Adulting - #48 Why Is Sex So Powerful? with Sara Pascoe

Episode Date: November 10, 2019

Hey podulters, this week I speak to comedian and author, Sara Pascoe about sex, female sexuality, relationships and lots more. She’s always been a dream guest so i hope you enjoy xx Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Hello, followers. Happy Sunday or happy whatever day it is when you're listening. This week's guest is someone that I had on my wish list when I very first started the podcast. I've always found them super inspiring and someone that I really look up to and find really funny, interesting, and just generally fab. And she kindly agreed to come on. And we managed to get to record. And today I'm talking to Sarah Pascoe, all things sex, power, money, female sexuality, Instagram, social media, beauty standards, pubes, you name it, we talk about it. And I'm really excited for you to listen and really think you

should go listen to Sarah's podcast too, which is also called Sex, Power, Money, along with her new book. Please enjoy and please do rate, review and subscribe. Bye! Hi guys and welcome to Adulting. Today I'm joined by Sarah Pascoe. Hello, I'm Sarah Pascoe. I'm a comedian. You are lots more than a comedian. And I'm an adult, I think. I'm 38. Oh, you look so great. I'm not at an age where I doubt anymore that I, oh no I'm definitely I can I could legally drive if I passed a test oh my I haven't passed my test either well

I think it's an odd London thing but in my head that's such a grown-up thing but even those 17 year olds do it yeah I'm like wow grown-up 17 year olds but even sometimes when I got offered wine in a lunch meeting I think oh can I, can I have that? Do you ever get that still? The daytime drinking does it. Because also, you know, it's a different kind of drunk. Yeah. And you have like a 6pm hangover. Yeah, that's the worst. Yeah.

So apart from your comedy, you also are a very established author now, which I guess is a really interesting thing for you to have come into. So I read Animal, the autobiography of a female body. Yeah. And then I did it for my book club, which is like a monthly thing I run. Yeah. And I absolutely loved it. And also at also at the time I just started going out with my boyfriend and it made me think that we weren't in love and it was all just chemical reactions

for about a week but I think there's all these interesting stages to be thinking about like the chemicals under writing kind of pair bonding because one of the times it's interesting is when you've broken up with someone and you miss them and it can be quite a good time to go oh no my body misses this or it thinks that. And actually, intellectually I know I've made a healthy decision or I know I can recover. But falling in love, in a way, you just want to go, no, this is magic. It is because I've

met this incredible person and it is the one. And having someone go like, it's not that. You'll feel this again. All relations break down. It's not maybe the best time. It literally was. Because it was so funny because we were dating and we'd gone to school together and I was like, I don't think this is a good idea anyway. And then I was reading that, and I was like, obviously, this is just really convenient. You live nearby, we know each other quite well, we get each other's smells, so it's fine. It has lasted since

then, which is good. How long have you been together? Four years? No, two years. Two years, okay. You're just adding on time, that's fine. But what drove you to write Animals, and then and then subsequently will come on to Sex, Money? First of all, with Animal, I was just really, really interested. I was really interested that culturally, everyone, everyone was talking about relationships.

And obviously you have things like about, I guess you have like the kind of heteronormativeness of relationships. So everyone was talking about relationships as if it was a man and a woman and they were then going to have biological children. But also this idea that any relationship, the language I kept noticing was this idea of failure. And I'm what you would call a serial monogamist in that I'm not polyamorous. I like one person at a time and fidelity is quite important to me. But it's interesting my my

parents who had broken up when i was a child um had continued to kind of had relationships and i think relationships that were um not monogamous as in like they both uh dabbled in various kinds of infidelities right and um and i realised that there was something really natural about it, that it wasn't wrong. And in all of my relationships, I'd never had a switch that had made me only fancy them. I'd never stopped being attracted. And also, especially with acting, if you go away to work,

I kept falling in love with men that I was working with. Like every time, within three weeks, I was besotted with someone and dreaming about them. And I always blamed the relationships. I thought, oh, it's because I haven't met the right person. And then I got to this stage, and I did it while I was falling mad in love with a comedian called John, that I then realised I really want to understand this cycle because I feel like it's a mating cycle so I've been reading kind of pop science books and I'd read um sex at dawn which is kind of it's not hugely scientific the science has been really

disproven but it's a really interesting angle on human sexuality which is just about female sexuality and multi-partnering in our evolution and essentially it's about how what we think culturally as monogamy doesn't exist in nature. There's always this kind of extra pair copulations is what they call them. And then I was like, oh, that sounds very right. And I wanted to find out more. And then I thought, when I was researching, oh, I just want everyone to know it. I want it to be information. I wish this had been sex education because I wouldn't have grown up thinking,

number one, if a relationship doesn't last, it's a failure. But also that if you fancy somebody else, it doesn't mean there's something wrong with your relationship. And that you can also, if we don't keep culturally telling people you're broken if you fancy other people, then you don't have to be hugely hurt if your partner goes, oh, God, I've got such a crush on someone at work. Because the minute you tell your partner, that can be such a huge part of intimacy. Yeah. That you feel you can be honest. And it's so lonely to hide your

feelings from the person you're closest to i think it's so interesting you said that you're falling in love with people at work because one of the things it sounds like the strictly curse and my boyfriend i discussed as well it's like obviously you're going to fall in love with someone if you're dancing that intimately with them every single day oxytocin and i think i think it's probably quite a universal experience there's a thing we first meet someone and i always find i'm not instantly attracted to anyone. So I'll think a man is gross. And I always imagine that with Strictly.

For the first week, I'll be like, oh, he's weird. He's from Portugal. He's a bit greasy. And by week two and a half, I'll be like getting ready in the morning. You know that thing where you put your mascara on for them? You're just going like... Thinking about them going, should I wear a skirt or trousers today to rehearsal?

So my bum looks nice in these leggings. And of course, you would go through such a stage of like, you see how they hold each other after they've danced. Like, oh, well done you. And you think within three weeks, they are in a zone that's only the two of them doing this self-supporting thing. And like, you're amazing and you can get there. And the idea of a teacher, yeah, kind of instructing you while then you're pretending to love each other. I, a couple of times in plays when I was in like a, I once did a TV show when you have to pretend to be in love with someone. After a couple of days of rehearsal, my body was

like, well, I just love them now then. And I was like, you don't. So my body's like, but I do. It's like placebo love and it feels the same. Because you're staring them in the eyes and willing to be there. Yeah. And I think it's interesting what you say about attraction as well because i think that's entirely true i think this idea that you only have eyes for someone as you say it's really redundant because it creates also it's really controlling like obviously i think the idea of being in a relationship is the choice every time to pick them even though you might think he's really sexy or yeah definitely

with them i just won't because i've picked you. That's it. I think, yeah, when you have like an in a group and then another outside, like a club, it's a little bit like if it's a members club. Every time you tell someone they can't join, the members club becomes more exclusive and stronger. And that's the same with kind of monogamy. Every time you do choose, especially if that's part of a process of realising, because relationships, do you love Esther Perel? Oh, do you you know so I need to look into her because I do this thing on my Instagram where I say get some of your confessions

yes and everyone said and they've been cheating like hundreds of people and I was like this is so fascinating I didn't want to pass judgment but it was everywhere it was women sleeping with their married bosses at work and it was just constant and I was like really fascinated about what the drive to infidelity is it clearly signals there's a flaw either a flaw with monogamy or I was like really fascinated about what the drive to infidelity is. It clearly signals there's a flaw, either a flaw with monogamy or I was wondering if the secrecy of having an illicit affair, which is by nature secretive, allows women to explore their sexual desires more or something. I think sometimes also it can make you then more attractive to your partner as well. You have this really guilt thing, like, oh, I'm going to lose them if they found out.

So actually you come home and you're like so lovely to them because you're so glad, especially if you feel a little bit guilty. And then you end up having like, sometimes I think, so if you have nothing on the side, if you're being a very kind of like straight, there's no distractions, that's when sometimes you can be a little bit like, not taking your partner for granted, but you will just be like, oh, shut up. Yeah. Like you can, whereas when you're, I think if you're cheating on them,

you're always just like, okay, shut up. Yeah. Like you can, whereas when you're, I think if you're cheesy on them, you're always just like, okay, baby. I think it's really common. I don't think it's because we misunderstand monogamy. So with birds, they thought they were monogamous. They're all pair bonding. They raise their chicks together. They thought that all these birds, they were like, they made it for life. They stayed together.

They're so romantic. And then when they watched them more, they realized that a female bird would very often, like there's this example of these birds that they thought were the most monogamous in nature, and they're tiny little, and they're eating berries from a bush, and they're like, oh, that's so sweet. And then they saw the female,

she went round the bush, fucked another guy, came back round the bush again, carried on eating berries with her partner. And the reason is, you have this, for both male and females in nature, there's a benefit, so kind of, if you need to pair bond to raise your young, you stay in a couple.

But you get a spread of genes if you have a little bit of extra sex on the side. So for both males and females, there is an evolutionary benefit. And then we have a thing where actually maybe if both people in a couple are cheating, they could have an open relationship. But we weren't brought up thinking that was a healthy or positive thing. And also we have this morality. We think, oh, sex people. Even when people talk about swinging. I had a round with someone the other day because they were saying about doggers.

