Girls Know Nothing - S2 Ep3: Laura Bates: 'I am now on anti-depressants as a result of researching misogyny'

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

Welcome back to Girls Know Nothing! 🧡  GKN is a female focused podcast hosted by @SharonNJGaffka   Our next guest is Laura Bates BEM FRSL. Laura is an English feminist writer, who founded the Everyday Sexism Project (everydaysexism.com) in 2012, as a way to record stories of sexism faced on a daily basis, by ordinary women, in ordinary places. To show that sexism exists in abundance in the UK workplace and that it is very far from being a problem we no longer need to discuss. In 2014, Laura then went onto publish The Everyday Sexism: The Project that Inspired a Worldwide Movement. In 2022, Laura released her most recent publication - Fix the System, Not the Women, lays bare the patterns for everyone to see. By joining the dots from an epidemic of school sexual violence to the failings of the police and CPS, institutional and systemic misogyny, political apathy and media distortion, this will be an examination of how the entire system lets women and girls down, again and again. New episodes of Girls Know Nothing 🧡 will be released every Thursday, and will also be available on Spotify, Apple podcasts and wherever you get your podcast fixes!  GKN Social Channels:  Https://linktr.ee/girlsknownothing  Instagram: @girlsknownothingpod  TikTok: @girlsknownothing

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so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get-K-A-T-Z 13. Just go to Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Welcome back to another episode of Girls Know Nothing. I've been hosting this podcast for about six months now and it was a podcast created off the back of my own experiences with gender discrimination. A message that was constantly reinforced to me growing up that because of my gender, I must know nothing. During these six months, I've been so fortunate

to be able to speak to some amazing individuals learning all about their areas of business their life experiences and what has made them so successful I know that a lot of my viewers will share the same sentiment that I have learned so much in this time despite our differences and the differences between every guest I've had there is one thing that unfortunately unites us together and that is our shared experiences of discrimination. That's why I think that this next guest is so relevant and so important to have, not just because I wanted her on the podcast

for purely selfish reasons, that I am a very big fan and have read every single publication she's put out there. But our next guest and the lady sat next to me is Laura Bates, who is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an English feminist writer. Laura founded the Everyday Sexism Project website back in 2012 and her first book, Everyday Sexism, was published in

2014. Welcome to the studio, Laura. I'm so glad to finally have you here. Obviously, we will get on to your most recent publication, Fix the System, Not the Women, which we do have here. And I have read, but I wanted to start with like, you know, your initial project, which was the Everyday Sexism Project. And for those that are watching or listening that don't know what this is, if you wanted to give a bit of an explanation. Sure. Thank you so much for having me. The Everyday Sexism Project is very simple. It's a website where people can share

any kind of gender inequality. So it could be anything from street harassment to sexual violence, workplace discrimination. And we have about a quarter of a million entries on there. It's fully searchable there's branches in 20 countries worldwide so anyone can go on there and have a look you can you can type in the industry that you work in the area that you live and see what women are experiencing around you that you might not be aware of I think it's crazy that it's been

able to I'm not shocked but it's crazy to know that it's reached so many different types of audiences. So what inspired you to start the project? It was 2012. I was living in London. I had a really bad week where I was followed home by a guy really sexually aggressively propositioning me, refusing to take no for an answer. A few nights later, I was on the bus on the way home on the phone to my mum. And a man sexually assaulted me, put his hand between my legs, grabbed me. And I said what was happening out loud because I was on the phone to my mum. I just kind of blurted out, oh my God, this guy's

just groped me. And everybody on the bus heard. Everybody looked out the window. Nobody stepped in. Nobody tried to do anything. But no one even made eye contact with me and it felt like they were saying we don't talk about this keep this to yourself this is your issue I felt so embarrassed I ended up getting off the bus at the next stop walking the rest of the way home never telling anyone else what had happened and a few days later I was walking down the street and some guys started shouting at me you know shouting about parts of my body about stuff they do to me and I just suddenly started thinking about these three things that happened so close together. And the thing that struck me was, if they hadn't happened in the same week, by coincidence,

I probably never would have really thought twice about any one of them because it was so normal. I was so used to that kind of thing happening throughout my life. I'd only at the time quite recently graduated from a university where there was a supervisor who wore a black armband every year on the day that women had been allowed into the college. And I started to realize it had become such a normal part of my life that this is just part of being a woman. You put up with it.

You learn it from such a young age that I'd never really questioned it. It was the first time I ever started talking about sexism, saying, hang on, why? Why is this so normal? And people said sexism doesn't exist anymore. Women are equal now. So the project was my effort to try and get people to see it, not even necessarily to fix it initially, but to try and force people to recognize that this was a form of discrimination that was affecting people's lives every day. Yeah, I mean, like you said, when you talk about sexism in general, especially now, I mean, when you started the project, social media was kind of just kicking off.

It wasn't online as much as it is now. The biggest comment or throwback that I get is that women are far more protected in society now, that it doesn't really fit, it's not really a thing. And, you know, I mean, I'm unsure about whether I think misogyny is a bigger problem now than it used to be. But I know that we are no longer tolerating it and trying to speak out about it and call it out.

So, I mean, do you think misogyny is a bigger issue now? Or do you think it's just people like yourself that are more actively calling it out? I think it's probably different. You know, I think there are some things that have improved, obviously. You know, women can get their own mortgages. You know, there are various different legal challenges

that have been overcome because of incredible campaigners. Of course, we've made progress. And I understand why people point to that. But we know that we are still living in a country where 85,000 women are raped every year, half a million sexually assaulted, 54,000 women a year lose their jobs to maternity discrimination, a quarter of women experience domestic abuse, and where rape's basically been decriminalized.

