Everything Is Content - The Supreme Court Ruling, Money Dysmorphia & Fighting In Relationships

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

The sun is shining (emotionally and hopefully literally wherever you are), as it's time for another EIC episode!On Wednesday 16th of April The Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. The ruling sparked a wave of horrendous transphobic discourse. We are appalled and wanted to unpick how this happened, and JK Rowling's role in this abhorrent outcome. Next, The New York Times published a piece on 'money dysmorphia'. Is it another BS term, or a real phenomenon for the over-spending, and money hoarding camps many of us fall into regardless of our finances?Finally, George Clooney has flexed that he and his illustrious wife Amal *never* fight. We dive into the debate around what a healthy relationship and conflict looks like.Thank you so much for listening and for everyone who's reviewed us. We read every single IG message and review! If you haven't already, we'd love if you could on your podcast player app <3 and follow us on Instagram and TikTok @everythingiscontentpodIn partnership with Cue Podcasts.-----This week Ruchira loved Stalked and Last One Laughing. Oenone's been loving The Offing.Beth has been loving the 'I'm so hungry' TikTok trend.Are You the Only One Who’s Broke? Or Is It ‘Money Dysmorphia’?Not a PhaseThe success of J.K. Rowling's transphobic fight depends on the future of "Harry Potter"If Britain is now resetting the clock on trans rights, where will that leave us? Gender identity, England and Wales: Census 2021 Welcome to Terf Island: How Anti-Trans Hate Skyrocketed 156% in Four Years Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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If you want to stay sharp and skip the crash, visit londonnewtropics.com to try it for yourself. And you can use everything at checkout for 20% off. But hurry, it won't last forever. Thank you London Newtropics. I'm Beth. I'm Rachera. And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything is Content, the podcast where we analyse the week's biggest and best pop culture stories, The podcast where we analyse the week's biggest and best pop culture stories. TV, film, TikTok, celebrities, we discuss it all. We're like a pop culture scratch card except you win every single week, twice a week in fact. This week on the podcast we're talking about the horrifying Supreme Court ruling on gender in the UK, money dysmorphia and George Clooney's flex that he never argues with his wife.

Is that really a relationship flex though? Follow us on Instagram at Everything Has Content Pod and on your podcast player app so that you never miss an episode and do make sure that you're caught up with all of our extra Wednesday episodes too. But first, as always, what have you both been loving this week? And Oni, you go first. I've been reading, I've been so slow but really enjoying. I'm reading two books in a minute but the one that I wanted to recommend, I can't remember if I've said this on here because I feel like I've been so slow but really enjoying, I'm reading two books in a minute, but the one that I wanted to recommend, I can't remember if I've said this on here because I feel like

I've been reading it for about five years, is The Offing by Benjamin Myers, which is following the Second World War, a young boy called Robert Appleyard leaves his little village in Durham and goes on this huge adventure where he basically traverses across the English countryside and meets, makes an unlikely friendship with an older woman and it's really beautiful. I'm not that far in yet, but I'm going to, the minute I get a minute, I just want to sink my teeth into it further. But it was recommended to me after I read in memoriam and kind of decided that I wanted to get more into war fiction, which is not something I ever thought I'd say. And so far I'm loving it and it's really beautiful. So big recommend from me. What about you, Richira?

So I have two. One of them is a podcast that a few people recommended to me actually off the back of me saying I was obsessed with the tortoise investigative ones. This one is BBC Storked and is essentially just a mad story about a young woman who comes to meet this seemingly enigmatic man called Kin. And from that meeting, soon after she is bombarded by harassment on a level that I've never heard about before. It is just almost like 10 different seeming voices just constantly barraging her with abuse for three years and accusing her of being all sorts of things, an escort, accusing her of having falsely signed up to meeting them on a night out in London and never having turned up.

Just like all these kind of creative things designed to kind of make you go absolutely bonkers. And this series basically is done with her and her former step-mom, Carol Cadwaller, who was one of the big journalists who helped to uncover Cambridge Analytica. So it's amazing because they have that kind of familiarity. They're really close. They have that really good dynamic and they have that personal element, whilst also her being able to uncover what's gone on with her former stepdaughter, even though they are really close still. So yeah, really good. Although I've seen lots of people critique it online on Spotify in the comments section saying that it's really dragged out, but I really like it. I love

the fact that I just tune in for half an hour and then it's just like continuous storytelling, but there's some beef in the podcast world. That feels a little bit like we are all losing our ability to concentrate on things and like don't look a gift horse in the mouth. If something is going on multiple episodes, if you have to wait in between them, if it's well researched, surely that's not on a topic like this. I just think maybe we are all getting a little bit too impatient with our content. That sounds really, really great. Do you say that that's finished now? Like they've reached a conclusion or it's ongoing?

I think they finished. I think they got to 10 episodes. I'm about halfway through, but yeah, I think it's done now. So it's a good time to binge it if you want to binge something very dark or just pepper it into your day like I do. I keep meaning to listen to that because I follow Caroline on X and I remember when she first started tweeting about it and I had banked that to listen to it. It's one of those things that I do and then just immediately forget about. So thank you for the reminder. No, definitely, definitely listen to it. I think you'll love it. The second thing is, I don't know, is this illegal for us to do, but I'm basically recommending something you

recommended weeks ago. Beth and I think we both do. We do constantly. Yeah. Okay. So it's not illegal in the rule book of EIC. It's fine. So last one laughing. Oh my God. I watched it all over bank holiday weekend and I have never felt such joy from a show so easily. It's so good. I just loved them all, but Bob Mortimer is my absolute like number one of them all. Father Mortimer. Not just love them all. But Bob Mortimer is my absolute like number one of them all.

Father Mortimer. Not Richard Ayoade. I love him too. But Bob Mortimer narrowly for me is just like top comedian, top favorite person, just generally guy that I want to stan. They're also, I know I said that Max Rushton and David O'Donnelly are my dream husbands. I also will add in Bob Mortimer and Richard Ayoade. If I could have all four of those as my husband, it'd be perfect. See, I used to live not too far away from him in London. The first time I ever saw him in person, I just forgot.

Which one? Richard Iowadi. I wish it was Bob. I think he lives in Kent. I kind of thought, oh, there's my friend. I went to wave at him and I went, no, no, wait, that's not my friend. That is Richard Iowadi from television and film. He really just had that moment where I thought, I know that man intimately. It was so bizarre. Love him. Also, last one, last thing. I didn't realize that there's one for every country. There's also an Irish one, which looks amazing. The only person I saw a clip Ashing B on it and now I think that's what I'm going to watch this weekend because obviously Irish people are very, very funny and I love the show. So I think if it's on prime, I'm going to watch that this weekend. Have either of you seen

any of the other nations LOLs? I haven't, but that's such a good shout. Have you? No, I'm so happy to hear this. And also it was someone else pointed out that it was called LOL, laugh out loud, laugh on laughing. Yeah. And again, that was kind of like my Mike White, white lotus moment the other day. I was like, wow, that's amazing. Wow. They really do be making good names out there. What have you been loving this week in Oni?

