If I Speak - 77: What’s the difference between a girl and a woman?

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

*The If I Speak Baggu bag is ethically made, comes in two colours and is available from shop.novaramedia.com* What would it mean to be valued simply as a woman – not as a mother, wife, caregiver, girlypops or MILF? Ash and Moya talk about their animal natures and fear of motherhood in a chat spurred by […]

Maybe you'll be in the bar. What are you singing? I'm singing someone to call my lover by Janet Jackson. I saw someone on TikTok say, this is what it sounds like to date a white man. Because like, maybe we'll meet a bar, a fancy car.

I don't know what white men they've been dating. I don't think it's about the things. It's about the sounds. I think that you're less likely to get a fancy car. No, it's not about, it's not by the objects in it. It's about the tweenus of it. It's the like,

do, do, do, do. That vibe. The hair bands. I tell you. what sounds like dating a white man for me. It's Heartbreaker by Mariah Carey. Heartbreaking, you got the best of me. Before we get into it, how are you? How's it going?

Oh, how's it going? It's going both pretty well, and there's also large problems hanging over me. But on the whole, really good, tan, healthy, putting my phone in another room, when I go to sleep, which has really improved my sleep due to a podcast episode that I heard. That was, so we're back on Methaphone. Methothone is coming back. Nice.

I relapsed when I moved, but it's coming back. How are you? I am really good. Yay. Despite having had like a very worky weekend and having to squirrel myself away and just like bash some stuff out, I also had a really, really good weekend.

Reasons for that being my housemate took me to the gym I've never been inside a gym before because I found it too intimidating and too scary but turns out I love it and I really like doing weights I thought you'd like doing weights

into it so into it anyone who likes Sisyphia and tasks will enjoy doing weights yeah I mean it is when you're benching for the first time it's really scary yeah I don't do the weight room

I use free weights. Because I don't, I don't, I don't like waiting. I don't like waiting for my weights. Oh, look at that pun. I know, I refuse to be cat. I refuse to wait in line for the fucking benches. So I'm always, I'm doing my own bench in situations with the barbells you can put together. That's also a tip.

If you don't, if you're worried about the weight room or the being perceived on the weight floor, there's always studios at the gym where there's free weights. And they do the exact same thing. So that's tip. Oh, that's exciting. you're starting your gym era what led to this i know i was i just i've been thinking about it for a while because i wanted to do i wanted to get stronger in the bits of my body that yoga can't make stronger because yoga there's no pulling right like and it's you're almost always just controlling

your motion downwards and like pulling yourself back upwards um and it means that there are certain things like handstands that i can't do because my arms are never getting strong enough like i can do a headstand but I can't do a handstand. So going with my housemate, that was great. And then I tell you what else I've been doing and you can't judge me for it, but it was also really, really fun. I don't judge you?

I mean, my housemate started watching old WrestleMania's. Why would I judge you for that? That's again, pure geese energy. Like, that's so, what do you mean? Why would I judge you? That's in line with you. That's clearly something you're going to love. It was so much fun because, you know,

we both used to watch wrestling when we were like, little kids and it's one of those things that stays in your brain and you don't remember that you remember it until like maybe five seconds before someone's entrance music and you're like oh my god I know all the words to this song time to play the game or like whatever this stayed in that's so fun oh one of my sweet friends did you ever watch wrestling when you're a kid or are you like what do you think I would guess no no it's not in line with it's not in line with my access. It's not in line with my access. I didn't watch wrestling. I was on the pop channels. I want to know. I want to know from any other special ones if they watched

wrestling. And I've got very, very specific questions for those special ones. Did you also think that Kane and Undertaker were real brothers? I mean, I've heard of Undertaker, if that helps. Yeah, well, you would, because he's very, very famous. I mean, you had this gimmick that, you know, seems to have stood the test of time. But we have this whole thing where, like, undertaker killed Kane's parents in a fire and that's why Kane had to wear a mask because his face was all fucked up from the fire. Turns out not real brothers and there was no there was no fire. There was a part of me that I knew that the wrestling matches weren't real but I thought that the storylines going into them were. Well I mean like that as a child you

kind of like can tell a bit of truth but there's some things you wouldn't you're like how deep does the deception go? Also that's amazing that they were kind of doing Kane and Abel oh yeah yeah yeah that's look at these biblical inspirations how fun and then cane took off his mask and he just had a normal face and I was like what the fuck

it healed no oh medicine's really advanced more Jesus more Jesus stuff and do you have questions I've got questions for you and my questions are stolen

this week two of them are anyway because I went to an amazing club event and had the best night out I've had in years that's not on my own club event apart from Charlie X, EX at Glastonbury last year, not this year,

which was also an amazing event, but that was because all my organisation came together, went to an amazing event. It was the event I sent you, Ash, it was that slow jams event. It was so good. They played so many slow jams. I was surrounded by the most

beautiful, nice people possible. It was like going to the football as well because there was so many men just like emoting to songs at the end they got them even got the scene like fucking also I play the climb at the end of I played the climb at the end of my club night

and they played the climb here and I was like wow I'm in a safe space I'm in the safe space as possible but you're watching all these men yeah all these men going is the glass and I was like this is what the people yearn for this is why at my own events I play music with words because the people yearn to sing

and you're watching these guys like singing the house to like everything from Usher to like Kendrick it was so nice it's so nice anyway while I was at this event also another thing ethnicity-wise

white men don't know how to chirps other ethnicities do yeah I've realised this because I went and I was like oh my God

