Everything Is Content - Millennial Nostalgia, The Female Manosphere & A Women's Only Gym

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Happy Everything Is Content day & Happy Friday!Ruchira is back from her holiday... We're SO back... but we're also so sorry to tell you that we’re now old enough that Gen Z are romanticising the 2010s. After years of us Millennials being an absolute joke to them, they’re now craving a life of Buzzfeed, hipster myspace and American Apparel disco pants. We ask what it is about Millennial culture that is so cringe, but also, somehow better than whatever is going on right now.Next up, women in male dominated fields! Beth found a really interesting article on the website Semafor by Max Tani called “Young conservative women build an alternative to the manosphere.” And in the piece Tani explores several key female right wing creators who are now building empires and audiences in a way that feels very new and separate to the existing right wing media, which has historically been very male-dominated, often headed by controversial middle aged men who focus on recruiting young men into the fold and tend to espouse really misogynistic views that aren’t particularly appealing to women anywhere on the political spectrum. Was it only a matter of time before we got a femosphere?And lastly, our timelines have been absolutely ablaze this week after Natalee Barnett, founder of the women's only gym, The Girls Spot, went back on her 2021 statement that her gym would be inclusive of trans women. We share our thoughts!We hope you enjoy, as always please do rate, review and remember to follow on your podcast player app :)In Production Partnership with Cue PodcastsBeth's been loving, Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead, Letter LoopRuchira's been loving, Hacks, A Real PainOenone's been loving, I Found A Body, White Lotus Recap PodMillennial Redemption Arc Substack@romulusedits TikTokYoung conservative women build an alternative to the manosphereWhat’s Going On With the Pretty Little Thing Rebrand?Influencer’s U-turn on decision to set up trans-inclusive gym sparks massive backlash online Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth. I'm Richera. And I'm Manoni. And this is Everything Is Content, the podcast where we cherry-pick the best pop culture stories from the week and analyse them in depth. We cover everything from TV and film to celebrities and social media. We're the metallic pink American apparel disco pants you wedged on your arse 15 years ago. This week on the podcast we're talking about the great millennial resurgence, the female manosphere and backlash against a women's only gym. Please do follow us on Instagram at everything is content pod and make sure you hit follow on your podcast player so you never miss an episode and make sure you listen to our special extra episode on Millie Bobby Brown which came out on Wednesday.

Also, we've teased it for long enough, but Gershaw Loins, we're covering Miranda July's novel, All Fours for mid-April. That's mid-April. Now, I've missed doing this, but what have you girls been loving this week? I've actually got one locked and loaded this week. I've got two, in fact. I've got a book and I've got a thing. What would you like to hear first? The thing. Oh, do you know, I'm going to do the book first, actually.

I said it and then I thought, I'm going to follow my own rules. Because I think the thing is funner. So the book is a reread, which is kind of naff. I love a reread. I find them really comforting. But it's been a while since I read this. So anyway, I'm loving it again. It is called Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily R. Austin. Have, Richa, have you read this book? Or did I dream that we talked about this? I haven't read that book, but that is an amazing title for a book. Isn't it? And I think that is what hooked me to it so it is about

Gilda amazing name who is a 20 something she's really highly anxious she is terrified of dying convinced it's going to happen and then she finds herself in this job basically because she's too anxious to correct the person she finds herself working at a local church as the receptionist to replace their previous receptionist because that receptionist died and it is it becomes very funny quite twisty dark but really it's really funny on anxiety mental health tale of someone who is like battling all these demons of anxiety like she's got serious like death anxiety and also life anxiety, which I can absolutely relate to. As I get older, it's like I've just learned that death is coming and it will come for us all. It gets it so right on that and makes it really, really funny.

And then there's like a murder investigation plot thrown in. Very funny, very good. And I'm just really enjoying it because I love books about mental health stuff, but I do quite enjoy when they're funny and they aren't like really heavy and I know I probably shouldn't be doing a reread because I have got such the biggest stack of amazing books that I want and need to read for work and other projects but I just saw this book and went I'm gonna read that again so it's very very good oh that sounds so good so is it comedic it sounds like it's got a lot of levity from what you said totally and often the levity does come from like how insane she's feeling and like it opens with this car

crash where she thinks she's dead and the author just extracts so much funniness from that because at its heart anxiety and depression so many of the other things they are very funny when you are able to look at them and you're not in them they are actually really jokes you're like sorry my brain is turning on me I think I'm gonna die I can't stop thinking about death that's jokes that's lol laugh out loud yeah so much I hate that moment in a therapist office when she makes or they make you see that what you've just said is objectively absurd and stupid it's like my own brain what what a trickster um so that is my book that I have been loving and then the second thing I'm loving I don't know how to categorize this that's why I called it a thing but it's something called

letter loop which I might be the last person to ever hear about this but it's a newsletter service for like your friends and your family. So I did set this up. I was invited to join one. It was sent immediately to my junk. And then my friend was like, oh, sorry, do you actually want to be part of this? Because you haven't talked about it or responded. I was like, it was in my junk. You get the link to these questions sometime in the week.

You fill them out. They're kind of like, how are you? What's some funny things you've seen this week? Or like, what's an inspiring thought you've heard lately? What is a photo, like, you know, your favourite photo from the week? What have you been listening to? And you can like embed tracks from Spotify. And then you send and then later in the week, you get a newsletter delivered to you, like via everyone else in the little newsletter chain. And so you get to read it. And I was like, Oh my god, this

is a gorgeous idea. I think in the social media age of I mean we follow all of our friends but we also then follow 1,200 internet friends and influencers and celebrities and news sites lots of stuff gets lost in the shuffle the group chat gets a bit chaotic and I was like oh my god I actually could keep up with my nearest and dearest in this like cute newsletter forum. So I thought it was a really cute idea. Letter loop. That is amazing. But I just can't imagine committing to that for more than one loop. Like I'd get all my friends involved, we'd all be like, it's such a good idea. And then within one loop. Maybe one's enough though. I've only done one to be fair. I mean, I don't know there's a follow-up. I think if that, if I was going to introduce that something would have to go so

I'd have to like delete whatsapp or something like I couldn't fit that in along with all of my other communicational it's a great idea that is that is like a utopian version of communicating compared to how we communicate now I think I'm going to sign up should we do one with each other I think I'm going to sign up and give it a go yeah we should I mean we are in contact I suppose we're doing it now. We also have a podcast, which is where we share what we love. It would just be this. It would be this.

I think maybe it's good for people that you're kind of distant from and maybe like older friends and family who perhaps do have the time for that. I think it'd be a really nice idea to be like, what's my dad been thinking about this week? Or like, what's my aunt been thinking about? But you're right, it's a utopianopian idea I feel like Ruchira actually is gonna take this and fly and only you might be a one hit special I think so Ruchira what have you been loving this week so I have saved up a few but I'm gonna only give you two one of them is

a tv show that I have now caught up with and binged while I was away oh I love it so much hacks yes that was oh my god so good I need to calm down but yes tell this is about hacks the best show it's just everything I am fresh off it so I am just you know in that afterglow of a tv show where I think it's the best thing I've ever seen. But I truly think this is in my core top five TV shows I have ever seen. And I don't say that lightly. It's essentially about an iconic comedian who is in her 60s, who has gone to the top of what is possible as, you know, a daytime host. She's now found herself doing a residency in Las Vegas. She could be coasting, but she feels like she wants to push the boat. She wants to do something a bit different. She wants to have a lasting legacy, and she's kind of feeling that hunger. She's then matched with

this, I don't even know how you describe Ava. She's a gen-zed, sardonic, ridiculous woman who basically has just been cancelled for tweeting something offensive and she's needing a job urgently. She gets paired up with Debra Vance, the iconic legacy comedian, and they don't hit it off. They basically hate each other really openly. And it's about those two women finding a friendship, finding a mentorship, finding a new kind of relationship with each other. And it's just so beautiful. It's not even the fact that, you know, they have maybe 40 years between them. It is just people growing into who they are as people, finding new meaning in life. Comedy also, what is possible in comedy? What are the kind of, you know, future routes for where we can go in our own lives?