And I was like, and they were talking about anybody derogatory wear. And I was like, it's not my kink at all. But the thrill for them, I said, they're not hurt. It's consensual people. And the thrill is they might get caught. Like, that's not, theyink at all. But the thrill for them, I said, they're not hurt. It's consensual people. And the thrill is they might get caught. Like, that's not, they're not bad people. They're not ruining. They were like, this on the M25 because it's going to encourage dogging.

I went, okay, well, what's wrong with that? It's just people enjoying sex lives. You and Yuval Noah Harari have given me the best party stories because one of my favorite things is he, I think it's in his book that he talks about it with the set of monkeys, the female monkeys. Oh, yeah. But you also talk about how my favourite thing about sex, women making noise during sex. Oh, yes.

And the sperm selection. Can you tell us? Because honestly, I am so far in that party. So it's really interesting. So the thing about the vocalisations during sex is that they did a cross-cultural study because often they, because it's one of those things that people blamed porn as in like uh so uh women now are all thought to just be kind of imitating something that they've seen or they assume their partner wants and um but it's the opposite way around in porn um female performers often very very vocal um and and

then they found in studies that it speeds up male orgasm and so they then the then theory was that women do it to make men speed up but and they do if so it's it's actually completely sometimes uh disassociated from enjoyment of sex yeah but it's sometimes just like a oh yeah and come on and actually what you're saying is come on then and in the book i think you talked about how the reason for this was we always view women as the chastened, virginal ones who literally lay back and think of England and don't enjoy sex. But actually, another point to this was they would signal to other men around to get him to come really quickly. He then falls asleep. Falls asleep, which means that the reason one of the theories is that that's why the male body gets sleepy after sex, is that then the female is free to leave.

He won't fight any other suitors and she's kind of free to go. And if she has been very vocal, it means, especially if you're living in a hunter-gatherer society or obviously in kind of primordial, ancient situations, living outdoors, it means that someone nearby, a male might go, hang on, there's a woman. There's a sexy woman nearby and then that leads to more sexual partners and then spam spam competition i love my favorite story and it makes

sense because me and all my girlfriend every woman you've ever met is like i can have more sex than my male partner can because i say they just fall asleep and there has to be surely like most things have an evolutionary reason yes and it's also really interesting because they discovered it ages ago that basically women's arousal state so they do it on graphs so women become aroused so that's the little the graph the little the little line goes upwards and then it plateaus it can stay up there for a really long time and orgasm doesn't make it drop down whereas the reason with male the male body that the orgasm has to um so quickly is that they need this period because otherwise if their penis stayed erect, then it would drag the sperm out that they've just inserted.

So they have this thing where their penis gets all kind of small, straight away and becomes very sensitive. And they have a refractory period. That's what it's called. So insane. We can't touch them, although they tickle it. Yeah. And it's different for all men.

But the idea is that if you then had sex straight away again or carried on, then you'd be putting sperm in, but you'd also be dragging it out with your penis. Oh, fascinating. So you have to leave it in there to do its business. That is so interesting. Yeah. I absolutely love that book because I think it is really empowering as well as women because it kind of factually steps it back and goes,

slut-shaming, for one, is just not a thing. It shouldn't be a thing. Yeah. And not just because culturally it's so archaic and redundant, but because biologically your body wants you to be shagging. But that's also why this is the thing about, and I know not everyone is male and female and doesn't have heterosexual relationships,

but this is where we're at kind of odds because of course the patriarchy or men would have this, straight men in particular, would have this deep-seated want to control female sexuality because women shagging other people is to their detriment. So that's the point, is that that's why it exists. It's not because, it's not like religion. Yeah. Those things were all imposed on top of this thing of just men being very uncomfortable because they might be in a committed relationship giving all their resources to a partner who

is cook-holding them. Yeah, that's true. and then they might end up raising a baby that wasn't there exactly yeah so i guess you're saying it's all like based in kind of fact but then the argument i always think about is just because something has a natural aspect to it where it's based in fact because i think that's an argument that like evangelicals use oh yeah they're like oh well it has come from nature and therefore we will implement it now for me it's always the exact opposite of understanding it makes me go like oh i see yeah there we go that i feel then that's an even better reason to go you're so silly yeah like we don't think of ourselves as apes anymore we don't go to the toilet outside like we have all of these things so but understanding where it comes from like oh i see

now we can all forgive ourselves if we have those reactions to things. Yeah. And sometimes you can't help having a reaction. What was people's reaction to your book? Like everyone around, I know that you speak about your mum's really open about sex. I find that so funny because I was brought up by a really prudish Catholic mum. Oh, really?

Who never, she talks about it now. Yeah. A bit too much, actually. Yeah. But when I was little, nothing. I think I found it really confronting at the time as a child yeah and then but then I think it's really molded me and it was very has been very freeing as an adult like I wasn't I didn't ever feel like I had been politicized but I realized my mum the way that

my mum brought me up really was I didn't realize that she was so extraordinary until I kind of got a little bit older. And then I was like, oh, wow, like, she was just so, I was always treated like an adult. But my mum's whole thing with me was like that she let me dress myself from 18 months. She just wouldn't row with me. So I just had such freedom. And also, obviously, dressed terribly. Like at school, they used to, the joke was that I'd got dressed in the dark. But because my mum, I just didn't have any conventional things,

so I would put a skirt on over dungarees because I wanted to wear it because I just didn't have an adult who said, don't. But I think that's a really, I think we're moving towards that with parenting. I'm no winner having kids, but I find parenting so fascinating to the point where I'm actually slightly obsessed. Even I remember you talking about, sorry, I've listened to everything you've done, on Dolly Alderton's Love Stories, you said, I'm so scared that if I remember you talking about sorry I've listened to everything you've done on Dolly Alderton's love stories you said I'm so scared that if I have a daughter I'll talk to her about sex so much that when she goes to

have sex she'll think of me and that's exactly kind of where I'm at when I whenever I envision if I ever do you end up having kids that I'll be like right drugs sex masturbate what's next on the dinner table and they'll be like oh my god mum stop that's the thing so I really believe why I think that children should be so educated and supported and have the information at age appropriate ages um age appropriate stages i mean sometimes it shouldn't come from a parent they should know they can ask a parent i was i was talking to someone the other day and her son had been shown a bestiality video at school and he's nine and um and he'd come home very upset and then in the bath kind of had a chat with his mum about it was a woman and a a dog and what appeared not the school

hasn't no well no it wasn't school assembly yeah the syllabus now is really weird um no a boy at school on his phone had shown it to him and i and i just thought what i think obviously of course that would be a really difficult thing to compute at that age. But I thought, how amazing that he thought he could go home and ask his mum about it. And I think that thing is so important. But do you want your mum giving you all the information? Probably no. Yeah.

You'd want a trained professional. Did you think you grew up with less sexual shame because your mum brought you up like that? I definitely, definitely, and I didn't realise that this was a rare or special thing, was repeatedly told that my sexual needs were about pleasure and that sex and love weren't connected. That's amazing. It's really amazing. And I didn't realise that wasn't.

My mum used to say about, my mum asked about sex education and she always said, they don't talk to you about love and that that should be part of it. And so it wasn't just just sex it was the emotional side of it as well because we were um when i was growing up in fact because i've been listening to what you've everything you've done on another episode of um what's the one uh sarah millican's podcast again the standard issue podcast yeah you were saying and i really related this as well but when you were younger like if you so if you got on a bed with someone you probably have to give

them a hand job and i when i was 16 that was the thing like don't get in bed with him you'll have to have sex with him that was just normal and it wasn't about your pleasure it was just you put yourself in that situation deal with it and then also you might get such in the next day yeah everyone will think they're a hero and I find that really fascinating because now then looking forward to thinking how I would talk to my children about sex yeah I would I would be interested to say, like, you always think, oh, it's two people who fall in love have sex. Actually, no. I think I'd want to be like, so you can have sex with someone that you fancy

and then you can fall in love. Yeah. I would want it to be really judged by, I think the language all around losing virginity is going to change or is changing. And also what we tell, because girls are always told that it's going to kind of hurt their first time, but kind of get through it, you'll like it eventually.

And rather than, the whole thing about sex should be like, oh my gosh, like how it feels to be so aroused, like wait for those feelings. And it might be that you really fancy that person but they need to do things to you to make you feel really aroused. But if you don't, but that idea of like pushing through like no don't do that wait until your body is like there's something in

it's in one of those oh I tell you it's in Naomi Wolf's book The Vagina and she goes to a man who's like a what do you call it what do they call it

not a nuni an unoni you know what's the name that they have the spiritual name for the vagina do you know what I mean

I have no idea oh it's terrible I'm desperate to say you know what I mean? I have no idea. Oh, it's terrible. I'm desperate to say punani, but I know it's not. No, but it's from the same derivative as that. Okay. Anyway, so let's say it's unani massage. It's a word like that. So unani massage.

And this man, so he's in Kentish Town, and he massages with oils. Right. Your labia, your vulva and um your vagina and his theory is that when a vagina is ready to be penetrated it sucks you in you don't penetration wow there's always control from the vagina and i think anyone who has a vagina will understand has been that aroused and goes oh yeah there's a huge spectrum there's a point there's these points that you can have consenting sex that are so many stages before that point of arousal. And if the way we spoke about sex and penetration and foreplay was all about, if people were always waiting for that point and then going, now I'm ready.