I'd forgotten that you can be chirps I've forgotten that you can't chirps white men can't jump white men can't chirps white men can't chirps I'd also

because I used to go to a lot this was a predominantly black event and I used to go to loads and loads of them and then as I've got older I guess I just don't go to as many anymore, partly because, I don't know, I run my own club nights, so I'm not

really down in the events anyway. Often it's like, you know, you'll go to a random bar in Dulston. It'll just be like a mixed crowd, whereas this is predominantly black. And I'd forgotten how good it does feel. Forget what I said about my ethnicity. Like, it turns out I do, I do have a connection to it. And it's forgotten how nice it. No, no, it's the church, it's not the church. I've forgotten how nice it is to be surrounded. by black and mixed black people an event it really did feed something in me

anyway but the chirpsing yeah because at the moment like I have been up to a lot of predominantly black events and then when you go and you get chirps you're like oh yeah I forgot that actually people can chirps and why I mean by that is they'll come and talk to you and ask you questions

whereas the two other types of chirpsing that I've been experiencing recently have been in the street like or in a pub where someone's just like oh how do you know it going girls yeah the question you do always get is where you from because everyone needs to pigeonhole you immediately yeah yeah yeah they're like where you from and they all think I'm like

Latina I'm not sorry I kept doing my Commonwealth 101 mix and they love that line um everyone loves the Commonwealth 101 one X one one mix line but then I got asked some interesting questions and my number one question for you Ash is what was the last piece of art that inspired you to make something oh god and this doesn't mean just like paintings it's like anything creative and that you read any watched oh my god maybe i lead a really uncreative life um come back to me on that one i don't think the answer is nothing can't remember it i just i'm not used to thinking

of my own activities in that way. So give me a minute, give me a minute. I'll give you a minute. My second one is a question that I asked on my Instagram that I really want to know the answer to, which is, what song sounds to you how it feels for you to fall in love? Not a song about love,

but what song sounds like how it feels to fall in love. Specifically your experience of falling in love. um the demo version of love never felt so good by michael jackson it's the one where it's like baby love never felt so good but why does it feel like falling in love to you there's a restraint in his voice there's a tentativeness in it and there's a sort of sincerity And it, for me, it very much has to be, it's just like a click and a piano accompanying his voice. So it's very, very simple.

I think for me, the feeling of falling in love, it's not, I don't want a super layered or rich or baroque kind of production. Because for me, that's artificial and obscuring. It was that stripped backness where then you can hear the tentativeness and the vocal, which for me, that feels like when you're falling in love and you're a bit like, oh, what's happening? Oh, I love that. I love that. What about you? Oh, mine was, I've got several, but the one that I set off the question was Luther by Cizor and Kendrick,

which I'm obsessed with because it's so, like you say, it's so tender and it's so, and the way it moves it's like floating me I'll take a way to I'll do a slow maybe you're a star pose exactly

it's like it just it's just the entire emotion of that is so like floating it's like I would I'd give you anything and we can do anything

and you know if it was up to me I wouldn't let these no bodies I wouldn't give them no sympathy it's just like you want to defend your love for everything but you also just like it does go in out and do it real slow you know like it's just a great song anyway you know what

you know what something happened this is a few months ago now which is I was with my partner and we were at a friend's birthday party and one of their loose acquaintances was really mean to my partner like just really really mean in a way which was like so clearly motivated by a kind of like insecurity but it is also something which I've seen like a few times where it's sort of like

you know a queer person reading someone else is cis and straight and being like disgusting and it's like look it's not a hate crime but it is boring and uncreative and so this person was just like really, really ragging on my partner. And every attempt that my partner made to turn it into a shared joke or sort of, you know, turn it into maybe we can, we can bond rather than you like coming for me. This person just like kept flipping it back. But because of how we were all sitting at the time, I don't think this person realized that it was my partner.

And the only thing bitchier than a white gay man is a brown woman who went to an all-girls school and so I went in studs up I was like it's very rare that I get to take the silencer off but I did it and afterwards my partner was like I fucking I emptied the clip um and afterwards my partner was like that was incredibly hot you know he was like I didn't need you to do it um like I didn't feel uncomfortable but I really liked you know it's that thing of like oh I get to spring to you defence. I enjoyed it. Yeah. This is the thing when you're in love, it's just like, only I get to call them next. His self-esteem is mine to break, not your house. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Okay. Okay, third question. Do you have friends who are specifically party only friends?

No, but I would say I've got friends who are more party friends. but not party only. And I think that that's something that's really nice about it, which is there is space for emotional intimacy with everybody. Like some of my friends who are the most like parody hardy people, I also have something separate, which is something that we do, maybe just the two of us, where we're really locked in with each other.

So I would say no. Hmm. What about you? Me, um, no, but I think that's because I used to, but now I only categorize my friends as people who I have, as you say, the external relationships with. And also I'm starting to like, if I'm just a WhatsApp friend to you, you're starting to be dropped down my categorization of how close we are. If we're only doing WhatsApp only, then I think it's got to be, we've got to have IRS.