You already asked me that. I think you mean Beth. No, no, no, no. I'm deliberately, we're just going to have a conversation. No, no, me and Oni. Back and forth hours, like an episode of Black Mirror. Exactly. And Beth just sitting there staring like, what the fuck is going on? we're just going to have a conversation. No, no, no, no. Like in fourth hour, it's like an episode of Black Mirror. Exactly. And Beth just sitting there staring like, what the fuck is going on?

I'm going to think I'm a ghost. Am I real? She never gets a chance to speak. That's this episode. Okay, fine. Fine. Okay. Let's go Beth. What have you been loving then? If you insist, I have one, Ruchira. To be fair, I very almost didn't and mine is the least substantial. At the top I was like, I'll quickly get in with mine and then they'll forget that I've got such a shit one. But anyway, mine is a trend on TikTok, which it's so silly. I kind of hope that you've both seen it, but it's where people say to like a friend or a family member, they go, do you know what? I'm so hungry. I could eat. And then they say the name of someone really

obscure that that person knows, but the person making the video really shouldn't know. So I saw someone say to their mom, the name of her mom's prom date from about 40 years before, someone else did the person that like, did their dad's extension in 2001. And it was, it's so funny. It's so like funny and charming. And I was gonna come on and do one to both of you,

but then I saw a video where a girl says it to her boyfriend and she's cacking away and he's like, my friend who died in a boat accident in 2011. I was like, oh God, it's so potentially dangerous. But I was going to come on and like say one for you both and like bleep the names. I was going to be like, Ruchira, I'm so hungry. I could eat. Which is someone I found on your Instagram. And I was like, if I do that, what if there's just like dead silence in the room and I say someone that you're beefing with, who was sadly not with us. But I've been laughing at these videos all day long. Wait, who was mine? It's so funny. Yours was, I hope I can remember this correctly, it was, I know I'm so hungry

I could eat ****. That's good. If you'd said a different **** I was about to really blush. That's what I was thinking. I was like, I could easily get someone you've had a one night stand with because like people tag you in photos, you follow people. I follow people. Yeah. No offense. Really would never want to hear their names again. So I'm finding this really funny, but it does seem quite dangerous. Potentially very, very risky. I've seen a few people say a saddy deceased person, but if you want to try it this weekend, report back. Oh God.

I want to do it to my mum because I felt her reaction will just be so funny. Like she'll just either like completely just laugh and like walk off, just not react or just get so confused. I'm going to do that to her. People are like, how do you know this person? Oh, it's very, it's my whole timeline right now. So that's my insubstantive, insubstantial one, but I thought good times. No, very good. On Wednesday 16th of April, the Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman

is based on biological sex. It came about after the Scottish government included transgender women in quotas to ensure gender balance on public sector boards. Campaign Group for Women Scotland, an anti-trans organisation that boasts JK Rowling as one of its most financial backers, argued that sex-based protections should only apply to people born female, i.e. exclude trans women. The judges ruled that the definition of sex, as used in the Equality Act 2010, is binary and decided by biology. A person who is not born as a biological female cannot obtain the legal protections the Act

affords to women by changing their gender with a gender recognition certificate. Keir Starmer, who previously said that trans women are women, when asked to repeat that statement on Tuesday, pointed to the judgment which ruled the term woman referred to biological sex saying it had answered that question. Downing Street later confirmed the U-turn. Asked if the PM still believed that a transgender woman was a woman, his official spokesperson said no, the Supreme Court judgment has made it clear that when looking at the Equality Act, a woman is a biological woman. That is set out clearly by the court judgment.

After the ruling, J.K. Rowling posted, I love it when a plan comes together on X, alongside a photo of herself smoking a cigar. In a piece for Salon titled, The Success of J.K. Rowling's Transphobic Fight Depends on the Future of Harry Potter, Coleman Splide wrote, the Supreme Court's decision resulted in a throng of protests in London's Parliament Square, fearing that the ruling could have a cataclysmic ripple effect on trans rights throughout the UK and embolden those like Rowling who seek to have

those rights vanquished, while an entire subsection of the UK population worried about their equal rights being stripped away by antiquated thinking and baseless conspiracy theories. Rowling sat back with a smirk. She may as well have been pictured like Dr. Evil stroking a white Persian cat announcing her plot for world domination. Ruchira and I both actually attended the march on Saturday and in fact I turned around and she was just standing behind me so we marched together which was such a nice coincidence as we hadn't planned it and I know that had Beth been in London that she would have been there too. Not a phase, a trans-led nation-wide charity committed to uplifting and improving the lives of trans plus adults wrote on social media,

while the implications of this are currently unclear there is no doubt that the ruling will serve to further marginalise an already marginalised population. It's also important to note that no trans plus people were consulted with this ruling and were not heard from during the process. A tiny margin of our society are trans women, despite the daily political and social overexposure trans plus people and trans women in particular are forced to navigate. Many of the intersectional challenges faced by transwomen are felt by all women, economically, socially and with regard to safety. To suggest transwomen are not oppressed by the patriarchy is to choose not to further understand, unpack and challenge the powers the patriarchy has not over just transwomen but all women. For these reasons it's not possible to advocate for the exclusion or redefinition of trans women in the name of equality or in the name of feminism. Trans people have always existed and are well documented

throughout history globally. Our existence long predates the oppressive structures designed to silence or remove us from the rest of society. We are not new and we are not a phase. Maxine Herron, friend of the podcast, also took to social media to share her experience as a trans woman as more hostility builds towards trans women in public spaces, as well as the particularly provocative strawman argument about trans women using female toilets. She wrote, When I was at secondary school, I honestly just went without water every day and didn't use the bathroom at all. I can count the number of times I did use them on one hand because it was always too awkward and embarrassing to make it worthwhile. If I needed

to go, I'd hold it till the end of the day. This is a normal experience for trans kids at school. I spent summers feeling so dehydrated and unable to focus. Even in adulthood, so many of my friends just don't go in public because it's too awkward and not worth the risk of harassment. If you're staying quiet on these debates right now, this is the future you're paving the way for in the UK. And then I also just reached out to Maxine and spoke to her and she sent me a few things to mention. And she said, if it's not all men, then why is it all trans women? We live in a culture which protects rapists more than it protects trans women. So men don't need to pretend to be trans to harm women.

