

00:43:18.380 and revel in it.

00:43:20.160 Actually, I think that the Asia Argento story is sad

00:43:24.700 and it reinforces my point of how wrong the Me Too movement is

00:43:29.500 because we don't know that she did that to this guy.

00:43:33.460 It's what he alleges, it's a kind of closed agreement

00:43:37.000 for other financial strange kind of payoffs they have in America.

00:43:40.660 So you're, other than opening a criminal case,

00:43:44.680 you're never going to get to the bottom of whether or not

00:43:46.840 her and Anthony Bourdain, her boyfriend at the time,

00:43:49.880 paid this guy out the kindness of their heart

00:43:51.520 or whether they were shutting her up because she had sex with him.

00:43:56.460 Unfortunately for her, there have now been some leaked text messages

00:43:59.460 that shows that she was boasting about having sex with him.

00:44:02.100 So, you know, she probably did have sex with him.

00:44:05.240 But the point is you don't have the full facts

00:44:07.660 and suddenly she is now the accused

00:44:11.800 and she is the enemy and she is evil and she's terrible,

00:44:15.060 she's an abuser, you know, who knows?

00:44:17.540 I would sort of, looking at that objectively, think,

00:44:20.480 why wouldn't he want to have sex with a good-looking celebrity?

00:44:24.620 You know, this doesn't necessarily have to be abuse.

00:44:26.780 There's a whole range of different outcomes for this

00:44:29.960 And yet we've boiled it down to the accused and the accuser and the wrong and the right.

00:44:36.240 And that's why Me Too is so unjust.

00:44:39.900 Not just because Rose McGowan is hypocritical in her treatment of those who are accused.

00:44:44.960 I mean, she's not alone in that.

00:44:46.020 Lena Dunham was rightly trounced for, you know, on the one hand saying Me Too was this fantastic thing

00:44:53.820 and we should kind of blankly and blindly believe the victim.

00:44:56.360 and then on the other hand, when the writer of Girls was accused of rape,

00:45:00.400 she was like, oh, but I know this guy and he's kind of nice.

00:45:03.860 But, you know, wouldn't you, if you're a brother or your best friend,

00:45:07.740 you'd say, well, I think, you know,

00:45:10.340 I'm sticking by this person until I see the facts.

00:45:12.580 Oh, if Frances Everett gets accused of anything, I'm walking right out of here.

00:45:16.060 But that's what we've lost, the presumption of innocence.

00:45:19.140 And even though Asia Argento is, you know, I don't know the woman,

00:45:23.820 but I think that she's politically suspect.

00:45:26.360 what she's done in relation to the Me Too movement

00:45:28.620 and all this kind of opining about it's pretty disgusting.

00:45:32.260 Now that you've seen that she is sort of a kind of hypocrite

00:45:35.300 in relation to this case, none of that really matters.

00:45:38.640 What matters is the destruction of the presumption of innocence in this.

00:45:42.420 I think Asia Argento's case is fuelling that,

00:45:45.660 and I see it still as kind of problematic,

00:45:47.500 so I'm not revelling in her downfall.

00:45:49.500 Actually, I think it's part of the problem.

00:45:51.020 Well, I do think that hypocrisy is important.

00:45:52.680 I mean, you see it right now with the conversation

00:45:54.300 in the Labour Party about anti-Semitism.

00:45:56.360 And I see it all the time.

00:45:58.120 People who are on what I call the loony left, right,

00:46:01.160 they're straight white people very often explaining to Jews

00:46:05.020 what anti-Semitism is about and stuff like that.

00:46:08.160 Whereas if it happened to any other minority,

00:46:10.360 they would be instantly shutting those people down,

00:46:12.920 going, oh, you're white-splaining, you're man-splaining,

00:46:15.080 you're this-splaining, you're that-splaining.

00:46:16.640 But for some reason, when it comes to certain people,

00:46:19.020 it's OK for other people to explain to them

00:46:21.300 what it is to be discriminated against or whatever.

00:46:24.020 And I do think hypocrisy is a big part of all these issues, is this idea that you treat different groups differently because they're different groups instead of having the same standard of equality for everybody.

00:46:35.220 And I kind of do feel that hypocrisy reveals a lot of the flaws in this way of thinking where it's all about oppression and power intersectionality instead of just going, how about we treat everybody equally?

00:46:47.480 Yeah. One of the things that I wrote in the book, which is such a great example of hypocrisy, is, and you might have to bleep this out because I'm going to start talking about boobs.

00:46:58.140 Oh, we have no censorship.

00:46:59.200 All right, I'm going to start talking about boobs.

00:47:00.540 Talk about boobs, then.

00:47:01.700 We very much approve of them on trigonometry. Can we just make that quite clear?

00:47:05.640 So it's just such a beautiful counterposing this is.

00:47:11.640 On the one hand, you've got the Free the Nipple campaign

00:47:15.220 and you've got largely middle-class feminists

00:47:18.680 talking about the fact that women are oppressed

00:47:20.760 because they can't feed their child in public

00:47:22.460 because society is so prudish about women's naked breasts.

00:47:27.420 And you've got, in support of that, on Instagram,

00:47:31.540 which is a largely kind of affluent, middle-class social media platform.