Have some IRL in there now. Should we move it along? So I have an intrusive thought and it's inspired by the guest that we had on last week, Sophie Gilbert, and her brilliant book, Girl on Girl. I've been thinking about what it means to be a girl versus what it means to be a woman. And the other thing which has really inspired me on this is from talking to Blind Boy, who's an Irish storyteller and podcaster and artist. And one of the things that he says is, you know, gendered expectations have never been useful. So the advice of be a man, actually so often for him, what that means is react like a child.

So react in an outsized way to any sense of threat, blah, blah, blah. for him the key question is how would an adult react to this thing and so I'm interested in that because I'm not I'm not necessarily sure that the same applies with womanhood but we can we can get into it look it's no secret that I don't like this culture of infantilizing adult women and interestingly queer men as well with the whole like girly pop brat thing I do I find it irritating and I find it regressive um it's something about it sets of my teeth on edge. And I don't think we have to get into that again because it is just, I find it really annoying. But I am interested in what the boundary is, what the differences are between being

a girl and being a woman and what it means to value womanhood when so much of what's valuable about femininity is rooted in girliness. And we talked about femininity before and whether or not we feel that's something that is able to reflect aspects of ourselves or not. But I do think that femininity is, it's very girl coded. So to be feminine is to be not wholly capable or wholly competent or wholly agentic in the world. So you're in this space between being a child and being an adult. So you don't, you know, you're not. you're not a child in the sense of, you know, an unsexed being, but you're not an adult in the

sense of you've got responsibilities and capabilities of your own. You're not fully in control of yourself. And it's interesting to me that in porn, there are basically two categories for cis women. There's the teen and then there's the milf, right? Regardless of whether the performer is actually a teenager or actually a mother, those are the two categories for women. And I'm not saying that porn ought to be progressive, but as Amir Srinavassan says, porn does train us. It conditions us for certain sexual scripts and certain ways of understanding each other. So my question is this. What's the difference between being a girl and a woman? How do you navigate the concept of being a woman or not? And what would it mean for women to be valued as adults and not as being

proximate to children either through being proximate to being a child or being proximate to having a child. So many questions. So many questions. So many questions. I mean, you have answers to this, don't you. I don't have answers. I don't have answers. I don't have answers. I have inklings. Do you feel like a woman? Like a natural woman. I don't mean in terms of woodhood, but I mean, we're talking about here instead of like, girl versus woman, you, what does it mean to to be a woman, and we're not talking about gender here, we're talking about adulthood. I mean, I was thinking about a core memory I have

of when I was 16, literally, just turned 16, and there was this guy who was a few years old, and not loads older, but like 19, and we hooked up, and I remember him looking at my body and being like, oh, this is the body of a woman. And I was like, what does that mean? And I was trying to work out at the time if it was a compliment or what it meant.

And I think what he meant is that, you know, I've got curbs. I'm a curvy person. I have an ass and I have breasts and I have more than 2% body fat. And it was something that felt weird at the time. But then again, also everything to do with sex felt weird at the time. because I was that young and had no sense of my own desire. My agency was being expressed through,

I think I want to have this thing, not what do I want to do when I'm having it. And having that being reflected to me about my body when I got the sense that my friends who had more slender builds and in particular those who were white were being understood in a different way. I felt adultified

and that I'd skipped something. I'd gone from being a child to being a woman and I felt that there was something in between that I didn't really get to experience. And so when I was preparing for this show, that was a memory which popped up but I don't necessarily know how to contextualize. It's just something that happened

and I'm not entirely sure what it means for me. although I do have a suspicion that when I was in my teens I was getting treated more as an adult in ways which were kind of fucked up but I think now the idea of being treated like a woman whether it's by my partner or by people around me

feels like a form of respect it feels like an acknowledgement of capability of grownness of trust certainly when I think about my body and my appearance and I think about aging and I think about aging out of you know the window of what you're taught is desirable and thinking well no this is a woman's body hearing that or thinking about that the age of 33 is really different from hearing that at the age of 16. It actually feels like

an opportunity for sexual self-ownership and understanding and doing things on your own terms and being in tune with your body, whereas I think hearing that at the age of 16 felt really dissociating from your own body because you're going, well, how I perceive myself and how you're perceiving me are wildly, wildly different. And I think that there is a, you know, I know I just said I don't want to think about proximity to children, but particularly this year, everyone I know is having a kid, right? My best friends, like most of them are pregnant, very, very sad victims of teenage pregnancy at the age of 33.

But what it is their bodies are doing is also a bit of a mirror to my own, even though having children isn't something that I think I want. Being pregnant isn't something that I think I want. But my best mate gave birth a couple of weeks ago. Oh, congrats. I'm so, I'm so done. You're an auntie. Congratulations.