You know, if you report a rape to the police in the UK at the moment, there's a 1.4% chance that a perpetrator will be charged or summoned. So the idea that, oh, there's no issue anymore. You look at those statistics, you think, come on, clearly, there's still a massive problem. So I don't know if it's got worse, if it's changed, if it's kind of more visible because of social media. But I think the main thing is, it's still a massive problem. And we do still have to challenge it. I think it's one thing now that when we feel like we've defeated one challenge another one crops up because of something the way society is changing and I just feel like it's an exhaustive battle to constantly keep going to ask for something that seems like common sense totally um and you know for any of the viewers that haven't actually checked out the

project or the book I would highly recommend. I think it actually changed my perception on what sexism is or, you know, I felt like I could relate to a lot of the things that happened or the things that you'd written about. And I think that was one thing that really shocked me is that, you know, I was like, oh, you know, these things happen, like being catcalled in your school uniform at 14. Oh, these things happen. Actually, it's sexual harassment. And like, we should start calling it for what it is. Obviously, there are other publications that you've written. So I briefly wanted to touch upon another one that you'd written, which was called Men Who Hate Women. We did make a bit of a brief joke about how I had a nice guy friend over who looked at my bedside table when I was reading the book and said, isn't that really anti-men? And I was like, I questioned his reading ability if he couldn't

see men who hate women, not all men hate women. I'm sure you get that joke all of the time. We are seeing a huge rise in misogyny influencers. You know, it's all over social media, the press at the moment and about how much of an impact it is having on our young men and men who are now weaponizing the internet against women. Who do you think is to blame for the indoctrination of these vulnerable men? Well, the internet lends itself to that radicalization process, particularly through algorithms. So for example, YouTube, if you start watching a fairly innocuous video that's about women or about feminism, the videos that will be suggested and served up to you by the algorithm will take you down a really

increasingly extreme rabbit hole until suddenly it's, you know, women don't deserve the vote, women should have their rights taken away, women should be the property of men, you know, and then from there is a pretty short step to, you know, women should all be giving men sex, and if not, they should be raped. I think it's a combination, the responsibility belongs in lots of different places. But definitely social media platforms and algorithms have a really big responsibility. And at the moment, they're not facing up to it. They're not following even their own guidelines. You know, so there are certain influences spreading extremist misogyny that in, for example,

one case clearly breached the TikTok guidelines, but TikTok had pushed out this content to over 11 billion viewers, like more than there are people on the planet. So there's obviously an issue there. There's an issue, I think, in terms of government taking responsibility around sex education, around supporting schools and teachers to deliver it.

It's not enough just to put it on the curriculum. They need to fund it. There needs to be training. And then schools also and parents, I think, have a role to play in supporting young people to really deconstruct these ideas so that they're not on their own trying to deal with them yeah i think when i've spoken about the indoctrination of men i always put in is vulnerable men because these are for unfortunately men that feel like they have no role model to look up to or feel lost in some kind of way and they're looking for something that is slightly relatable or an answer for their problems and unfortunately sometimes when we're in that place, it's easy to blame a group of people.

When the group of people becomes an entire section of society, like an entire gender, it's really hard to try and battle it. One argument I always see as well is that, do we think that there is female equivalence of these misogyny influencers online, especially with the way we're talking about TikTok algorithms, for example? Well, we know that there aren't. I mean, like it just doesn't exist in the same way. I think I once interviewed Gloria Steinem

and I asked her this question because I'm always asked, aren't women their own worst enemy and so on? And she said women don't have the power to be their own worst enemy. And I thought that was just so incredibly powerful and also so true. I think it's really telling that when we think of these men as vulnerable and we recognize the problems that many of them face, people then tend to look at women and go, okay, so maybe women are unkind to them, or maybe it is women's fault. Instead of saying, actually, the offline spaces where men could receive support, particularly vulnerable teenage boys, where men could receive support particularly vulnerable

teenage boys where they could get a sense of belonging and being kind of looked after and supported a sense of community those have been decimated by the cuts that the government's made to youth centers for example by the underfunding of teenage mental health services so instead of going actually if these groups are vulnerable we should should blame women, I think we should say, if there are real issues and challenges affecting teenage boys, which of course there are, let's look to societal responses to that. Let's look at increasing funding for youth centres and teen mental health, because that would make a real difference to this cohort of people. Yeah, I think the one thing that I've experienced quite a lot of recently is cat calling by teenage boys in school uniform um a lot of the time it's not just like you know oh you look nice in some kind of way it's quite sexually graphic language something that I would

never have even considered to come out of my own mouth at the age of 27 let alone under the age of 16 and you know at one, I recognised the school uniform. I'd pulled up, they had teacher on it and they were like, oh, we're doing X, Y and Z. And I was like, but, you know, there's one thing to teach about misogyny, but it's like, you know, you have to look at the whole,

the way your school ethos works in general, because there's something about the school. I had a lot of women reach out to me saying they also suffered with similar issues from pupils of the same school. And it is an all boys school. So there's obviously something in the ethos of the school that's a big problem as opposed to just the internet. And I know that, you know, for example, my parents have no clue what goes on online. They are basically apart from YouTube videos where they stalk me, they have no access to the internet whatsoever. So they would be powerless

to do anything if my brother, for example, ended up in that same kind of cycle. And I don't really know what is out there to be able to support parents to save their sons, essentially. It is really difficult. And I think a lot of parents feel understandably really concerned. One thing I'd say is that you don't need to be really internet savvy to tackle the wider issues. Actually having lots of small, non-threatening, it doesn't have to be one terrifying conversation, little and often small conversations

about gender stereotyping, about respect, about consent, about healthy relationships, all of that will help. Even if you're not immersed in the online world yourself, you can still talk about those wider issues. And you're so right. It's so much broader than just like one lesson that the school might have had. It's well, is the whole leadership team of that

school white men? Because that's sending a message to pupils. If the senior leaders are all a specific type of person or, you know, does their school dress code send girls home for wearing short skirts? Because that is teaching boys in a roundabout way that girls are to blame if they get harassed that girls should be covering themselves up instead of teaching boys how to respect women so it's so much broader than any one thing and that goes for parents and and schools I think yeah I mean before we kind of like go on to another bit, I know that, you know, some of the things you have covered in your publications are quite hard to listen and to hear,

especially when we're talking about actual sexual offences that have taken place to underage people within schools. I think I was watching one of your interviews where a school was dealing with an inter-school rape, for example. And the teacher asked the boy, why didn't you stop when she was crying? And one of the parts of the things that you researched was that, oh, that's normal. Yeah. It's normal for girls to cry.

