Adulting - #85 Sex, Mental Health and The Limitations of Whiteness with Maxine Williams

Episode Date: November 29, 2020

Hey Podulters, welcome back to what is technically season 9 of Adulting, even though there was only a week between episodes! In this season I’m asking each guest what they wish they were taught in school. We’re kicking off this season with Maxine Williamson who is 18 years old and currently applying to university. Maxine reached out to me on Instagram and I asked her to guest on the podcast, and I’m so glad I did. I hope you enjoy, as always please do rate, review and subscribe! 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, poddlers. Welcome back to what is technically season nine of adulting, but I only took a week off in between. You might notice it wasn't episode last week. It's because it was the end of the season. But because we're in lockdown and because the world's a bit topsy-turvy, I thought I'd try and get back as quickly as I can and start back with a new season, which is where we're at today. And there has been a change in format. So this season, I'm simply asking my guests, what three things do they wish they were taught in school? They're going to send them over to me prior to the interview, and then we're going to discuss them. And the reason for this was I thought it might allow for a bit more silliness

and seriousness within one episode. And also it gives the guest a bit more power as to what we talk about and how we talk about it, etc. So I think it's going to be a really nice fun change up and I hope you enjoy it. The first episode is with Maxine Williams. Maxine has just turned 18 years old. She's still in school. And the reason I invited her on is because she slid into my DMs in response to my episode with Hayley Nauman and choice feminism. And we ended up having a really interesting conversation. And as you'll hear in the podcast, some odd discussion made me decide that actually I'd love to speak to you on the podcast. And I'm so glad that I did. It's a really interesting,

informative conversation. I think that all too often we make assumptions about Gen Z and about the way things have changed. And we're not necessarily actually that clued up on how everything is for people of that generation and what it's really like in school. So I love this episode and I hope that you do too. As always, please do rate, review and subscribe. Bye. Hello, and welcome to Adelting. Today, I'm joined by Maxine Williams. Hi. How are you? I'm okay. How are you?

I'm good. Thank you. We just spoke briefly before we both got a bit of a headache but we'll power on through. I'm really excited to be talking to you but for people who don't know who you are, I know you're nervous about this question, can you tell us about Maxine and what it is that you're doing at the minute in your life? um so I'm currently in sixth form in my last year so I'm in year 13 um just turned 18 um and I'm studying A-levels at the moment and I'm applying to university for PPE so that's like what I want to sort of go into in the future I've recently become like self-proclaimed activist um on social media so that's what I'm sort of doing at the moment and so yeah so you're here on my podcast first episode of this new season because you dm me about another episode that I done and we ended up chatting and I thought you're very interesting you're really clever and you said

something to me like I just feel like I'm never going to be heard um especially because you're very interesting you're really clever and you said something to me like I just feel like I'm never going to be heard um especially because you're a black woman and so much of mainstream media and conversation is dominated by voices like mine so I said why don't you come on the podcast and it's perfect because this season I'm asking everyone what's three things that you wished that you've been taught in school and you literally are still in school you're my youngest guest I've ever had on I think fairly certain oh I feel on it I was about to say I feel it's such an honor to be chatting to you and it's exciting because I think that we don't always have these conversations between generations and and I'm interested to hear what it's like I kind of hypothesize about what I think school is like but I don't actually know anymore because I left school nine eight nine years ago um but anyway so your first thing I asked you three things that you wish you'd been taught in school and the first thing that you said was that you in your girl's

school were taught how to put a condom on the penis on a penis but boys weren't taught this and so when the guys that you knew from that school um first had the like sexual experiences they didn't use how know how to use condoms and also you said it reduces sex to just penetration and that's something that sticks with young girls we weren't taught about sex for people who weren't heterosexual and we didn't learn about conditions like vaginismus and vulvodynia I don't even know what vulvodynia is am I saying it right so I only yeah so I only learned about vulvodynia and vaginismus actually through um another podcast called bucks given um I don't know if you know that one um and there was a guest on there and she was

talking about her experiences of vulvodynia and how like it's basically like a burning sensation. So she can have penetration. I'm not really sure too much about it. But it was very interesting because I was learning these things through a podcast, but I should have been learning these things at school, considering I'm still at school. And we've never had those conversations at all and when you asked me the question like when you asked me you know three things I'd learned at school or I hadn't learned school I really had to think I was like oh my gosh I forgot in my like 7 to 11 experience but I thought that's something that stuck out to me because in a girls school especially it reduces us to ultimately serving men because we're learning this I guess for our own protection of course but why wasn't the conversation about you know female pleasure or you know more than just

you know how to put a condom on a penis yeah I mean I had the exact same experience which is tragic when you think about like how long ago I left school and the same me and my girlfriends all had the same conversation about how when we were younger we genuinely didn't know that sex was for our pleasure but it took us years like in our 20s to really kind of like get to grips with this idea that you know sex was more about pleasing a man um and it could be like a myriad of different experiences what at what age did you realize there was something missing in your education around sex or was it like were you like wait is this all we're gonna learn or when did you kind of click