I'm so, so delighted for her. And she's the friend with whom I've always been in step and we've always done something at the same time. And I suppose I thought, oh, maybe. will you having a child make me feel further away from you and look I've not I've not seen her the baby yet because you know

she lives in a different country so does the baby you know like her they actually have in two different countries yeah they actually have she just she fucking threw it like an American football cross borders she was like enjoy France and you know

her and her partner and the baby have to bond and whatever very selfish for them to put them in their family unit first performing. But actually, I don't feel really far away from her. I feel really interested and curious about what her experience is. But then I also feel like, wow, like seeing you do this, because I identify so closely with you, it's making me think of the fact that my body can do all these things as well. And that once upon a time, right, when you look at the old like ancient little fertility statues, like the image of womanhood was like a big belly in really big breasts and, you know, really wide hips. And I'm not saying that that's any more

progressive than an image of womanhood, which is stick thin. But it's interesting that so much of it is about, no, this is a body which has carried children. This is a body which is breastfed. And these are all things which are, you know, so, either they become fetishized within the world of porn, right, in a way which is, is, is, you know, so, either they become fetishized within the world of porn, right, in a way which is, is, you know, hugely, hugely objectifying or it's rendered invisible, completely invisible. So I realize that these are just thoughts which are completely disjointed. And I'd tried to do some reading and some research before coming into this and it didn't make sense of it anymore for me. But it is something which is

on my mind at the moment. So share with me your disjointed thoughts. I do have, I do have loads of thoughts, but which were the bits that, like, you were trying to make sense of it? What are you trying to make sense of specifically here because that's what I want to nail down like what are you trying to make sense of um is there a difference between being an adult and being a woman for those of us who are coded as or identify ourselves as women am I misunderstanding because I see being an adult and being a woman as the same status like I I mean I'm I've just never separated them, which is such a boring answer.

Because when you're talking, I thought it was so interesting when you're talking about what you think of when you think of woman, it was all around the body and the development of the body, whereas mine completely is around what I can do with myself.

Mentally, financially, for me, the difference between being a girl and being a woman, and this is obviously not true, it's just how I codify it, is you can't fuck with me when I'm a woman. As a girl, It's like this idea of, you know, there's a vulnerability.

And I'm not saying that women aren't vulnerable. What I'm saying is the way it's just broadly codified. In my mind, it's like, as a girl, it's like, if you call me a girl or I'm girly pops, it's like that weakness we talked about, that vulnerability. And I'm not saying in an emotionally mature vulnerable way. I'm saying in a, oh, I don't know what to do. Can you help me? Kind of way.

And there's the ability to be fucked with. whereas as a woman I'm like you can probably hurt me you can do things to me but you can't fuck with me in the same way I'm not as

impressionable I'm not as easy I have standards I have boundaries not as pliable there's a pliability in girlhood I'm not pliable

I'm not nubile I am much more rigid I am much more I have a score of steel rather than like the soft willowy willowy girls you always hear about

about willowy girls. And then it's like, no, I have a core of steel. And I have always, I think I've always just like, from the jump, been so excited to be a woman. And now I do very much feel like a woman. And I do notice the difference in the ways that I might be received to someone else. Where I do have like a level of don't fuck with me-ness.

That doesn't mean people won't fuck with me. It doesn't mean I can't get hurt. It doesn't mean that I'm not as susceptible to all the other things that, you know, people are susceptible to. I'm susceptible to violence. I'm susceptible to other things, but it just means my conception of self is much more like this is where I stand, this is what I have, this is how I'm going to protect it, that's, you know, we talk a lot about agency and autonomy. A woman, I think, has agency on autonomy

and wants to exercise it, whereas I think a girl is much more unsure and wants someone else to tell her how to kind of exercise that. That's just like my, it's all intellectual for me. It's all like in the mind, it's all in like the presence. I think that there is something about, because I think you're right that for me woman carries all these connotations of like you can't fuck with me you can hurt me but you can't fuck with me but then there's also something else and maybe this is just this is a reflection of how much this is about the body and how bodies are understood is that there is something about womanhood which I feel puts me in touch with the fact that I am an animal which I mean you know girls are supposed to be

right we're talking about constructions of various kinds of femininity we're not talking about how people actually are you know hairless smooth um you know scented um whereas there's something about when i think about um you know i'm a grown woman and you can't fuck me it's like well no because i'm an animal and i've got teeth and i've got fur and i've got you know muscles which are coiled and like ready to spring um you know there are elements of you know there are elements of nurturing and care but it doesn't come from a sort of like serene

Madonna and child you know I think about that ability to care as being something which is also connected to an ability to protect so not just to nurture but to defend and to protect

I think that for me also being a woman and I think that this is maybe different from how blind boy understands being told be a man which means you know be a man protects your honor you know dominate and you know that kind of thing is that being a woman and it's different from being a girl also means having a very developed emotional repertoire exactly so exactly there are there are these animal elements of sort of like stink and funk and hair and teeth and nails.

And then there is also this bit, which is experience, perspective, understanding, empathy, which isn't the same as rolling over. Whereas for me, the like the girly pops thing. And I suppose like this is, you know, I think that this is an interesting tension at the heart of Brat as an artwork. And I'm not trying to say like, oh, this is just stupid. I think that lyrically, this is stuff that Charlie X, X, X was thinking about, thinking about motherhood and thinking about purpose and thinking about whether this is a form

of life which is stunted or limited. But I think that the brat cultural moment isn't that. It's a sort of, yeah, I don't know. Like when I was encountering, when I was leaving. Skeptor at Glastonbury and like there was the surge of the brat people coming at me because following Skeptor was Charlie. I was just like, Jesus fucking Christ. Like, oh my God. Well, that's because I feel like brat, well, Brad doesn't always sound like it's a brat's child. A brat is like it's fucking brat. It's like tantrums, you know, very reactive, doesn't have control of

their emotions, can't regulate, pure just kind of impulse. That's brat. And I think a lot of what's sold to would be women nowadays in the consumer market is products that keep them in girlhood and keep them as like the impulsive pliable consumers who'll just buy this. Because when you develop as a woman, in my opinion anyway, so I'm not saying that I don't fucking go mental and vintage sometimes, but it's like I know that won't make me happy. I like my items but I'm you know 10 years ago I had a very different consumer relationship to how I could buy myself into a certain

way of being or a certain way of you know they've all got the Stanley cups they've got this and they've got that and it's like I think girlhood is just much more it's much more commodified whereas being a woman as you say it's like the teeth and and the fur and it's like I think of