It's normal for girls to cry during sex. Yeah. And I think that when I heard heard that it actually made me feel really shocked and actually question about my own sexual experiences like you know that's something a behavior they're learning from when they're very young and they're actually carrying on into adult relationships it's not just that they're young and naive and I don't know like every time I talk to people about potentially putting in proper sex education in schools. They're always met with kids don't need to learn about sex or about LGBTQ relationships or pornography because it's a non-issue. Yeah.

What would you say to those kinds of people that don't think sex education should be an integral part of the curriculum? Well, we've actually just this week had some really good new research. We know that 50% of 13-year-olds have already seen online porn. We know that 60% of kids have seen it by the age of 14. A quarter see it by the age of 12. And this new research has found that about 80% of young people see porn that involves sexual violence. And it's having a huge impact on their ideas about what sex should be.

So about half of them now think that girls expect sexually violent behavior like choking during sex. So that's a massive impact. And it's a big group of young people. We're not talking about just one or two kids accessing porn. If we're talking about half of 13 year olds, then I would say, how can we bury our heads in the sand on that? We owe it to them to give them the support they need to deal with this kind of misinformation that they're seeing online. And I think what makes porn powerful is the vacuum. If you're seeing that kind of content and there's no one anywhere else talking to you about sex or healthy relationships or respect or consent, then you will think that that's what sex looks like in the absence of anything else. So the way to take away the power of misogynistic porn is more conversation,

not less, not shutting it down, not saying don't talk to them. It's giving them as much opportunity as possible to talk about what real sex is like and how different it is from porn. And unfortunately, there's still so much stigma and taboo and fear about that. But opening up those conversations as much as possible is what we owe to young people, I think. Yeah, definitely. I think it's really hard for me to hear that, you know, well, 12 years ago when I was doing sex education, it was a blue penis and a condom and it's still the exact same conversation. Do you think that the porn industry has some sort of responsibility to change how it kind of shows sexual acts. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. We know, for example, that one eighth of the videos served up to first-time users

on the front pages of the biggest, like, easily accessible porn sites show rape or coercion or illegal acts. So it's really common for kids accessing porn for the first time to be shown something that is degrading, humiliating, hurting women. And of course, they have a responsibility. But I think we haven't seen the porn industry take much responsibility when it comes to women's welfare, sex trafficking,

any of those issues. So I think I totally support action on that. But I also think pragmatically in terms of what we can do and what's in our control, working on sex education and those conversations we're having with kids is probably the more kind of realistic route to go down. Do you think that your mental health has been drastically impacted by your research for your publications? Yeah, definitely. I'm now on antidepressants, know medication that i wasn't on before i started it i think what was the like hardest thing that you had to like experience and read through when you were going through your research without a doubt it was um forums i was researching sort of extremist misogynistic forums and there was a school shooting in the united states and they were

sharing videos i don't know how they got the videos and they were sharing videos. I don't know how they got the videos, but they were sharing them. And there was this conversation, I will always remember this day of research, where some of the users were complaining because there wasn't any sound and they said they wanted to hear the girls screaming when they died. And there was a rumor going around that at the time that the shooter had been rejected by a girl at the school before going on this rampage and these men were saying that they hoped that he'd raped her so that she died knowing that the man that she'd rejected had been inside her and that was what they said which is a horrendous thing to share I know and I wouldn't usually talk in such awful detail about the stuff I've seen

but part of the problem is that you can't talk about it because it's so awful. And what that means is that when we discuss this stuff in wider society, people think, oh, it's just a few men letting off steam on the internet. You know, it's just a few off-taste jokes. It's not. It's communities of thousands of men

who are fantasizing about women's violent deaths. And that was the worst day that I had to just close the computer and go and cry I think one of the biggest things around it or the biggest fear I have is that because of the level of anonymity you have online you don't necessarily know who these groups of people are they could be your family members like your relatives they could be your friends your neighbor and that fear of not knowing I think is what scares me the most as opposed to actually reading the comments online because you could be letting this person

by choice into your life no not knowing what they actually truly believe or think yeah and people struggle with that because when we talk about these people people think of them as like extremists like you can see that in the word troll even, like the idea of someone under a bridge, like the idea that these people, they have nothing to do with society. But the reality is that they are colleagues and brothers and partners and men that we walk past on the street and work with. The most chilling example of this during my research was a man who ran one of these websites. And online, he would write things like rape isn't all bad because at least the rapist enjoys it and so on he was a you know really misogynistic man

turned out he was a serving US politician he was a state representative or there was a case of a guy who'd sent the most appalling horrendous abuse to some women in the public eye and he was a dad of two who coached his son's soccer team. So we have to get away from this idea that these are kind of monsters, nobody knows, because sadly, they're not. And even at a more kind of less extreme level, these ideas are becoming really prevalent, even amongst, you know, good men, men who wouldn't think of themselves as misogynists. For example, 27% of American men now say that they wouldn't have a one-to-one meeting on their own with a woman in the workplace at all. Because this idea that women are making up false allegations and

that they're dangerous has become so widely accepted, even though it's total nonsense. I think that actually blows my mind. And to think that my ex-colleagues, for example, would have a conversation with me because they're worried about false allegations crazy I actually think I remember one of the teams I used to work for a couple of years ago a man had made a me too joke to me because I tripped over and he'd like stopped me from falling he was like oh well don't get me done for like harassment and I or like assault and I looked at him and I was like well that's not even funny no I don't know in what world people do think it's funny. And because I was one of two women in the team,

I didn't feel like I could say anything. Yeah. Or call it out because then I would be isolated from my work team. Yeah. And it's that, it's a real choice that women have to make about whether they feel isolated from the groups they feel like they belong to.