It's just, it's so beautiful. I love it so much. And it's more importantly, so funny. I'm really upset you've reminded me about this because basically I was watching this when I lived at Grace's, but now I don't have access to whatever streaming service it's on. Is it on Disney Plus? Now TV.

Maybe Prime for the early seasons, but then the third season. Oh, okay. Yeah, because I think I maybe watched the first series i absolutely loved it's such an easy watch as well and it's really like heartwarming and very funny yes half an hour episodes and series four is dropping allegedly in may of this year so we will do an update on april or maybe may in this country because we get them so late this is my biggest biggest beef like we didn't get season three for such a long time so if you're in America or you love illegal downloads which I don't know I've never heard of them I've never used them I actually can't figure out how to do them I can't either I feel like they've cracked down big time I don't know how

I just if I if I do that I will just get a million like porn pop-ups I just get too scared so I'm like okay it's a win-win for you then I just think my laptop's gonna get eaten or like it's gonna get an infected virus I just I don't even bother I can't I just don't watch things I think I think illegally streaming stuff is for people that just have given up on life like you don't care if you get a pop-up you don't care if you get a malware if you get an email being like hello pervert give us 5 000 you're like I don't give a shit oh my I love that we're talking about hacks and I I'm actually re-watching at the moment with my mother and do you know what I do really like on the internet is people really ship uh Debra Vance and Ava who is Debra's the comedian Ava's the younger woman they're like there's sexual tension here because Ava is a bisexual character people

are like yeah there's I mean they even have like a kind of dreamy sex scene, which watch it just for that. A lot of people ship them, which I just think is chef's kiss. That's so funny. I really see it because in the new series, there was a moment where I felt that myself. And then I came back down and thought, oh, wait, no, that's probably not I don't need to do that. Porn brain. We've all got it. What about you and Oni. What about you Anoni? What have you been loving?

I have also been loving a book. So I got sent a proof. It's called I Found a Body. It's by Becky Bernoff and it's out at the end of April, I believe. And it's about a influencer who's away on like this, it's kind of like sustainable trip

and she's trying to like build her audience, but it's not going that well. And then she stumbles across a dead body in the woods and basically starts like live streaming this series of events that happens after she finds this body and then it's like the tussle between this detective who wants to do her job obviously and investigate what's happened to this poor woman that's been murdered and this influencer who is riding off the coattails of the fact that she's just stumbled across this massive

case so it's very zeitgeisty very modern whodunit really enjoyable so I'm very much enjoying that it's like a really good modern twist on something that feels very realistic and also about what we've spoken about so many times which is people wanting to be sleuths online and it's also quite reminiscent of whichever Paul brother was live streaming in the Japanese woods and stuff so I've been really enjoying that I've also been enjoying White Lotus I'm up to date on that we did do a little bit of that and there was something else so I've been really enjoying that I've also been enjoying White Lotus I'm up to date on that we did do a little bit of that and there was something else which I've now completely forgotten what it was so I'll give you those two lovely I was just gonna say I realized I forgot

to give my second one which is A Real Pain I finally watched it on the plane ride to India and it's so good it's so so good I really recommend it it is exactly what people are saying Kieran Culkin is honestly just heartbreaking and he does kind of play a version of himself but I'm not mad at it I see why he's getting all the awards for it that's interesting because I actually was just listening to a podcast earlier the oh actually this could be my recommendation it's really good at Juno Dawson and Dylan B Jones have a sex and city podcast which they're now using to do a White Lotus debrief. Anyway, in the latest episode of that,

which I listened to earlier, recapping episode four, they were talking about how they think that the supporting character in Enora, the one of the goons, should have got best supporting actor over Kieran Culkin because Kieran Culkin, they thought, was just himself or like Roy from Succession, Roman Roy and they actually didn't think he was that amazing in it. Well my Roman Empire is that I think Jeremy

Strong should have got the best supporting actor for playing Roy Cohn in The Apprentice. I think he just like that performance is completely insane. He's acting with a capital A, but I do get that. I don't necessarily think Kieran Culkin was best supporting actor this year, but I think that performance was outstanding. When you watch it, he just kind of steals the entire show and it is just completely breathtaking. And he obviously hasn't gone through those experiences. And I heard a friend tell me that apparently his process is that he brings himself into the roles and he ad-libs and he doesn't keep on script. He doesn't method act. He just brings a huge amount of life experience himself, his personality into the role. So I think there's something special

about that that is deserving of recognition. It's just very different. Wow. He's so talented. I know. I mean, I do think that I haven't seen it, but I would like to watch watch it I would like to be on a long haul flight actually so I could watch a load of films there's a lot of films that I will and won't watch on a on a plane because I'm like am I going to get the full impact of this on that like tinny little screen I mean I do kind of layer my earphones and then my noise cancelling and whatever the shitty ones they give you so I can get like as good of experience as possible but I will always just watch gladiator on a plane because I think gladiator yeah they've always got it and I kind of feel like I've seen this always watch whatever the ones that I can't see on a streamer on a plane and actually I'm the same I get more emotional because they do there's something about being up high that does make you

more emotional I remember me and my sister the mild cry Club. Me and my sister watched the Queen film, which I now can't remember. Was it called We Will Rock? You know it wasn't called that. Bohemian Rhapsody. Bohemian Rhapsody. And we were sobbing. And then I watched it

like a year later and I wasn't crying quite so much. I'm sure that also could have been the Bloody Marys, but I think it also was the altitude.

Yeah, it does. It makes you tawny. It makes you cry more. That's why people like Bloody Marys on planes because apparently at that altitude they taste delicious yeah yeah they do fascinating i like them interesting i do like them down on ground level as well yeah that's why they serve you that's why bloody mary's like the iconic airplane drinks apparently it makes the flavor

like sweeter or they're just enhanced flavors i would love a bloody mary right now actually i'm still hung over from sunday it's now wednesday Welcome to 31. I'll tell you that much. Don't get better. So I am very sorry to be the messenger here, but we are all, well, I don't know, maybe some Gen Zs are listening to this, but many of us are old enough that Gen Z are romanticising the 2010s. After years of us being an absolute joke to them, they're now craving a life of BuzzFeed, quizzes, hipster MySpace and American apparel fits. A TikTok by Romulus Edits has 1.2 million views and has been distressing a lot of millennials because it's the most viciously nostalgic thing you'll see. The text overlay reads,

quote, I'm watching girls on HBO for the first time and I realise I wasn't meant to be 23 in this age. I was meant to be a 23-year-old hipster living in Brooklyn in 2012, wearing too many floral patterns, listening to Vampire Weekend and writing absurd listicles on BuzzFeed while it was at its peak. I'm a converted millennial apologist now because what a time to be alive. And God, guys, the music behind it is Dancing On My Own by Robin. And it's got clips of Broad City, Lena Dunham's Girls and Alexa Chung, aka millennial 2010's Katnipp. And somebody sent me this video and I felt like being sick. I felt like retching because I don't know what it was.