Andrew Dawkin rather than say Charlie X-X, even though that doesn't make Charlie XX, you know, I think probably behind the scene, she's very woman-coded in the way she goes about stuff, like adulthood, but the public persona Brat is a different thing. So yeah, I think it's, I just think girlhood as well, that's why it's been so snapped up because it's much more easy to sell as a product, whereas you talked about the emotional repertoire. It's like a woman has self-worth, and when you have self-worth, it's much harder to exploit that

for uh to like make you uh pliable consumer that doesn't mean we don't buy we all live in a capital system but it's so different like you're not buying a new football shirt every day you're not buying the new gold hoops every day you'll have like i don't need this these are my priorities these are my responsibilities like my priority is i want to go to therapy i don't need another set of hoops i i would like to you know invest in a house it's one day so i'm going to make these decisions again like we're saying these are both like really broad brush archetypes the way we conceive these things but yeah womanhood to me has always been like I've got my shit together or I'm getting it together I'm always in the process of knowing about my shit and I'm getting it

together and I'll never be perfect but I accept that whereas I think girlhood's a constant sort of like coquettish striving to be and it's much more built around also being in relation to men even if like even if you're not straight in girlhood like it just comes with with this idea of, I don't know, there's a Lolita editor-ed to it, isn't there? Whereas I think when you're a woman, it's like you exist fully as yourself without having to like exist in tandem

to male desirability in the same way. I would be really interested to hear from somebody who is trans in terms of how do they perceive and relate to the distinctions between girlhood and womanhood, and when it comes to feeling accepted as your lived gender, is the desire to be accepted into girlhood, which is also a more desirable form of femininity for all those reasons

that we've talked about, desired by the male gaze, or is it about being accepted into womanhood when there are so many facets of womanhood, which we've talked about, which are to do with, you know, hair, stink, gore, and it's unfeminine, right? There are these aspects of womanhood, which are really, really unfeminine. Yeah, I think it really depends on how you develop what validates you. Like, I've got so many friends who definitely fall on the girlhood side of wanting that, but I see them moving towards the woman bit now, because they're like, this is not making, this is not giving me the steel call that I want of self-sufficiency

and it's not giving me a well of self-worth that I can pull from. I feel constantly empty because I'm always looking externally for proof that I am a human being and I exist and that proof is just coming back to me as like, be always, you know, coquettish and, you know, alluring and back your eyelids and be a little, be girly, be girly, wear your little skirts all time. Whereas it's much more fun to just be rolling around the stink and not get the fuck. Like I was in the queue at that event I went to and a guy asked me what I was currently reading. And I was like, oh, it's a book called pornography.

I saw him look horrified. And then I said it's by, he was like, who's that by? And I was like, oh, it's this woman called Andrea Dawkin. She's a radical feminist. And he was really polite, but I could see that he was utterly repulsed. And he went, oh, yeah, you women love that kind of stuff. And I said, what are you reading? He said, oh, a book about business.

And I could see, just by the way he was talking about it, he thought he was like, I wouldn't even say better, but he thought he was, like, smarter than me. And, like, he knew more, and that I was just reading my silly little feminist history book. I was just like, it makes me so sad that you'd never want to read that. Like, it's full of, like, fury and anger, and you don't, I wouldn't agree.

I don't agree with all of what Dawkins says, but the way she writes is so exciting and so interesting because it makes you think, whereas I'm like, I read business books, too. I read how to be a good manager. And I'm sure they set your lights there, but you're just missing out on so much by writing off everything that's to do with, like, grown-up women business.

Grown-up women business, not silly little girl business, grown-up women business. And a lot of, I think so, because obviously we live in a patriarchal world, but because we live in a patriarchy, so much of, like, womanhood has to be positioned as repulsive, positioned as, like, you know, unnatural and disgusting and, like, these angry women.

And it's just like, you and, missing out in such a rich part of the human experience and I, but I don't give a fuck because it's like I don't need these people to validate me. If I needed that, I'd be in the back in the girlhood bit. It's like you don't need, you don't need people to validate what you read as a woman. You don't need people to validate what you do as a woman. You, or like even when I was younger, you used to get so angry when people couldn't see the worth in certain work or like, you know, certain books. And that's like, why would I, why do I care? I don't care. Like, you're missing out. I care. I only care in like a systemic way in that, you know,

we're not getting a feminist revolution any time soon but I don't care on a level because I'm like I have the richest possible experience stepping into being a woman and if you can't be part of that that's your loss bro

I mean thinking about how you know for blind boy being told like behave react to this like a man right is something which is

inherently limiting and it sort of feels to both of us that there is a different sort of social meaning to, you know, behave like a woman, right? Behave like a woman. Is that I think I would react very differently if a man told me that.