Yeah. Or stay in silence. Totally. And in some areas, like female police officers have been talking about this recently. And a lot of them have been saying, if you whistleblow, like if you speak out about it,

you don't know if someone's going to have your back in a dangerous situation in the street. Like it's kind of life or death to speak out. So it makes it so much harder for people to talk about it. I guess like moving on, like when you're talking about police and like the systems and things, obviously your most recent publication,

which came out, was it last year? Yeah. Yes, Fix the System, Not the Women. I was very lucky to get a copy. I'm very grateful if you send me one. But what was your kind of like main purpose for writing the book? I was just so

angry and frustrated that we had this high profile conversation that was happening that had been very sadly triggered by the deaths of a lot of women that have been in kind of in the news and even when we were finally talking about the problem the responses were so inadequate and they were all so focused on women and what women could do. So you had the police and crime commissioner who said, oh, Sarah Everard shouldn't have submitted to that false arrest. Women should be more streetwise about when they can be arrested. You had 200 attack alarms being given out after Sabina Ness's murder to women in the local area. You had Bobbie Ann McLeod's murder and then immediately the male leader of her city council

saying we shouldn't be putting ourselves in compromising situations. Like again and again and again, we had even the Met putting out statements saying women should think about flagging down buses. Or you had the police force that are meant to be the national lead on spiking saying maybe women should carry anti-spiking kits with them on a night out. And I just couldn't believe that we were talking about this still as if it was something women could simply be a bit smarter about avoiding instead of recognizing this is a public health epidemic. This is an epidemic of male violence against women. I was so frustrated with the fact that in any one of those cases, there'd be a media

coverage, an article that called it an isolated incident. And I wanted to join the dots and recognize this as a wider thing, but I also just wanted us to look at fixing the systemic problems instead of assuming that we can somehow fix women and it's their fault. It's quite telling that a lot of these people

clearly don't know how to, have never taken a bus before in their life because sometimes you can't even flag it down when you want it, let alone when you're in serious trouble. And, you know, I remember seeing statistics coming out that with these attack alarms, people are less likely to respond to it than they are if you yelled fire.

Like I saw a tweet thread and it was, you know, if you were in trouble, what would you say first? And I said the first thing that came to my head was fire yeah not I need help because realistically who's gonna want to help me in that situation yeah um and I know in the first chapter of of the book you talk about like the first chapter is dedicated to a list um dedicated to the list of reasons as to why we as women have decided to change our behaviours in line with society. So I don't know if you want to talk a bit more about kind of your list and the reasons for that chapter. Yeah, I just, I realised that all through our lives, we're essentially

gaslit on a national scale. As women, we are constantly told, oh no, you've got the wrong end of the stick. You imagined that. It didn't happen that way. It was probably your fault. What did you do or say that caused it? That wasn't because you were a girl. He just likes you. It's boys being boys. You should take it as a compliment. He meant it as a joke. And when you brush away all of that and let yourself acknowledge your experiences, I think pretty much every woman I know has a trailing list of incidents. And it's really varied, you know, like it varies from incidents of being rated out of 10 at school to being sexually harassed in the street, in some cases,

sexual violence, workplace discrimination. My list started when I was five years old, and my grandparents met my baby brother for the first time and gave my mom a piece of gold jewelry and when she looked at my dad afterwards and said what's this for he said it's because you finally had a boy you know like it can start from that young and before you even know it's happening or what it means and our list looks so different you know obviously there are so many women whose lists are combined with racism, with homophobia, with transphobia. But the thing that I think often unites them is that we're not allowed to make them at all. We're encouraged not to think about it as a structural thing. We're encouraged instead either to dismiss or blame ourselves or to think it didn't really happen or that it was our own fault.

And I think for me, making that list and recognizing it as systemic oppression, which is what it is, it is really empowering because there are a lot of behavioral things that we then think are just our choices. Like, oh, I'm just not the kind of person that likes to exercise outside. Or I'm just not the kind of person that asks for a promotion or puts myself forward. When actually the fact that we've had these experiences our whole lives are what's forced us into those behaviors it's really interesting you say that you're I'm not the type of person to exercise outside because when I was a teenage girl that was me um you know I'm weirdly it's not that I'm free of catcalling now but have

more experiences of street harassment at the age of 14 in a school uniform than I do now as a full grown woman. It doesn't matter the age. I don't think it makes it acceptable. But evidently, when you're in your school uniform, it makes it worse. And you're unsure as to why it's happening. And you don't really realize it's their fault and it's nothing to do with you. And for so long in my life I wouldn't run outside yeah even or I would get up at 5am as a 14 year old to run in a place where I knew nobody was but that's not safe either yeah so realistically like what are you supposed to do and you know we talked briefly about the the death of Sarah Everard and the woman the advice that was given to women you know I used to live in that area and I used to

walk across the same path that she did on my own multiple times so to and to be living near that space was terrifying to me and you know we were talking about how women were told to restrict their freedom essentially because it wasn't safe for them. I had a conversation with a male Twitter user about how would they feel if a police officer said, actually, no men are allowed to go out past 9pm or past sundown. And the response was, well, that's absurd.