It was like synthesizing the last 15 years of my life into like a TikTok and just being like it's gone that time is gone now it was so it was awful. So Kate Lindsay who is an internet culture writer has a substat called embedded and she tried to tackle why this trend is happening and why it's so upsetting to us and she wrote an essay called the millennial redemption arc. She made the and she wrote an essay called the millennial redemption arc she made the point that after a few years of millennial cringe compilations racking up hundreds of thousands of views on tiktok quote there's recently been a vibe shift and i think it's thanks to girls yes the show which ran between 2012 and 2017 has been resurfacing in

the zeitgeist for years now gen Gen Z might not even remember a time in which it was considered anything less than pitch perfect satire. But now it seems at the same time that Lena Dunham is gearing up for her next project. By the way guys she's got a rom-com coming out soon I can't remember the name. Anyway millennials themselves are being reassessed. She goes into a lot of reasons why she thinks this is, and she talks about how the time around girls and that kind of 2010s era was one of the few times that politics felt optimistic. We were in that kind of post-Obama era. Liberals were kind of patting themselves on the back. There wasn't this fear. Everyone was kind of living in the afterglow of,

God, we did it. We're all good. Everything's good. And she talks about how Gen Z couldn't be further away from that. It's just been thing after thing after thing from COVID, from Trump to Trump again, to Ukraine, Russia, everything, to Gaza, to Palestine. It's just no wonder they're romantic for that time. It would be so nostalgic compared to the bullshit that they're going through now so I was wondering what do you guys think about potential nostalgia for the 2010s what do you think about this trend do you know what it actually makes so much sense to me in a way that I never would have understood but I also saw another reel where it was just some guy playing all of that kind of I got a feeling that era of music and uh like other kind of like EDM songs and songs that even

at the time went out of fashion quite quickly like they became cringe very quickly and what I realized is it's so funny how when you're close to something its level of cringeness is really heightened but it just shows how much time has passed that actually I do feel nostalgia for the American apparel dresses like I was saying to you when I watched High Fidelity, like her outfits, whereas there was a point maybe five years ago where if you'd asked me about that kind of music, that kind of clothes,

I would have thought that is the most awful thing in the world. But now I just think that is how the passage of time works. We're background baby and it's cool again, but it does make me feel old. And I think we maybe didn't realize how good we had it so I'll be interested actually because I'm sure it must always happen in 10 years time what will we be romanticizing about this era there must be something but it's very hard to know when you're in the thick of it I've been mulling over this the past however long since we brought this up like in our group chat I always think it's very very easy to look back and nostalgia is a powerful powerful drug but I do think there's something about like the 2010s the

kind of like peak at like 2014 2015 and then it the world went to you know the end times seem to have begun and I'm like was it that much better am I playing tricks on my own brain i do think millennials are much easier to first like skewer and parody like we've seen that has been the big thing prior to this what we're seeing is a kind of like millennial nostalgia because we didn't have like during those peak years we didn't have the same trend cycle that we have now like there were trends and there were cycles but they just they existed over such a longer arc and i was like why is it so different for gen z and i think it is because there's a really rapid fire way of like having trends it's much harder to be like and now we're in like berry core era because that lasts like 0.9 seconds it's so so swift whereas i think

the millennial signifier has lasted for a little longer, long enough to get sick of them. And then long enough now to be like, oh, my God, I remember that entire year when I was obsessed with this. I remember that song that was played every single club night. Like we wore our disco pants as reference at the top of this episode. We had those like slogan T-shirts. I love thinking about this because it is really reminiscent. Like we over identified with things like the pizza memes, like, god i eat pizza touch my butt kind of things we did like well i did a thing and there are so many things which cringe or not we get to go back and like

live in the era again i really do wonder actually what what we will take from this point in time because everything is so transient it's so quick can we really get nostalgia for something that lasts like 0.5 of a cultural second that is what I'm worrying about or wondering about yeah that's so true it doesn't feel like we're anchored in the same way I don't even really know what the signifiers of this current time would be apart from AI isn't that so fucking depressing or TikTok in her essay Kate wrote there was this earnest enthusiasm that eventually gave way to millennial burnout as Jen said began to take our place and then shitification gripped the internet and politics

alike and the pandemic interrupted many kids coming of age the discourse naturally turned dry sardonic and deeply unearnest and I think that's so true it is just something that I hadn't thought about when we were going through it but the internet being this super earnest place and as you said Beth everyone posting making jokes in this way that was just so hopeful and optimistic and in hindsight probably cringe but I feel like now I'm romanticizing posting like that and we've spoken about it before but the time of Instagram where you would just post a picture of your foot or a sandwich or something really shit and put like Valencia on it and you would get like 10 likes and that would feel so great I miss it and I also can remember when Gen

Z started posting like really differently because that's what we we were pretty avocado toast we are the generation of all the brunch places putting flowers up everywhere and then Gen Z came in and would just post things that I did not understand which they kind of invented the photo dump I think and it would be like a picture of an alien and then like a really weird quote and then the caption would be completely unrelated and it was all very cool and we all suddenly felt really ashamed of ourselves for wearing baby pink and standing in front of walls but I did actually start watching the Meghan Markle documentary because I saw the clip where Mindy Carling says to her about being Meghan Markle and Meghan says, I'm a Sussex now,

which led me on to find this piece in the iPaper, which kind of goes against everything that you're telling us, Ruchira. It was by Emily Bootle and it says, Meghan Markle is everything that's wrong with the millennial lifestyle. And it did make me laugh because it says, this show is straight from the aspirational millennial playbook. We're a generation who grew up under dutiful, stiff, upper lip boomer rule and gradually realized by access to the internet, a traumatic financial crash and the invention of front-facing camera that the most important things in life were to do what you love,

be yourself, and then prove to everyone that you tick these two, I don't care about ticking boxes, boxes. And it's all about how her show is this other facet of millennial culture which is like jam jars everything's very pretty live laugh love like live laugh love and YOLO started off as quite serious phrases that we were using they only became ironic like later down the line when we became more self-aware maybe self-conscious I don't know what we were before so as much as I do feel nostalgia there is also after reading this piece I'm like there is a bit to criticize like it is cringe but as I say constantly when you're cringe you're free and I think what has come with Gen Z and it's good it's this idea of like and just globally as well everyone's holding a mirror up.