that you know there was something missing in that education probably when I was like 15 or 16 and I like first started dating obviously it sounds really tragic now but I think with those experiences you sort of without realize internalize that in sort of like intimacy you are just for the like you are just serving men and I think especially going to like a school that I have gone to a lot of the girls there are very you know articulate and we can talk about these sort of things I think it clicked in my mind when other girls were like shit no this isn't right or why did we learn this and I think especially a lot of my friends who were like coming out and you know were sharing their experiences and how they had to navigate, you know, relationships that weren't heterosexual, sexual experiences that weren't,

you know, just man and woman and how they'd been completely left out of our sex ed, which is quite dangerous because it is obviously it's like you know it's important that we all learn about our own pleasure but I think it's quite dangerous because it's sort of if I was in those if I was like oh I'm gay and I was in those lessons I would sort of sit there and think I'm I'm not important or I'm not valid or my relationship isn't valid. It's really impressive to be one, the deafness with which you speak about sex, because you seem like a very sex positive. You're quite frank talking about it. And I don't think I would have had the language or even the ability to talk about sex in the way that you are. I had so much shame around sex growing up so what's interesting is

you seem so clued up and yet you've had the same education as me in many ways in terms of what you were learning about in school so would you say that lots of these things that you're learning um and this quite deep understanding of of pleasure and sexuality and why it's so important that we don't kind of hide away any parts of those would you say you've learned that through things like podcasts and social media then or or where are you getting the information yeah definitely podcasts and social media because if it wasn't for that and if it wasn't for me listening to I think older women talking about their experiences I would have never questioned mine so I would have just

gone through the exact same journey as everybody else and then got to like my mid-twenties and being like, shit, actually, no, that's wrong. Or I, you know, what I learned in school wasn't everything to do with sex. I think as well, I've had, which is obviously quite sad, but I've had like sexual trauma. And so I think in order to protect myself I have to sort of stay clued up because to sort of prevent such things happening again that's really devastating and it's that classic thing of us especially as women

and people who are more vulnerable to those kind of incidents where we kind of have to, it shouldn't really be us doing the work to make ourselves feel more safe. It should be that, you know, in reverse, it's kind of that classic idea of like, we should stop worrying about women getting sexually abused and worry about men teaching them how to not be sexual abusers. But how did those conversations go then?

So now that you and your, it sounds like you and your friends are really interested in making sure that you understand the nuances and the complications of sex and sexuality. Do you discuss it with those boys that you mentioned in that initial message who you said seemed to have absolutely no clue

when it came to sex? I think the thing is, it's like you've, when we spoke before, you brought this up and saying how a lot of millennials think that school has changed so much more like the younger generation are so much more like clued up or know what's going on and are really engaged and I don't think all of the time like I don't think that's the case a lot of the time so even with my experiences of like sex within sick form and just in terms of like relationships all of that sort of stuff and there was still you know your classic like girls don't talk about this sort of thing

until like one person brings it up and then everybody else starts you know like everyone brings it up so it's it's quite hard because even though I like you you've said that I appear to be someone who's who is engaged with these conversations it can be still quite it can be hard navigating that within sort of a school environment because not everyone is at that level and in terms of the boys I don't I don know, because as much as I say that, I think it's about finding like-minded people. So there are some people in school who are very similar to me and so we'll have these conversations, but then I'll have other friends that I wouldn't have these sort of conversations with.

So it's quite hard to know what boys my age or, yeah, what they're thinking or what they're experiencing or their knowledge and stuff do you find it frustrating when people like me and so many other people say oh my god gen z are you gen z yeah yeah yeah when people kind of make claims that you know like oh my god you're all so much more um clued up and you know the education is so much better does it kind of make you feel like you're a bit bereft or someone has kind of taken a bit of your youth away because we almost put so much um not necessarily responsibility on your shoulders but we assume that you're kind of like miles ahead of us even if you might be

does that take something away from you in a weird way yeah I think especially recently with my work on like Instagram a lot of people have this expectation that I'm meant to know everything or you know I'm meant to handle situations in the best way well I've just turned 18 you know I still, obviously I'm an adult under the law now, but I'm still a child essentially. So I'm still in school. I have only known like my local area. I haven't seen like the rest of the world. So I think there is this big, huge responsibility that our generation have.