00:47:36.860 Lots of rich kids on there.

00:47:38.520 And you've got these sort of lovely, skinny little young things

00:47:43.000 putting up topless pictures saying, free the nipple.

00:47:45.580 It's all very artsy. It's all very tasteful.

00:47:48.460 It's all very trendy.

00:47:51.800 Great. Those kind of boobs, fine.

00:47:54.320 Then you've got page three.

00:47:56.120 And you've got grid girls that they don't get their knockers out.

00:48:00.140 They just wear nice dresses.

00:48:01.540 You've got the sun, you've got glamour models, and that's bad.

00:48:06.480 You know, that's oppression.

00:48:07.880 That's terrible.

00:48:08.940 That kind of nakedness in women is wrong, and that's influenced by men.

00:48:13.700 No, no, the kind of, you know, the picture that you put up on Instagram,

00:48:17.340 which is really sexy and topless, is fine because it's free the nipple.

00:48:21.900 But the one that you, the Essex girl with the, you know, 34D chest,

00:48:26.740 puts up and gets 300 quid for it is wrong.

00:48:30.900 And that's such a kind of hypocritical argument

00:48:33.640 because what are you talking about?

00:48:34.900 Are you talking about women's freedom to be naked?

00:48:38.180 Are you talking about censorship?

00:48:39.420 Are you talking about prudish society?

00:48:41.840 Or are you talking about good boobs, bad boobs?

00:48:44.660 And though that sounds like a very specific, almost silly example,

00:48:47.820 it really gets to the heart of, I think, the problem with feminism

00:48:51.320 because if it's working-class Essex girls in the sun, it's bad.

00:48:56.960 And if it's working-class grid girls

00:48:59.700 or if it's the darts girls or if it's any of these kind of women

00:49:02.820 who are using their bodies to work, rightly or wrongly,

00:49:07.560 whatever your opinion on that, then that's bad.

00:49:10.800 But if it's these more middle-class women

00:49:13.760 who are sort of making an artistic statement

00:49:15.760 or trying to, you know, make a political statement

00:49:18.240 about breastfeeding or whatever,

00:49:20.080 even though that, I think, is bullshit, is good.

00:49:24.360 And that's a class distinction.

00:49:25.900 You know, it's a kind of anti-working-class position

00:49:28.240 because, as Harriet Harman said,

00:49:31.120 I remember reading this fantastic article where she said,

00:49:34.140 I think the Kardashians are so empowering and they're so wonderful,

00:49:37.800 you know, the Kardashians,

00:49:39.060 who are the kind of queens of selling their naked bodies for fame.

00:49:44.040 They're brilliant.

00:49:45.400 And then I think it was Piers Morgan said to her,

00:49:47.400 but, you know, what about page three girls

00:49:50.240 who are doing the exact same but for far less money?

00:49:53.100 She said, no, no, no, that's terrible

00:49:54.680 because they're controlled by men.

00:49:56.140 And you think, what?

00:49:58.240 So that's like, you know, the hypocrisy there is tantalisingly, you know, just amazing.

00:50:04.600 It's such a clear way of saying this is not a movement, feminism, that cares about women's freedom.

00:50:10.740 Can I just say I feel this is a very serious issue that requires further exploration instead.

00:50:15.740 Yeah, when you were talking about the free, the nipple movement, I just thought, yeah, after 10 years in a relationship, my girlfriend is not in favour of that anymore, sadly.

00:50:23.060 but um someone did a very very a comedian i can't remember who it was did a very funny tweet about

00:50:29.200 it about the whole darts girls issue and they said that finally left-wing third-wave feminists

00:50:34.740 will be able to enjoy darts in peace that is funny um this pity wasn't me that posted that tweet

00:50:54.060 We touched on the gender pay gap.

00:50:56.820 What would you like to tell us about the gender pay gap?

00:50:59.840 So I call it a myth, and that upsets people, but it is a myth.

00:51:05.440 We have the law which says that you cannot pay men and women

00:51:10.940 the different amounts of money for the same work.

00:51:13.860 That's been a law for a fairly long time.

00:51:16.420 It's one that's, on the whole, respected.

00:51:18.180 but then the gender pay gap is the claim that um you know for every pound that men earn women earn

00:51:27.080 you know 2p or something terrible they it's always the stats are completely unreliable

00:51:31.460 and you know in the book i give about four different or four or five different stats in

00:51:36.420 the space of like a year that were given by different organizations for women won't earn

00:51:40.320 the same amount until 2050 or 2110 or you know just think get your act together and can you all

00:51:45.980 disagree on one myth and then peddle that rather than doing all the different ones um when you look

00:51:51.440 break down any of those stats however you see that what gets conflated is different work skills and

00:51:58.400 different hours and different job levels so it's never the case ever that joe and jane who clock

00:52:05.940 in at nine and clock out at five on the same desk get paid differently because as i said that's

00:52:10.280 legal, it will be the case that, you know, Joe, who is working 72 hours full time, gets paid

00:52:18.620 different to Jane, who is working part time freelance for a similar role. So there are so

00:52:24.080 many things to consider. And I think it's just really disingenuous to talk about something like

00:52:30.960 that without being serious about the numbers. So you had all these kind of very, very high paid,

00:52:37.880 like telephone book number kind of salary,

00:52:41.440 paid women in the BBC talking about the gender pay gap

00:52:44.960 and how terrible it was and how, you know, oppressed they were.