Self-inspection is massive. We're very conscious, maybe too self-conscious. And probably because of the advent of like front-facing cameras and documenting our lives, we're not only, we're just constantly thinking about what we're saying, how we're saying it. And I think that can have positive impacts. But it also means that no one's just being frivolous and silly and hopeful

because everything has to be caveated with this concept of actually someone's listening, watching and seeing what I'm doing and that's kind of sad I think. Yeah if I if I could turn back one thing it would be just to make that shame-free part of the internet history books last a bit longer. I think the focus on you know receipts culture making sure that people are consistent in their views having everything documented and timelined and screenshotted I mean it is what it is but it's also not particularly fun and it's also as we've said before the internet is just spam everything about it is spam it's just littered with like seo bullshit whereas back then as you

mentioned before you would get you know your friends coming up first second and third on your updates for everything the algorithms favored just like engaging with each other not necessarily engaging with brands or engaging with bullshit in the same way so I've fallen down the trap I've fallen into the trap okay I mean nostalgia though is a trap because I always think there is nostalgia for the time. There's a nostalgia for like a slightly longer trend cycle and for the earnestness of the time, which wasn't perfect, but not everything was churned through the irony machine. And that there's a lot to be said for that in terms of consuming our culture and actually enjoying things. But there's nostalgia for a time of perceived safety then and hope and i you know we live in

a time now where i think the future feels foreshortened we're under constant siege from bad news and this is what you know is covered so expertly in the piece there's constantly terrible news stories and like dooming predictions about the future rising fascism rising sea levels bad things are rising very fast and i wonder how much is nostalgia for pokemon go and whatever else like themed weddings with the what are these called the mason jars and the kind of like dainty aesthetic and how much is nostalgia for like i had hope in my heart then you know like i can't separate within myself as someone that is a kind of like a younger millennial i mean i'm a toddler millennial i think rut, you're basically a baby millennial and only you're somewhere in between. We are on that spectrum. And it's really interesting to draw generational labels because they are really imperfect. It's such a broad span of time. We probably have more in common with an elder Gen Z than we would someone that's 44. If I'm doing my maths correctly, it's 43, 43 44 45 is the oldest millennial in terms of like net worth

political views world view I probably got more in common with like bona fide gen z than I have them but I think we are really obsessed with generational labels at the moment I don't know that's a good thing or a bad thing but it's yielding a lot of really interesting discourse but it's so funny because I wrote a subtext the other day, which is about like attention spans. Someone commented like, I'm so grateful for my 90s childhood because I was talking about boredom and how like we didn't have things to entertain us. Like if we were bored, we had to use our imaginations. And I found myself almost saying like, yeah, back in our day. And I was like, oh my God, this is such a trap because who has not said that in the history of the world? I remember my grandparents saying to me, like back in our day, we did blah, blah, blah.

My parents saying, well, when I was younger, da, da, da. So is it just that we always romanticize it? But it feels, and maybe that's just, we're living through it, but it does feel very much like we were the last generation to have that, the real luck of growing up without social media, without the internet. I actually can't imagine that the people that are

growing up now will look back and be like, what we had is better than what the younger millennials had. I don't think that will happen maybe, but they'll still think it's better than the coming generation. I don't know. But I think the point you've made about exponentiality, is that a word? It sounds like a word. Sounds like a word, doesn't it? Okay. So I think it's the fact that tech makes everything move so much faster like our parents and their parents generational experiences would not have been as vastly different as us from our parents and us to like the next generation and I think that's what makes the passage of time feel really scary it's like being in a Christopher Nolan film where time is going really fast you know when he's on that

planet with the water oh interstellar that's a plane film yeah oh yeah oh such a good film although actually you don't should not go down rabbit holes I once got on a rabbit hole about how none of it actually works that is also actually a vibe don't think you don't think about it too much you can't think about it too much but yeah so I think it is that I think it's the fact that everything is happening so quickly and things are changing even within our lifetimes. Like I don't have any grandparents left, but my granny definitely wouldn't have known how to use an iPhone. But that makes sense because she was 70 years older than me.

But there are things that I don't know how to do that a 23 year old can do. I'm only 31. I don't know about certain things. Like I think that's what's quite interesting. One thing I will say on the topic of millennials, there is a book which I was reminded of when thinking about this topic, which is a 2017 book called Kids These Days by Malcolm Harris. I don't know if either of you have read this book or you probably will be familiar with Malcolm Harris. He's written a few books now. Most recently, I think he's got a book out this year, actually, about the millennial experience written by a millennial. I think he's about five years older than me. Excellent writer. And it's a really comprehensive look at millennials. And it looks at us and our culture and our signifiers and our behaviours, not as like, oh my God, we love brunch, or we love pizza. And you know, we're quite good at computers, but more as, and this sort of harks back to what you said Anoni, like we are product of the former generation. There is a constant play and interplay between who we were raised by, the world they were raised in, and what we were given as a result. He does primarily look at it from a perspective of capital and work and capitalism and labour.

But he also talks about like the circumstances by which we came into the world and how we've lived and the rewards we were offered versus the rewards we actually got um and as much as like you know we get a lot of flack for being this like woke work shy generation but actually we were raised for work we we were we were given tools upon us kind of entering adolescence to make us really good as workers like we were given mobile phones so we would always be in touch with an employer. That is a brand new thing for that generation of like people entering the workforce. We were, you know, a generation of unpaid internships. We were a generation that were taught to like maximize productivity via social media.

Like we were constantly networking, constantly like in verbal and written communication it's a really interesting framing of millennials in a way that i've not seen anyone else write about it it's really comprehensive like i say touches on everything and i would just recommend that as reading for anyone that's like i'm kind of curious about this time of life because like i said before like generations are kind of diffuse but we try and really border them this year and that year but actually this is a really really good look of in fact like we are quite a put-upon generation and Gen Z will feel the effects of that and that they've got their own things going on they're pushing back at loads of things but actually we're not the aimless hypersensitive layabout bums that other generations have suggested we are.

We're the generation that were told you can be anything you want because boomers were living in a world of like endless access to credit cards and mortgages. And they were like, we fixed it, like we're here and now we're going to have kids and we've got all these houses and all this capital so we can have children and they don't even have to stress, you know, be whatever you want to be. And then by the time we got to being what we wanted to be, the economy was completely fucked. Those things didn't exist anymore. Working like a normal work-life balance did not exist. So there's been so many shifts and then Gen Z are coming up off the back of that as well. So you're right. Everything is kind of in tandem and in relation to each other. And it's such a weird like knock-on effect because it is, we are those kind of dreamers. We are the dreamers born from the boomers who really thought we could have it all and then poor gen z are just completely

jaded and it feels like there's just been a landslide from each generation where there's such a big knock-on effect yeah even with the reference to buzzfeed just thinking about how there was the dot-com boom and we were getting paid to write funny witty things online to do silly things online people doing I'm going to crafts and taking acid and that would be a video on youtube for vice.com that's a real video guys so even even just like politically financially the fact that we were doing a bit better that there could be a boom in media that would be fun. It does, it all just feeds back into the same ecosystem of we were optimistic, we were in a good place marginally back then. So it's understandable why Gen Z are looking around and just thinking there's no youth media companies

that represent me. Being in the late 2010s was fucking sick. so this week i stumbled on a really interesting article on the website semaphore by max tani called young conservative women build an alternative to the manosphere and in the piece he explores several key female right-wing creators who are now building empires and huge audiences in a way that feels very new and also separate to the existing and historic right-wing media, which has always been very male-dominated, often headed by controversial middle-aged men who focus on recruiting young men into the fold and also tend to espouse really misogynistic views that aren't particularly appealing to women anywhere on the political spectrum. And in the piece, we meet Brett Cooper, who is a 23 year old American writer and social

media commentator who used to work at the Daily Wire, which is a conservative American media company. And she now hosts her own show on YouTube, where she uploads medium to long form videos about popular culture and politics from a young conservative woman's point of view. And she's very critical of the left. She makes very supportive content about Donald Trump and is very pro-traditional views. She's basically a Gen Z voice for the right. And as the piece shows, she's very much not alone as more and more young, pretty, very articulate women emerge as, I think, the new face of the female right. And we've talked before about this rise in conservative values and trad wives and how these ideas spread via TikTok and YouTube and other social platforms in opposition almost to legacy media and kind of what that means for society