They're doing it already and they're doing it to trans women too. The total number of trans women in the UK is 48,000. The total population of people living in the UK is over 67 million, which means trans women are less than one in 1,000, 0.1% of the population. She goes on to say,

there is no data to show that trans women are harmful to women in female-only spaces. Trans people are twice as likely to be victims of crime compared to people who aren't trans. 68% of trans people have experienced verbal harassment in bathrooms and 9% have experienced physical assault in bathrooms. And all of this is backed up by statistics and evidence, which we will put into the show notes. It's such heavy news and I feel really deeply saddened by it and by the way that our society is going. And JK Rowling has now called on the Prime Minister and the government to apologize for previous statements supporting trans women. She wrote, women have fought and are still fighting the single biggest land grab on their

rights in my lifetime. I wanted to ask you both how you're feeling in the wake of this awful news. Just, yeah, I don't know, I just feel cold when you were going through it. It's just, it's honestly beyond words, which is not ideal having to do a podcast on it, because I don't really know what to say other than it's just horrifying and appalling and egregious. And it really makes me worried about the world that we're building and the next few months, the next few years, the kind of continuation of this rhetoric. I worry for trans women, I worry for trans people, I worry for society generally. It's hard to kind of localise the fear because now it just feels like it bleeds into everything. This is so shocking and it feels

appalling on a level that I just, I can't really localise where we go from here. Yeah, second all of that completely. I think it's a situation where words fail. You know, it's disgusting. It's disappointing. I feel ashamed by proxy to live in this country that's done this hateful, regressive and frankly stupid backwards thing, watching the world around us become less tolerant and less fair, and more rigidly attached to gender norms in real time in 2025, does feel, I mean, it feels devastating and enraging. Obviously that can't be the driver, that can't be the primary emotion going forward because it's

quite paralyzing that, isn't it? If that's the driver, that can't be the primary emotion going forward because it's quite paralyzing that isn't it? If that's the driver, then you just collapse onto the pavement and you give up. I think watching people and watching the demonstration, I mean, yeah, I would have loved to be there if I still lived in England. It looked like a really enormous turnout and I think does speak to the fact that so many people, this is, I think it is a hateful minority who are allied with very, very powerful far right forces, which is why it does feel absolutely catastrophic and devastating. But was the sense there that, you know, most people do think completely contrary to that. And it is just a case of, we must not kind of drop

the fight. I mean, it did, I wasn't there, but it did look like a really enormous kind of really motivated crowd. What was so nice, it was such a lovely crowd. It was such an uplifting environment. It was such a piece. I had Astrid, my little dog with me in a bag. So I was like protesting, obviously got really busy, might get jostled around. It was just really lovely people. And we were commenting on like, it was so interesting how many police were there. There was not one moment of sort of aggravation or anger or anyone doing anything remotely violent or aggressive. And you compare that to kind of other protests, far right protests where there's like very little police action and a lot of, you know, drunken, drug-fuelled fighting. And it kind of, we said right at the end, when we got through to Green Park, the sun was shining, there were people like sat in the trees, so many

people wearing colourful outfits. It genuinely looked like Peter Pan's Neverland. It was like something out of a film and there was so many people. So that was, I bumped into a chair and her friends and we all marched together and we said it just felt like a really lovely day in spite of such a sad reason to congregate, but it was lovely to see so many people out and proud and supportive. And it just shows what a lovely community the queer community is as well, just for everyone that was there. What was your experience of it, Ritera? No, exactly the same, completely, completely same. Just, as you said, really uplifting, really motivating. And it's, I don't know, it's just such a signifier of community strength

that there is so much pain, such so much understandable pain for trans people right now. But the feeling of that protest was so joyful somehow. And protests always feel amazing. And I just, we were saying this, I wish that the people in the protest, all of us could go and the people who align with these values could just go live on an island and we could create that island and that could be our society. That would make me so happy. And it feels like such a simple thing to say. And that's what everyone always feels when they go to a protest. I really felt that, especially that day. You mentioned briefly there, Beth, you know, that it's such a small minority, this gender critical feminist

group, but they are backed by big powers and JK Rowling's really cartoonish reaction, quite Angie Tate-esque imagery that she's put up. How do you guys feel about such a wealthy singular individual having so much power politically politically, genuinely able to like spearhead political change for such ill. And what do you make of gender critical feminism in general? Because I find it, well, let me hear from you guys. What do you make of it? The one thing I will say about JK Rowling is it is so disheartening to see essentially what I thought was a crank and just kind of a mindless crank parroting shit online has had real world implications and I can't speak for anyone else, but I think that's

definitely a flaw in myself that I really couldn't foresee that she would be able to spearhead this kind of change and lobby and utilize and mobilize her money to enact this kind of real world harm. And I just completely underestimated her ability to do that, frankly. So yeah, that's something that I felt this past weekend. I really, I find her detestable. This is my opinion. I find her detestable. I think her positioning, her own positioning of herself as protector and champion of women is laughable. This is my opinion. I find her detestable. I think her positioning, her own positioning of herself as protector and champion of women is laughable. I think the way her acolytes, and I think they are acolytes, I think she has this kind of cultish figure, again, my opinion. And as chosen, in my opinion, a group, such a tiny group in society made

an enemy of them, used her sway and her cash to, well, do this to kind of further marginalize them and then gone problem solved. And I think you've just made one group more feared and scapegoated. The women that you claim to want to help, we are all mired in suffering, reproductive rights, domestic violence, rape convictions, rape culture. I just think it's classic misdirection. I think it's a crusade that does not make any of us safer. And I think it's classic misdirection. I think it's a crusade that does not make any of us safer. And I think it's just so, it's infuriating. And I think the piece that you referenced at the top is very good. It really skewers her. So many lines in that I agreed with completely. Where he writes, Rowling is playing edgelord from the comfort

of a life so far removed from reality that the truth is just a speck in the distance. After years spent tarnishing her brand with rampant trans exclusionary takes, she's assured that her writing won't define her legacy, her flagrant cowardice will. And I agree completely. I'm quite interested to see the sort of success of her new TV show. And I will, I have to say, I will be judging people quite harshly that are speaking now, but will choose to give her more money, enjoying that show and enjoying the merch, whatever, because we know what she does with that money. So I'm finding that yet to be seen. In terms of the TERF allyship, I think, yeah, they're right-wing men and they're not going to stop at this quote unquote victory. You can already see certain

people online celebrating this and saying, well, next, let's discuss immigration in the UK. And it's just this painting of a picture of UK women as these sort of needing protection, these little dames needing protection from first trans people and what will come next is immigrants. And what will come next is scary non-white men. It is already the direction that the right wing is trying to take us in and they have joined that fight. They've joined that crusade. And I think they have to be held accountable for that. They have to be very, very clear in their own minds. This is who you're in bed with. This is your cause now. You are inseparable from the right wing