00:52:48.520 And I bet if you said to one of them,

00:52:50.220 oh, OK, so you did, what did we do?

00:52:52.560 We did a three-hour radio show and you got paid, you know,

00:52:56.060 whatever, hundreds or thousands for that.

00:52:58.620 And while you were doing that in the studio,

00:53:00.720 there was this Nigerian guy who was cleaning your desk

00:53:04.020 and your office for three hours.

00:53:06.100 And he got 25 quid or 50 quid or whatever it was.

00:53:10.140 What about that pay gap?

00:53:11.720 You know, what are you actually talking about?

00:53:13.140 Are you actually talking about people being paid fairly?

00:53:15.600 Are you actually talking about raising wages?

00:53:18.200 Are you actually talking about giving people what they need to live?

00:53:20.740 No, this is a kind of very, very shallow, very self-serving attempt for some women to get pay rises.

00:53:28.480 And it tends to be richer women.

00:53:30.460 I think it's been really used and abused.

00:53:32.120 The one thing where there is pay inequality is what I call the motherhood pay gap. That's not bosses being sexist against mothers. That's not, you know, even the fact that capitalism as a structure means that one part of the family, if there are two parts, has to stay at home and regenerate.

00:53:51.780 I don't want to get into all of this with you, but you know that kind of argument.

00:53:55.300 This is about the fact that because of poor access to childcare,

00:53:59.260 women who have children tend to, on the whole,

00:54:04.640 because it's too expensive to hire out babysitters and all that kind of thing,

00:54:08.200 take time off work to raise their kids.

00:54:10.800 That means they're out of the working world,

00:54:13.240 and when they come back, because they have had to take time out,

00:54:17.340 that doesn't mean that, by the way, we don't force people to get pregnant.

00:54:20.520 that is also a free choice um but when they come back they have less opportunity they've they you

00:54:26.100 know they they don't get paid as much on the whole and i guess you would argue that if a man were to

00:54:30.280 do that same thing he probably would get exactly the same fatherhood gap if he was to take time

00:54:35.640 because it's about access to child care and and you know as i say that's a very simple thing that

00:54:41.180 you could fix very quickly i argue for um and i think spike argues for free access to 24 hour

00:54:48.480 good quality child care on demand. Very simple. Something like the NHS that the state could

00:54:53.680 provide. Why not? But instead, you've got this kind of bullshit about women being oppressed

00:54:59.340 in the gender pay gap. And it's just another case in which you're just having the completely

00:55:04.900 wrong conversation. You're having this sort of fantasy conversation about sexism and work

00:55:09.560 when you could be doing this really concrete thing, which is addressing one of the key things

00:55:13.960 that stops women from going back to work

00:55:16.440 or having a good sort of quality of time at work.

00:55:21.580 But no, let's carry on peddling the myth about the gender pay gap.

00:55:26.600 And, you know, some great facts out there

00:55:29.340 are that women in their 20s and 30s are out-earning men.

00:55:33.720 You could say that's a good thing, you could say that's a bad thing.

00:55:35.940 It's happening.

00:55:36.880 So it means that women in their 20s and 30s

00:55:38.600 aren't being hindered by their sex or by their gender.

00:55:43.380 We've got more women going into all different types of workplaces.

00:55:49.300 There's been this big push for women in STEM.

00:55:51.980 Women are flooding into STEM.

00:55:54.140 I don't think necessarily off the back of government-funded pushes,

00:55:57.420 but just because they're interested in it,

00:55:59.880 the world is open as a woman.

00:56:03.100 There's no area in which you will be stopped because you are a woman.

00:56:08.400 the one highest in the stats of gender pay gap the one highest industry which I think is a terrible

00:56:17.040 shame was construction you know what we're going to say that there's no women in construction

00:56:21.860 women get badly paid in construction wonder why that is I used to work with my dad who was a

00:56:27.080 builder it's back-breaking work most women can't do it or don't want to do it you know because you

00:56:32.000 You need to be a big, burly guy like my dad was.

00:56:35.480 So it's just ridiculous.

00:56:37.320 I mean, it's utterly ridiculous.

00:56:38.700 That is an interesting part of this whole fight for equality,

00:56:41.640 that it always seems to be a fight for equality

00:56:44.460 in all the best bits, isn't it?

00:56:47.220 So there's very little fighting for equality

00:56:49.800 in the bin men or the bin person industry.

00:56:52.740 You know, women are not really clamouring

00:56:54.700 to be, you know, emancipated and that, right?

00:56:57.240 So it's all about TV jobs, radio jobs, banking, whatever, right?

00:57:01.420 And it destroys, I mean, this kind of discussion and this gendering of this debate destroys workplace solidarity.

00:57:07.480 So for most workers who, like you said, aren't in the media, aren't in these kind of high-flying, highly paid jobs,

00:57:15.520 your working experience, you want to have solidarity.