You can't restrict the freedoms of innocent people. And I was like, well, take your own advice towards women. And they don't see that restricting women's freedom as an issue because I feel like people don't see us as people. Yeah. And because we're so used to it, we're so used to that attitude that every woman I know has learned these hundreds of lessons, right? Like don't wear a short skirt because it'll be your fault. Don't wear heels in case case you need to run don't wear headphones so you can hear if someone comes up behind you don't wear a ponytail someone could grab it make sure that you keep your hand over your drink go to the bathroom in groups text each other when you get home safe carry key between your fingers so as

a society we're so used to that that when the police knocked on those doors in Clapham and told women not to go out on their own everyone went well it's just common sense isn't it you know like there's a guy out there killing people we don don't know who it is. It's just about keeping women safe. It's not about blaming them. But if the police had said the men can only go out in pairs because one of you is killing people, we don't know which one it is, it's that outrage of restricting their liberty. As a society, we are completely comfortable with restricting women's liberties. And I think the thing that like really revealed that so tellingly was actually what everyone tweeted after Sarah was murdered which was she was just walking home and she did

all the right things yeah and then we saw it again when Aisling Murphy was murdered and everyone tweeted and shared online she was just going for a run and I know that of course no one shared that like meaning it maliciously I totally understand why people said it. But if you look at that, it is quite chilling because as a society, what we're really saying there is these were tragedies because these women weren't asking for it. Like these were perfect victims who didn't deserve to die. And what you're saying there, even completely inadvertently, is there are some women, like if she was out at two in the morning or was wearing a short skirt and heels or was drunk in an alleyway then what do you expect and that's where we're at we're at this level where if women's freedoms aren't completely restricted and constrained and they don't keep completely within the lines we kind of shrug our shoulders

and go well you know she deserved it what did she expect and that's horrifying yeah I think it's something that I experience I think it's it's an unconscious bias thing as well that I've experienced from my parents. Not saying that they've done anything wrong, but I even now notice a very different way in which they speak to my brother and I. So I've lived away from home for nine years. I've moved to London, done all these things.

And when I come home to see my parents they're like oh even if it's 5 p.m old dad will take you home in the car because you shouldn't be out walking and I'm like it's 5 p.m like I'm walking my dog I said I'm allowed to do that or you know be careful if you're going to the shops it's dark but they would never dream of saying that to my brother if he was going out out with the lads at goodness knows what time or goodness knows where so you know it's something that I feel like a society we've just learned to grow up with and now I've started to challenge my parents I don't you know why do you say that to me and not to my brother they say well we do and I was like well you don't it's obviously a gender thing and they don't realize that they're being

not misogynistic or sexist but it's somewhere in them yeah saying that we have to do more to protect you than we do your brother yeah and i i briefly pointed out on my social media recently there's a whole capitalist market out there designed for protecting women keychains like weapons that are technically legal because they're not weapons or like mini spray cans of mace and all these things anti-rape underwear yeah varnish that you can twirl in your drink to see if it's spiked and it changes color yeah or like scrunchies that have like lids for drinks and things yeah and if people don't realize there's a whole capitalist market for protecting women if that doesn't tell you there's a problem I actually don't really know what else can um and I don't know I mean you've probably experienced it yourself but another thing I

wanted to talk to you about is one of the chapters in your book called putting the victim on trial um obviously we've talked about briefly the ideal victim, the victim that wasn't asking for it. And we've seen a very famous case fairly recently where the accused was found not guilty, but there was quite a substantial amount of public evidence against them. I mean, you probably have your own thoughts and opinions on that case itself, but I feel like it makes women become more scared to come forward, even if they have this stacking case of evidence,

that they might not get any kind of justice for themselves. Totally. And the problem is that our justice system is so suffused with the same prejudices that run rampant in our society. Like, obviously, jury pools are drawn from the population, and we know in the population that the British Attitude Survey found that a third of people think a woman is partly or fully to blame for her own rape if she was flirting beforehand. A quarter of people think she was to blame if she was drinking.

So it's completely understandable why people don't want to come forward, because we don't treat it like any other crime in our public perception of it. Like we would never look at a case of someone who'd been burgled and have people sharing on social media, yeah, but had you seen how much money he gave to charity? Like he was totally asking for it. You would never see a victim of arson going to court

and suddenly finding that they'd gone through his social media and found pictures that proved that he through his social media and found pictures that proved that he once went to a bonfire night party and people saying so you probably actually loved it like watching your house burn it's just we don't treat any other crime in the same way our justice system is just not fit for purpose when it comes to sexual violence and nor is our police force you've got 800 officers currently under investigation themselves for sexual misconduct. And we know that when they actually face allegations of sexual assault, only one in 18 Met officers actually faces any disciplinary action. So at the moment,

it makes total sense that people just don't have any faith in the system because it isn't working for us. It's like when you talk about when people say not all men, it's like not all people in the system. Yes, totally. You just don't know which people in the system and that's the problem. Yeah. And also I think there's a point where there's kind of a tipping point where if there are enough people in the system that normalize it, then it becomes an institutional issue. When you talk about institutional misogyny, the term often confuses people because they think what you're saying is every individual in that institution is misogynistic. And of course, you're not saying that. Obviously, I know that there are individuals

in all of these systems working hard to try and do the right thing. But if you look at policing, for example, you've got Wayne Cousins whatsapp groups where he is sharing horrendous misogynistic racist comments about domestic abuse victims and so on and then going on to commit a rape and a murder or you've got the Charing Cross inquiry with officers sharing horrendous misogynistic racist messages you've got the Bieber Henry and Nicole Smallman case where the officers who were supposed to be guarding the cordon where they died shared images of their murdered bodies. So obviously at that point, you're in a system where the atmosphere and culture

of that institution is such that you feel emboldened to share that stuff with others. Wayne Cousin was nicknamed a rapist by his colleagues. Carrick, the other officer who's recently been revealed to have been a serial abuser, also had a similar nickname from his colleagues. So at that point, that's a culture problem. It's not just bad apples we couldn't have seen coming.