on every single issue. And I'm just, it's so sickening, isn't it? One thing quickly I was going to say is if anyone is interested in the kind of deeper mechanics of JK Rowling and her behavior, there's a really good podcast on her by Matt Bernstein, who has a podcast called A Little Bit Fruity. It's from March last year. I remember really enjoying it. And it was called JK Rowling's Spiral Into Madness. And it's with ContraPoints. So I saw on Juno Dawson's Instagram, Juno Dawson is like an author, podcaster, writer, whose work I really like, who is also trans women. And she shared a tweet that JK Rowling tweeted in 2020, which said something along the lines of slightly protectionist views around, you

know, what it means to be a woman, but also in the same breath, she said, I will march for you on the day that you're being discriminated against on the basis of your gender. Fast forward five years, and obviously she has literally caused that to be an issue. And I think I was talking to a friend the other day about gender critical feminists and the demographic of people that tend to hold these views and it does tend to be white women in middle age and their views have got more emboldened, more extreme, seemingly in retaliation to people pushing back against maybe their slightly lighter views that they held five years ago. And it's very interesting to try and wonder where that's come from. And I was talking

about it with my friend and we were like, I think it is just that those women years ago were kind of perhaps the face of feminism and had very lean in Cheryl Sandberg, white feminist views, breaking glass ceilings, becoming a man. Their idea of feminism had a very specific face to it. And when intersectionality became the forerunner and when people's understanding of feminism changed and actually white women were viewed as especially white middle-class, white middle-class cisgendered women are really in the grand scheme of things, not that far away from white cisgendered men. And I think that they took that as a real hard hit. They want to feel a sense of oppression and they

feel protectionist over their own oppression. And so the way that they find to have a voice or a position is to find a way that they are oppressed and the way that they find to have a voice or a position is to find a way that they are oppressed and the group that they have chosen as their oppressor is trans women, which is completely incorrect, just factually incorrect. And we're all people with trans women, trans people in our lives. And I do often wonder if they've ever spent any time with anyone who is trans or gender non-conforming, because I don't know how you could and create such a caricature of someone that you've is just like you and I in every other sense of the word, except they're trans. And I think that that,

and it's a conversation we're kind of always having about how does the left push it further apart. But I do think there is a conversation about why did JK Rowling's views, Rowling, I always say Rowling, JK Rowling's views got so much more extreme over those five years. Was it because she became defensive and instead of listening and perhaps stepping back and taking on information, she just decided to double down? Yeah. So in that podcast episode that I mentioned, they talk about the fact that she has never backed down from anything that she tweets or says, and to the point that she will literally go in search of things to get triggered by. She'll start replying to people with less than 100 followers and start arguing with them, encouraging pylons on these people who

barely have any followings. And when she's called out for something, she finds a way to basically victimise herself and then triple down on the opinion and just goes into defence and attack mode. And that has been a pattern throughout the last five years, as you say. And that really is quite a thread in how I imagine and how they talk about the fact that she has just furthered herself along this rabbit hole of complete transphobic radicalisation. And yeah, everything you said I just agree with. It is just radicalisation to be frank. And what you said about the turf movement being very commonly white middle-class women is so apt as well. This idea that their oppression and their victimisation is paramount and essential and needs to be considered and talked about

constantly I think is a really, really problematic idea that can spread to so many different kinds of issues and people. This allergy to intersectionality and this kind of feeling that if we talk about, I don't know, working class women, brown women, if we talk about trans women, that somehow shoving our issues off the table is so ridiculous and it's such a problem. This is kind of going off piste a bit, but I remember listening to daytime radio like a year ago and they were covering the issue of should the UK pay reparations to countries that they had formerly enslaved and just hearing the kind of general public talk about their opinion on this was so distressing. Honestly, so many people just went into defense mode and I turned around to my boyfriend and I was like, this isn't even to do with them. They don't even have any stakes in the game.

They weren't enslaved. They weren't the people enslaving people. But so many people are like, well, if we start here, then what does it mean for this, this and this? And well, it doesn't have anything to do with me. Why do I have to get dragged into this? And I think nobody can have a conversation about any of these issues without going on the defence mode.

Not nobody, sorry. A lot of people can't wade into these big topics without going into defence mode and it becomes even more, I guess, inflammatory when people feel like they're oppressed as well. I don't know how you have these conversations when those are the people you're having conversations with because we had a message from somebody who listened to our podcast and when we were talking about the left and it's infighting and they raised a really good point. It's like, what do you do when the other person is a bigger or they're transphobic or they parrot these horrendous views? It's always on us to have a conversation with them and talk them out of that. It is really difficult and the onus is on us and that is just an impossible situation

to be in. Yeah, 100% to all of that, I think. It is, it is. It's the situation we find ourselves in. It's the big question for the left. It's one of the big questions. I think on the topic of visibility, I think there was that real push in the 2010s where trans people were on magazine covers. They were our favorite actresses and actors in this, that and the other. They were present. It was very obvious that this was this next frontier. I think Sean Fay talks about this a lot in her book, Transgender Issue. It was coming to a head. It was, this is the next civil rights issue. I think big, turf names are well aware of this. Because familiarity breeds trust, it familiarity does, breathes trust,

it breathes understanding, it breathes acceptance, knowing that I think this is, it drives this next sort of part of the plan, which is, as a lot of trans people are pointing out now, this is not to keep us from a bathroom here, a bathroom there, a sports club here. It is to keep us from public life. The point is to make us less visible, to make us this monster in the cupboard is to do that. I think that's why it's so sinister. I saw a tweet by Thomas Willett who said, this Supreme Court judgment is nothing more than a vanity project for a handful of privileged white women with more money and spare time than sense. It won't affect their lives in the slightest, but it will have real consequences for trans people socially, if not legally. And I think

that's the point because they're all heralding this as this victory. And there's a lot of misinformation about people saying, you know, by law, a trans woman must now piss in a urinal, all of this nonsense. Like it does not mean that it has what it's done. It's thrown a lot less certainty on interpretations of this Equalities Act. You're seeing even like Labour MPs running with this misinformation and saying things which is painfully untrue. It has attached a biological definition to man and woman within the Equalities Act. That means that spaces can now, on the basis of offering single sex accommodations, not be accused of discrimination if they were

to define women in line with what has now been the equality sex definition, rather than in line, in my opinion, with decency and common sense. But anyway, I think anyone who is now planning to be bathroom vigilante is just sad and sick and also stupid. What's happened now is it's not illegal to pee where you want to pee. It's just public spaces do not have to be trans exclusionary, but a lot of them will. I think it's such a murky, it's what it's done. It's injected murkiness into this issue. It has emboldened a lot of bigots and it's made people feel afraid. There is no victory inherent here. I think now we have to look to people like Kirsten, who's already

given his answer of whether he'll appeal to decency sense, make a right decision. Obviously not. But to governing bodies, to sports clubs and schools, whether they will make the decision. But the decisions are not automatically made. And I think that is a very frustrating thing to watch people willfully misinterpret this, to celebrate this as though more has happened than has. It's all shit. It's all bad, bad news. But there is still a lot of people left to be held accountable. And I just think, I think they've made it very confusing on purpose because they want people to be afraid.