00:57:19.600 Or if you, like me, believe in workers' power, you want to have solidarity between men and women.

00:57:25.160 so you don't want to have a meeting about the fact that everyone's getting a pay cut and you know

00:57:31.480 you're going to mobilize to go on strike and then some of the women say oh well actually we want to

00:57:35.800 have our own thing because this is going to affect us differently when it isn't when you should be

00:57:40.200 banding together that's I think something damaging for anyone who actually cares in about workers

00:57:47.020 rights and you've got this in other areas I mean quotas and um and sort of to to give women leg

00:57:54.160 ups to separate women out from men in workplaces to say they are different, they need to have a

00:57:58.380 different say in the boardroom or they need to have a different position, utterly destroys the

00:58:03.420 idea of workplace solidarity. I mean, it is a fact that if you are a, you know, let's take two Tesco

00:58:11.160 workers in Tottenham, one's a man and one's a woman, they're pretty much going to have the same

00:58:16.880 in common in relation to their working life, their experience at work, probably even their

00:58:22.320 political desires at work um the idea that that woman would have any kind of solidarity with

00:58:29.360 carrie grace at the bbc or you know is is trash of course it's not and why are you saying that

00:58:35.880 that should be the case i'm curious what is it like being you having these opinions

00:58:41.020 um when i'm on twitter or um any kind of place like that it's sometimes rough because people are

00:58:51.820 very intolerant to it i think the tone of the debate certainly around feminism or any of these

00:58:57.300 kind of sacred cows today is so vicious so if you if you voice opinion that's critical of it people

00:59:03.980 say i've been called a rape apologist i've been called a misogynist all of that kind of stuff

00:59:09.340 which you know hurts because it's something i care very deeply about women's liberation and

00:59:14.100 that's that's you know i i would never want to be associated with anything like that

00:59:18.600 but outside of that you know when i'm among my friends when i go out when i'm you know i'm just

00:59:25.540 living and outside of the online world it's fine because like i said most people i think are a bit

00:59:32.600 sick of the tone of the debate and you know whether i'm talking to um the women that i do

00:59:37.580 exercise classes with at the cerebral center and holloway or whether it's my mum's mates or anyone

00:59:42.040 we can have sensible discussions about this and we can have sensible agreements disagreements

00:59:47.340 about it um it's when i get put on a panel with you know uh whoever kate smithway yeah we do not

00:59:56.440 get on not do we she's blocked me on facebook a long time ago yeah well and any kind of any sort

01:00:02.340 of what i call the professional feminists who have a stake in their career in being this kind

01:00:06.700 of belligerent um then then it gets a bit heated but i'm fine with that because i really really

01:00:13.540 believe in this and I really want to see a world in which women are completely free and that's this

01:00:19.020 is the main reason why I've spent so bloody long arguing about this um and some days I do get really

01:00:24.460 sick of it but it's because I think there's so much at stake we've still got so much to gain

01:00:28.980 especially in relation to you know abortion rights these kind of big issues um we should

01:00:33.400 stop wasting time on this crap of like you know whether or not the air conditioning in a building

01:00:40.000 and its levels set to colder for men and, you know, is sexist,

01:00:44.640 which is one thing I once debated when I was younger.

01:00:47.320 Well, I'm glad to report to anyone watching this,

01:00:49.360 our studio is always incredibly fucking hot,

01:00:51.340 so we are anti-sexist at trigonometry in terms of our room temperature.

01:00:55.340 Just cut the crap and talk about what it is you actually want

01:00:59.460 and how about listen to some women who have something to say

01:01:03.060 and stop kind of taking your cue of the situation of women

01:01:08.140 from these very middle-class, very politically suspect feminists, I think.

01:01:23.020 One thing that I really admire you for is the way you speak out,

01:01:26.820 because there is a culture of fear now, and there just simply is,

01:01:30.200 and where people who don't believe in the status quo or certain movements,

01:01:35.000 they do feel that they will be publicly shamed.

01:01:37.320 I've seen women online make reasonable points against Me Too

01:01:41.240 and then they just get shut down

01:01:43.000 and, you know, they get these epithets thrown against them.

01:01:46.680 I mean, what do you think ultimately is the solution to this?

01:01:49.340 Do you think it's more people coming out?

01:01:51.340 Is it... I mean, what can we do?

01:01:53.520 Because at the moment it feels like there's a sort of mob mentality,

01:01:57.180 especially online.

01:01:58.580 I think it's just more debate

01:02:00.100 and that sounds like a very wishy-washy way

01:02:03.280 to deal with some very real things that are happening,

01:02:06.660 like people being hounded off social media

01:02:09.400 or people having insults hurled at them

01:02:12.180 or whatever it is, being shut out of discussions.

01:02:14.260 But it's just to keep reiterating the fact that, you know,

01:02:17.780 even if you're whatever extreme of the end of discussion you're on,

01:02:21.220 to have free speech, that's why I'm a kind of free speech absolutist

01:02:25.400 is what we call it at Spiked,

01:02:27.980 is saying that there is no opinion that shouldn't be heard.