and culture as a whole. So we're going to get into the piece and other tangents of this issue. But firstly, I want to ask, had either of you heard of one Brett Cooper or of any of the other kind of popular young right-wing female influencers and commentators before reading this piece? No, I haven't. I've seen a few right-wing women crop up over the last few years, but I'd not heard of any of these specifically, not at all. No, I hadn't either. I'd seen some seen some like you know those debates sometimes around like hot topic issues like abortion and stuff and I'd seen young women vocalizing things that we normally associate more with like right-leaning men the only person I know of this ilk would be Candice Owens who's

obviously completely infamous and but she's a bit older and she's been around for a while but I had to say I do always find it so much more shocking when it comes from a woman and I also really think it has that kind of weirdly pervasive angle to it especially because you say they're like young and attractive but no I hadn't I hadn't kind of come across them by name knowingly before. Do you know of Just Pearly Things? She's the one that I know about. She is the only one I know about. Hannah Pearl Davis she's the one that I've seen crop up quite a lot I think she was quite infamous especially as being like one of the first few that you know really blew up is she one of the

blonde trad wife that kind of looks like Marilyn Monroe no so I think she's she's a redhead I think but basically she oh yes yeah yeah so she uh frequently is espousing just like horrendous views and I think I remember first seeing her like two years ago I think and I would say that actually the distinction between someone like actually Candice Owens and Just Pearly Things are two like really prime examples of women attempting to work within the manosphere work within the existing structures of right-wing media output and it's really interesting to see these new creators because they aren't doing that. And I think they recognize what does and doesn't work. And they recognize the same things that someone like just Pearly Things, or I think, yeah, Pearl, I'll just call her Pearl, what Pearl has recognized, which is there's a lot of money

to be made. This is on the rise. If you get in here, then you can probably find something, you know, you can profit, you can kind of make good money. I think they're kind of trying to separate themselves. Pearl is someone that's very anti-feminist. She's constantly trying to go viral by saying really shocking things. She went the route of trying to enter the existing manosphere. And I think what you can find there is you get cannibalized by it. That side of things, they will turn on you because, of course, misogynist is a misogynist, whether you agree with them or not, if you are a woman. Whereas these creators and these writers,

what they're doing is appealing directly to conservative women and they're spotlighting their wants and they're trying to grow an audience off the back of saying, look, I understand your fears of the future. I understand that you want love and a family and stability and you don't want to enter the horrifying workforce that these crazy leftist women have fought and tried to force you to enter. And I think that is a very smart thing, what they're trying to do and what they are actually succeeding in doing. They're trying to grow an audience of women rather than trying to piggyback on existing male right-wing commentators, influencers like Andrew Tay and Jordan Peterson

and whatever, Dan Bilzerian. They already have it locked off and it's very anti-woman. So I think what we're seeing now is people going, this doesn't work. This wouldn't win me. How do I win the hearts and minds of really young women? And I think it's this, it's like trad wife content, it's stuff that says, I'm a woman, you're a woman and someone like Brett Cooper she's she's 23 she's married she's like this is gorgeous I love this country I love what it's bringing me it's bringing me joy it's bringing me purpose fulfillment and you can have that too so I just think it's very distinct from what we've seen with that pearly things and at and Candice Owens I feel like there's been a bit of a slippery slope with discourse for years I feel like you know even just something as basic as the debate that constantly crops up

among feminists of should men pay for a first date it sounds so stupid in this conversation but something like that where women would say I am a feminist but I also think that men should pay for a first date and they should pay for all of our dates and the kind of disparity between squaring that up with well if feminism is equality how do you square the fact that financially you're still wanting to be supported by men and you know play into those kind of gender roles and I think that that's something like that something as basic as that is a perfect in for these kind of influencers because they can say well you can have it. You can be empowered and also you can subscribe to gender roles and why not be proud of who you are, proud of your country,

and also not have to kind of bow down to the woke media, blah, blah, blah. And I think, I don't know, I think something as benign as that is just such an easy way for these kind of female influencers to get their foot in the door and kind of square up to bringing people into the fold. Well, I think also this is the well-trodden path of what we've been taught historically is a nice life, which is to be married with 2.5 kids and live in a nice house and not cause any fuss. And more recently with the rise in feminism and and people being kind of I guess more brutally honest about the truths of the way the patriarchy works is it's not very sexy and it's not very

attractive and it is made to feel like a fight because I guess it is a fight and there's a really easy in there for people that just actually do want to be made to feel like there's a way of living this life that doesn't have to constantly feel like a battle unknowingly not realizing that actually by subscribing to a lot of these deals you're probably going to put yourself in quite an uncomfortable situation even if it doesn't look like that I was thinking about a conversation I weirdly had like with one a family member at lunch the other week and they were saying isn't it a shame how like everyone gets divorced now and I was like well no because that means that lots of people are leaving really unhappy relationships probably lots of women and then a female family member went to me oh yeah she was like so these

people just aren't like sticking with husbands they don't like for 60 years and I was like exactly but it's so easy to frame it in a way which is like it's awful no one stays in long-term relationships anymore there's no such thing as long-term love this is kind of what they're tapping into these very easy ways of making it look like the breakdown of sort of like traditional values is a negative when actually what it is, is a response to things that never really existed, that were always a mirage. It was never really true that people were having, always having these like happy homes. And so I do see it sometimes online with child wife content. I do get sometimes like very Christian evangelical content about women being very submissive to their

partners. To be honest honest I find it quite unbearable to see so I do often scroll past it it's it's almost weirdly more insidious because it is painted in this light of what you're saying of like making a life that seems attractive to women rather than necessarily degrading those women in the way that the manosphere might I also I do think a lot of it is a lot of us probably do consume quite traditional and right-wing content for a long time without realizing like the homestead content like the farm-to-table content like the very popular Mormon influencers cooking for scratch like so many mummy vloggers it's easy to see it as like pure entertainment and relaxing viewing

and to see it as like either bipartisan or even like totally apolitical and of course it's not but i wouldn't have realized it had we not had all of these mirror discussions or had it not become obvious months and months and years down the line like they're such a handy tool in selling to the absolute masses like ideals of tradition and nostalgia and you know making that kind of life seem really appealing like this old-fashioned life without having to say like well people lived this life and they were actually had to go off their tits on medication or they stayed in this life because it was illegal to leave your husband you would be you had no bank account you'd be fucked you were essentially an indentured servant like it's so easy to just be like well here is a gorgeous

video of me milking my cow and i I'm gorgeous and I look in love. It's just like such a wealth of propaganda. And I wonder if us on the left have maybe got too comfortable in our position of being like, but we're good at social media. Like we have got the youth. We know history. We are. We've really got them. Actually, we've become a little bit comfortable as this like meme savvy young person's haven.