Yeah, exactly. So because they said that the Equality Act from 2010 always was binary, that it was biological. That's what they've said. So they kind of, it's almost like they're saying nothing has really changed. That was always the definition. But it also says that the act still provides transgender people with protections against discrimination and the judges said it was not their place to weigh in on those definitions and the wider public space, aka meaning what you just said, you know, it doesn't mean that trans people aren't going to have access to single-sex spaces, etc. However, people are running with this and saying that it does. And a tweet that I shared with you both, which I just

found despicable was from Jess Gill, who's another gender critical feminist and campaigner, which read, we've won the battle against trans ideology. Now it's essential that the gender critical community speaks up about the dangers of mass immigration for women. Women and girls are being raped and harassed across the country. If you truly care about women's safety, you need to speak out against this." And someone retweeted this saying, and onwards to racism. And a lot of people have been commenting, it's like that poem that goes, first they came for and so on and so on. And then I didn't speak up and I didn't speak up and eventually they came for me and there was no one to speak up for me because there was no one left. And it very much is that, like, I think a lot of people could see this for a mile off, but this rhetoric, this gender

critical rhetoric is so pervasive and clever in the way that they frame it. And because trans people, there's been such a long project now of trying to other them, create a caricature of what it means to be gender non-conforming, create a villain and someone who's dangerous in the minds of certain people. It's very easy then to make people fearful, to create this fear, this transphobia within society and get people to subscribe to this because it sounds to some people like it makes sense, but all it's doing is opening the floodgates for more and more discrimination against more and more groups. And that shouldn't be the main place that we start. And in fact, I shared on my Instagram story on Wednesday,

something that Chloe Law said, which I think bears repeating. She said, one thing I keep thinking about is the framing of trans women's rights only as they pertain to the oppression of cis women. I understand the impulse, I've probably done it myself, and I know it's an attempt to rationalize with TERFs and their views, but that's an impossible endeavor because they don't want to be rational. Trans women deserve to be safe and have society accommodate them, period. Not just because the stripping back of these rights will impact cis women, but because it is their human right. So I always want to come back to that point. But I also do want to recognise that this won't be the end for these people. They've got desires on much more broad and further marginalisation of

other groups, which eventually we may be included in. And that is why it's so important that we always try and stand up for especially those most marginalised. Sort of on the back of that, I read a great piece by Zing Sang for iNews about the ruling and it's just, yeah, it's very good. And she writes, everything I've learned from years of reporting tells me this ruling, defining a woman solely by biological sex is a step backwards and a misreading of what matters to most women in the UK. The feminist movement fought to be seen as more than our biology. That we are now just about seen as citizens with inalienable rights and not just mothers and mothers-in-waiting is the result of generations of activism that

proposed the once radical idea that women were more than wives, wombs and property. And I think it's a great piece, which we'll link in the show notes. And it just hammers home that point that, I mean, we've all fought for each other. We must continue to fight for each other. Our liberation is entangled forever with the liberation of all women and all oppressed people. And I think to forget that is yes, to open ourselves up to what this will be, which is a complete smothering by far-right forces who have hijacked this and used this to infiltrate. And I think there's so much good writing on this, there's so many people poised for the fight, but it does, I think it's important to think, okay, this is ongoing, this will

be ongoing. Gather your energy, kind of preserve yourself and maybe get ready for it. Do you have money dysmorphia? A New York Times piece by Emma Goldberg explores. And in the piece she describes the phenomenon as, quote, a sibling of the term body dysmorphia, meaning people who look in the mirror and do not see what's really there. It refers to people who have a distorted view of their own financial wellbeing. It's a mind bending split screen view of reality, end quote. And this distortion can either come in the form of being quite comfortable earning more than most people and being on paper very comfortable and privileged, but finding yourself excessively worried about money or feeling sure

that you're a low earner, that you're not doing well and that what you earn barely covers what you need. Or it can look like being quite a low earner, but spending on luxury goods, feeling that you can afford them, they're yours. There's no hesitation that this is a life within reach. And as Emma explains, this latter dysmorphia is the one that can throw your finances and financial future into real disarray with buy now or pay later technology and credit cards, making it possible to rack up huge debt in pursuit of the lifestyle you might believe is yours, but on paper is actually not yours. And I think most of us will recognise this, we will have experienced it probably from inside and outside, ourselves and other people. We live

in a world now where we're watching luxury lives play out on social media, some of them very real and some of them very, very staged. We're also taught not to discuss finances, which is a further kind of messiness to the situation. We're taught not to discuss finances, which is a further messiness to the situation. We're taught not to tell even close friends out of politeness. I think because of that, so many of us have no idea of what other people are earning, what or how they're able to save, what they're spending, what their debt profile looks like, and whether or not they're as worried about money as we are. All of this contributes to a warped, twisted, confusing, dysmorphic view of our own finances and the finances of other people around us and of money itself. So what did you both make of this piece? Were there

any points in it where you felt called out about your own possible money dysmorphia or where you thought, okay, I know a few people who have definitely got this. I definitely think it touched on something that we experienced. And I think it's a confusing time as she points out in the piece to be a young adult because we are in an era of abundance. I remember even talking to my mum about this. She was like, we didn't have restaurants. There was like fish and chip shops. Like I never went on a date with your dad to a restaurant. Like that wasn't a thing. The life you live is incredibly abundant and we have so much opportunity. And I think because of that, we want to grasp at it. And because we live such busy lives, you know,

we want to spoil ourselves with the silly little treats and things. And I do think I have money dysmorphia in that I just don't know. I don't like knowing at the minute it's not that great. So I just like to not acknowledge what's there and just hope it comes out in the wash. I know that you guys relate to this, but my salary is really lumpy. So I really have no foresight of how much money I'm going to earn. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. So I'm in a complicated position. I'm also in a weird position where I get meals gifted and stuff. So I could go for a fancy meal that I probably couldn't afford at the time, which definitely adds into some sort of dysmorphic viewing. But something Lily Allen said recently on Miss Me really, I related with, she was like

in New York, she said, it's so expensive now that to buy groceries, I might as well have just door dashed it. And I've, we, I don't think we have door dash here, but I've stopped getting Deliveroo in a pitch to become, you to become more frugal and also to get back into more cooking. I'm just trying to not do any frivolous spending. But I've been doing my food shops and almost every single time I'm like, I honestly could have bought this on Deliveroo and it would have cost the same amount of money. Or I've gone out for dinner with my friends and I'm like, that's really only 10 pounds more. Especially if I go to like Sainsbury's Local or Tesco Extra, I have been going to Lidl, but that is like a 35 minute walk. So it's like an hour and 10 minutes out of my