But I think it's interesting because when I was growing up, so I was born in 2002. So when I was growing up, I thought that I was a millennial and so many of my friends did but then it got to the point that like your your generation like there was this whole idea that millennials were you know the ones that were going to change the world and I mean some of them are but it was like this whole thing and I was talking to one of my friends and she said yeah millennials said they were going to change the world but they're all in office jobs now and the world is still the same and I was like yeah that's very true so I think that distinction in my head means like I know that I'm not a millennial and I'm a Gen Z because we I think

especially with social media like we had I had social media from the age of 12 13 um so we had all this information thrown at us constantly so we've we've developed a lot differently than you necessarily would have yeah do you know what else is really is such a shit thing but so when I was I think I was 21 I was on holiday with my sister and her boyfriend at the time and I remember being really passionate about something and we were out for dinner and he said something like you won't be this passionate forever like you'll get older and you'll start to like calm down a bit when life gets a bit easier and I remember being so angry about this but there is something about and I don't think we should ever lose that spark but when you're in your like teenage years in your early 20s that life is a lot harder like you don't have the stability and like you're figuring things

out and you really have so much more I think more like passion and empathy for like things going on whereas something starts happening I hate that it happens but as you get older you suddenly have like other responsibilities and like you might end up getting an office job and like I think that's also another thing that was probably when you were growing up I think that each generation definitely has their moment of action where they're kind of like we're going to do something and then a lot of people it's like how people through the course of their life tend to end up being more conservative in their like voting which is tragic that's shit as well but that's like an interesting position that you

were like oh my god we thought the millennials were going to do it and now they're all just also we're old now the millennials like people are in their like yeah 30s yeah which is really weird to think about it is weird to think about but what do you because what I found really interesting was when we first spoke, we were DMing and you were like, I really want to be an activist. And like, you really, you really want your life to have a lot of purpose when it comes to, rather than just enjoying yourself, you really feel a deep seated root sense that you've got to, you make some kind of impact and I think that's another like generational another like sweeping brush that we all kind of generalize your generation as um but do you think that is kind of true amongst you and your friends that do you think there's also a kind of burden because of this expectation of you all being so knowledgeable that you all so desperately all want to be kind of game changers and the next Grutter Thunberg and is that something that's leveled at you?

It's interesting because I sort of experience it where like I said recently I've been trying to find like-minded people because it's hard because I feel like the space I'm in and like you said the way that I speak and the way that I articulate myself, although I don't know everything, of course, I'm just 18. I sort of relate a lot more to older people, whereas people my age don't. It's hard. I think, in all honesty, not everyone cares. And that's fair enough. And I think that is fair because people look at the world. A lot of my friends will look at the world and be like, I can't actually change anything.

So I'm just going to live the life I want to live. But I, I sort of accidentally fell into it because I made a post the other day and I said, why am I fighting for my existence? And it was me coming to the realisation that the reason now that I call myself an activist is because when the whole thing with Black Lives Matter happened in about May, June time, and I first made a post. And considering I don't have a lot of followers on Instagram, it got like 4,000 views and for me it was like really big. I realised that I was speaking about these things not because I thought, oh this will look good for me or you know this is a nice career, it's because I want my future to be better. I want to be able to enjoy life and not have my race hinder that. So I think that's why I'm personally so passionate about that and my gender as well. Do you think that on the one hand, I kind of feel envious that you're so knowledgeable at such a young age, because I feel like in some senses it does, it can like protect you.

But on the other hand, I feel like it's such a big thing to be exposed to and obviously depending on your layers of privilege you will know some of the huge injustices of the world because you're already marginalized because of your gender because of your race because your sexuality whatever it might be but do you do you ever wish that you hadn't grown up with social media or do you you're so accustomed to it that you you kind of do you how do you accustomed to it that you you kind of do you how do you feel about it or are you sort of indifferent I sort of feel like recently I've been feeling sometimes when I get down or especially when it comes to Instagram I'll be

like I wished I didn't think the way I did because it I go into situations where I'll be like yeah if I did this it will make me feel like better in the moment but I know that it's actually a bad thing to do because I'm so self-aware and because I'm so critical but sometimes I wish that I wasn't and I was able to like be a child so sometimes I, it's hard because in the space that I'm in, I'm expected to have, I have all this responsibility put onto me. But when I want to be a child, or like a perfect example of this was, you know, the like sculptures, like the little pottery naked ladies I've been doing.

I put all of them on my snapchat story um and someone swiped up for my story and said different body types question mark question mark question mark and I was like it's my a-level coursework leave me alone and the reason I was doing that because it because I wanted to create bodies that just, you know, weren't typical, like skinny white ladies. And so that's what I said to the person. I said, it's my A-level coursework. I don't have to be an activist in every sort of, you know, or have to be, you know, politically correct in every aspect of my life. This is for my A-level work.