01:02:31.240 And so even if you, you know, sometimes for my sins,

01:02:34.880 I started to delve into some debates with some men's rights activists,

01:02:39.160 you know, just for the hell of it, on Twitter.

01:02:41.540 But just because I think I want to know what you guys are up to.

01:02:44.220 I want to know what's coming from this strange corner of the internet

01:02:47.380 so that, you know, if anyone ever asks about it, I know what's going on.

01:02:52.060 In the same way that I want to know what, you know,

01:02:55.060 whatever feminist has written in The Guardian,

01:02:57.120 also whatever kind of reactionary has written in, you know,

01:03:01.320 the male or the conservative woman or anything like that.

01:03:03.720 it's it's you know you have to have if you want to have any kind of healthy political debate you

01:03:08.240 have to allow everyone to have their say on it but then you also have to pass judgment i think so

01:03:14.940 the so the one thing that i would say that comes after free speech is being open about your views

01:03:20.800 and passing judgment so you don't just kind of say we can all have our discussion every view is equal

01:03:25.280 no not every view is equal my view is much better than your view yeah and here's why and here's why

01:03:32.180 and more importantly let me convince you this is how these kind of things uh

01:03:38.520 why these things are useful this is how society develops right it's not just that some some people

01:03:44.760 decided right this is the way we're going to go and that's it's without question it develops through

01:03:48.880 argument through struggle sometimes it goes backwards sometimes it leaps forwards but without

01:03:53.320 this is thing that we've forgotten without free speech and without free debate you just stand still

01:03:58.260 or you just sort of agree that any of the...

01:04:01.220 And that's why we've got to the position where feminism is a kind of...

01:04:04.880 It's like blaspheming if you speak out against feminism.

01:04:07.720 This thing that wasn't invented, that wasn't an idea, you know, 40 years ago,

01:04:14.440 is now the unquestioned kind of God-given sacrament

01:04:18.700 that you cannot even criticise to the kind of most tiny extent.

01:04:24.080 That is bizarre, you know, and that's when it becomes dogma.

01:04:28.260 Feminism has become dogmatic.

01:04:30.340 It's like, you know, you cannot question it.

01:04:32.960 And the people who are setting the tone of what feminism means

01:04:35.800 are so unrepresentative of the population of women in this society.

01:04:43.320 I think that's just terribly wrong.

01:04:45.420 One thing that I always find interesting

01:04:47.440 is when people use the word oppressed, I'm oppressed,

01:04:50.240 this culture of oppression.

01:04:51.680 As somebody who has family in Venezuela, I'm like, really?

01:04:54.360 Are you oppressed?

01:04:56.040 You know, are Debenhams really oppressing you

01:04:58.880 by saying that you're a size 14?

01:05:01.320 Or, you know, is a jumper really oppressing you

01:05:03.380 because I have to fit into a large now?

01:05:05.840 Do you know, all these different things.

01:05:07.420 And I just sometimes think that we take these words

01:05:09.640 and we twist them until the original meaning of the word

01:05:12.580 is actually lost.

01:05:13.840 Yeah, definitely.

01:05:14.900 I mean, it's very hard to look at anything like that seriously.

01:05:19.140 Oppression, abuse.

01:05:21.620 We've got now, especially in relation to the whole discussion

01:05:24.900 about sexual harassment this new phrase came up sexual misconduct what does that mean i mean what

01:05:30.640 does sexual misconduct mean it could mean anything it literally could mean anything in the same way

01:05:34.960 that now oppression can mean anything and you've got you get the example of venezuela i mean you've

01:05:39.240 got people being lined up and shot as an oppression that's kind of the kind of worst kind of oppression

01:05:44.980 when your your life is being threatened if you don't toe the line and then you've got people

01:05:49.260 talking about, you know, the cultural appropriation discussion in the West where Kim Kardashian

01:05:56.960 wearing a certain set of braids is oppressive to whatever people who supposedly own braids.

01:06:03.960 So how can you have a serious discussion about this? And you want to have serious discussions

01:06:08.460 about oppression. It's a real thing that happens in the world still. It's a real thing that

01:06:12.900 sometimes happens in this country still too. Well, that's why I was going to bring up while

01:06:16.420 we focus on these side issues, as you said before, actually, this was one issue we talked

01:06:20.920 about before we started the show. There are serious issues happening in this country. And

01:06:26.000 this culture of fear around speaking out, political correctness, not offending people

01:06:30.280 does mean, you know, I told you, we wanted to have Sarah Champion on the show, who's

01:06:34.940 an MP who spoke out about the grooming gangs and Rotherham and other areas. And, you know,

01:06:40.680 she said, look, I wouldn't feel comfortable after, probably after what happened to her

01:06:44.020 when she spoke out and we have a very international audience so first of all you wrote about this so

01:06:49.200 can you tell our audience who might not know anything about it and actually i became quite

01:06:53.240 aware that like when americans hear like about grooming gangs it's such a weird way of talking

01:06:59.020 about no one even knows what it means so can you just lay that out and kind of your thoughts about

01:07:03.360 how that's happened okay so what happened um it's an incredibly complicated case so just to really

01:07:09.600 sort of boil it down essentially in certain parts of the north in the uk there was uh sections of