Wouldn't that be different right from the beginning of exploring the sexuality? Entirely. When we were taught at school, it wasn't about, I never knew really that sex would be good. And even it probably wasn't until about like three years ago like I really hadn't had good sex and I didn't understand it was always about their pleasure I wasn't but the worst thing was I wasn't even expecting it to be good it wasn't like oh it just happened to be bad yeah it wasn't a prerequisite that I was anticipating was going to happen yeah because in school you're just taught this has happened it's all about their ejaculation their arousal and you're right that idea that you're probably taught this has happened. It's all about their ejaculation, their arousal.

And you're right. That idea that you're probably going to bleed and it's probably going to hurt. That sounds a lot like rape. Yes. Which is not great. It's not great because it just takes female pleasure out of the equation. Which is another way of non-intentionally controlling female sexuality. Because the most terrifying thing would be a woman being in control of her own sexuality going,

I'm not aroused. Yeah. Or i am so i'm gonna follow that now this brings us on i guess to your latest book which i listened to as an audiobook and did it in like a day lol sex power money which i guess following on from animals is kind of the perfect thing because animals is debunking myths and talking about what love and sex really is but then how is that applied in today's society and constructed is a really fascinating breakdown and there was loads of things that I actually found slightly confronting so for instance sex workers work is something which I bosh out on the daily yeah and then you kind of challenge that a little bit in the book and you

say do you know it's not always that simple yeah as much that seems so progressive yeah so it's the thing there's some thought exercises you can do so one of them was the thing where um so if sex work is work then it can be in the job center yeah and there's certain things you can do you can invert it and go it's not quite as simple which is not to undermine any of the rights of sex workers and the things that they're asking for and should have including kind of decriminalization but to just say it's work then means oh well that means people who don't have jobs should do that yeah which isn't true or there's an example i was thinking about um in restaurants where in we have this idea that if you can't pay then you have to

go and do the washing up but if sex work is work then you could also just go and give the manager a blow job and none of us would think that was okay yeah because we do think that sexual contact that you're not consenting to is damaging so if we have those two things at once like oh if you're raped to someone just pay you and then it was a job like so so it so it is much more complicated when it comes to sex because oh I mean especially from there are people who call themselves survivors of prostitution or have been prostituted um because it has been so incredibly damaging and traumatic. And so it's having all of those things in your head at once about it. Yeah.

And it goes, each individual or whatever has happened to them or whatever they chose to do, there may or may not be ramifications. Totally. Because I think I've seen a bit, you see sometimes not so much anymore, but people going, oh, I feel so sorry for people who are red-lighted.

I want to help them. And it's like, no, because because again that's stripping them away of agency again you don't know why someone's entered into that and it's yeah it's really complex to try and like pick apart well it's interesting that the sympathy thing because if we restructure society and I know most people don't want to but the thing is if we restructure society to the point that we kind of eradicate poverty or have a really great safety net, we wouldn't have to ever worry about anyone because we'd go, well, that must be a choice. Because we don't have a huge amount of illegal immigrants who are vulnerable to manipulation. We don't have this going on.

There are centres like, no one would be having to do that because they'd be homeless otherwise, because have this brilliant system where we don't want people to be homeless yeah you're so right and i think i think this is you again i can't remember saying about how basically if you look at the old fashion structures of marriage like when a woman enters into it yeah and she's basically handed over by her father who owns her to her new owner her husband yeah to engage in sexual acts to bring about baby is that not ownership and prostitution just by a different name? And a lot of people do enter into relationships and stay in them. I think it's changing now, but I definitely think, like, women of an older generation would have been having really unenjoyable sex

purely because of the contract of their marriage. Well, that's the thing. So it's in my lifetime that rape became illegal in marriage. And I remember my mum making a big fuss about it. And obviously that's only in this country there's other countries where it's still you still it's you can't rape your wife because you own her like the whole point of getting married was just literally a ticket going you can have sex now whenever you like and it used to be culturally a lot of the jokes about men in marriage

and not having enough sex they're like about it was like but it's mine why can't i have it like my dinner's on the table i want sex in the like it's yeah the entitlement of it but then i the flip side of that is because women didn't have majority of women didn't have financial agency the flip side of it is that men were expected to financially provide which is as bullshit as someone being expected to sexually provide yes and again it was a structural problem where everyone i think i'm not saying that no one was ever happy i don't want you to get an angry email from a 70 year old going actually it was good in the old days you're right because the thing is with the patriarchy like men and women suffer i think we get bit like sometimes when you talk about the negative aspects of the patriarchy men are like

oh no because we don't have a great it's like yeah you're also imposed with these ridiculous rules where you've got to be the breadwinner who's completely soulless, mindless and just wants to shag. And that's just as damaging. It's so damaging. And the whole thing about that men have been told for such a long time about not communicating, not good with their feelings, like, oh, great, they can read a map, but they're not allowed to cry. It's like, I know what I'd rather be able to do. They're imprisoned by all of the same things things i think there's so much bullshit for men and actually that's with sex power money so much of the empathy exercises for me was to go okay

but how would i feel if i was my age and a man and i think the things i'd be furious about is like what some men's rights activists talk about i think the idea of like men proposing or um yeah there's lots of stuff around marriage is really shit the whole like spending however much it is three months of your wages on a wedding ring

that would make me sick if I was a straight man I would just be like any bitch who wants a diamond like that kind of like no man this is how you show

you love me I would be so furious do you know what's funny I actually do quite like a big diamond ring and my boyfriend said to me interestingly

he was like well one of the things why years ago like a ring would have been a good sign is because you're basically making investments you're saying a marriage is a is an economic contract it is if anything else it shows that they have money yeah but it also shows I'm not taking this lightly yeah and I'm investing in you so I do quite want quite a big one yeah I know but I know I know it's but it's an odd thing that it's based on and also people it doesn't also it just doesn't mean anything I know, but it's an odd thing that it's based on.

And also people, it doesn't also, it just doesn't mean anything. No, I know. Also, another thing in that empathy exercise, I've done the same thing, thinking about what we were talking about earlier in terms of boys who are my age, men I should say, when they were 16, when they were maybe entering into non-consensual, which they didn't know was non-consensual sex, and I don't hate them because we're brought up in exactly the same way. So I think that's where it gets complex because often the shouting will be like,

well, you did that. I'm not saying all these politicians are coming out doing awful things. I mean, like, boys. Well, this is why the way that the law works is you have the mental element and you have the physical act. So I think, is it possible to rape someone without knowing it? Yes. As in, the act is rape for the person who has been raped is rape.

But I also absolutely allow within it, and this is not me saying this about all, I'm so careful, I'm not saying about all rapes, especially with younger people who are uneducated or uneducated or i mean uneducated about sex would it be possible to carry on with a thing that you think is maybe awkward or yeah this or they've gone very quiet or you think you're supposed to get them really drunk because your older brother said get them pissed and they'll let you do anything whatever so i do think it's possible to do it but we don't send people to prison unless it's a mental element if you if you kill someone accidentally yeah you don't go to prison because it was an accident i agree and i think it's it just shows where that we're lacking in education because they're all avoidable right yeah all of those people it wasn't malicious wouldn't be rapists if they'd had more information yeah totally and i think boys

and men are getting much better because they understand that and i think even this kind of stuff but the social lubricant of alcohol being a thing, which I think thankfully is coming to the forum, we're all talking about it more, and I drink in every social situation I go to, I'm the first one to write half a Prosecco, thanks. Yeah. And actually it is really problematic,

it's like we don't actually possess the ability to just meet people, unless it's a podcast, when actually it's the best way to meet people, because there's still a lubricant thing, because you have to talk, and you can't leave until it's done. And I that that's another issue with like younger people in sex is that a lot of your first sexual encounters you might not even be entirely sober and i feel like that must

change your arousal and attraction and stuff well also it's um disinhibiting and actually so the prefrontal cortex when you're very aroused, kind of has less, I'm putting this very crudely, and obviously I'm not a brain scientist, but as I understand it, as you become more aroused, the prefrontal cortex, which is the most civilised part of your brain, the civilising part, has less blood flow, less going on in it, which makes you slightly more animal. And it's great for insects because it means that you do grosser things that you wouldn't do if you weren't turned on, things that would very weird if you think like oh god that's so yeah um so um but alcohol does the same kind of thing so so because so for that reason the two things obviously go easily hand in hand because you can shortcut that kind of more aroused kind of less like yeah let's do this or with that person i guess it just speeds it all up doesn't it yeah and while so while we're on the topic of i guess young sex and maybe losing virginity and things, I wanted to talk about T.I., the rapper, yesterday.

Literally, this article just came out saying that he takes his daughter to the doctors to check that her hymen's still in check. And as of the age of 18, it's still in check. And that he's okay with his 15-year-old son being sexually active. And I think, for me, that is, I mean, I read it and I actually didn't know what to do. I read it on the Daily Mail as well. It's even worse. Double wag. And it is sex, mean, I read it and I actually didn't know what to do. I read it on the Daily Mail as well. It's even worse. Double wag. Yeah.