It's a problem in an institution where those attitudes are completely normalised and celebrated and that's never going to be solved unless you tackle it at its roots and i guess it goes back to that whole horrific cycle about wanting to whistle blow but not feeling empowered enough to be able to do it and then you just end up in a very vicious cycle that we really can't get out of yeah um going on to that i know you in the book you do cover and in other interviews that you've done about now having the fear of reporting,

not just as women, but like male victims and male survivors also have a fear of reporting because of the way that sexism is ingrained into society. Did you ever, when you were doing research, come across a similar thing that males were experiencing? Absolutely. And sometimes in a slightly different way. So the thing that we hear from a lot of male survivors is this massive stigma that they face because of gender stereotypes that suggest that men can't be victims of sexual violence, or that if they do, it's emasculating. There's this sense

of like, you should have loved it. There's this sense of, you know, this assumption that all men are always up for sex. So, you know, how could a man be sexually assaulted? There are often homophobic forms of abuse, because it's very common for male survivors of sexual violence to be victims of male offenders. And that's really frustrating. I find that often when we talk about male survivors, people try to pit them against female survivors as if you care about one or the other. When the reality is that the problem we're talking about in both cases is usually male violence.

So actually, we are all on the same side here, tackling the same problem. And so often they're kind of manipulated or they're kind of used exploited by groups claiming to care about men whose actual motive is attacking women and who do vanishingly little to actually support male survivors so I am a an ambassador to a female domestic abuse charity and I often get backlash being like well do you not care about male survivors and it's like the charity does and I do. And if a male survivor ever went and approached them for help,

they wouldn't be turned away because they're a women's organization. They would just find them the right avenue for help. And I think that's something that I keep telling people and I keep trying to remind them, but I'm fighting against the massive system that is trying to indoctrinate them to believe that I'm against them. Yeah. When that's not true at all. And, you know, there's one thing about going against the system,

but when you also add in media side effects as well. Yeah. And media misogyny, you know, we're seeing female athletes often being talked about their physical appearance as opposed to their ability to be a good athlete um you know we see like Serena Williams and um the female football like the lionesses and things like that or um you know we had the Grammys last night and Adele's weight loss

has also made headlines as opposed to Adele as an incredible artist yeah and do you think that well obviously media does contribute to it do you but do you think it has as much impact as you know feminists are saying that it does yeah I think so it's massive because it's about the way that we as a society think of women then like if every woman in the public eye is portrayed through this lens of never mind what she's done even if her sporting prowess or her musical genius is like so exceptional, what really matters is how sexy she is. And like, you know, let's dissect her body and her weight fluctuations as if that's the most important thing. We extrapolate from that as a society that that's the most important thing about the women in our lives. And it has such a massive impact. We know that five is the age when girls first start to worry about the

size and shape of their bodies. We know that a quarter of seven-year-olds have been on a diet to lose weight, and it goes up to 80% by the time that they're 10. And I think maybe one of the most heartbreaking statistics ever is that the number one magic wish of teenage girls in America when they were polled was to be thinner with all the things that they could wish for it's devastating and it affects lives in every area to such a degree so I think yeah it's massive and the media absolutely drives it they're not solely responsible for it you know it's in advertising and like a whole, like you said about kind of capitalist industries around making women smaller and obsess about their weight and bodies and perceived flaws and imperfections. It's, you know, it's not just media, but they have a massive role to play for sure.

So, you know, you actually can't physically remove freckles. And that's something I have to keep reminding myself. But when I was younger, I used to think that it was something that made my skin dirty and it made me less beautiful. And like I would see adverts of ways to remove it or full coverage makeup to hide it. And even now as a grown woman,

now that I've come to that realization that they're beautiful and they're fine the way they are, is that even if I achieve, I could cure cancer, but somebody would still talk about my waist or how tall I am. I get comments all the time, she's too tall, which I don't think is true.

I'd love to be taller. But like the reason I want to be taller is because of stuff that I'm consuming as opposed to like, do I actually want to be taller? Is there a need for me to be taller doesn't make a difference to my actual everyday life and I think it's it's not just something that impacts women it does impact men as well because we know now we're seeing airbrushed photos of men and like they're having their own capitalist things trying to profiteer off their insecurities as well. And it drives a massive part of the system

that I don't think people really realise that now we're having to compete not only just to be able to achieve something in life, but to also be for society to think that we're beautiful. And do you think that causes young women to potentially not want to go into subjects like STEM subjects and follow those potential fields? I think that's part of it. And I think there's also just so many stereotypes that are so difficult to shift.

We still hear from girls being told like, oh, science, really? Are you sure? Like, oh, physics is normally quite hard for girls. That's not really a girl's subject. By the time that you reach A-level at over half of all state schools, there are no girls at all studying physics. And that's really quite mind-blowing. But if you think about the messages our society sends them, it becomes less surprising. Like walk into a toy store, go and look for a science kit, and you'll see it under a big blue sign that says boys toys.