Like, just leave me alone. But it's so interesting because if it was anybody else that wouldn't have been said but because it's me and it's because it's like oh Maxine thinks that she knows everything and oh she's calling people out and she's talking about racism and feminism and all of this sort of stuff then she must be like that all the time it can be quite exhausting because I just wanted to show people that like I'm really enjoying making these like the naked ladies I love your naked ladies as you know I replied to you and I was like oh my god I want to buy one

which is probably also me um taking away your childhood a bit as well because I'm trying to turn your fun into a business um but that's something really weird that happens. And I think it happens more because social media is so flattening as well. I do think social media is part of this, that when you stick your head above the parapet and start talking about things, people do hold you to a much higher account than they would someone else who perhaps has never, ever spoken up about those things. And that's really frustrating because I think sometimes that can really halt people and stop them in their tracks and actually stop them from wanting to talk or stop them from wanting to you know fight about something because it's just you kind of feel like as you said you're

constantly being told that you have to be active in your activism which is unsustainable and not possible for anyone to be doing you know at every moment of every day um but I find it interesting so you you don't I just want to know like would you do you ever wish you know that social media didn't exist because I think that all the time and I think that's such a millennial thing we all kind of love it and hate it and some days I'm like it's the most amazing thing in the world and other days I just dream about everything breaking down is that something you feel as well or do you think because you grew up with it so much younger it's almost a different entity to you I feel like sometimes I wish that the hate that aspect but I think because I've

grown up with it I to some extent love it I love that everything is I think in our sort of like generations we've got so used to things being so accessible that when things aren't, you know, easily accessible, readily available, we can get quite frustrated. So my dad will sometimes be like, oh, you just need to be patient. I'm like, but I've got things to do. But realistically, I don't have, it's not like I don't have things to do, but I can be patient and I can wait. But because I'm so used to things, literally, if I've got a question I'll just google it and I'll get an answer within seconds but when we have to stop I think that can be quite and like slow down I think that can be quite frustrating but I don't know if I would say

that you know I wish it didn't exist I think it has made it's hard there are things that wouldn't have happened because of social media like everything that happened over the summer with black lives matter wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for social media um because people would only get their news from news you know channels newspapers and as we know they are biased and not obviously not all the time but ultimately the people at the top are always going to be you know white upper class middle class people controlling these things so the message that they want to bring across is what they will you know is what people are going to consume so I think with social media you get to hear different perspectives I think that's the positive thing about it but I think when it comes to you know your typical comparing yourself to other people and feeling

like like you said the other day in your post you felt like you know you hadn't done enough this year and when I look at you I think you've done so much this year and you can tell when I look at you, I think you've done so much this year. And you can tell when I look at you, I can tell that, you know, you're constantly trying published books so you're like oh I haven't you know made a book so that means I'm unaccomplished when that's really not the case at all so I think I'm sort of like sitting on the fence yeah that's very kind of you to say and you're right and we all do it where you always look up rather than look around and so we're always comparing ourselves to someone there's always going to be someone better than us but then there'll also be lots of people who are doing the same or not as much. And we never think to stop and, you know, take store of that either. Like we always look at the negative, I think.

But going back to what you were talking about in terms of how social media has really accelerated some of these social justice movements, which I completely agree with. And it's whenever I talk about social media and people kind of say oh it's got a net you know negative effects especially on mental health and things I also always go back to how it has really created momentum for these different movements and this links on to your second thing that you said to me when we're talking about race and visibility because you said that the second thing that you didn't get when we're talking about race and visibility because you said that the second thing that you didn't get taught in school is about the limitations of whiteness and how your secondary school experience was shaped and very different to white friends because the staff at

your school are like 99% white and 100% white passing and I wonder if you could expand on that and I thought the limitations of whiteness was a lovely phrase and I wonder if you could expand on that and I thought the limitations of whiteness was a lovely phrase and I wonder if you could explain that a bit more so I think if I just take something that's more recent and then we can sort of work backwards so you can sort of see how even though we feel like times have changed and things are changing. They might not necessarily, that might not necessarily be the case. So in my art coursework, I am looking at the human form and mainly the female form and naked women. So I was obviously talking to my teacher about that. He was like, yeah, I've got this great book.

And, you know, I really he really wants me to perfect my proportion. So he got this book out and it was all these, you know, amazing artists, you know, very famous artists and their paintings. And every single page in that book, it was quite a thick book, where they were just white women. And I said that to him and he said, oh, yeah, that's true. And he was like, oh, I'll try and find, you know, a black artist or something or I'll try and find, you know. But it's just so interesting because if I hadn't have said that, bearing in mind I'm the only black person in my art class if I hadn't said that that book you know no one would have seen it's just oh it's a book with you know really good proportions and you know beautiful use of tone and color and all of this

sort of stuff but it's only helpful if you want to paint just white women because if I wanted to paint a black woman then I have to literally teach myself how I use tone correctly for different under like different shades of black and all these things and I just found it interesting because I I should as a student be able to get have access to resources that help me and my work at all times and I think when it's just I just found that that this literally happened last week And I just found that so interesting because before, before even last month, I would have gone through that book and I would have said, yep, cool, this is helpful. But in the last, I think, month or two months,

I've become more self-aware. And I just thought, this is just white women. This isn't helpful at all. So therefore, when I say limitations of whiteness, it's that because white people are in charge and they're the ones, you know, head a department or, you know, running the school, these small things aren't picked up on because whiteness is the norm. Yeah, that's honestly such a beautiful and shit example because you're so right it's that default white concept and I was trying to think back to when I was doing art my GCSEs

and the same as you I don't think that anyone any of the artists that I looked at I don't think any of them had um black figures or people of color it was all white people and I literally can't think of anyone that didn't depict that so and and that is especially because I think you said to me before as well that like the majority of the people at your school or that it's it's not all white students right you have a quite a diverse cohort in your school do you? So with my actual school the student body it's quite diverse being a grammar school um so even in terms of location people will come from or like all over Essex even into people from London coming to the school so it as the student body it's diverse and you'll see so many black students, Asian students and other people of color. But then when you look at the staff, it's just white staff.