And it is sex, power and money. It's a man who raps prolifically around sex and really explicit promiscuity. And then owning his daughter's sexuality and then having to control it. It's so freaky. It's very, very animal this. Because, I mean, animal in the sense of because what it is is his genes will go through his son and his daughter but um i guess with the son spreading his seed everywhere if you think about it in that sense any children the more children that his son has the better

because his genes are spread everywhere and through his daughter he wants to control the suitor because they will obviously be part of the family. It's this thing like maternity certainty. They know it's going to be half her children, it's going to be his genes. It's really disgusting. It does happen in places in the world. So again, we're culturally affronted

by it. I only find out who rappers are when they do something disgusting. I've never heard of this T.I. guy. I'd never heard about DJ Khaled until he refused to go down on his wife. Oh my God, yeah. So this is when I find out about rappers, because they do something horrific.

Can I tell you what else he said? He also said about his wife that he owns half her Invertical Mrs. X box, and he owns the inside part of it. And then also that with his daughter, he thought it's better to keep her virgin as well, because no one's going to want to sleep with her because all of that extra effort.

I mean, I completely, this is why I love the book so much because you really objectively go, well, taking your emotional reaction out of things, what is it objectively? And you do it really fascinating, actually, when you talk about young girls wearing short shorts because I am one person where if a man looks at me

and actually you said this, I literally am like, oh, I feel like I'm being attacked. Go away. I i get so angry it's not for you i'm not shocked yeah but then you're right because um like obviously if you see someone who's attractive you should be allowed to feel because the repression of emotion is surely like what creates incels and that is more problematic than so yeah and the self-hatred and the shame like i know a lot of men because of their relationship with pornography have um lonely lives as in they have people who care about them who they can't talk to or they feel like they're a bad person and um so there has to be a middle

ground where people are allowed to wear whatever they like but the other side of it is it it's a bodily reaction and you just go okay fine my body likes that body get on with the day it's not about me as a person yeah yeah it's really weird to contend with because you do feel so protective over i don't know i hate this i did so interestingly and i really want to talk about this actually weirdly i was doing english at uni end up being a fitness influencer which is basically the more you look into it really sexualized videos and photos of yourself doing workouts and stuff yeah and I saw that that was my gateway into feminism I was like I'm so empowered because when I was doing exercise it made me muscly which I

thought was like an absolute liberating thing to do because I'd always had body issues and I was like wow I'm finally doing something for me and it's not about being skinny so that was step one step two was oh I'm posting pics of my body which is me taking my sexual liberation all these things kind of come full circle now and i'm like i know it's maybe not that helpful but it was a really interesting means to get into it but on the flip side of it it's i don't know with feminism at the minute and you talk about this all the time especially with social media feminism and things that are going on some do you not think some things are going so polemical one way that it's drawing back the conversation?

Do I need to add? I think that's what, I just think that's how conversations go. I think, so number one, I believe in like bloodless revolutions, as in you don't have to, people stormed the Bastille, which sounds scary, and if you're on the wrong side of it, you get your head chopped off, and I just, I feel like so, but what happens in other kind of revolutions is like, I think it's like a tide that goes in and out.

And that's what a conversation is. So a couple of years ago, Chloe, I think her name's Chloe Moritz. Yeah. I might have got her name slightly wrong. But she criticized Kim Kardashian for taking her closer for the time. And I thought it's so interesting because what Khloe is actually angry about in society is how she is treated, how she's maybe sexualized, all these kind of things. That is not Kim Kardashian's fault.

Kim Kardashian is a billionaire, I believe, from selling her erotic capital, which is something that is it's really tricky but the same the reason that people she's selling a thing you want to be in control of in exactly the same way she is as in you want it to be ignored or left alone you want to be respected and the thing we have to change isn't her body or how she sells her body and it's it but we wrongly attack each other but i don't think it's becoming more polemical i think it's always happened. Right. You're right.

Do you know what it is? It's duality. And I've got the point better now, which I'll say. So I think what it is, is, and I remember saying this as well. So when I did that thing and I was like, oh, I'm not going to do that anymore. I was like, actually, it's internalised misogyny telling me that I've got to cover up. But it's also my internalised misogyny telling me that I need to be objectified. Well, it's one of both things.

What's interesting is you're worried about judgement. there's this um instagram is so interesting because we can't help but judge each other and when we judge each other what we put out we are always trying not to be the thing that we kind of saw through someone else when we see other people who clearly or are saying i like my body here's a picture we might we maybe, is it confidence? We go, oh, should you be that confident? Or if you're confident, why aren't I confident? Or even going like, oh, your need to be liked is so palpable. And so there's this horrible website, and it's horrible,

and it's also funny, called Girls With Irrelevant Captions. Do you follow it? It sounds great. Well, it's really great, apart from occasionally it makes me really sad because the person... So it started when there was the first Californian wildfires. And lots of bikini models were posting pictures of themselves near where there was now a fire going, heart going out. But they were wearing a thong.

And so that's the joke. It's like, this is you in a thong. It doesn't show any kind of solidarity or kindness. But that person, I honestly believe, did feel bad. And was just going, here's a picture of me yeah but of course I've seen other people do it well they'll go tits get likes I think we should all donate to ovarian cancer because I lost my mum last year and so it's that kind of thing you go the reason is they're getting you to engage or they just judge it with how many people like a post and it's about ovarian cancer this is literally so true so ironically that

post I put picture I posted yesterday if I talk about it I'm going And it's about ovarian cancer. This is literally so true. So ironically, that post I posted yesterday, if I can talk about this, I'm going to. It was a campaign with Audible about this new book that's out. Oh, yeah. And I'd taken this photo in Bali and it wasn't to me overly sexualised.

I'm literally lying on the beach with the book on my phone in a bikini and they went, no, we don't want that. You've got this other one which was a carousel that's meant to be the second image.

They're like, we want to use this one. I was like, no one is going to like that because it's not very good quality and I'm not in it and I know. Oh, if you're not in it, you don't get it. I one i was like you know when it's going to like that because it's not very good quality and i'm not in it and i know oh if you're not in it i want them to read the caption yeah so let me put this bikini picture up it's going to be way better for your sales they didn't my average likes are like 5 000 likes that picture got 260 likes and i'm not an idiot so

on the one hand sex sells and it's problematic but also i want you to listen to me but the thing about saying sex sells which is i know it's the slogan but actually people like looking at bodies yeah and that's really odd yeah i mean especially like looking at women's bodies i love it i'm slightly so that's it so it's not it's not it doesn't so and that's i'm not gay i mean but i love looking at women so much so i that's how i know it's not always sexual it's just i like the shape of them i like looking of course i do like personal comparisons and all of those things I know it's not always sexual. It's just I like the shape of them. I like looking. Of course, I do like personal comparisons and all of those things. So it's more complicated. And that's the other thing about faces.

We love faces. From being a tiny baby, we love faces. So, of course, an Instagram picture of someone's big eyes close up. Yeah. We will click on that and like that. I've had the same thing. If I post a picture of my dog in the woods, even though it would be a far more beautiful photograph, I will get likes in the hundreds rather than the thousands.

Whereas I could just be in my bed going, I'm about to go to bed. And it doesn't have to be beautiful. It doesn't have to show anything. So this is where the girls with the relevant captions is sometimes a bit upsetting. But sometimes they are hilarious because someone will have a very, very busty,

kind of very high thong so like they've got no pubes it's waxed so high talking about like their granddad's death and how much they miss him and so it's the discorrelation of them going like but it's like oh what so if you're sexy you're not allowed emotions or because i think that's something that we've all this is when you say internalized misogyny oh oh, hang on, sexual is 2D, how dare you have a dead granddad? Or how dare you be sexy and say, are you not allowed to have both things?

This is the exact thing. So I went through and I ended up calling it my existential crisis of hotness because I've gone from doing that thing where basically the reason I stopped really talking about fitness is because people could only see me as a fitness influencer. Well, actually I wasn't.

I'd just finished an English degree and I'd never been into fitness before in my life. It was, I wanted to be a journalist and accidentally people fought and they couldn't they couldn't separate me from being having abs that was no that's who you are so that's what I follow you for yeah it's interesting isn't it because I follow like authors and things and some of them if they like post a picture of their cat someone will go like I'm not here for cats yeah I know it's the entit. With being a comedian, including because I did a podcast to go along my books, I wanted to interview people who had experience rather than talk on anyone's behalf.

And a lot of the feedback was, well, it wasn't funny. It's like, oh, I'm sorry. Wouldn't it have been awful if I'd been listening to a sex worker trying to get a gag in rather than listening? How did you find, because I was listening, or maybe Dawn and Pauta was sharing that she obviously was an amazing um journalist and she used to do documentaries but now i think people follow her on instagram and find her really funny and people were commenting about how they couldn't believe that her books were so well written

because people look at women and you do one thing you might like wearing certain clothes and immediately it strips you of any other kind of personality traits or academia or anything that you might have yeah and i think there is a thing and i'm sure young men get it as well but maybe they don't if they're from a certain kind of well-educated you're expected but i do think people fanduel casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute?