day there and back. So on the one hand, I know what she's saying where it's like, oh, everyone's out for meals and you know, that doesn't add up to what we're talking about when everyone's saying that our purse rings are really squished. A food trip is so expensive that you might as well just go out for brunch, to be honest. What did you make of it? The new money supermarket expert over there, go for brunch. I think that's the right one. I really thought the piece was good in the sense of like it kind of covered it from a few bases. And the main one that I think was quite relatable was just this idea that on social media is just like the highlights reel of everyone's life. And it made me reflect on the fact that

it kind of made me view myself almost from above. And I was like, Oh yeah, because I rarely do post on social media. It really is only if I'm doing something exciting, if I'm on a holiday, or if I'm going for a meal, but that is not at all representative of my life or my day to day or anything like that. I really do contribute to that idea that possibly it looks like I'm doing that all the time and I'm really not. So that was an interesting perspective for me to have and just, I guess, kind of taking a bit of a pause on how maybe I'm not helping the situation when it comes to people feeling money dysmorphia and also myself feeling that as well. Also, this is a bit of a side note, but it really reminded me of this amazing podcast by Anne Helen Peterson on culture studies on the enduring myth of

budget culture. That podcast really, really helped me and I have a much nicer kinder approach to money and saving at the minute, which is not just like, she almost describes it almost like diet culture in the way that we internalize a lot of the shame from the messaging we get. Almost like you're not doing good enough, you're not earning enough, you aren't making the right choices, here's what you need to do. But she spoke about the fact that obviously this comes from a lot of places. Jobs aren't really in a good place right now. A lot of people aren't getting promotions or salary increases to line up with the amount of inflation that is happening. The world

economically is going to share everything costs a lot more. It is just a bad situation across the board. That is even coming from a privileged position of talking about being able to access a job, being in a job already. We can't even talk about the fact that unemployment is obviously even more difficult. Coming in from that angle, she talks about this idea of mindfulness and maybe mindful saving and just rather than internalizing the shame of having strict targets to reach, kind of treating it like you do with food neutrality and just come in through that lens. It really has helped me personally feel a lot kinder with my own personal situation and money and saving and my salary and whatever

and trying to unlearn a lot of the shame that I've attached definitely to that side of things, of personal finance. So yeah, I don't know if that resonates with anyone, but it definitely felt like it hit me at the right point. And I feel a lot nicer to myself rather than a lot of the shame and the kind of horrible self-talk that I used to do about my money situation growing up and for the last few years. I think, yeah, it's so important to have a rational view of it and to talk to yourself nicely and to not approach your own finances or other people's, or maybe other people's,

they're billionaires. But just to not have that, your guard up about it and think, I'm horrible with my money, I'm this, that, and the other, not assign these labels. Because I think the problem with finances, and I think especially are, there's just less of a culture of I think creators pop up more and more who are really shame free, want to educate women about their finances and relationship to spending money and shopping and having things and the pink tax and all of this stuff. And I think that's been so helpful for me for also dropping the shame. I think I've had money dysmorphia in the other way of, I would get really, and this is mentioned in the piece, I would get really stressed about spending

any money. I always thought when I'm screwing over future me because I, so I've always been a low earner and I mean low earner in a sense that I'm not dysmorphic about this. You know, it's, it's under the, you know, the government's heading of this is when you're a low earner and I mean low earner in the sense that I'm not dysmorphic about this. It's under the government's heading of this is when you're a low earner. It's not that I've had money to burn, but I could have fought it to do things and I've gone, I'm not going to do that. I'm screwing over future me. I should save everything. It's definitely contributed to a really weird relationship with money. In terms of this money dysmorphia, it's such a loaded argument. The thing is about are you actually broke or do you just think you're broke? I think in England, in

the UK especially, it almost felt like nepo baby levels have loaded of kind of suggesting to someone like, I'm accusing you of something if I'm saying you've got money dysmorphia. You are sort of donning being like a working class person or you are your cosplaying as a lot less well off than you are, which does happen. And I understand completely why for a quiet life, people are a lot quite cagey about their background, their money background going up, what their parents do and what their parents have, what they earn, because there is, you know, we're quite cognitive about money and things. And I think it hits a real place of sensitivity the same way as an EPO discourse to suggest to someone, okay, it would be helpful if we're

all a bit more transparent about having middle-class parents having this, having gone to this kind of school, having this kind of inheritance, whatever it is, it's quite helpful to do that. It's quite helpful for everyone to be a bit more transparent. I think that hits a real point of sensitivity and it feels almost like a value attack, attack on someone's morals. It's saying like life was maybe made easier for you by this financial aspect. Sounds like an attack when really it's just saying life was made easier for you because of this financial aspect. Not you are not hardworking, not you do not have talent, not things are often probably really difficult for you because unless you are mega rich, things we've said this, people

say this all the time, like you're much closer to becoming homeless than you are a billionaire, but we've got to be realistic. Some of us are in a comfortable position. And I've had this a few times where because I was a low earner, and I mean, I think there was one year I was talking to someone, they had paid more in tax that year than I'd earned. I'd earned about like 22 grand. This is a couple of years ago, it wasn't even that long ago. And I thought, fuck, that's not a lot of money. But then I was really tempting to be like, I'm broke. I'm actually, you know, I was feeling in my head like I was risking, I'm going to lose it all. But because I have this quite comfortable family situation, because like I've got, I stay with

someone, I can borrow money. I was never in that position. And I think I gave myself this more fear of feeling really financially insecure when in fact I had levels of protection that other people simply did not. I think it behooves us to confront it in ourselves because it wasn't serving me to lie about it. I wasn't empowered by that. It made me feel scared when I shouldn't have and it made me assume an identity that I didn't have. No one has to disclose it super publicly, but I do think it's helpful to just be really honest with ourselves. I agree. It's such a confusing thing because I had such a weird relationship with money. I grew

up with from like the age of 10, my parents having a lot of financial insecurity and my dad lost his job, didn't work for his and it's still like very financially insecure. So I grew up with a really weird kind of going from one thing to another. And when I started making money, and when we, funny enough, when we started having conversations about intersectionality, because everyone was telling me I was really posh. I never like spoke about my background and everyone would be like, you're obviously really rich. And then I was starting to make like a bit more money from my Instagram things. I was like, oh my God, I am really rich. And I would spend and pay for everyone because

I was like, I've got so much money. And I also got this really stupid guilt about being really posh. I was like, oh my God, I'm like a millionaire. And when people say, oh, I can't afford that right now because I'd never come from a family with like savings. I've never had savings. I've really only ever like whatever I earn I used to spend. So when someone said I couldn't afford that right now, I thought they would mean they literally didn't have the money in their bank account.