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are are those conversations like happening in the classroom and if and if they are are they happening are they coming from those white teachers or is it more like students having these conversations um well surprisingly well unsurprisingly these conversations don't actually occur um it was only till so in the summer I I think it was like June time I um made this 28 page document and it was I sort of gathered people you know present pupils and past pupils um to write their experiences of racism and we compiled it and we made it into like a formal letter with you know all people's accounts on there as well um and we sent it to the school and it's been since then that they've been trying to sort of diversify as much of the curriculum that they can.

But it's very interesting because my school in year seven, we had a lesson in PSHE that was called British Values. And I honestly can't remember this lesson, but I remember some of my friends talking about it and it's just interesting because British values we're not learning anything to do with race we're not learning anything to do with diversity it's all very like treat everyone with respect or you know that's sort of very niche um and cliche so the conversations don't really happen and I think something I do nowadays which is very I think it probably does annoy a lot of my teachers when I'm walking around in the corridors and I'm having a conversation with my friend and if it's to do with race or like feminism I will speak really loudly especially if it's to do with race so that they can hear and they can hear that I'm confident in speaking about like

unapologetically about race because it's one of those things where white people don't a lot of white people don't like it when they see people of color especially black people confidently talking about any issues full stop um so when it comes to race that's obviously something that a lot of white people feel uncomfortable about so I sort of do it in a way to show that we're allowed to have these conversations in school these aren't conversations that are sort of boxed off to one you know staff meeting after school or you know the summer of 2020 or wherever it is these are conversations that should be happening regularly and they're not so I sort of have my little input and speak really loudly when

I do when I am having these conversations. I think it's incredible that you took your own initiative to get people to put together this this document and piece of work to kind of campaign for you know more conversations around this but how was that received what was the reception like when you kind of you did present this to your teachers or your head teacher whoever gave it to you um so I actually sent it to all of the staff in the school which took a very long time because I had to go through like the email list like clicking each staff one by one, just to make sure it wasn't, I didn't want it to be boxed off to just,

you know, the head teacher or the deputy head. I wanted every single member of staff to see it. I wanted, you know, the dinner ladies to see it. I wanted, you know, the support staff to see it. I wanted everyone to see it and everyone to be involved within the conversation. But that was quite scary. And because if you read the document and you read the accounts of racism within the school there was one

a couple of at the start of the year before lockdown and it was this group of white students in the year below and they'd after school with you know a couple of people from other schools or like I don't know the whole situation but essentially this piece of paper was produced and it had lots of slurs on it like the n-word everywhere but it wasn't the n-word that you know an a it was with an er it had like blacks as subhumans on it it was very derogatory it was just disgusting and the way that the school dealt with that was basically silence black students and you know just hush hush it's fine but I don't think in terms of overt racism you could get any worse than that and it was just shocking to see that how you know how the school had sort of dealt with it as just an internal issue so when

I was sending it I was petrified because I thought they could see this as oh my gosh this is Maxine again you know trying to be disruptive or trying to you know cause problems but I was I was surprised but um when I spoke to my dad about it he sort of felt as though it was you know they received it in a positive way they wanted to you know change aspects of the curriculum or make you know black students or students of color more involved in the school community and more you know appreciated because I that was sort of the overall message that lots of students of colour, even those, you know, who had left school, and they were in their 20s, were writing, you know, accounts of their time at my school. I think that really showed me that it was like such an important

thing. And the whole, the overall message was like, we don't feel valued, we don't feel seen, we don't feel respected. So I think that's what they're trying to implement now. But it's still, it's slow. It's a process, obviously, but it's quite difficult because there's not that, you know, passion for it. That must take a tremendous amount of courage to take on that responsibility and as you say to like pitch to the school pitch to teach us something which you already feel has been undervalued and not treated with the respect and levity that it needed like as you say that's horrific overt racism that's really horrifying to think that that that that's happening and that it wasn't dealt with in the correct way but I imagine your dad and your friends and the people that wrote in were really proud and grateful that you did that with how did that did it create a