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Expect you to be stupid or they feel a bit superior to you. Yeah, it's much in the same way, I guess, that when someone is in a bigger body, people expect them to be kinder. It's just general preconceptions and all that kind of thing yeah and i find that really fascinating i find i think that's one of the hardest things i find to contend with because it's this idea of toying with

attractiveness or toying with trying to be attractive i find am i doing that because i really like playing with makeup which i do sometimes or am i doing it because i want to be objectified because of the page or am i doing it because I want to be objectified because of the page or am I doing it because this is a social structure that tells me I need to be beautiful to be important and I constantly I'm really bad I can't not think things through but I think but I think I think where you'll have to find some form of content is that it's a combination that sometimes it's about creativity and and self-expression sometimes it's about attention and that isn't always about sex yeah being looked

at or being groomed or you know everyone's got like you must have like a weird hat that you know if you leave the hat I can't wear a hat at all because if I do I feel like everyone's staring at me I love that but there'll be a certain day yeah it's almost like oh yeah look at me I'm wearing a beret with a dog on it like and and it's almost like on that day it's it's peacocking yeah that's what it is yeah and it could be all of those things and I think it's almost like on that day it's peacocking yeah that's what it is yeah and it could be all of those things and I think it's so interesting that I was reading a book about hormones the other day and it's talking about um the female body and shopping on your with your ovulatory cycle there's a part of there's a half of our ovulatory cycle where we shop more wow yeah because

we feel so good in ourselves because we're just kind of shiny and I was because I always think it comes from lower confidence like for me I reckon it's decrease in progesterone. They start going, little nice things, I'm still nice. Yes. That's really funny. Also, interesting about the confidence thing, because I've always felt like if I have a face full of makeup, everyone's staring at me on the tube.

Whereas if I have no makeup on, I'm like, no one will, you can't see me. Interestingly, I have other friends who, if they had no makeup on, they would be mortified and scared of going out and I think everyone has different levels of what your comfortability is

so I normally wear quite loud clothes I look a bit like how my boyfriend dressed today which is random this makes me feel more someone's

going to look at me and be like that's a weird outfit than if I went out wearing stripy trousers and a green jumper and a yellow hat

which is funny because I think we all have different levels of what's our safety zone or comfort zone of course and we feel self-conscious really early on with stand-up actually maybe it was a time and maybe I hadn't even joined Instagram yet and actually I'm very self-critical and I don't post a lot of pictures of myself very few and far between because my number one is because what happens is

people make little finicky I don't know why people are so critical in such a weird way like when I first joined Instagram

I had a lot of men being really mean about my nostrils and my teeth and it reminded me of being at school like how odd that you think

you can say that to a stranger and they weren't like I would never call those people trolls because they weren't trying to make me want to kill myself.

Right. They were just being like, oh, you've got this. Oh, that's wonky. Or this is a... Do you think that's a power thing? Do you think it's that you're a woman who's doing quite well and may want to say something? I just think if someone's posting pictures, if your first thing is, well, you look tired. And also sometimes it was the no makeup thing.

But Katherine Ryan said to me, so Katherine Ryan does both things. She's incredibly well groomed. And it's part of the brand it's something she enjoys and it's glorious because it's something that 10 years ago women were told in comedy

you couldn't do you had to kind of basically wear a raincoat and jeans and if you were pretty really really try and look not pretty because no one will listen to you

and Catherine turned up in heels and a beautiful like skirt and said get fucked like I'm funny so it doesn't matter what and um and she's expressed it so brilliantly and it has changed what female comics are expected to

look like now there's a far wider spectrum and um but she also said to me because I said I hate it when people ask for pictures when I don't have any makeup on and I mostly don't have makeup on unless I'm working and she said it's really important for people to see you without makeup on because she said on a tv show you have to wear makeup I mean I'm not successful enough to go in and go I'm just going to look normal on a panel show if one day I would love to do it just be like yeah I'm not I'm not a pretty flower today I'm just a normal woman but she said but for anyone at home if they only see people with makeup on all the time yeah they don't realize that they when they're judging themselves

and she said it's really important to like look lovely one day and then have a literally your face is all pale and you see oh that's a tired person who needs to pluck their eyebrows I also think it's really healthy for you because I've done I used to be I've weirdly grown up because my career's been on social media so I've had a really weird relationship with it but now I couldn't give a shit I'll do stories and pictures but then's been on social media so I've had a really weird relationship with it but now I couldn't give a shit I'll do stories and pictures but then I also will look really glam

I love being glam but it's really healthy for you because you know what your face looks like because when you first have a picture have you ever had especially professional pictures

and you're like oh my god I'm disgusting because they make you look awful I don't know why but getting used to how your face looks from every angle I find this fascinating

all the time but the trouble with photographs is that it doesn't look like how we look in the mirror it's reversed it's true so that's why we all go well that's a monster

that's a monster we've just it's I like listening to our own voices from I mean I don't know how you find it with a podcast

but if you have to edit I don't listen back anymore oh yes you can't I record all of my gigs because I have new material and I never listen to them so I've got a phone full of gigs I can't listen to because I have new material and I never listen to them.

So I've got a phone full of gigs I can't listen to because I hate myself so much when I listen to myself. I love your voice, one of my most favourite voices. Oh, really? It's so nice. I don't know. You've got a really soft accent. Yeah, I don't have a soft accent. I don't have a soft accent.

I just hate it. But yeah, all of those things. It's not dysmorphia, but it's something else. It's dissonance. Watching or hearing yourself when it felt fine to be in it, and then you get it back and you're like, oh my God, how do I ever leave the house? And also because I think if you concentrate on it,

this is like with the Kardashians, they literally have had their whole selves adapted for screen. So for like, so that they look and i think we expect then as the lay person because of this culture of reality tv which has turned into it's interesting almost everyone on those massive reality tv shows have created a new form of themselves so they're literally designed to be on screen but not really in real life like when you see someone's real life face it's always beautiful I think everyone every face is beautiful this is where the thing about having the work done and there's a few people that I've met not like comedians but like say like more famous people

that I don't get to work with like a Spice Girl for instance and because they've had work done are photographed or on tv, they look great. But in real life, number one, your brain just knows when things are uncanny. Yeah. Like that thing of like, oh, something's up or something's... So you're almost looking to go, what is it you've done? And also people do look their age, even if they've had the work done. They look like their age with Botox.

They look like their age with surgery. That thing of like oh my god I can't believe she's 60 or I can't believe she's 40 happens so rarely and it's always good genes yeah because they'll always be like

oh yeah she drinks she smokes or he like it's yeah it's a different thing or sometimes it's just some people's faces are they have shiny personalities

so they're so attractive like in a really natural way I think so too and I think that like the whole thing of wrinkles, I actually want to talk to you about pubes. Oh yeah. Because I think you just said something about pubes, I can't remember.

Oh yeah. But I find it fascinating. So loads of my friends get laser and I adamantly, I do shave, I have a little strip, but I want to be able to grow it because I think if I have a daughter, I want her to be able to see that you can be hairy and fuck it, I might grow everything out just in case, you know, I want the option.

Well, I think the weird thing would be because I haven't had children but I always think so I'm very hairy like I'm in hairy in general so I've got I've got PCOS and at the moment I've just when I first got together with my boyfriend I was going for Brazilian waxes for the first time in my life and actually I really liked it yeah did not like having the Brazilian wax but I kind of liked it as a process. And then about a year ago, I said to my boyfriend, I'm just going to stop now. And also, but I'm so hairy, it means like I couldn't wear a swimming costume like in a public place. I would have to do some kind of pruning.

But I keep thinking, if I did get pregnant, would I then start going for waxes? Because you'd have so many examinations. So it's not in a sexual way would i just want like want to be neat or not to feel like stubbly or all these kind of things but it is a personal decision did you see today i'm talking about instagram that lovely beautiful girl from girls um do you know the one i mean oh the one with the long blonde hair the british one yes i can't remember her name she was posing and it was so funny because her caption was about when she was 15, David Bowie asked her if she knew where was an ashtray.

And she held her hand because she was just so, and it's such a funny caption. And then a man commented underneath. You know when you see a comment because the person replied to it? And he said, I just don't understand the hairy armpits thing. I get everything else, but why? And I hadn't noticed. But in her picture picture she obviously doesn't do anything to her armpits

and that's what I mean about the little pernickety man and this person felt like he could just go like ooh not for me and he doesn't understand

it's like that's the whole point and the whole point that you think if I see a woman's armpit a woman I don't know she better have cleansed it of hair

totally and Emily Matajowski did a campaign. I actually think it looks like the hair was superimposed on, but it was exactly the same thing. Everyone was going, you used to be hot and now you're not. Fair in mind, she's one of the most sexually attractive women I've ever seen. I've looked her naked and I'm turned on and I'm not gay. She's so stunning.

I can't cope. Her boobs. They're ridiculous. It's like they made a different consistency. My boyfriend was like, what are you doing? Unbelievable scenes. Amazing. And they were like, you were hot before, but you're not now. One is if she's going to give a fuck about Pete from Scarborough and what he thinks. And my boyfriend was like, what are you doing? It was like unbelievable scenes. Amazing. And they were like, you were hot before, but you're not now. One is if she's going to give a fuck about Pete from Scarborough and what he thinks. And two, just that they were so shocked that women's...

And it was the same night I did a campaign with a model that had hairy armpits. And the audacity of men, because they don't seem to think... What's that they don't know? I don't... Well, that's the thing. Because they've never seen it, and they believe women are supposed to be hairless, they are shocked. Yeah. And this is the thing. Because they've never seen it and they believe women are supposed to be hairless, they are shocked.

Yeah. And this is the thing. If everyone is doing it or everyone feels like it's an obligation, as in men don't do it because they believe they're supposed to and girls, from the minute it appears, it's all they get rid of that because it's not supposed to be there

rather than like, oh, no, now it is. Post-puberty, that's where it is. Yeah. It's there. Like it is with boys. And it's fascinating because I wonder if everyone ends up getting laid. So I have all these weird thoughts about, like, yes, I should have pubes for when I'm older, but maybe actually everyone will just end up getting laser from the age of 16 automatically.