I think if you were giving me advice about something and something which I was finding really difficult and I was putting myself in a position of passivity, you'd be like, you are a woman. Like you are a grown woman, behave like one. I think if a man said behave like a woman, ooh. I mean, for me,

that would then come with all of these implications for, you know, if we're thinking about shaving as a metaphor for femininity, like all these things you have to shave off of yourself and to sort of carve yourself into a different shape. For me, it would come along with all of those implications. Yeah, because they're talking about a different thing, but I'm also like, when they're like act like a woman, They don't want to start like a woman.

They want to start out like a girl. They're not talking about womanhood when they talk about acting like a woman. They're like, know your place, step back. Like, you know. They're sometimes rarely, I think, if a man says, come on, be a woman. What they're talking about sometimes is like,

step up and be a mother to your kids. Like, I've heard it using that context as well. Do you know what I mean? I just think it means been grown up. Ter responsibility. So I'm one of the things which I find so interesting. And again, thinking about the portrayals of womanhood as being distinct from girlhood or something else.

I've always been fascinated by cultural depictions of women who kill their own children. And the novel Beloved by Tony Morrison, which, spoiler alert, is about a woman who kills her child and tries to kill. two more of her children to prevent them from going back into slavery. That was based on something that really happened. And the woman who did that was known as the black Medea,

because Medea is the Greek myth of a woman who kills her children in revenge for something that a man's done to her. Jason, scoundrel. Jason, scoundrel. Scoundrel. There's also prokney. who's another woman who kills her child because her husband, Tiraeus,

rapes and mutilates her sister, Philomel. So she kills their son in revenge. And part of it is this like, you know, a natural fury. But one of the things which I found so fascinating about beloved, and there was a ferocity to the main character, Sether who kind of reminded me of my own mum but that's the whole separate thing but that this sort of

you don't see her as something unhuman you don't see her as something beyond the pale of humanity and human decision making or something unnatural in fact you see this thing that she does as an expression of her expression of her humanity in a way which is very different from how we understand

the myth of Medea. And I think that for me, the really interesting thing about the myth of prokney and philomel, which you first get in Ovid's metamorphoses because they all turn into birds. It's like, oh, there's a sort of like irresolvable conflict. It's like, you know, reach the point of crisis.

And then it's like, oh, don't worry, they just all turn into birds, which is a very big Ovid move, is that it comes from love for her sister that she kills her. child and I think I think that there's an interesting thing which is her son belongs more to her husband because because you know he's he's going to be the heir he's going to be you know the heir to the kingdom and that in the myth itself there is this community of women that prokney belongs to

and philomel belongs to as well and one of the things that the son does and this is how you know he's doomed, is that he looks at what's supposed to be a woman-only festival, and he peers in, which is big no-no. You get killed if you do that. So there's an interesting thing for me there, which is we so often associate womanhood with motherhood, that when men are telling women, you know, you should be a woman. What that means is, you know, look after your kids, is that in this myth, the myth of Prokney and Philomel it turned into an amazing play by Timberlake-Warton-Baker called The Love of the Nightingale

and also when you read Beloved is that the slaughter of one's own children isn't presented as this wholly unnatural act in Beloved it's an expression of humanity because she doesn't want her children to be taken into slavery and experience all the things that she experienced and in the myth of prokney and philomel it comes from this belonging to a community of women

and enacting revenge when that community of women is violated that's so deep it's also deep i like this uh no no no i'm i'm sort of sitting here thinking like god i get stupider by the day my womanhood needs to read more i think i'm only just starting to do it I'm just starting to be able to think for myself again. But also I get really uncomfortable when we talk about like motherhood because it scares me so much. Why? Because it robs you of your identity.

It robs your identity and you become someone else. Like you're talking about it's your identity is subsumed by that of the child. And you stop being a woman, you start being a mother, which is exactly what you're talking about. That's exactly what you're saying. And my woman who is so precious to me being, valued or valuing myself as someone who exists outside of sustaining another life, as you say. I just don't want to give that up. Never in human history, have we had so, have we been

so free? Why would I surrender that? What's interesting to me is that I've heard from friends of mine who are parents, who are mothers, that it's a bit different for them. It sometimes felt like they went from being somebody's child to somebody's partner to somebody's mother and that this latter thing is so transformative and it's not wholly a shared project in a way which has has all these implications for the split of domestic labour and you know the robbing of the identity and women's world's getting smaller but then there's also something else so I was talking to someone who may be familiar to many of our special ones, my colleague, Aaron Bastani, who's married and has a child. And he was like, it was instantaneous after his wife had their child

that she went from loving me the most to loving this child the most. And, you know, they talked as many parents do, like, half the house was on fire, which one of us would you save? and his wife was like our daughter and I wouldn't even think twice about it. Yeah, sorry, bro. You're burning to death. And he was like, and rightly so. And rightly so that there was this thing of, you know,

everything that I loved before is nothing compared to this thing. And there is a sort of like maniacal ferocity to it. But there's also what was interesting about what you said is these women were saying they've gone from child to partner to mother, I've got a big gap with the partner thing. So I think I'm much more wedded to the status I've built in between those things. Do you know what I mean? And I'm like, it's really good.