01:07:17.260 um it was in in rochdale in rotherham and in some other parts of i think it was yorkshire

01:07:23.160 there were groups of grooming gangs who are essentially groups of men who groom predominantly

01:07:30.300 young women um and get them to through the abuse of drugs or through threats to be essentially sex

01:07:37.160 slaves for them and they were prostituting out some of these women but they were certainly

01:07:40.920 raping them on a mass scale and so we're talking about thousands and thousands of young girls

01:07:45.960 yes yes it was it's kind of i don't i actually don't think a number has been put on it specifically

01:07:51.400 because the cases are still ongoing and they are unearthing uh new cases now but this was allowed

01:07:57.600 to happen allowed to happen um it seems because uh the police were very nervous about prosecuting

01:08:07.260 or opening up a case about some of these men because some of them not all of them but quite

01:08:12.120 a large proportion of them were um british pakistani men and sarah champion was an mp in

01:08:19.000 one of the areas and what she came out and said was uh she'd had some complaints from some of her

01:08:24.240 constituents there were some women who went to social services there was some of these girls

01:08:28.240 were very very young um there some of them i think were even as young as 14 and they had made

01:08:34.580 complaints to the police they had made complaints to social services sarah champion um was pushing

01:08:38.800 to get an investigation into what was going on and i think what she said and certainly what came

01:08:45.400 out of it was that she was told that because of a fear of a backlash of racism against the

01:08:50.060 Pakistani communities in these areas that they weren't going to investigate this and they were

01:08:55.660 just essentially going to ignore it and as a consequence lots of predominantly white working

01:09:01.400 class young girls were systematically raped and abused um there have been some sort of there's

01:09:09.800 been some recognition of this in relation to there was a kind of BBC drama about it

01:09:14.960 there's been some discussion about it in the news however it was sort of this all broke at the same

01:09:21.740 time as Me Too happened and I'm telling you the contrast between the airtime that Me Too got

01:09:28.580 and the airtime that the Rotherham and Rochertale scandals got was astonishing how different it was

01:09:35.760 this really wasn't something that people wanted to talk about and I mean you've got a national

01:09:41.060 discussion about rape and sexual harassment and then you have a you know huge example of the

01:09:47.540 systematic rape of very young girls and you can't put two and two together and I don't really know

01:09:53.920 how to feel about it because I don't think it's that people don't want don't see this as wrong

01:09:59.240 I don't think that it's that people don't understand that it doesn't matter what race or

01:10:05.540 ethnicity what kind of person you are that raping someone is wrong but I think it's interesting in a

01:10:11.020 kind of very dark way that essentially a fear of political correctness or a fear of giving

01:10:18.700 offence in relation to racism in the Pakistani communities meant that there was a weighing up

01:10:23.780 of justice and that, like you said, thousands of girls did not get the justice. Do you think

01:10:31.040 a large part of it is the fear of having your personal reputation tarnished and being seen

01:10:37.040 to be racist or be intolerant or be Islamophobic,

01:10:41.340 but essentially perpetuated these young girls,

01:10:44.080 unfortunately, being sexually abused and raped.

01:10:47.500 I think that definitely plays a part of it.

01:10:49.660 I mean, as a public official, whether you're a social worker

01:10:53.060 or a police officer or someone in a position of authority

01:10:56.240 who's meant to have a responsibility to a community,

01:10:59.440 you have to not be...

01:11:01.300 ..you have to not be afraid to put your neck on the line

01:11:06.380 And you have to not be afraid to kind of go to the dark places that maybe some cases might take you.

01:11:12.560 So there was no reason why you couldn't at the same time as say the reality is large groups of Pakistani men are raping large groups of white working class girls and say, by the way, that doesn't mean that every Pakistani man in the UK is a rapist.

01:11:30.520 Because he's not.

01:11:31.180 Yeah.

01:11:31.520 Why would you make that?

01:11:32.960 Why would that link be made?

01:11:34.400 And if that link was made by certain racist people in the UK, you would argue against that.

01:11:40.480 But that takes guts because that means, you know, that means saying that you're going to make a very principled stand on something.

01:11:48.080 And they didn't. They chickened out of doing that.

01:11:50.600 And as a consequence, you had terrible tragedies happen.

01:11:54.440 So the kind of, yes, the fear of PC can have very, very dark consequences.

01:11:59.480 And it means that people can't, you can't get to the truth.

01:12:03.440 So sometimes the truth is what you don't want to hear.

01:12:06.280 And in the fact in this case, it was something, you know, clearly quite racially loaded.

01:12:12.380 You can ask questions about why it was that it was predominantly this group of people that did this without at the same time saying that you then mount a nationwide racist campaign against the Pakistani community.

01:12:26.220 I just I don't see why they think that was not possible.

01:12:29.460 And do you think also as well that the authorities refusing to deal with this issue head on has then fueled the rise of the far right and people like Tommy Robinson and who say, well, you know, you're not going to get justice through traditional means.

01:12:44.060 The only way you're going to get it is through supporting me and I will help you.

01:12:49.040 It's a gift to them to do this because what you're saying is, yeah, you're right.