Well, I think, again, I think it goes in waves because I think people will have lots of pubes because their grandma doesn't have any. Yeah. I think that's how fashions always work. Eyebrows. there was never a time when I was growing up so I was this is the 90s

there was never a point if you'd said oh no it's going to be a thing of big eyebrows everyone would have gone get out you're a vampire get out of this town

we're going to burn in crosses the idea that any hair on your face just shave it off wax it off draw it in the idea that

no no there's going to be big eyebrows honestly supermodels are going to be famous because their eyebrows are so big on women no way

no one would have believed it we used to pluck our so that my mum literally has no eyebrows we plucked them the same much they wouldn't go back of course and now she's really

stressed about it and now they go to a beauty show and have them like drawn in and you just would have sworn a tiny line

like one hair each in a row is what you was the ideal it's so fascinating i don't think we'll ever lose that fascination with the female body because as you say there is some like innate fascination of it but it is also intrinsically more fascinating than a man's body why is that because they make children and so we're talking yeah so i know that sounds very um uh essentialist but because there it's a there the whole thing with the female body it's not just decorative what's interesting in terms of male and female mating is that we both have sexual signifiers like men do have things that are they do to be attractive to mates and a lot of them are about intelligence

or humor yeah but also obviously like men's shoulders and being big like there are there are things that um the male does in nature to be attractive so it's not necessarily much more female there was a theory that I was told years and years ago that the thing with a female is that in terms she can trick her partner to think she's lots of different women by dressing and looking different like so someone's saying like maybe it was Desmond Morris you can completely change how you look when your hair is up is down different kinds of outfits and makeup the idea that there's something in that that suddenly looking a little bit different to your partner they're like oh hello like and so you're kind of keeping them sexually interested in you which is fascinating which i

don't think men can do as much we can shave a beard off but like that's that is true but then i wonder if that'll change when we move towards society with less binary prescriptions of what gender looks like which would be really interesting yeah how um just on the sex palm anything i listened to all the podcast episodes as well but i've kind of forgotten what you spoke about how long did you take to research it because it's a very thorough book yeah it was a it was a year longer than I thought it was going to take because originally I'd written Animal and it hadn't come out yet

and I spoke to Faber about doing the exact opposite doing one about men calling it Manimal and it would just be about the male body and how we treat it

in culture and then as I started researching it I realised that it was going to be a completely different kind of book but I realised

in a kind of way of having a breakdown not knowing what I was doing for six months as in I was going to write a chapter on pornography and sex work because what I was going to do I hadn't talked about it in animal because I thought it affects everyone yeah let's talk about it in a book it's about women feels really silly and it also feels like I'll be regurgitating what feminism has already said which I didn't quite agree with so I thought

I'll do a bit more research and then as I did the research I was like oh this is a whole book it's not a chapter we just go like oh and then porn and sex work and then the next thing. So it became a different book. And a lot of the research, I didn't know how to consume it. And also there was a point where I'd printed out a really helpful man at university that had given me his university login so I could get free studies. Amazing. So I printed out 100.

So they all had pornography in the title. And I spoke to my editor and I. So I've printed out 100. So they all had pornography in the title. And I spoke to my editor and I said, I've printed out 100 studies. And she said, okay, you need to stop reading and write a book, please. And I was like, but there was so much information. But a lot of these studies were really small. And there was so, it was really interesting

the angles of people coming out. And I realised, actually, I could have just read pornography studies forever and not ever finished it but what another thing that I want to ask you quickly is with the sex work thing

the angle is really interesting because it's generally you start off talking about straightforward prostitution which is an old term I guess it's

some people call themselves prostitutes or prostituted and then some people think this term is very um uh offense oh yeah derogatory so and that can really vary with individuals i think it's the way that it's used is quite often yeah but then going back to the point about instagram so there's a there's a lot of different variations of feminism flying around and i think all of them have credibility but one

that i find interesting to listen to is maybe because I was brought up by a mum who stopped working when she had me lives with my dad and then doesn't have any agency now and tells me all the time how lucky I am to be this woman that's got my own job really emancipated like he my boyfriend lives there but I do whatever I want to do and I feel more than I know we talk about gender inequality still existing now but whenever I talk to my mum I think fuck I've got it so good just from having so much agency so I want all my own money I want to pay for everything all the time even if I can't afford it as much as my boyfriend could I've got such a weird thing about controlling money and I don't want to ever be controlled yeah but this new feminist conversation coming in is about because of the gender pay gap and gender inequality women should

be making men pay for everything and I then at first was like no i don't agree with it but the more you read it and i do take in a lot because i tend to be reading loads of stuff i then think oh my god am i in the wrong which you should never let anyone think but it's a really interesting thought play because it seems to me to be the opposite of what we've been fighting for yes and that's another thing you talk about in the book yeah it's it's it's something i've found it's something that made me feel really old I was suddenly like oh wow and also like kind of needing it to be properly explained to me so there's Slumflower

who I just think is so important and so brilliant and I would never ever want to disagree with anything she says what I want to do is understand why she's saying it and so she was the person, it was the first time I heard someone saying, like, I am going to be provided for, and here's my reasons.

And I was like, is this what we're doing now? Yeah, that's how I felt. But the reaction to that, because I think she's so amazing, wasn't like, oh, I'm in disagreement with her. It's like, I really want to understand the argument she's making. And she does have an argument. And I think this is sometimes the point about divergence

without it being um coming up loggerhead yeah you're not you're not arguing about it it's just going like oh wow okay so you've had this experience and you have the same you have this information which I also have and we both have made different decisions about how to deal with that information and then and then I have all these mumsy thoughts like well I think you're going to find terrible men I think the kind of men you'll end up with if that is what you expect of them are gonna be sexist old idiots who also then feel entitled but if there's a completely different power dynamic where that isn't happening also I wonder in terms of like erotic capital the thing about erotic capital if that's what you're selling and that is essentially when you're saying i'm beautiful or i'm sexy so you pay for my dinner

which is reductive to what um some people are saying but it's virtually that is you have to realize that is a dwindling capital because as you age and and young women haven't yet, so they don't know, they think they can get round that. As you age, you have less attractiveness because it's so connected to fertility. So even if you are beautiful, you will find yourself being of less worth. And that is the thing about erotic capitalism, it dwindles. So of course a woman in her early 20s goes, you are lucky to sit next to me or lucky to have a dinner with me. And I absolutely kind have, I absolutely

kind of, I'm amused by it actually and I find it really titillating but it might reinforce sexist men but just be aware, have a different capital for your 40s. I agree and what I found with this, what I then had to question was, is it because I'm a white

middle class woman coming from a completely different lived experience and as a woman of colour she's saying that I want to be treated in a it because I'm a white middle class woman coming from a completely different lived experience? And as a woman of colour, she's saying that I want to be treated in a way that a lot of white women have been. Yes. And I think it's very, that's the fact that she's a black woman is really integral to this. Because it's a little bit like when people discuss repatriation, there's this certain economic conversations that are completely legitimate. And as a white person, I just need to listen to it rather than go like no i don't think we it's like it's a different conversation the problem yeah i completely agree but if i apply that style of coupling yeah to me i would feel exactly how i said about when i felt like i was 16 if i got in

bed with a guy i had to sleep with him that would be the the suffocating feeling that I would get from being paid for yeah because I have this weird desire I'd rather go bankrupt and someone saved me yeah um there's a thing it only happened to me a couple of times when I was really young like as in teenage or early 20s where I'd go to a restaurant with a guy I never really dated but I remember once being at one thinking if I eat anything I have to fuck him because I can't offer to pay like I'm going to have to like pretend but definitely I'm fucking this guy

but in Essex when I grew up that was the thing you were told I think I was taught that there's an amount of money where you have to put out yeah my friend Aisling in Ireland she was told, so it wasn't about paying,

it was, her mum told her it was very difficult for a man to ask you to dance. So if anyone asks you to dance, just kiss them. You can't say no

because it takes so much for them to, they're so brave to ask you so you just have to kiss them. Oh my God. So she spent her teens kissing boys she didn't fancy.