I really love it. I've not even started fully like being the woman. I'm just getting into it. Why don't want to give that up in order to be viewed by society as a mother? God, when I think of my own mother, she's so loving, she cared for her so much, we make her so happy and yet the amount she gave up as a person of her own you get 18 plus years where your identity is just completely subsumed by this thing that you have given birth to and you stop being your name and you start being mum mom mom from the moment you wake up mom mom and they get so

angry at you all the time for everything you do they're so ungrateful they take all your money and you have to raise this thing which will grow up and go on a podcast and talk about you what the fuck what the fuck like oh no no no no it just it terrifies me and I think that's why and other women I know I like know that that is really rewarding experience and it has been the best thing I've ever done in my life and both our positions are like that is just your own experience, your own way you're wired. But I do think like my conception of woman for me, specifically me, I'm like I don't see, I see the kids as interrupting that rather than adding to it.

I think that I see children as interrupting the kind of life I think I want. Yeah. But I also think that there is a whole world of experience that I will not. that I will never understand or get my head around, which is, you know, like talking, talking to my friend about the experience of childbirth and she was like, yeah, really fucking hurts. It's like, it's so, so painful.

But then they put the baby on my chest and it instantly goes away, you know. They're endorphins that you'll, we will never, if we don't have children, we won't experience that. Or if we don't have a... You will never, there is a whole thing, which, you know, if you are...

That's not just endorphins. you know you're if you're if you're cis women you know there are certain biological processes that your body is designed to do and I'm not just talking about having a womb or having ovaries I'm also talking about the hormonal responses to having a child like the flood of like oxytocin and dopamine and all that good stuff that I will never experience if I don't have a child you're yeah apparently the oxytocin is the biggest that's the biggest like rush of oxytocin you'll get but you can still get loads of oxytocin by looking at someone you love. You can, and what's interesting...

What's interesting is that if you are the pregnant partner, you start with a higher level of oxytocin, but anyone who parents the child and steps into a parental role will match it. So if you're talking about a heterosexual couple, the man will start with a lower level of oxygen. but like through bonding with the baby by caring for it the baby just hijacks your hormonal responses i fear my father um was awry and i didn't get enough oxytocin but most of his children

so my my biological father i don't think did any of the caring for me so yeah where was that they needed a good dose of oxytocin yeah what you need is someone whose job it is to have a sort of like poison dart full of oxytocin in the hospitals so if there's anyone who seems a bit deadbeat it's like here's a question okay your father's a deadbeat would you rather have someone who's able to oxytocin him into caring feebe he's still got like deadbeat energy or would you rather he just go away well he is away no I know but like what would be if there was an oxytocin dart would you want the oxytocin dart I don't mean that he's like because I'm like if you're predisposed If you're a person, I'm like, go away.

I don't want, I would not want to. I think there are very few people out there or men who've been taught to, like, far, actually not very few that's not fair. A lot of men that I've encountered romantically, and that's because of my choices, I'm like, I would never want to parent a child with you. Whereas there's been like one or two where I'm like, you're the only person. And it's not even like being like, I'm in love with them or anything.

I'm like, you're the only person I could ever see myself. having a child with because I can see how good you would be at that and how caring and how like you are made for parenting. But I would rather have if I had, if I had, if I had to my head had a child, I'd rather that child had no father than one who is just seeped in patriarchal dead beatery. Well, the thing is is that I think that very often the how a father is with their children is a reflection of or an extension of how the father is with the other parent, you know, in particular a mother. So I think that from what I understand and obviously because my, we should do we should do a dad special by the way. I think we should absolutely

dads on. If your dad, he wants to come on. We should absolutely do a dad special. I know your dad's special. But he was a horrible partner to my mom, especially after they had kids. And that's because he was no longer the center of her world as soon as they had my older sister. And my older sister was, you know, born with health problems and stuff like that, you know. The child, like, people always think about, like, you know,

Edipal complexes as being from sons towards fathers. But there's also something from parents towards their children. And there is this desire to be like, I've got to kill this little sucker. Because it has displaced me. in the affections of the woman. And I think that's what happened. And I think that he's a deeply selfish man

for all sorts of reasons. And then when my mum said no more, like no more of this, like you can't treat the kids in this way, he cut off all contact with myself and my sister as a way of punishing her. So I think that how he was with us as kids is very much an extension

of how he viewed my mom as long. woman yes and on that note on that note we should do a problem shouldn't we so this is our regular segment i'm in big trouble and if you are in big trouble email us that if i speak at navaramedia.com that is if i speak at navaramedia.com moya i'm going to read this one out because i think you're going to have great advice um dear ashen moya my request for help is a simple one. How do I have conversations with friends like you do on the podcast? Specifically, how do I hold conversations which are open, honest, vulnerable and personal? I find talking about myself hard. Even saying that makes me cringe. I don't avoid passionate or intense conversations generally. I don't mind

holding the floor when it comes to politics. But as soon as we cross into the murky waters of our private lives, family, mental health, relationships, even just feelings or insecurities, I feel myself pulling away. I become self-conscious and awkward, occasionally spinning out to the point of dissociation. I retreat, ask mediocre or boring questions, keep the conversation going, but reveal nothing. I want to have better conversations, and I do want my friends to know more about me, in theory. I think it would help me feel closer to them and help them feel closer to me. So how do I open up? And how do I relax when people open up to me? Best wishes, an awkward and a little lonely special one who's been listening since day one. P.S. I'm