And instead, the right has then repackaged and within these this new wave of influencers and creators we've we've lost a lot of footing like even just i watched a few videos from brett cooper and even with that my timeline on tiktok was populated within the hour by so many more like it isn't a monster that you know sprouts all the different heads i forget its name the hedra or something like it's really one of those and they're so compelling they sell such a compelling gorgeous fantasy that you don't even realize that you are being sold one we will sit through and watch the end we'll go god that actually does look nice to make a you know a brownie south tree bark and serve my husband and live off the land when in fact as you say that is not reality for 99.9% of the people doing it it's really insidious one thing I've thought

about so many times is influencing is on a spectrum but is at its heart very domestic like lifestyle influencing at its heart a lot of it can be drawn with parallels to a kind of Christian lifestyle a kind of traditional lifestyle so much about it is you know being at home so many of the kind of original lifestyle influences that I ever used to follow they weren't partiers they would be in relationships with their sweethearts from 16 or 17 years old I'm thinking of Tanya Burr. I'm thinking of Zoella. They have children in their late 20s. It's this very domestic kind of home-bodied lifestyle, even thinking of Molly May, one

of our biggest influencers. She had Bambi fairly young for modern ideals where women are having babies in their 30s more and more. The fact that she got married to Tommy and they had their kind of life of not going out and raising Bambi and it all being quite sweet, her putting Halloween decorations up, enjoying festivities, it all feels very kind of comparable to Mormon wife content that we see. So I think the internet has been built and ready for trad wife content for a while. It's just been that it hasn't explicitly been with a propaganda angle or from women who

are Mormons. That's kind of been so easy to slip into the internet. It's been ready and primed for that. The other thing I was going to say is I don't think the left is very good at the internet. I don't think the left is very good at the internet. I don't think they have been ever. Maybe the Obama era was good at posting those kind of red and white Instagram filters of his face. But I think even thinking of Jeremy Corbyn's campaign, it was really fun, but it didn't target a mass demographic. It was really catered for young people. I'm thinking of Kamala Harris's brat. There's a reason why these campaigns weren't successful. And I think

people think that they're good because they speak to some of us, myself included, but they aren't widespread. Whereas the power of the alt-right, the power of the right is that in its messaging, in its aesthetic, in everything it does, it's speaking to all age demographics. It's speaking to every single person. It's repackaging everything in this succinct tight way and just re-narrativizing things in a way that speaks to anybody and I think that's a problem that we're really facing on the left how do we speak to all ages whilst also having these really sticky campaigns and I don't think we've figured it out I don't think we've had it for the last 20 years and I think that's the thing we need to really focus on

now it's such a good point that you made about like the domesticity of social media in its nature and actually that's something that's been happening over the last especially I think got really heightened in Covid with people wanting to like make their homes look nice and kind of like decorating and tablescaping and that kind of like 1950s housewife stuff was really on the rise and you're right even I just think in the inbuilt nature of the way that social media works, boyfriends of Instagram and husbands of Instagram, loads of women, and it was initially mostly women, there are more male influencers now, would be able to have content because they had boyfriends and husbands who would be literally like shooting their content for them. And the other main thing

is that Instagram fundamentally is a capitalist endeavor. Influencing is about selling you things and so much of right ideology is about believing in capitalism, about believing in your country, about believing in spending money, gaining wealth, hoarding wealth. And a lot of the left's argument is actually about dismantling so many of the things that we by nature feel comforted by, that being maybe the traditional nuclear family or capitalism or things which actually we haven't really got a language or a vision for what it looks like without those things, whether it's like ACAB or socialism, or, you know, you can talk about those things, but it's actually very hard to create an image of that. Whereas an image of a perfect

all-American family is something that has existed, especially in the world of like advertising and stuff from the beginning of time. And as you said, Beth, we all, even if we don't identify ourselves as people that prescribe to those things, find them comforting and we're used to them. And I think that that is what makes it so difficult because how do you translate something that we haven't really experienced? I don't know. I'm thinking of punk as like a concept, but like those things wouldn't work on the internet because the internet is inherently a sorority girl. Like Instagram, it's like those who think it would have to, I guess, to break through or to get that messaging. It probably couldn't coexist on these platforms, which as you say, like these platforms mirror everything that already exists in society because they're coded by white men who have these traditional values.

So that's how that kind of works. So I think you're right. Once it starts to take over, it's so easy for that to become even more ubiquitous than it actually is in real life. And even one more thing I was going to say, all of us are quite on the fence about having kids. And that is because we've been really, really exposed to women who have been very honest about their experiences of being mothers. And all of us, I think, have found comfort. And actually, it's given us tools to be empowered to make decisions about what we want other with the rest

of our lives to look like but I do also understand that often on the left using that as like a really broad term people are open to talking about the complicated more difficult realities of life which is really unsexy and if you can like, sometimes I do wish that I hadn't opened the lid on Pandora's box and didn't know too much. You know, I wish I hadn't opened the can of worms because it does mean that you're kind of having to actively make way more choices than you would do if you just followed down a path that was preordained for you, literally preordained by religion or society. It does feel like that's the path of least resistance. Even though, as we've all said, it actually, especially as a woman, or especially as anyone

with any sort of like marginalized identity, is full of resistance. It's just designed to look like it's not. What I'm getting from this entire conversation is, it's something really overlooked in women and girls who feel left out and feel kind of unrepresented and unheard, perhaps by the left or perhaps by society and everything that makes up society. We do talk about men and their being radicalised by the right. We talk about the forces at play there. But for young women, I think there is an assumption that they will think and they will vote in line with what seems the most university caring and society-based and benevolent for all people. But actually, it's not the case. And a lot of young women also feel, they do feel as men feel, invisible in

society when it comes to a life that isn't focused around work and labour and independence. And I think I've kind of skipped along through my own feminism and my own journey on the left. And I haven't given it due thought that there is a real sense of being left behind and not being listened to, not being catered for. And I don't think we can just go, oh, because silly girls wanting to stay home with the children, they don't know what's in store for them. Perhaps they don't know what's in store for them, but someone with a huge platform, someone with some really wonderful promises, someone who's already living the life that they think oh i'd love to live that life is telling them we'll just step right in like the water

is warm come this way and and i think we all too have been absolutely ablaze this week after natalie barnett who's the founder of the women's only gym the girl spot went back on her 2021 statement that her gym would be inclusive of trans women in the now viral video amassing over 45 million views the 25 year old fitness influencer and model said, When I made that tweet in 2021, I had just announced my plans to open a women's only gym. I hadn't fully thought out the vision or mission of what it would entail. The girl's spot exists as a safe space for women because we're facing gym harassment, sexual assault and violence in gyms. I know this because I'm a victim of it.

The meaning of the girl's spot is now entirely different. She said that the gym would include self-defense classes, Mai Tai, boxing classes, as well as workshops and activations around PCOS and training on your menstrual cycle, all of which occur to biological women, she said. Barna actually fundraised the capital to open her gym with the promise that it would be trans- and on her LinkedIn she said that she did this with a 20k donation from gym wear brand Gymshark and near 3k from her online community as well as her own personal investment but many who donated are now furious that she's done a total u-turn on the inclusivity of the gym and on Tuesday this week after the uproar she then posted a follow-up video saying I wholeheartedly sympathize with trans women and allies who feel hurt by my recent announcement

and I appreciate that the decision to operate in this way will come as a disappointment to some however she maintains her stance on only allowing biological women her words and even claimed she'd spoken to trans women when coming to make this quite shocking decision. Lots of people have even questioned whether or not it's legal under the 2010 Equality Act, which protects against discrimination based on gender identity, while the usual suspects, including JK Rowling and Serena Patrick, whose handle is Billy Bragg, were very keen to add fuel to this transphobic fire. Beth, I know that you actually responded on X and it was quite a tame response, which I agreed with, and that you yourself came under some awful fire. So maybe we can start there. What did you respond to this and what was the

reaction to your response? So she has been on my timeline for months and months now, and people have been really excited. And I've been watching little videos of her kind of getting the stuff on the window so people can't look in the progress has been coming and people have been so so complimentary and because I've engaged with that I was getting more content as it came and then this happened and I was really confused by it and so I replied and I said along the the lines of trans women face harassment and gendered violence in public as well. And they face it from men. So essentially all women face this and it's from men, not trans women. And I said, look, this is a shame because she'd invited commentary and she'd invited questions.