That's amazing. I think I kissed a lot of boys I didn't fancy actually to be fair yeah but we were just snogging we just used to at a school disco

you'd all just snog each other we were like that drama club so like 16 onwards and I used to keep a tally I'd be like so the most people I ever kissed was 36 in a night that's amazing

but that's why I just loved kissing yeah so did I it wasn't anything sexual and we'd all kiss each other and we were all still friends and we'd all have snogged George

I know you were never like jealous you were like oh why is Andy kissing her I was just like we used to think at the drama club I didn't kiss anyone

until I was 16 and then once I did I was like oh my god kissing so we used to we used to do like a thing where it would start off

stage kissing like we'd do it in no tongues and you'd have to look like it was really good but like literally sitting in like someone's living room

just all getting up with each other I think we've done that as well pretending we do movie kissing like it was really good but literally sitting in someone's living room just all getting up with each other I think we've done that as well pretending we're doing movie kissing it's the pretence of thinking it's acting because it's like

a really childish foray into sexual dalliance which is a shame because I think that's lost I also didn't have my first kiss until I was 16 it was actually

a really upsetting experience he basically the washing machine thing I think he'd do you remember when you were told that was and it was the loft rebel

and I was actually really off it and I remember thinking how do you inject it into were told that was and it was the loft rebel yeah and I remember thinking how do you inject it into someone's mouth like that like he had like glands oh yeah

so much saliva it's really upsetting no one kisses like that do you know have you tried this with your boyfriend you may have done before because it's something

we used to do at the time that a girl always puts her lips inside the boys that their mouth is over yours yeah but I but have you tried

the opposite way around if you put your mouth around your mouth it's so funny so we have kissing arguments in that I always want to be on whatever side I can't remember

I think he is on the top yeah but I always want to get and he'll just go back and I I know I'm doing it I'm like I want to have a go

up there you can move it's my turn that is really interesting yeah one of the things I said in the book because I was asking my mailing list quite a lot of the things I said in the book because I was asking

my mailing list quite a lot of questions when I was coming to topics where I didn't think I by myself had enough kind of subjective information and this girl

and so it does still happen and she explained that I was talking about the thing about I was asking about the thing about oh has anyone ever spent money on you

and you've ever felt obliged and she and her friends had been in a bar and a man had come over and bought them a bottle of champagne and then sat with them and then says three of them and then he bought another bottle of champagne then he bought a third bottle of champagne and then her friends kind of said one of us is going to have to sleep with them and we both have boyfriends so you

have to and I and I felt so sick and so upset for her even though I understood logically because they're worried about a man getting angry or feeling like or and so it's like all one of us has to and she and she's she was lucky because she kind of went to go home with the guy and he said do you want to do this and she said no and then he's like then why are you and I think that's the other thing we to circle back to this thing about unconsent unwanted sex which is obviously separate to rape um undesired sex there is a situation where maybe a man doesn't realise that a woman feels obligated because of things we were told growing up. I think that's entirely true.

And also... What if a man thinks that you like him? You know, what I loved about that, and it's a really old reference now, but the cat woman story. Do you remember the New Yorker, the story that... Oh, Cat Person. Cat Person.

The thing about that story is... Oh, it does make me feel sick. But it's such an incredible empathy exercise because he didn't realise what was going on with her. So it created a different narrative. And I think, imagine how confusing behaviour would seem if you had a dinner with someone, which you paid for, because you watch first dates all the time and apparently that's what men are supposed to do and then she came

back to yours and you have like completely fine sex fine and then when you go to see her again she doesn't want to see you that would be so hurtful you don't understand oh she didn't want to sleep with you but it's that thing of being a woman where you have to be open and kind and like i want people that i don't like to like me because of that like really entrenched feeling that as a woman I've got to be really like mothering and lovely

and everyone loves and really kind and sometimes I just want to be a bitch like I don't know if you ever get this when say you're doing an event and someone

meets you and you're just in a really bad mood and you just wish that you could be like I'm just feeling like a bit of a bitch today but you have to be

really nice and I think that men are allowed to kind of have a bit more. This is the thing. So hearing you say that out loud, I would say to you, not being rude to someone is totally different to faking how you feel. Because I think it's perfectly fine at an event to say to someone, I'm in such a bad mood.

How are you? Yeah, that's true. And you can say that to them and then they can say, they might say, why are you in a bad mood? And you go, I've got no reason to. Or I'm tired yeah i just have that thing where i thought i was supposed to come here and actually all they're asking people actually aren't asking often for like a show from you but actually a human connection is what they're asking for yeah that's so true i think sometimes there it's an improv, like on my thing, like with stand-up,

if you try and lie to an audience about how you are, you'll have a terrible gig. Like if you come like, oh, hey, guys, how are you all doing? Like everyone's like, this is fake. And stand-up is supposed to be about communing. And it's why you can't do material that's out of date. Like you can't talk about a boyfriend if you're not with him anymore. You can't talk about a breakup if it's nine months later and you're fine you have to be where

you are and um and it's really good for like if you're in a bad mood it's not good to start negatively but it is really good to say to an audience hi how are you this weather is getting me down yeah and it comes and they instantly go to oh you're telling me how you actually are yeah no that is really true I think that that, I do think I'm getting better at that and getting better at not apologising, which I used to love doing for absolutely everything. Like, so sorry, I hope this is okay.

And like, sorry if it was their fault as well. I think it's all tied into that same thing which you have to unlearn. Yeah, of course. Sarah Millican, and I don't know if she invented it, but she was the first person I heard it from, which was, no, it's a sentence by itself.

Oh, that's so true. Yeah. I had, this is is really funny i'm sure he won't listen to my podcast so years ago when i did my personal training course the guy who did it i don't literally can't don't remember him at all i've never spoken to him since yeah didn't particularly got on with him yeah got an email the other day hey hope all's going well um so you're really living it up on your career so all i need from you if you could just make me a video about how your experience was learning from all this stuff and I was like first of all it took me about 20 minutes to figure out who it was from and just the presumption that I would do it and it was like loads of things and then I did just email back and I just went hey I hope you're well I don't have time to do this and I was like oh my god that's so liber. And that's also a perfect way to quit it.

Yeah, but normally I would have gone, oh my God, so of course, like I used to say yes to everyone's dissertations. There was one to write about stuff and then I wouldn't be able to do it, which is why I feel a bit bad that I've been hounding Sarah about this podcast. So it's okay.

It's absolutely, so I have the same thing. If someone's asked, I feel like I have to. A lot of people think they're the first people to do their dissertation about women in comedy. And the other day, it happened to me in the street and i was getting so proud of myself a man who lives near me we've said hello a couple of times and he said i've just finished a journalism course i've decided i'm going to do this this article that i can kind of show everyone my writing skill and i'm going to do it about women in comedy and i thought you live near me i'm just going to ask and put it all that can I interview about it and I number one I love a hustler I understand

again he was brave to ask and I'd love to help a neighbour and do an interview and I said I said I'll do it I can't talk about

women in comedy I said everyone thinks that this is a new thing but it's all we get asked about and it's really kind of not relevant to my job it's like asking about

women in bus driving or women at the post office it's like it doesn't actually if we do our job in such different ways. It isn't a genre of comedy. And he was so sweet about it. And I walked away and I was like, fuck, that is so hard. But it's a real advancement because I just would have said yes.

While resenting it, sitting there going, oh, you think you're the first person to go, I think Sarah Silverman's good. Yeah. It is hard though. And it's like you want to help everyone, but you can't. And also there's so much fun in that now I get real pleasure in like negotiating things and saying like

because it feels so empowering whereas you're taught I think from a quite young age as a girl it's like the most wonderful empowering thing you can be

is to make everyone think that you're the most fabulous I also think it's the safest place to be so if we think about like I think for anyone we're all negotiating social safety

which means never have confrontation yeah and I think that that isn't necessarily gendered like my boyfriend is terrible at any kind of confrontation and when I say any kind of confrontation like yesterday I snapped at him because I ran for a bus I'm going to turn around he wasn't running and it just made me feel like a twat just feel like a twat I felt like the bus driver who drove past thought I was a knob and then I was like why do you make me look like a twat? And he just knew we weren't... But I was so rude to him just in that moment that he's like,

it's still weird with me today. Because he just doesn't want to bring it up. Because he would call that a row. Right. But it wasn't. It was just me going, why did you not run for bus? I felt like a twat. That is funny.

People have different levels of confrontation, don't they? It's so your family don't make my family speak atrociously to each other and that's how we communicate so to be with a boyfriend who's like they don't we took so i did an episode i don't know if you've read why we fall in love uh no love factually the science of how and why we fall in love by laura muka okay i had her on it's amazing it's all about attachment theory and my boyfriend's from a really securely attached family and they never shout ever and my family

scream and call each other everything under the sun and he will be in the car whilst my mum and dad are arguing I won't even know

they're arguing I'll just be looking out the window and he's sat there like about to he looks like a dick because he's never heard it

and me and my sister will say the most mean things to each other and five seconds later she's like are you wearing that top shirt no do you want to buy bright cool fine and he looks like his head's just spun around in a circle I love it so that's the thing it's like if your family communicates like that it's like that's how it that's your base level yeah but if someone else thinks it's the worst

day ever and you're having a melt every you're having a meltdown and they're like oh that was such a nice dinner and they're like your sister stormed out like oh she always storms out that's what we do he's actually really taught me now not to over react to things which is the bit because he'll very calmly I remember I got really

annoyed at him once I was hungry and he just very calmly kind of went you don't need to shout at me it's actually fine and I was like

oh yeah it's really quite it is quite affronting though because you realise you are a bit of a psycho my ex-boyfriend used to do that while I was talking he'd be like

can you stop being aggressive he'd raise his hands up to defend himself. Oh, no, but I don't know if that's a bit... Oh, no, but it was fine because what I realised was I thought I was saying the words to him and I wasn't. You were shouting. And he was like, I'm listening, just less aggressive, less aggressive. That is funny.

Do you think there's anything in... Oh, no, because I literally could hypothesise anything. But that women have to be less shouting in the workplace and we let it out in our personal lives? Because men can kind of get angry in a boardroom in a way a woman couldn't. It's true. I mean, I don't know. People probably manage anger. No, on this hormones book, it's really interesting.