Or more subtly than that, the packaging will be blue and there'll be boys in white coats in the image on the front. Or even go to your supermarket, walk down the magazine aisle, and it will say men's magazines and women's magazines. And under women's, you'll see celebrity and diet and gossip. And under men's, you'll see the New Scientist, and you'll see National Geographic, and you'll see The Economist. So we get these messages from all around us all the time that certain things aren't what girls should be interested in. And I think social media is certainly added to that in terms of kind of pressure and unrealistic kind of suggestions about appearance and that kind of thing. But it's just coming from everywhere and that has such a massive impact. I think one thing where I feel very conflicted all the time is that, am I part of the problem or am I personally part of the solution? Because,

you know, a lot of young girls grew up wanting to be an influencer, for example, because they think it's glamorous and everybody thinks they're beautiful and it's such an easy, carefree life. And because I technically fall into that category of career, am I now part of the problem despite everything else I do because people only see me as the pretty pictures on social media as opposed to the fact that I'm a law graduate and I worked in politics and I had all these other things before and I'll have those things for the rest of my life and that's something that I constantly try to educate people but it's something that's very conflicting can you be part of the solution if you're also part of the problem? I think if you're using your platform in a way that you are, you know, to represent refuge,

to speak out against spiking, to be going into parliament and trying to raise the voices of people who are reaching out to you, then you're sending a message to those people who are following you that it is completely possible to do those things and to tackle those issues. And you're using that profile to raise those really important issues, which I think is really positive. Do you think that like all the publications you've written are also part of the solution? I hope so. You never know. There's no way to measure it. There are certain things which I'm really proud of that I know have changed things. Like I know that it was the thousands and thousands of entries from teenage girls at school that we shared in Parliament

with ministers and MPs that helped to put consent on the curriculum. I know that it was, we used 2,000 of the entries from women on public transport directly to retrain 2,000 British transport police officers to change the way that they responded to sexual violence on the network. And we were able to see the reporting rates go up by about a third afterwards and the detection of offenders. So there's really clear things that it's great to see. And it's really special and moving when people reach out and say, you know, reading your book made me realise I wasn't alone

or that it wasn't my fault. But I think all that any of us can do is try and do our little bit I think we have this thing in our culture at the moment where we expect people to be completely perfect and to do everything for every cause and to fix every single thing and that isn't realistic in terms of our messy lives like I think the fact that you are doing so much and yet here questioning and worrying about yourself is a really clear example of that when there are so many people out there doing nothing like you know not doing anything at all and yet particularly as women I think we hold ourselves and we are held to these such high standards that just are impossible and that's why people get burnt out and that's why people kind of move away and I think instead I'd love to see us focus on this idea of everyone that is

doing something that's brilliant. And if all of us did one small thing, then together, that would be the big picture that we need. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something. And that could be incredible and beautiful to see if we encouraged rather than kind of tearing people apart. Yeah, I think that I can really relate to what you said about burnout because I don't I was never sure if it was me as a person or ever it was my gender as a woman that we're told that we can fix everything or we're the motherly figures as to like why can't I fix everything like I should be able to help everyone when realistically I know I can't and it's always that conflicting like argument between myself in my head um obviously the you know we talk about people that can't do everything there

are politicians that might not be able to do everything but feel like you know we look to to be able to do the most for majority of the people in this country yeah um you know off camera I briefly made a joke to you that I nickname it sometimes pessminster as opposed to westminster because of the ridiculous claims and stories that you hear that yeah i don't understand how anyone can deem it as normal behavior in society let alone in the biggest but you know thing in that part of the system in the country um we were saying that 10 of legislators are in this country are being under some form of investigation for either misogyny or bullying

or harassment of some kind. And I mean, do you think it's a massive struggle when you kind of take your stuff to Parliament and try to have conversations with people knowing you're fighting against ideology they've had for years? Yes, definitely. And again, it's important to say that there are individuals working in that

system who I've met and worked with who I know are genuinely like working their socks off to try and fight these things and do good but you definitely also have meetings with men who are basically laughing at you or with men who will say things to you afterwards like you're very glass half empty aren't you you know just just be patient like don't worry your pretty little head type stuff you know just be patient women are doing much better than they were it'll all be fine and yeah I mean when 56 of our currently serving MPs are under investigation themselves for sexual misconduct you have to question how committed they are to any kind of measures to tackle this

at an institutional level. Because actually, it's a workplace where they get away with stuff that just wouldn't be accepted more widely. You know, you've got men watching porn in Parliament, MPs, you've got these MPs who are under investigation, presumably still meeting with vulnerable constituents. And as far as I know, since the news of that 56 figure came out, there's been no transparency. There's been no public update about any of those investigations or what's happened with them. So I think it is a real concern,

not least when we had very recently a prime minister who was known for deeply misogynistic remarks, you know? Like, how are we supposed to trust those people to be doing anything to help us if you've got voted into the most powerful position in the country, a guy who said you should vote for his wife's party to make your wife's breasts grow bigger,

or that if you didn't like what a woman said in the workplace, you should pat her on her bottom and send her on her way. That is clearly not an institution with our best interests at heart. It's weird because in a way that they should be the easiest people to remove from those powerful positions because we as the people have the power but if we're not given the knowledge of who is actually doing this we can't remove them from these seats of power and i think that's part of the reason why we don't know yeah um because it's shooting themselves in the

foot realistically unfortunately they see it as more as a power than as actually what their job is intended to do and that is to to help people and you know when i go to parliament sometimes i'm nervous about who i'm talking to about spiking yeah because like you said there are mps i've met that are incredible and really do believe in that cause and want to help you, but then you just don't know which ones aren't. And then you feel like you're fighting a losing battle when you're talking to them and they're like, oh, it's not really a problem though, is it?

Like it's just imaginary, but it impacts them too. It impacts their female MPs too. And we're seeing stories of female MPs saying sometimes they're too scared to go to work because of forms of misogynistic abuse not they're receiving by their just by their colleagues but also by people in the public that want to unseat them because women shouldn't be in power absolutely and that comes back to what we're saying about it all being connected because if you look at some of the media coverage of female MPs it massively normalizes that you had the new

cabinet at one point when they'd been literally promoted to like the pinnacle of their political career. And there was a double page spread in one of the newspapers calling them girls on a catwalk and like comparing their legs and their makeup. Or you had Nicola Sturgeon and Theresa May on the front page after a really high level meeting about Brexit. And the headline was, nevermind Brexit, who won Legxit? And it was about comparing their legs. Or even more recently, the treatment of Angela Rayner with that story suggesting that she was like uncrossing her legs to seduce Boris Johnson. It's so absurd. But if our biggest national papers are treating them that way, it kind of gives a green light to individual

constituents to think like, yeah, I can send them an abusive email and it has a massive effect on our democracy because at our most recent election there was an unusually high number of younger female MPs who stepped down which wouldn't have been expected at that stage in their careers yeah and I think a third of them cited misogynistic abuse as one of the reasons why they were leaving yeah I think i remember um years ago stories of theresa may like what she was wearing as opposed to like her political beliefs i think when liz trust became prime minister you know regardless of whether you believe in her ideology or not why are we talking about what she's wearing and it there's a problem in it as well, I think, where we put women against other women.