sense of community amongst your peers and the people that wrote in like how did you feel after after you did it I think it's incredible um well at the time I sort of felt like it's something that was it needs you know it needed to be done and I sort of felt like it's something that was, you know, it needed to be done. And I sort of feel really awkward when teachers will say to me, like, you've literally changed the whole school. Like, you don't know the impact that you've had. But that makes me feel quite, it's weird because, like I said before, it's just me fighting for people who look like me just so they can have a better experience it's not sort of a thing of where I'm doing it because it will look good on my UCAS application or I'm doing it because you know it's going to make me feel better you know morally I'm doing it because I had such difficult experience in secondary school so I want you know all I was thinking about when I was doing it it was quite

it was very tasky it was very exhausting but when I was sitting there you know trying to because I wanted it to come across in a way that it was a formal document you know it wasn't just one email saying that oh Black Lives Matter has happened so please can you care I wanted it to be this is very serious this is something that's happened in the school for a long time the school needs to take it seriously and not just be another issue that is brushed under the carpet um it's I don't know it's weird because at the time I felt like I yeah I just have to do this and now I sort of look back I think I still sort of feel that way but there is a part of me that thinks, yeah, I did that. Like, yeah, I did.

And do you think that there has been positive change from it? Like, have the schools stuck to their word? Have you seen action being taken from your activism? Which, that was true activism you know um yeah so my English teacher she actually was saying that because of I have a really close relationship to one of my English teachers and she's so lovely and she was saying to me how um I've changed the whole English department because over the summer they rewrote the whole curriculum for the like from year seven to nine. So like prior to GCSE and they really wanted students of colour to to see themselves in their work.

And at the start of the term, I don't know when it happened, but you know when Diversity did their Britain's Got Talent performance and obviously that got loads of hate. So my English teacher decided for a task in one of her lessons, I think with her year eight class, they were looking at articles and I think they came across one from The Sun and she got her class you know write a letter to The Sun saying how they didn't like the article that they had put out and how the article was focused around the hate of the performance rather than the performance itself and she showed me this one response from this year eight girl so she's no older than 13 she's probably you know 12 and it was so beautifully written and so articulate and I was reading it and I just thought I could have never written like this when I was in year eight and I said that to her and she said you probably could have it was just you weren't taught anything

that made you that you know you were passionate about and you weren't seen in your work and it just it really clicked in my head that now these pupils are gonna you know be better all the you know the skills that school teaches you like writing maths you know sciences all of these things because they're seen in their lessons and that I think that for me that made me feel a bit emotional because I thought wow like this girl has been able to unapologetically voice herself in her school work and is now being commended for that whereas when I was that age it wouldn't have occurred um so yeah that that made me feel like quite proud. That makes me feel really emotional listening to you talk about that because you're

so right that and it's funny because I had a really really close relationship with one of my English teachers as well and the reason that I was good at English was because as you said I felt really valued by my teacher and they used to give me lots of praise and they would be really interested in my work and so I would work so much harder for this one teacher I was actually really naughty in my other classes because I just felt like they weren't listening to me or they didn't think I was that good and whether or not I was good or not didn't matter I became better because I felt like I was being valued that's like a specific instance but you're right because in a broader instance like people of color people who are marginalized are more deeply undervalued in an unconscious way alongside you know general

favoritism or whatever it might be and listening to you speak about that and saying that you couldn't have done it your teacher's completely right of course you could have done it I couldn't do what you're doing right now when I was 18 either um so I think that's a really I think that's a really important thing and I guess when I think about the things I wasn't taught about in school I think one of the most important things is that actually what makes people so special and important and more than you know like being really good at sport or being like the one who gets the highest grades is learning how to like communicate with people in a way that makes them feel something you know and it's not until I got older really that I started to value such a non-entity in a way, but like value kindness and value, I don't know, just giving people their time. I don't know,

that was a bit of a shitty answer for me. I feel like you're better at this than I am. Definitely not. I think, honestly, I think that what you did in your school was incredible. I think it's such a shame that the burden fell on you. And's one a story of inspiration for other young people who maybe feel like their voice isn't getting heard and you did a really clever course of action in the way that you put it together like you said like a proper document and you had evidence to back it up but at the same time it's it's such a shame that as such a young person you do feel like you have to take on that task

because as you said you feel like there's no other option yeah definitely it yeah it can be exhausting so I'm going to move on to your last thing um that you wish that you've been taught about in school and it was that you felt like I guess a bit what we were talking about actually that you didn't feel like you were supported and so you had to learn how to be your own champion and how to support yourself um so I wonder if you can expand on that a bit more too. Yeah so when I started secondary school um year seven for me, it was really hard. I only found out last week that I actually have social anxiety. So I knew for a long time that I have anxiety, but I didn't realise that because people see me as a really confident person who's outspoken, who's all of these other things. But I actually have really bad social anxiety. I now I look back it's definitely very prevalent in year seven um and so when I got to secondary school my school was quite far from where I live you know for year seven traveling to school every morning and it's