What I have found in my relationships is that my hormonal cycle, and this is what the hormone book was confirming, which is not to say that this is absolutely true for everyone, but when I'm due on, we take it out on our boyfriends. But the reason is, we're not pregnant. Oh, so are we sad? We're angry with the person who's not impregnating us. Right, yeah. And so there's a little thing where we kind of push them away, but we do. So I've noticed in

all my relationships, the first six months are pretty much fine five, six, seven months in I start to when I'm due on that's when I'm meeting my boyfriend yeah and also do you track your period

yeah did you see that tweet about tracking periods so there's this woman where she uses an app to track her period and she hadn't logged it and she starts getting

all these ads about pregnancy and like baby clothes and stuff she was like that's weird and then she realised she went onto her

period tracking app and it was like you're late you haven't tracked it so she changed it yeah put in that she had a period all the ads went away and it's obviously these apps are selling your data about yeah and now i'm quite stressed about using one but you have to understand that like that happens with a club card in tesco that's been happening for 10 years they know when you're in a period they know when you have a boy so there's stuff that in terms of data i think it's really interesting because it's not necessarily always dangerous

because actually the flip side of that is her computer knew she was pregnant before she was. Yeah, but that's quite scary as well though, isn't it? Do you think? I don't know. Maybe I'm just, I just like robots. It doesn't scare me. I just go, isn't that interesting?

Isn't this a new world that we're living in? I don't think it's necessarily in any way evil. Because for me, it so makes sense. This is, and I won't counter-confirm it, but this is one thing I always hypothesise, and I find it really interesting about this nature-nudge thing, is this fear of, I used to be really scared of AI and robots and things. But actually, I can't remember who said this,

but the only way really we're evolving, and we're already evolving now, is for us to become, either become computers, Cyber-Zapion, yeah. and make it a part us and i think it is it is better to have that open attitude towards it because we're already attached to our phones okay so i'm going to hypothesize a future where obviously we're kind of killing the planet so we need a lot less people somehow doing better things but the thing with the ai what if all work what if the one thing they will never be able to do is art yeah so what if we all end up writing poems

in the woods kind of farming and subsistence while we are also kind of taken care of logistically by machines oh that's quite lovely

actually yes so this idea that there's it's because I've never watched one of the film where there's an evil robot

but I know that people and there's a lot of that stuff floating around I've never really seen a horror film and I've definitely I just don't really like films where there's an evil robot, but I know that people, and there's a lot of that stuff. Floating around. I've never really seen a horror film, and I've definitely, I just don't really like films. Do you not?

No, not really. And I've never seen any like Star Wars-y kind of film. So I just haven't absorbed anything where I have anything to fear of computers. Yeah. I think the only thing I've watched with a scary computer was iRobot, or whatever the Will Smith one is.

Yeah, I've not seen that one. So that is quite crazy. But basically, I think also those are silly because the point, I think the point that they're saying about the future is, it's not that we one. So that is quite crazy. But basically, I think also those are silly because the point, I think the point that they're saying about the future is it's not that we're going

to make a robot and it's going to kill us, it's we are going to become the robot most likely like with chips in our brains or we'll be living in weird things. It's odd because

people have done that to themselves by how they use their phones. People have chosen to go, my memory is now here, I'm holding it in my hand. And again, there might be a rebellion.

My friend Ben, who's exceptionally clever he says that the children now who grow up they hate phones because they're always their parents are always on them and the camera's always

in their face from being a baby and he said they will grow up and not want cameras they will want to live in the moment I already think

that privacy thing is coming back in now I don't know it's weird did you talk about sex robots in the book? No. Because that's always really fascinating.

Yeah, really fascinating. But it's really fascinating because the idea of robots, I mean, because also like there's not really an issue of consent with robots. It's a masturbatory aid. So it's nothing like sex work. But what if the robot looks exactly like a human and you can program it to always want sex with that not mess up people's relationship with sex in a way that they might then,

their attitude towards sex could change. I think someone who's aroused by a thing is really separate. But if it really looked like a human, then? I think you know it's not human. But isn't this exactly like what you were saying about with, because I think men are more inclined, and obviously there's massive markets, I think, in Asia for sex robots. I've watched a couple of documentaries.

The ones that they say are very human-like, you absolutely would, if it was sitting next to you on a bus, you wouldn't be like, oh, hi, Mary. You know it's not a human. But do you think that, and this sounds so generalisation, maybe a bit awful, but men seem to have a lower standard when it comes to sex. And in the one sense, I think you said about in the book, it might be one of the episodes, how there are women who buy sex, but a lot fewer because women are really attracted to the idea that the person that has sex with wants to be with them yeah whereas men are like i just want the sex or some or some men i think there's different things i but it's a little bit like with kind of sadomasochism um or a kink yeah but there are people who get off on the fact that you don't want it right and that's it that's a much more male than female thing which is not to say that's all men who buy sex

or no women who buy sex, but that is the enjoyment. The thing is they know you don't want it. So that is the control again. And that's why people also rape sex workers is because there's an even further extent. It's like they're rapists and they can get you alone in a room

with the pretense that they wanted to buy sex. When they didn't, they wanted to assault you. Yeah. The thing about being desired, there are some men who absolutely, who fall in love with their sex workers or believe that they are desired by them. Which brings me back to the very beginning of my book,

which is the thing that was so confusing when I was a child, is this boyfriend of my mum saying he didn't have to pay because he made her orgasm. Now, that is a delusion on the level of I'm so good at sex and she fancied me yeah yeah and it's but then it also comes back to that as well like the parts of sex work where there's no sex involved at all and it's just companionship which is a huge girlfriend experience a huge thing as well intimacy yeah um i'm conscious that i don't want to run over your time what what is there do you think there'll be another book coming out?

And what's your project for the future? Because I've actually, I've loved this exploration of yours. I think it's one of the topics that I find most fascinating. I think more of us need to delve into it more because sex is in our faces so often that we don't sometimes realise

how entrapped in it we are, especially when it comes to marriage and stuff. And it can be quite a dangerous mistress to not have like unraveled and go through your life not knowing. So do you think there's more? On this topic, what I'd love to do now is make a documentary in schools. I'd love to go to, this is what I'd love.

My dream would be to produce a documentary and I want to produce it myself because I want to lead the investigation. And I would love it to be talking to children at different age ranges and to their parents and to the school. And I'd want some of it to be kind of myth-busting. And I'd also want some of it to be looking into the different theories that people who are sex educators are taking into schools and what is the best way and what is confusing

and people reflecting back, even like parents reflecting back, and then dealing with things that are making it difficult. So, for instance, if you've got a school where, for certain religious reasons, children don't have the same, I'd like to go into all of those areas and then try and look at what we should be doing as a society where we aren't just going, it's teachers' jobs or the government are going to sort this out,

that we actually go, like, because it is precarious. It's not as easy as just going, like, just tell kids about porn at 13 and then everyone's so I'd love to make a documentary about that yeah even though I think it would be tricky and then then I think I'd be I'd feel and then maybe what I could do for the second if I did a follow-up one I'd be much more into that the science so then go into kind of labs and the people who are doing the studies about kind of evolution and sperm competition those kind of things because i do think especially with all these conversations around me too and all these things that happen later on in your life obviously if we'd had better education in schools hopefully you'd hope that that would eradicate some of those later on

prevent them i honestly think it's an empathy exercise i think if 14 year old boys or 13 year old boys heard more about how it feels to be, I don't know, shouted at in the street or if they were talking about workplace scenarios, all those kind of things. I've come from a drama background and the whole point of drama is you make people play opposite characters so they suddenly understand. Yeah. So you play the boss in one scene who's this person going like, oh, you look pretty today. What a lovely blouse, and doesn't understand what he's done wrong. And then you play the person who,

people keep mentioning how tight your trousers are. Yeah. And you feel kind of intimidated or worn down. You could do all those kind of things. I think it's absolutely fascinating, but it's so complicated, especially like, as you say, with porn and things in schools,

because that's just another layer of, I mean, I remember finding out what sex was from my next door neighbour, who was on a swing, and she was a year above me, and she just had sex education, I mean, I remember finding out what sex was from my next door neighbour, who was on a swing, and she was a year above me, and she just had sex education, she was like, come round. So I went round, she told me,

and I was like, no way, that is literally, I was like, that's absolutely disgusting. I also think I was like 11, so I was quite old. And then she said that to have twins, you have to put it in your mouth. So for years, I thought a blowjob gave you twins, and I literally, all the people at school who were twins, I was like, your mum is right.

Yeah. Have you seen, who's special is it? Someone's special's on at the moment. Nikki Glaser. No. So she's an American comic. Her first 15 minutes is about finding out what a blowjob was. And it's so funny.

It's so funny. She just deconstructs the logic of what it is. It's so funny. And all the words for it are hilarious as well. Yeah. I always think that's great. Yeah. Amazing.

Is there anything else you feel like you wanted to talk about? No. I think we've talked about so much. I know. We've opened lots of windows

on a computer like oh and then there's pubes and then there's this and then there's that. If I went I could literally talk to you for about six million hours which I knew would happen

but thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much. And so people can find your book and your podcast by the same name so it's Power Money and then are you doing

any touring or shows or anything I'll tour next year for a while I'm writing I'm just about to start filming a sitcom for Babes for Two

fab amazing that's so exciting oh thank you so much and thank you for listening guys bye bye We'll be right back. I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio,

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