01:12:54.280 The British police are biased against their protection of these groups.

01:12:58.520 They aren't going to go to the truth, so you have to join us

01:13:01.580 and we're going to get together and get in the back of vans

01:13:04.040 and go and sort out these communities.

01:13:06.140 I mean, why would you want to embolden that point of view?

01:13:08.560 What you want to say is, as a society,

01:13:11.500 we have generally liberal and good and decent attitudes

01:13:15.760 to justice and to the truth,

01:13:17.500 and we don't need people like you going around and capitalising off this.

01:13:22.480 Any time you censor any kind of difficult discussion like this

01:13:25.840 And any time you say this is, you know, it's too hot to handle, it's too hot to talk about, especially in relation to free speech with someone like Tommy Robinson, or you can't criticise Islam, or you can't talk about the burqa, or you can't talk about anything like this, then what they say is, ha ha, we told you, you know, this is what they're trying to do is they're trying to hide it from you.

01:13:45.520 And there's this fantastic example is Alex Jones.

01:13:49.600 They're kind of horrible.

01:13:52.180 I actually find him funny.

01:13:53.820 He's so mad.

01:13:55.260 There's been, like, someone set his rants to a Bon Iver song

01:13:59.400 and it, like, works perfectly because he's so,

01:14:01.780 it's just, like, talking about eating babies

01:14:04.760 and smelling of self and all that kind of stuff.

01:14:06.380 Anyway, he's been banned off Twitter.

01:14:09.380 And if you look at his website Infowars or anything like that,

01:14:12.520 all he's talking about is the fact that he's been banned.

01:14:14.640 and this is why people love him.

01:14:16.860 It's like, what are you doing?

01:14:18.080 If you want to actually beat him, all you have to do is say,

01:14:21.640 for example, his conspiracy theory

01:14:23.560 that the Sandy Hook massacre didn't happen,

01:14:25.660 all you have to do is say,

01:14:27.060 shall we take a trip to the graves of the kids that died

01:14:29.780 and we can show you why they died

01:14:33.420 and we have the facts you are wrong.

01:14:35.620 By banning those kind of ideas,

01:14:37.360 by saying that they're too dangerous for people

01:14:39.640 to even see or read,

01:14:42.800 obviously the question then is why what are they saying is there some truth to it you know it's

01:14:48.140 just a total gift to the right i think that's the thing with like it seems often the idea the

01:14:54.520 conversations around free speech they're academic to a lot of people they're just these people

01:14:58.500 sitting in a room talking about it because they've got nothing better to do but when it comes to

01:15:02.280 something like rotherham and rogerdale and all these things you see the practical consequences

01:15:06.660 of not allowing difficult conversations to happen in public.

01:15:11.400 And they have an impact on, you know,

01:15:13.680 a very significant, terrible, terrible impact

01:15:16.220 on thousands of young people.

01:15:18.000 Yeah, not just those examples,

01:15:19.700 but it has a real impact on how people associate with each other.

01:15:23.380 So if you push a culture in which people are afraid to speak openly

01:15:27.880 for fear of being told that they're, you know,

01:15:31.120 in breach of hate speech laws

01:15:32.580 or, you know, that they're even on low-level stuff

01:15:36.100 that they kind of get called a racist on Twitter,

01:15:38.460 which, you know, might not necessarily affect them

01:15:40.460 anywhere outside of Twitter, but isn't very pleasant.

01:15:42.580 What you mean is you have a society

01:15:43.740 where people don't speak openly to each other.

01:15:46.380 You know, you can make jokes about the fact

01:15:48.620 that we are now becoming a sort of bystander society,

01:15:51.720 you know, when... I find it fascinating

01:15:53.560 that when things happen, people are always filming on their phones

01:15:56.200 rather than getting involved.

01:15:57.680 But all this stuff is having a knock-on effect.

01:15:59.680 There's some changes that you can kind of feel

01:16:01.840 in relation to how people relate to each other.

01:16:03.980 People are much more cautious.

01:16:05.060 you know less likely to talk to each other less likely to say stop it less likely to say

01:16:10.300 to support each other and so then you don't want to get to a position where people are so afraid

01:16:15.160 of each other that we don't interact and we become a kind of society of very individualized

01:16:21.520 you know um anti-social people that would be a very very bad thing to happen and if you clamp

01:16:28.920 down on free speech that is what's going to happen well speaking of things that don't get

01:16:33.700 talked about our last question always is what is the one thing that no one's really talking about

01:16:38.040 that we ought to be talking about and when I say we I don't mean just us I mean society in general

01:16:42.280 well um it has been the thing that I want to raise is has been talked about and it hasn't

01:16:49.140 and it's abortion rights it's something that's very very close to my heart and it's something

01:16:54.580 I care about deeply and we just had in Ireland a fantastic win for women's liberation in relation

01:17:02.300 to the repealing of the Eighth Amendment,

01:17:04.400 which was a very, very archaic law in the Constitution,

01:17:10.000 piece of the Constitution,

01:17:10.780 which said that women weren't allowed to have abortions

01:17:13.240 even if they were about to die, essentially.

01:17:16.420 And that's been repealed.