like a like 45 minute an hour journey that's quite exhausting um so yeah I found I found year seven hard and then at the same time my mum was very ill she had cancer and she'd had it since I was six so I was 11 12 at the time and that was very difficult to navigate and I just felt like looking back um I find it quite hard to talk about my secondary school experience because I've completely forgotten a lot of it and I think that's down to a lot of trauma that I faced but my mum died in the summer of year seven so just before year eight so when I got into year eight I was known as you know the girl whose mum died

and I was as the years progressed known as all the girl who wants to kill herself and the girl who you know all these negative things and it really shaped my secondary school experience because I was sort of made fun of and looking back I was bullied in school but it's such a weird thing because when you're younger you're taught that you know bullies are external so they're sort of like they're just one mean kid that comes along and it's really horrible to you rather than people who you consider your friends and I'd be picked on a lot of the time you know people would dig at and make fun of the fact that I had mental health issues um and it really made me it made every day at school so difficult on top of all of the other challenges that I'd faced on top of grieving on top of dealing with my mental health um so I think from about the ages of like 12 to 15 16 I really struggled in school

and it was when I was probably around 15 I got to the point where I was like actually I just need to support myself I need to be there for myself because no one around me values me. And if I and obviously that might not be the case, but that's how I felt at the time. No one around me values me. No one around me thinks I'm valid. No one around me sees me. And so. In my head, when you know you have your own brain telling you all of these things and then people around you are telling you these things, it's very hard to be like, yeah, I want to live. Yeah, I want to, you know, I'm loved, I'm valued. All of these things that we're sort of expected to believe when you have very few people around you telling that and then your head is telling you that it's quite hard to sort of live everyday life and I just I got to the point

where I was like I need to I need to cut off you know some of these friends I need to I need to make time for myself I need to invest in myself I need to do things that I love I need to express myself in the way that I want to and through that I think made me as sort of like form the person I am today. And I've still got a lot of that to unpack. And I think when I leave my school next year, obviously I've got like eight, nine months left. But when I leave school, I think I'll be able to unpack that properly. I'm so sorry for the loss of your mum and I can't even imagine how awful and devastating that still must be for you to go through and to keep going through and it's so cruel that something so devastating can be you know fodder for bullying and cruelty but that's weirdly often such a common

thread with with children and younger people is that we find things that we find uncomfortable and almost weaponize it against the other person because we don't know how to deal with that level of feeling it's such a awful thing for anyone to go through and it's also difficult to hear you say about your mental health and how that was a point a reason for people to tease you as well because I optimistically through my rose-tinted glasses would have hoped that maybe the conversation would have progressed somewhat when it comes to mental health um but when you were growing up I guess maybe it still wasn't as advanced as I'm imagining it was when you were at school then. Yeah, I think it's weird now.

And I think in the age of like TikTok, I personally don't have TikTok because I feel as though obviously this is not the whole of TikTok. I feel like with any of these, with any social media, the algorithm will just know who you are. And because I do speak I did speak about like my mental health a lot on my Instagram and I still sometimes do um that it would just be the same on TikTok and they'll just be flooded with all of these you know people talking about their experiences I think that nowadays it's weird because when I was 13, 14, I was literally demonised for being ill and for being, you know, for having all of these issues. But now it's weird because people who are that age currently sort of it's like cool. It's cool to have a mental illness or it's cool to have mental health problems, which is a very weird thing for me and I think it's I find

that very uncomfortable because a lot of my secondary school experience was shaped because of my mental health and like now my mental illness so it's very weird that that's seen as a cool thing when that was not absolutely not seen as a cool thing when I was 13. When you say it's a cool thing, do you mean that cynically in that like people kind of maybe are romanticising mental health? Or do you mean it's like it's super chill for you to talk about mental health and no one really cares? It's like romanticising it. So there's sort of this level of competition that I see that this is the one of the main reasons I won't get TikTok but a lot of my friends will like post TikToks that they've seen on their stories and stuff um or they'll talk about that you know that happens

and things like that but I think especially in this country um there's this like competition of like who's the most ill amongst teenagers. And like, oh, I've been admitted into a psych ward or I've been on medication or I have really intense whatever. And I think it is very romanticised. in that because people who might have like you know mild anxiety or you know uh you know have mild depression can get dragged into this idea that they need to be validated the worse that they are which is obviously very bad because they could be helped a lot earlier but then they might end up developing you know like really negative behaviors because they think that's how they they need to be seen. Wow that's not something that I've been privy to or that I've seen and I guess it's interesting to

hear you you talk about from that perspective because I guess especially in my generation and where the conversation from mental health it's taken me so long even to recognize my own mental health um that I would worry and I'm not saying this is what you're doing but I I worry about you know us diminishing the conversation around mental health by people saying people are romanticizing it but it makes complete sense that teenagers would romanticize it because psychologically when you're a teenager the way your brain works it's like everything is happening to you rather than externally um yeah and so like obviously if you've got social media playing into that and then you are struggling with your mental health it's very interesting to hear that that angle and that you do have like you're also very compassionate towards those people but that that's a whole guess I guess that's a whole new ball game