in my late 20s, the oldest daughter of a single volcano, and I'm lucky enough to have many lovely people. I would call good friends. Girl, same. You wouldn't believe it from this pod because I tell, I talk about myself all the time, but my friends say I'm terrible at opening up and I've had to learn. I've had to learn. I'm still not amazing at it. I feel so awkward. I get all red. Sometimes I go, I'm sorry, I'm being so boring. I'm being really boring. I do that on dates as well. I'm like, oh, sorry, this is so boring. When I try and talk about things. I feel like my tongue is heavy in my mouth. I feel like I can't articulate my thoughts or feelings. I feel like I'm both hogging all the limelight and, you know, the other person's

going to be bored out their mind. And also this yearning that I can't get out what I'm trying to say or convey to them what I'm actually feeling. I feel like everything I say comes out wrong when I talk about myself. And I'm sure Ash has thoughts on this too. Okay, the single Volcano. Do you remember what we said about, um, people always give away the key thing at the very end. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Single volcano. Okay, so I'm presuming what you mean by that, a single parent who exploded all the time. So you haven't learned that it's safe to either open up about your emotions or also that it's safe to hear other people up, open up out their emotions. Right. Oh, that is possible to do it in a way which doesn't feel out of control.

Yeah, yeah. That's what I think, just from that line. And I can be so wrong. Oh, 100%. I could be so wrong. How do you have these conversations? Okay. Honestly, it's fucking just practice. And it takes time. It's like inching forward. It's a little bit and a little bit.

And you have to say, you also acknowledge that you're not good at it or that you don't feel comfortable with it. It's probably a better way of putting it. Acknowledge, I want to open up to you guys more. I want to let you know more about how I'm feeling. I don't feel very comfortable with doing that so if you could also like

prod me and ask me questions then they know to do it I've got friends who now know to ask me stuff who will come to me and they will say oh how are you feeling about that or how are you doing or I know you want to talk about this so tell me about it

and it's because when they love you and care about you they'll do the same for you that you can do for them don't try and do everything all at once otherwise it feels artificial but you just have to practice a little bit, you know. And I've also witnessed it with friends as things that they've opened up a little bit about

and then a little bit more and then a little bit more and then we finally have a big conversation about it. But you're building up trust. Pocito more, little more, you're building up trust. This is the thing. You're building up trust and you're going to have to learn

that where is a safe place for you to express your emotions and to have them expressed you in turn. And once you also, work out in your head, I think you should unpack the single volcano stuff more and how that's impacted you. I think then you'll have a much clearer understanding of like the actual feelings like how your body feels at the point. You know, you say you should dissociate at times. Like where are you dissociating to? Where are you going back to as well? Like what's

in your head? When you really unpack those things, I think that diagnosing and understanding like the root of why we feel challenged with something called why something's hard for us just like kind of clicks it all open. It makes it so much easier then to overcome or work through it because it's when it's opaque, when you don't know why, you just think, I'm not good at it. I'm not this. I'm not that. That's when it becomes this like impenetrable or insurmountable challenge. But when it's something you understand the roots of, then you can be like, oh, it's because I don't feel like it's safe to open up. Okay, well, I'm in this place with my two friends. I'm going to say something, is this safe? Like, do I feel safe? That how way they

received it, great. Okay, nothing bad has happened. That was safe. And then you can kind of keep going. I have some practical advice. I have some practical advice because I think with the contextual stuff, Moyers got it covered. First thing to say is that this is a really, really common thing. A really, really common thing. And I can think of friends who struggle with this and who I can tell are like really struggling to overcome it to like stay in an emotionally engaged place. I sometimes find it really, really difficult to share what I'm going through with my friends because I think that my job is to be self-contained and to be resilient. And so I sometimes have to be nudged into letting people in.

And what I would say is this is that if doing this in person feels like too much right now and you find your body going into that freeze response, because that's what the clam up can't speak, dissociate is, right? it's a freeze response. Try voice noting because this is something which I found really, really helpful to also keep me in an emotionally engaged place with friends as our lives become busier and less tied to the same place. But also, because someone's not in front of you

and you're not constantly looking at their face for the social cues back and, you know, assuming that they feel bored or weirded out, it can allow you just a bit more freedom it's also a little bit I mean my friends we call them mini podcast it's like I'm sending you a mini podcast about this thing um you know invites replies people bring their own stuff to it um it doesn't demand that you know limited social time is you know taken up or you know chewing over something really heavy if that's not what people want to do when you're like at dinner or you've gone for drinks or something I find it really, really helpful, and I think it might be a good, safe starting place.

The one thing I'll say, and I'm going to give you this task special one, is that you're not allowed to delete and re-record. It has to be one take, one take only, mini podcast, and pick the friend with whom you feel closest at the minute to begin with, and then go from there. Yeah, that's also actually worked for one of my friends. she's revolutionised the way she opens up to us both via you know voice note and now in person so I co-sign that advice well I think this brings us

to the end of the show to a close farewell old friend when we'll meet again this has been if I woman I am woman what's the May Angelou poem again phenomenal woman

I just have that pinned to my war as a teenager. For some reason, the Joyce Carol Oates poem, women whose lives are food, men whose lives are money, came to mind. It's a good point. I think that says a lot about both of us. All right, right. Bye. Bye.

Thank you.