So I responded that, not thinking anyone would see it because it was sort of blowing up at the time and then by accident by virtue of the algorithm whatever it is I sort of ended up at like the top of the replies had like a few thousand favorites and lots of people were replying I had a real blend of people that were out and out turfs e.g people that believe trans women are men, erroneously, and hate them very violently. And also a lot of people that were really defensive of single-sex spaces, but claim, you know, say, well, I'm not a TERF and trans women are women, but single-sex spaces are valid. And so I disagree with your tweet. So I was getting DMs and a lot of replies from people saying, okay, so you support violence against women and just like worse stuff in the DMs and a lot of replies from people saying, okay, so you support violence

against women and just like worse stuff in the DMs being like, you are anti-women, you love when women are assaulted, just the silliest stuff. And just like really idle threats. And obviously I've been at this a long time in the Twitter game. Like there's nothing that a TERF can say to me that will change my opinions or rattle me but I found it really surprising like nonetheless the back and forth that were going on like this has really lit a storm like I didn't even realize it was that many millions of views but actually considering this point in history and like this point in the transphobic arc of the UK and the world actually I shouldn't be surprised like nuts Richa what were your how much of this did you see and the responses and what did you make of it?

So I only learned about this when I've searched for it I'm not on Twitter anymore I came back from holiday have been just like in an offline bubble it's been really good coming back into this seeing the kind of uproar around it I just I is so shit to see what could have been a really exciting, really amazing venture. This show of solidarity, which I mean, I'm saying show of solidarity. To me, it's the obvious, it's the bare minimum to just include trans women in a space like this. The fact that we have to even speak about this just is so frustrating. And I think her, her not even defensiveness, that's the thing that's shocking it's just kind of almost like a non-reaction everything that's coming her way I'm sure she's

probably speaking to legal experts as she said and maybe she can't acknowledge the fact that this is really fucking horrendous of her maybe she's just trying to bulletproof her response but it's just nothing it's not even an apology it's just so nothing the fact that she's like I understand some women might be disappointed by this it's not disappointing it's prejudice it's it's not even an apology it's just so nothing the fact that she's like I understand some women might be disappointed by this it's not disappointing it's prejudice it's it's disgusting like I'm not saying that she's a villain I read a really good piece by Shivani Dave for Metro saying Natalie B Fitness's women's only gym isn't transphobic it's just misguided and I thought it was really gracious take Shivani Dave is non-binary and was saying that if we want to include people on our side, as we previously spoke about in the segment above,

we need to come to a place where we're not just kind of inviting and calling people transphobes, which, you know, I think this is a really gracious take. They were saying that they just think that this person probably needs to have a conversation with people who are affected by this and understand but I do I am disappointed by Natalie's response to it I don't think it seems to be acknowledging the kind of pain and distress this will be causing people that is really generous and you know it is that is a thought that also did cross my mind but as a cis woman I don't feel wouldn't have felt confident to say that it come from a place of ignorance because I did see another reply that said something like the general population in the area where that gym is going to

be the general population of trans people would be like 0.1 percent I think it's not 0.01 percent 0.01 percent so the likelihood of that even being well there might because she'd made such I think the other thing is because she'd said right at the beginning when it was doing the funding that this would be a trans inclusive space I did see a reddit thread as well from a trans person who'd said like they've been really excited about it and they'd actually donated because that's what's so lovely about the space so it does it like the fact that people were excited about it so yes maybe there would have been disproportionately more trans people going to this women's only gym had she not because she specifically made that statement but it does seem like it's come from

a place of ignorance which is so much of the argument and the discourse around trans people and this sort of like gender wars argument that's going on in the minute. It's like, they make up such a disproportionately small number of the population and are disproportionately targeted, attacked, and abused. It's, on the one hand, I was like, I actually didn't see a lot of the, I saw JK Rowling's, I saw Billy Bragg's, I actually saw so many people being so enraged by her saying this, I was like, maybe this is actually going to have a good impact in the long run, because this could have gone one of two ways. And I did ask you guys, I think like, do you think if this had happened in the US, if people would have been more supportive of it? But I think again, it's like, I think like do you think if this had happened in the US if people would have been more supportive of it but I think again it's like I think the fact that it's had so many views and

so many people talking about it I wonder if this is actually a good area of conversation around this because it has shown how many women are supportive of trans women how many people feel really disgusted at the idea that trans women wouldn't be included in a women's only space. And maybe the take that you said, Ruchira, maybe is sort of an ignorance. And maybe there is that element of sometimes remembering that one of our failures, we keep saying on the left in a way that is probably really redundant, but one of our failings is that we are very quick to point fingers and maybe the best course of action would be like, why do you think it would be safer without trans women? What is your safer without trans women what is your understanding of trans women that makes you feel this way and how do we make it so that people

understand actually trans women face the same if not more violence from men than than cis women so I don't know yeah what was how much what did you see sideways I know Beth you were literally in the firing line but did you see have you seen more positive reactions of people championing her choices or more people kind of going I can't believe that she's done this U-turn what side would did you see more of? I've seen more people calling it out and I hope that is representative of as you say the tide being more kind of backlash towards this rather than just my algorithm directing me that way it's so hard to get an actual temperature check on anything anymore because of the fact that you are just fed either provocative content that

makes you feel like you're against everyone or you're in an echo chamber so you have no idea. So I honestly have no idea what's going on out there. So just to very briefly hark back to the statistics because I think we just got muddled there but I think we did it in the right way. So first, Paris Lees tweeted something about, so trans women make up less than 0.01 of the population. That's that statistic. And then the second was, which we were talking about the population of Wandsworth, where this would be, a user called Binchan Smiles wrote, I'd like to point out her gym in Wandsworth where, get this, 0.002% of the borough's population identifies as trans women, 347 women out of 172,000 women. That demographically makes it

so easy to visualize who is being targeted and who is being painted as a threat. So I think that is very important just to get those numbers correct. And we'll double check those. But I read the same piece in Metro that you did, Ruch in the piece they um caught a survey by ori gym which found that one in three women want female only gyms to feel safer 61 of female gym goers have experienced harassment from men while working out which is absolutely disgusting and not at all surprising and so the idea of a woman's only gym is so timely so necessary like that's that's a reality we need that and the need for women's gyms exists because of misogyny and the resulting violence against women that amounts from misogyny and trans misogyny and so where i get confused

about this and i do sense myself getting like my my what are they called my hackles are really up because it just to me it's so clear-cut like what's happening here is what's happened what happens in so many other spaces is some of the victims of that gendered violence and misogyny we're suggesting that we leave them out of our solutions victims of misogyny male predation and cis men's crimes against women as a result of misogyny we're saying well, and cis men's crimes against women as a result of misogyny, we're saying, well, some of those victims are actually not deemed worthy of our protection as women in solidarity with one another. And this is something that Sean Fay, friend of the pod,

excellent writer, and she lays this out really clearly and fantastically in her book, The Transgender Issue. We focus so much on whether a trans person belongs in a space that we don't ask the question, but why do they need it in the space? And when we ask, why do they need, why would a trans woman need a women's only gym? Because they suffer the same thing that cis women do. They suffer the misogyny. They're at risk from gendered violence. If you propose a solution to harassment in gyms and you go, but some of these victims we're actually going to say you can't come here because of this diffuse and and