of like where social media can throw things into relief and kind of fuck things up a lot. I think that's why social media is so fascinating because I guess when you were talking about your platforms, you use Instagram and you listen to lots of podcasts. But I guess the platform for you that sounds like you would say, you know, maybe this is doing more harm than good would be TikTok, which is more your generation's platform anyway isn't it yeah I think that this is this is the awkward thing and it's the it's the difficult thing because on the one hand it's great that lots of people have been able to talk about mental health and are able to feel comfortable in voicing the things that they're going through and voicing that they're struggling and I think that's amazing and you know I didn't have that and I wasn't sort of welcomed in that regard like I find a lot of comfort in um like

mental health meme pages it always just makes me makes me laugh and makes me feel better because it's like someone somewhere understands how I'm feeling or we can laugh about you know the NHS and and you know the crisis team and all these things that we all experience but on the other hand it it can feel like you need to I think it's it's weird because people sort of feel like they need to share their like medical information with everyone in order to be validated or like how many times they've ended up in hospital or how many times they've done x y and z which but it's all it's it's like it's interlinked because you can't have that community without these things happening so it's like do we diminish so recently I think Instagram and like got rid of the BPD hashtag which is outrageous

because people with BPD find comfort in talking to other people with BPD like I find comfort talking to people who have you know the similar mental health issues or symptoms whatever it is so that is quite dangerous because it stops people from reaching out and it stops people from having a community but I guess I don't know I'm just guessing their way of looking at it is oh if we stop this hashtag then we stop all the negative things that might come out of it but it's like which one do we do is bpds for borderline personality disorder yeah yeah um no you're right and it's it's sometimes also getting rid of those conversations that open can push it into darker spaces of the internet and make it kind of even more taboo and harder to access i out of my own curiosity, I'm wondering if, because we know

that the way you spoke about algorithms earlier, and we know the way that social media works is it really thrives off outrage. And the more emotionally, not manipulative, the more like emotionally engaging a piece of content is, the more people are driven to it. And I wonder if there's some kind of tandem at play where because so many people are using social media so much, they then they're heightening their levels of kind of not outrageous, not the right word, but I can't and at the same time do you think that people of your age have less in real life communication and friendship time and it's more heavily weighted to being online or would you say you couldn't comment and it's not like a universal thing? I feel like to some extent it's not a universal thing like it really depends on the individual but I do think that a lot of I think obviously this year has been difficult because there's literally a pandemic so

you're not seeing people everything has been sort of pushed online and things you know positive things have been pushed online negative things have been pushed online but I do I do think that it's just down to where you find yourself how you've grown up and all of these different factors that it's not sort of everybody is doing the same thing I think like you said before I think that's the danger that a lot of that thinking that a lot of millennials have that oh it's fine the younger generation like are really in tune when I don't think that's necessarily the case but I also think within that it's very interesting because I the way I see it is that it sort of pushes the responsibility onto the younger generation to fix to fix things

and that it's it it stops people from holding themselves accountable yeah I think that in a lot of ways I think that's definitely true I definitely think there's this idea of like oh the kids will fix it or like and I feel like that's kind of been a trope forever especially when it comes to like climate change and stuff it's sort of like well we've set the world on fire but don't worry because we know you're going to put it out so it's all fine we'll just carry on um and I do think that creates a lot of pressure and I think you're right actually I think that we're seeking even a lot of this conversation I've been having with you it's almost like I I'm almost searching you for answers when actually you shouldn't be giving me answers for anything you know this course that's been a lot of it's really been pre-laid for you and you're just traversing it in the best way that you can

but for some reason it's kind of it's kind of fascinating because you've grown up with the things that have been laid down before you by previous generations whereas we've only like experienced them for portions of our lives so I guess you experience them very differently um yeah no I get what you mean I've loved talking to you so much you're such a fantastic interviewee you're honestly so fabulous to talk to um and I really appreciate you coming on that little thing thank you for having me oh you're so welcome honestly I'm so pleased and. Oh, you're so welcome. Honestly, I'm so pleased. And I just know you're going to do incredible things. And I'm excited to see where you go. If people want to find you and follow you more,

you're obviously still at school. So no one has any expectations of you doing anything crazy right now because you're literally studying. But if people did want to follow you or find you, where would you like people to go? So the main like social media that I use is Instagram and my Instagram is um looking for mother max so at looking for mother max um so yeah if you want to find me or engage in my content um I've got IGTVs on there which is sort of I prefer talking because I feel like I

can articulate myself better than this like on text so if you go into my account and you swipe I've got some IGTVs on there which might be helpful or informative amazing thank you and I'm I'm sure that everyone listening will agree that you're such an incredible orator. So I'm sure they'll go and seek out those Instagram TVs. Thank you so much, everyone, for listening. And I will see you next week. Bye. Bye. We'll be right back. Winning in an exciting live dealer studio exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario.

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