There was an all-female panel talking about power dressing and the suits that she was wearing as opposed to the words that were coming out of her mouth. And I was like, are you doing that because you've been told that's what sells and that's why you do that?

Or are you doing that because, you know, deep down there's some deep root of misogyny that women have for themselves? I think it's really easy to participate in the status quo without questioning it. And it's hard to go against it and try and disrupt it. And of course, internalized misogyny is a real thing. We all live in a world where we get baby grows literally before we're one year old that say, I'm going to be a superhero in blue and I hate my thighs in purple. Those are real examples. So we live in a world where internalizing misogyny is a coping mechanism, a survival mechanism. We all know that being the girl that says,

I'm not like other girls and laughs at sexist jokes or whatever it is, is a way to cope and survive and to deflect negative attention away from yourself. So, you know, yeah, it makes sense for women to participate in patriarchy as a coping strategy. But I still think, again, that they don't have the power to be their own worst enemies. Like, I don't think that that is the biggest part of the problem. I think it's a much wider issue. Yeah, I think it's just certain groups on the internet are trying to blow out of proportion as the biggest issue. Obviously, the ending of your book, you kind of touched upon solutions and things that individuals can do to play their part in trying to fix the system and creating safer spaces for women. I'm sure it's a question you get asked all the time, but is there

ever going to be a solution? I hope so. I mean, part of a question you get asked all the time, but is there ever going to be a solution? I hope so. I mean, part of the thing is that there are a lot of obvious solutions. We know what they are, but they just haven't been implemented. Really basic example, there isn't a specialist rape and sexual offences unit in every police force in the country. That is an obvious thing that would make a difference overnight. Thinking about training for juries, for example, in gender bias and kind of, you know, gender stereotypes could make a difference. Changing the makeup of like the diversity within politics, within newsrooms, within the judiciary would make a difference. So there are kind of high level things that organizations and companies can put in place.

As individuals, I think it's about going back to that thing of thinking, what small thing can I do? Because if we think about this as a huge issue, it's easy to feel so disempowered. Kind of very similarly with climate change, I think. It's easy for people to go, like, this is so huge and I cannot make a dent. So what's the point? But if everyone thinks that we're screwed, and if everybody actually did a couple of small things, then it would make a huge difference overnight. If you've got like 1% of people never flying, recycling everything, never ever buying

new stuff, you know, and so on, like that's amazing. But if the other 99% shrug their shoulders and chuck their milk carton in the bin, then we're not getting anywhere. Whereas actually, if like 80% of people did two or three of those things, then the difference would be huge. And I think it's the same with this. It's not to say that everybody has to be on every march and signing every petition and waving every banner and, you know, pushing this in every conversation they ever had. But if every one of us did one small thing, whether it's the conversations that we have with our sons about consent and respect, instead of telling our daughters not to go out in a short skirt,

or whether it's being the person that just mentioned something when they're on that bus that night and they see something happening, be the one person that says something instead of looking out the window. Or whether it's being the person in the workplace that says, you know, I've noticed that we don't have a sexual harassment procedure, like maybe we could do something about that. If every one of us did one of those things, then cumulatively the difference would be massive. So it's about not feeling overwhelmed and disempowered, but just thinking like, what one small thing could I do? And maybe that's enough. Yeah, I always go back to this kind of one time that I experienced walking home late at night with a man behind me.

He crossed the road and walked on the opposite side of the road because he knew it'd make me feel safer. And like it was the smallest gesture you could possibly do. But I will still remember it to this day. And it made a huge difference to me. So, you know, small things do genuinely really matter, especially when we're talking about tackling sexism in a big way. I wanted to kind of end this episode on a final question. So I wanted to ask you what you would say to those people who doubt the lived experiences of those people

that you've been talking and writing about. I would ask them to look inside themselves and wonder why. Like ask themselves why their first reaction to hearing that a quarter of a million women have spoken out about these experiences is to say, I don't believe you. Because it might be something that they've read or heard online. It might be that they've absorbed some of these kind of misinformation without realizing. It might be

because it's easier not to believe that it's happening than to accept that there is this huge, scary problem out there that we need to fix. Whatever it is, there are so many women so courageously raising their voices together. They can't all be making it up. They can't all be getting the wrong end of the stick. They can't all be looking for fame or any of these ridiculous things that people are saying as if anybody wants to be famous for being a victim of any of these things. So I think just questioning some of those kind of reasons why people think it is quite useful. And also perhaps looking at the statistics. When people ask me about false rape allegations, which they do so often online, I point them to this statistic

that Channel 4 News recently uncovered, where they looked at the numbers and they worked out that a man in the UK is 230 times more likely to be raped himself than falsely accused of rape. And if that shocks you, then it says something about what you've consumed online without necessarily even realising it.

I think that's a really powerful statistic to end this episode on. I wanted to, you know, thank you for coming on and being completely honest, you know, about your own experiences and things that you've seen online. It's not an easy subject to talk about, but like the postcard you sent me with this book, when you stand up for women, when you stand up for yourself, you stand up for all women. So I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you so much for women, when you stand up for yourself, you stand up for all women. So no, I just wanted to say thank you. Oh, thank you so much for having me. Hi, I'm Richard Karn, and you may have seen me on TV

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