false falsely proven idea that you are then somehow a part of it or we need this single sex space for people with vaginas but why like i think it's so unacceptable as cis women to say we've come up with an idea we're going to all rally around it but you my sister in the world you fellow woman you can't come here and i think that is why i find it so vile and like i mean the transgender issue we should we must all read it and read it again there's this discussion around like trans women fighting for safety and liberation and they are just reduced to these talking points like we go oh my god but they shouldn't be allowed in toilets they shouldn't be allowed in women's faces and she writes in the transgender issue

about how we dehumanize people by having these debates about toilets that you know suggesting that we consider why they are dehumanized and consider like how this works in like under fascism we're going oh let's talk about toilets let's talk about gyms let's talk about changing rooms and it just turns into this circus and it turns into this like very issue focused debate and it's not that it's like do you deserve to be safe can I help you be safe can we help each other be safe the answer is always yes and so when people go but I'm going to complicate this and say it's a no it just fills me with like I don't even feel like I'm making sense I this honestly makes me so furious but that's that's why I think it's like it is transphobia it's a fear of transness because that's it's a misunderstanding it's a fear that actually

she has done a U-turn she says she's taken four years to think about this she said she'd spoken to trans people in the process which felt very confusing because I can't imagine why trans women would be like yeah definitely don't include us whenever I see these things I'm like none of you people have ever met a trans person in your life this is the issue trans women are women there is no argument in my mind there is no one that could ever say anything that would change my mind I find and I'm sure you guys are the same that when these things come up I'm like I don't even really honestly what are you talking about how is this even an issue and the other thing that everyone was saying is how are you policing this like yeah biological women could come to the gym there has been quite funny tweets from trans men saying well I'll see you there because you've said that I've got a vagina

and so can enter and what are you going to do and so I do there is a part of me that does feel slightly bad for her because I'm like maybe she genuinely was fretting maybe she genuinely does feel that women are going to feel safer if there aren't any trans women there and it has come from a place of misguidance or thinking that she's being protective not realizing that actually all she's doing is shutting out one of our most vulnerable groups but yeah I kind of flip-flop because I mean I do on the one hand the amount of backlash she's getting it's really tricky because she now is the fit this this could have gone the other way or also could have just like no one could have noticed but as you said I wasn't watching the

lead-up to her I also in researching this didn't realize how many articles she's done in interviews with like Glamour magazine and the Daily Mail in the lead-up and even saying in those pieces that it would be trans-inclusive so I think it is really the 360. It probably wouldn't have had such a big impact had she not set out with this intention to include trans women. Yeah, I agree. And to be clear, I do think this is transphobic. And I also think it's ignorant in the same breath. I think Shivani's piece was really gracious. And I really appreciate that they set out a really gracious point of view but I do think it is transphobic full stop. A kind of stick that TERFs are using to kind of beat this debate is using Muslim women as kind of a shield here and saying well if you allow trans women in then Muslim women won't come in and I saw a really great video on TikTok which I can link by someone

called ddigital who is a content creator and commentator, who is a Muslim woman. And she was calling this out and being like, and so the argument would be that they wouldn't be able to take off the hijab if there was a biological man, which is what the TERFs call trans women, of course. They wouldn't be able to do that, e.g. they wouldn't be able to use the gym safely if it wasn't a single sex space. And I think, and what Dee is saying is like, how vile of you to, if you're't a single sex space and i think and what d is saying is like how vile of you to if you're not a muslim woman to use muslim women as your kind of weapon to yield to kind of say like we're a monolith you know she was saying i i personally wouldn't have an issue with this other muslim women would but also a lot of people are saying well also if it's a gym if it's a place

where people are filming they wouldn't be able to remove the hijab anyway so like there are so many things i think it's just intellectually dishonest the arguments that come out of the kind of turf space online it is really opportunistic they will say nothing when it comes to islamophobia anti-immigrant rhetoric racism but of course when it comes to something like this they'll go oh but you know muslim women and they will talk for them and i find that also another really vile point but something that does bear mentioning because that is a really big argument on the left like people are saying oh we're trying to make it more inclusive by being exclusive and i think that is further turf nonsense but it's really pervasive and that kind of idea does catch fire and it's like well let's talk to

some muslim women and you will find it's a very nuanced part of the debate and it's part of debate that we i guess should have like it is not a case of single sex fannies out and you come you can exercise like you can't even police that like you say i mean something i found really interesting and i'm interested to see how this pans out is the legality of it because i can't actually figure out if it is legal a lot of people are kind of umming and ahhing it's like a big question split into debate whether it's legal under UK law under the Equality Act a lot of people are saying it you know maybe is illegal because you even though you can technically quote unquote discriminate against like allowing a group of people into a space if it has a legitimate aim e.g. in this case safety you can have a women's only gym

but when it comes down to not allowing some this case safety you can have a woman's only gym but when it comes down to not allowing some women in does that become discriminatory that's one reading of the law like there's another reading of like okay gender is a protected characteristic but then also so is sex and i think that is getting very murky and i'm i'm so curious to hear what her legal advice has been because you can't legally as a business owner ask someone to produce either a birth certificate or a GRC a gender recognition certificate to kind of prove their legal gender and other than asking people to like strip off at the door or provide their birth certificate registering I don't think that's legal like there's no way this is practically

impossible I can't believe she didn't say nothing she would have had plenty of custom from cis women and trans women and women the thing I wonder though is with when you have these voracious tasks online they are not scared to say anything like I can't remember what it was but JK Rowling quote tweeted the whole thing with just a completely made-up line that no one had said so for all we know someone's got to Natalie in this four-year period someone that has very strongly held transphobic beliefs and put the fear of God in turn told her that if you don't make this completely exclusive up a huge number of the population but they're very loud voices and they're not afraid to use anyone as you say any excuse any reason even if it's not their lived experience even if they have no evidence of the fact they will say anything in order to get their argument across and so i think that's also what's tricky is maybe she's been ill-advised it's really hard to know what she actually thinks but it's um I think the fact that perhaps it has given a platform to people who don't hold

who aren't just walking around talking about trans rights because we just see them trans people as trans people and we're not turfs whose whole agenda is just to constantly bash trans people maybe it has actually given a platform to people who are supportive and allies to actually step up and say something. Because I guess day to day, we don't really feel motivated in the same way that someone like JK Rowling literally just can't stop talking about anything else. So as you were talking, I was just thinking about how I feel like not to give ourselves a huge pat on the back, but I feel like this episode has been so cohesive I feel like talking about nostalgia for the late 2010s and this kind of optimism liberal optimism that we had politically

going back into how things are so different right now we're seeing the right wing gain traction we're seeing Trump actively roll back rights and in the process these kind of right wing female influencers gaining traction too and a lot of their market is basically based on rolling back rights for other women, trans women, rolling back abortion rights and finding optimism in that. And then seeing this play out in businesses setting up active sites that are discriminatory against trans women. I think although nostalgia is really great, we have to root ourselves in the present and kind of look around and think, how is this all happening? We can't keep looking backwards. We have to work out a way forwards.

Thank you so much for listening this week. Also, have you listened to our latest Everything in Conversation episode? Because this week we tackled the public shaming of millie bobby brown and claims that she looks old if you've enjoyed the podcast please do leave us a rating or if you really want to spoil us a review on your podcast app five stars please please also follow us on instagram and tiktok at everything is content pod see you next week. Bye.