I did not know that people were putting money aside and had like spending money. So whatever came into my account, I can afford that because I physically like had the money. And it used to really then shock me if someone would be like, oh yeah, I've got this much in savings. I'd be thinking, but last time we went, I thought you couldn't afford that. I just didn't, I really didn't know. I paid for you. And then I heard Jordan Stevens talking about this on a podcast. He's saying that like when you're self-employed, it's like, it took me years to realize that

you cannot spend the money that you earn because you do not know if you're ever going to earn it back. So I had this like really good couple of years, maybe around the pandemic, because everything was online and actually advertising. I had a massive boom. And I was like, I am fucking loaded. And I was just spending all of that money. And then I had a really bad year the next year. And I like completely fucked myself loaded. And I was just spending all of that money. And then I had a really bad year the next year. And I like completely fucked myself over. And it's only really now that I'm like, well, I'm not even really recovering,

but had conversations around money been more open and also that conversation on class. And in the piece, there's the really interesting thing about like recession indicators, you know, skirts get longer and also the rise in sort of like aristocratic, quite preppy dressing. And it was making me think about how like at my school, which I went to, which was a private school, which also played into a lot of my dad, not coming from a family that's not very good with money.

Unfortunately, I thought I wasn't going to inherit that apparently I have for now. And the richest people, the really rich old money people always looked an absolute mess, always had the most banged up cars, always were wearing really old, random clothes. And actually there's like something to be said for, as she kind of says in the piece, when things are going badly, we want to kind of become more shiny and look like we're more wealthy. And this whole old money trend of dressing has been going on for ages. But it is, I do find it really interesting that in the UK, not only is our class system so confusing and blurred, and the signifiers are so erroneous, it'll be like, you've got a Northern accent, so you must be working

class, but they could be a billionaire or like, so I think there's so much of a muddle in terms of how we understand finances, how we understand class, that plays into our own understanding of money. And I do think that we need to be having more candid conversations. I do think there's so much shame around it. I once did a Let's Talk About, which was about the cost of sort of like weddings and handies and stuff and eventually the conversation got around to how is everyone affording this and literally everyone said credit cards and very few people admit that. And so I think that we do kind of owe it to each other to be a bit more upfront about how we're affording things. But I did feel a little bit in the piece, you know, that kind of the shade of

saying people are saying they've got no money in there going and buying dinners felt ever so slightly like millennials are buying avocados, which is why they can't afford a house. Which is like when you do have like when you're when your savings aren't going to add up to anything that's substantial, you might as well spend on a margarita because what else like where's it going to go? I know compound interest is a thing and it's not good advice. But I think when your mindset is there, I just think money is such an emotionally volatile thing, so confusing, so tied into your relationship with your money, like how you were brought up, everything. So I found it a really interesting piece and I think in this cultural climate is exactly when we probably do need to be

talking about it but also when the world is on fire it does feel like a good time to go and dance. Actor George Clooney revealed that he and his wife, the international human rights lawyer Amal, never fight this week. Clooney, who's 63, married Amal 47, 11 years ago and told CBS Mornings, quote, we're trying to find something to fight about. George Clooney is currently doing promo for his Broadway debut for Good Night and Good Luck and has controversially dyed his iconic hair black for the role, but that's a separate thing. We're not talking about that, although we can talk about that. He went on to say that they're, quote, having a really great time in life and, quote, I feel so extraordinarily lucky to have met this incredible woman. I feel as if I hit the jackpot. There isn't a day that goes by where I don't think I'm the luckiest man in the world, so it's great." I mean, that is a gorgeous thing for your

husband to say, but yeah. Some might remember the pair got married last year in September 2014 and the star-studded guest list included Cindy Crawford and Anna Wintour. They've also got two children together, twins named Alexander and Ella, who are seven. So you can't even argue that they just don't have children to throw into the mix of their marriage. They do. And apparently they are blissfully happy. I want to know, do you both think that this is some kind of classic PR quotable bullshit, or do you think that they actually don't argue and there are some couples that really, really, really truly don't fight?

I think I believe it. I buy it completely. I mean, one, I believe that what do really rich people have to argue about? Truly, but also setting that aside. I think relationships, every relationship, there's a quote, I can't remember what it is, it's like every relationship is its own ecosystem or own universe. And I agree with that. I think every relationship is governed by value systems and laws and histories and like private agreements that from the outside you will never be privy to and you just can't understand. I think some people are trying to do what works for them. Some people sleep in different beds from the minute they get in a relationship. Some people will be allowed

to sleep with other people. Some people will go on separate holidays or live separately off the year. And I think it's so easy to go, oh, God, that wouldn't work. That is crazy. Just because your character and temperament would never allow it. And then you watch these, quote unquote, unconventional relationships with these strange features outlast yours. And you think, oh, in this case, maybe it does work. So I do believe that I'm fascinated to, I want to hear about how they do resolve conflict because conflict is, especially when you've got kids, I mean, it's going to be, cannot agree on every single thing. It'd be very boring. You'd be like those, do you see those twins on the news? You'd be like that. You'd

be constantly saying the same thing. It would be great fun, but it would get, I think, a little bit old. So I want to be a fly on the wall when he's left the toilet seat up or something. Wait, what's the twins thing on the news? Sorry. Oh, it's so wild. Well, it was actually tied into a really sad story where someone was killed in a car accident. But the witnesses, two of the witnesses were identical twins, maybe in their 50s, and they spoke in complete unison. And so the kind of the story has been derailed a bit now. And they were interviewed later on,

on a news segment. And it is in unison, but it's almost like they finished each other's sentences. It is like a thing with twins, I think, but I guess they've just got so comfortable. They either literally say the exact same thing or one of them kind of joins in halfway through the sentence. Oh, sorry. I was trying to do it. But on God, are you twins? On the arguing thing. So initially this put my back up a bit and I don't know if that says more about me because I think confrontation is really important and conflict is really important and I have actually dated men who were really resistant to confrontation in

a way that was sort of like a bit egotistical. They were kind of like, I don't really do confrontation. It's like, well, you can't, if I've said you've upset me, you'd be like, you can't be like, I can't, I just talk about that, so don't do confrontation. You know, sometimes I think it can be a bit like stonewallish to deny someone the ability to bring up an issue. But then I really thought about it, I was like, maybe what they're literally saying is they don't argue as in they don't shout and they don't fight, but she's like a human rights lawyer. I'm sure she's got an incredible way with words and being diplomatic by nature of her work. They also met slightly later

in life. I imagine they've got chefs and nannies. I imagine if he does leave the toilet seat up, there's probably someone that comes around and puts it back down again. Their work schedules are really busy. So they're probably not sat working from home in a 50 square foot flat, both on Zoom calls at the same time, trying to meet each other. Like all the things that bring up petty arguments probably don't exist in their lives. And maybe when they say they don't, because initially it actually just really annoyed me because I actually think arguments, sometimes arguments for me have been the birth point of a really good relationship. It doesn't have to be an argument as in shouting, but a disagreement.