01:17:18.000 Ireland is now in the process,

01:17:20.140 a very lengthy and terrible process,

01:17:23.040 of rewriting some new laws.

01:17:25.980 But in the UK, what people don't know,

01:17:28.420 and lots of women who call themselves feminists

01:17:32.420 and, you know, opine about women's abortion don't know

01:17:35.480 is that in the UK, abortion is illegal, technically.

01:17:38.520 So under our laws, it is legal for women to have abortions

01:17:45.620 if they convince two doctors of their need,

01:17:48.080 and that need has to be in terms of either a threat

01:17:51.420 to the mental health or the physical health of the woman.

01:17:53.900 So you've got to prove it's going to turn you mad or kill you

01:17:56.960 if you if you have this baby and the law is only the 1967 act really only works to protect doctors

01:18:06.680 from criminalization so we still have a situation in which there's now abortion pills which women

01:18:12.540 are taking online that's illegal these kind of things so people don't know that they don't know

01:18:18.320 that by law women's bodies are not their own and you know if you go to a doctor and you want to get

01:18:23.940 an abortion because most doctors in this country are very good and believe in um you know women's

01:18:29.480 health will not necessarily say to you so prove to me that you're going to be mentally ill um it's

01:18:35.000 relatively easy but the fact is by law it is still illegal and we can talk about you know uh women's

01:18:42.480 liberation we talk about feminism from the point of view that your body should be your own bodily

01:18:47.240 autonomy and if we really really believe that women we can trust women to make decisions then

01:18:53.500 we should change that fact so i think that we should be anyone who's at all interested in

01:18:59.420 women's liberation should be pushing for the decriminalization of abortion and that means

01:19:04.200 that abortion will be available as early as possible but as late as necessary without

01:19:09.240 condition you don't ask her whether or not it's because she doesn't like the sex whether or not

01:19:14.640 it's because you know she's already got 20 25 nobody has 25 children has whether she always

01:19:21.000 has five children whatever the reason it's her decision um people get very very upset when i

01:19:26.980 talk about that because they uh feel very strongly that abortion is a wrong it's not about whether

01:19:34.560 abortion is a right or wrong it's about whether or not women should have control over their bodies

01:19:39.420 there's such a difficult issue though abortion isn't it because on the one hand i mean the

01:19:45.520 evidence is there actually allowing women to access to abortion not just in terms of their

01:19:50.220 individual autonomy and everything else but from a societal point of view it massively cuts crime

01:19:55.280 because women generally know when they're not really in a position to have and bring up the

01:20:00.220 child that they they could potentially do on the other hand i mean it is a human life right at some

01:20:06.120 point right and it it's such a difficult issue i have no idea where i stand on it because it's

01:20:10.940 very difficult but you know when i hear you say as late as necessary i'm a bit like you're talking

01:20:15.320 about nine months you know it's a difficult difficult issue isn't it well that is qualified

01:20:19.140 by the fact that the number of women who get late abortions is tiny

01:20:24.060 because it involves a very, very painful and traumatic thing,

01:20:29.560 which I'm not going to go into, but you can imagine what that involves.

01:20:32.060 It involves giving birth to something which is no longer living.

01:20:38.980 The idea that women are cavalier about doing that is mad.

01:20:42.540 Oh, of course not.

01:20:43.240 And so that is not...

01:20:44.340 But the point is that will only happen in cases when it needs to happen.

01:20:49.140 and when it needs to happen is when that woman needs it to happen.

01:20:53.260 That is the principled line in the sand you have.

01:20:56.000 I mean, I know you said it's a very difficult issue.

01:20:59.340 For me, it's just such a simple issue,

01:21:00.780 is that if you value women as individuals in society,

01:21:05.600 as free agents in society,

01:21:07.460 their decisions, their needs, their rights

01:21:10.480 come above the rights of the foetus

01:21:12.480 and it's their bodies, it's their decision.

01:21:15.720 when that life exists outside of them that is a different matter that's why we don't allow women

01:21:23.780 to um not that they do but we don't allow women to murder children that's why that's illegal

01:21:29.240 when it's inside someone's body it's a whole different discussion right and uh on that note

01:21:35.620 thank you very much for coming in ella is there anything that you would like to promote or plug

01:21:39.780 maybe your twitter handle your book and all the rest of it so you can find me on twitter at such

01:21:44.240 I need to change it

01:21:45.080 at Ella underscore M underscore Whelan

01:21:47.660 well we'll put it in the video

01:21:48.800 so people will be able to find it

01:21:50.420 and my book is called

01:21:51.300 What Women Want, Fun Freedom and an End to Feminism

01:21:54.080 and if you like pink it's pink

01:21:56.420 and if you like hearing some alternatives

01:22:00.920 to what's going on with feminism today

01:22:02.920 give it a read

01:22:03.460 perfect thank you so much for coming on

01:22:05.540 great interview

01:22:06.060 thank you for having me

01:22:06.580 alright well listen guys

01:22:08.180 if you've enjoyed it this week

01:22:09.260 as I'm sure you have

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TRIGGERnometry - September 17, 2018

Ella Whelan on Brexit, Feminism, #MeToo, Grooming Gangs & Abortion

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