I think you need to knead the dough of a disagreement in order to bake the bread of a beautiful relationship. I just came up with that. Trademark. Trademark. So I think, I reckon what it is, is they do, they have conflict or they have discussions, but it's done very amicably and they just don't raise their voices. But I had to say that I think I would struggle. I think that would make me feel a bit gaslit if I was with someone that like literally

would not argue with me because I do think that there is emotional responses and being able to regulate your emotional reactions with a partner is really good. But I think you know, if you need to be upset or feel an emotion, I don't think that should be dampened in the name of sort of, we never have a fight because I also do know families and things that kind of always would say they never fought and then as those people have gotten older, they're like, actually, I think it's because we never really actually spoke about anything. And a lot of things were left unsaid. I'm just going to trust that they don't. But I don't think that we should be like, this is

the benchmark of a good relationship because I actually, I don't believe that that's true. I agree. I agree with both of you. I think I also felt something reading the story, which was, I guess, I don't know if it was immediate kind of judgment and then had to temper that or whether it was just surprise, maybe a combination of the two. I think that probably just comes from my lived experience that in my current relationship arguments at the beginning have meant that we argue a lot less now because they kind of, as you said, needed out a lot of the issues and also meant that we kind of got to know our trigger points and also learn to resolve. It almost felt like those were foundational

into having a really lovely reciprocal, trusting, nourishing relationship because we had those difficult conversations in the beginning. For me, that has really been quite foundational in my interpretation of what was good for me and also, I guess, my idea of what was helpful in a relationship. So it's really hard not to project that. So yeah, hearing you both speak has meant that I definitely have realized that it's so easy to project onto a story like this, that this is the right way to do things. That's the wrong way to do things. But I think you're right. I think what he's saying is not that they don't ever disagree, it's just that maybe they don't fight, they don't argue, they don't get to temper tantrums where they're just

storming out the door and then coming back in or something. But yeah, I think there is definitely something to be said about communication and communication doesn't necessarily exist in the same Venn diagram circle as arguments. You can't communicate without the fighting. I just think possibly for me as a person, maybe the fighting was a way to get to the good communication and that doesn't mean everyone has to go down that path. What is it people say? They're like, when you're having an argument in a relationship, you've got to remember you're fighting for the relationship, you're not fighting to win the argument. And I was thinking, I mean, it's what you said earlier, she's a human rights lawyer who's

represented world leaders. He is one of the most enduringly famous men on the planet who's done PR and interviews. Both of them are basically trained to not win an argument, but to be the best at saying the right thing. I think if they had an argument, it would never end. It'd be like TNT. They're both like perfectly formed to do that. I think they probably know that they have to stay clear because any argument would be never ending. Something I was thinking about is I think people who don't argue, people who really insist on not arguing, but then doing like passive communication. So if they're pissed off, they'll slam a cupboard door, they do the washing up, they give you the silent treatment, they'll huff and puff

and smash the LaCruz in the sink and like, I'm fine in that very not fine voice. I think a lot of people do that and think that they don't argue. What you're doing is way worse. That passive communication to punish your partner, to like torment them, that sits and stews. I think often it is better to just sit down, have the row. I mean, the important part of arguing is then repair. A lot of people forget to do this. You have the row, you say what you say, but then you sort of go, okay, now we're repairing because we are fine for this relationship. You sort of say, well, this happened with feelings, you behold each other and the nude, I don't really know, I haven't been in a relationship

in some time, but that is essentially how it works. You just repair and then you go on with it. I think that view of fighting is toxic. There is also, there is toxic fighting. There's fighting that I think people do when they're quite, not to do armchair psychology, but when they're quite avoidantly attached or chaotically attached, it's a way to break and then remake connection to feel attracted to your partner. I think there's a lot of ways to be honest that big rows play like a sexual and also like connective role in bad relationships. But you know, torture therapist about that. I'm not I'm not the person but I do think nothing wrong with a good there's nothing wrong with a row. Sometimes you do

just have to have a scrap and then move on with your life. I will listen to you talk about relationships for hours and hours and hours. I'm just like everything you say is so small. I agree. Esther Perel, she is here. And I totally agree about what you're saying about the toxic, because that's something as well as women we're taught that our emotions, like if we want to have an argument, it's kind of seen as histrionics or hysterical or being over the top or being emotional. But

I think that there's getting straight to the point with kind of conflict and resolution, as you said, is really important. And it doesn't obviously have to be screaming and crying and emotions. But I think that comes out when you're not being heard, when someone is denying you the ability to say, or for instance, you know, these constant stories we read of women that leave their husbands and the husband's like, I literally have no idea where she left. And she's like, well, for 30 years, I tried to talk to him about something or I asked him to do X, Y, Z, and he idea where she left. And she's like, well, for 30 years, I tried to talk to him about something where I asked him to do X, Y, Z and he never reacted or responded. And I think that there, I think we have to be really careful about demonizing

conflict and arguments. And especially if it's coming from a place of sort of like cool girl rhetoric, where it's like, I'm really cool. I never really get in arguments because I think you should be able to voice your opinions, have conflicts, also accept when you're wrong. Sometimes you can start an argument and halfway through be like, oh, actually, I think that was my fault. I'm sorry. So I think just communication in general is really important. And if they found a way to communicate without having an argument, then they really have hit the nail on the head. But I wouldn't want anyone to feel because the same as you, Ritra, I did have a sort of like, oh, reaction to it. And I think that's just because there is something we've got to be careful about sort of saying that everything's

going to be rosy and gorgeous and that arguing is a sign of a bad relationship. I think if you're arguing in the very early stages, that might be a sign that you're maybe not that compatible. Or if you're having like recurrent rouse where actually maybe this argument is not an argument, it's just you don't really like each other that much anymore. Obviously arguing can be a sign of something bad, but I think being able to raise an issue, talk about it, and then put it to bed is one of the things that you'll find in some of the strongest relationships out there. Thank you so much for listening this week. Remember to go back in time and listen to our Wednesday episode where we dive, dive, doved?

Where we dived and doved into Miranda July's novel All Falls. And if you've enjoyed the podcast, please do leave us a rating and review on your podcast player app. Five stars, please. You can also follow us on Instagram and TikTok at EverythingIsContentPod and on X at EICPod. See you next week. Bye! This episode is brought to you by London Neutropics. Their delicious adaptogenic coffee is made with premium heifaster terra mushroom extracts

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