If I Speak - 91: If there’s no ‘ethical consumption’, can just I buy what I want?

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

Last chance! We’re at EartH in East London on 16 December with guest Jordan Stephens – a handful of tickets are still available from Dice. Ash and Moya tackle a mystery question about ethical consumption with a conversation about the urge to beautify and shopping as a numbing mechanism. Plus: advice for a special one wondering […]

Hello. That's it. That's all you're getting from me. Hi. Silence for the rest of the hour. Why don't we do that? We should do a meditative episode. A Philip Glass?

Yes. I do you know I accidentally once went to a Philip Glass, Ravishanka celebration. It was a joint celebration of both of their music or something like that. How was it an accident? I was accidentally there. No, actually, no, I wasn't. I was there because I was dating someone who was Indian at the time and I thought he'd enjoy it. He was, but no longer, no longer is Indian. He actually changed.

No, he was Indian, Swedish and I thought that was the, and he loved bleep-blop music, but also like traditional music. So I was like, this is the perfect emigamation of two. And I will take you to the Royal Albert Hall to listen to it. That was it. Well, I'm so uncultured at the moment. I was saying to you before we went live that I'm now communicating mostly through UFC memes. Ash is where I was this time last year.

You are operating on your last functioning, not even brain cell, but just like the thing inside you, there's, you know, like, the hoobs in Hoobtown, your last hoop is standing going, well, must somewhere far away. My last hoop internally is going, if you want your son high-level wrestling, two, three years, Dagestan, and forget.

Why? The hobs don't say that. What's that from again? That's, that's my last, my last hoop. And every time I see my cat do like anything with the zoomies, like, you know, sort of like grappling someone's ankle or something, I'm like, two three years, Dagestan. What's that from? So basically a UFC fighter who's like one of one of Habib's friends, like, who is just the most insane guy. Like he doesn't blink.

So he'll stare like this. And then he'll say the world's funniest shit. Like there was this sort of UFC thing. where, like, you know, they're asking fighters in Australia like, oh, you know, do you think you could win a fight against a kangaroo? And everyone else is doing it jokerly, like, you know, I know, I don't know, kangaroos, you know, they're pretty tough, they're really good at punching. And this guy is like, I would submit him. Kangaroo's a good striking, but grappling, no.

Like, it just takes it so, so seriously. So that's where my brain is at. He's serious about his craft. Okay, because your brain is. is your brain is smush she want me to ask you some questions to get it going to wrap up that one hub left in there also what podcast is this i realize we didn't say oh if you don't know by now then you're never gonna know this is if i speak this is this is if i speak with melvin brag listen to our archive of over one thousand episodes in our time has actually come to an end now which is so sad i really love the history in our times who do you think could be a new in our time presenter that's a real question James Butler would be my pick. That would actually be great,

but the BBC are not going to pick James Butler. No, but it would slap so hard. Actually, maybe they would. He's an LRB. He could actually slide sideways into doing that. But he is an avowed communist, so I think, uh, yeah, but in our, like,

in our time just exists in a separate silo where I feel like even the avowed communist could do it because it is literally just, that is the last gasp of the old public intellectuals, isn't it? It's the last gasp of like the Mechanics Institute, just bringing knowledge to the people. I don't know.

What with Robbie Gibbs' iron grip on the institution? I'm not sure if you'd be letting James Butler in. But anyway, run me the questions. Sorry, running the questions. Right. One, what is something you'll pay any amount of money not to have to do? Oh, there are so, so many things. I don't like going on walks, which are far from urban conurbations.

where the ground is really uneven and I might roll my ankle and fuck my ankle because I've got super fucked ankles like just the worst ankles in the world and so that's part of the reason I've been going to the gym is that I've been trying to do stuff

that really, really strengthens and stabilises my legs because I roll them out like anything and it hurts so much like I hurt my ankle really badly once and it took like two years for it to get back to normal like it really really took a long time so i have quite an acute fear of hurting my ankle like that when i wouldn't easily be able to get home you know can't call

a nubra up a mountain has it ever happened that you've rolled around clop a mountain no um there was this walk there was this walk that um my partner took me up with his parents and it was really slippery and there were all these like kind of like loose rocks and it was only after we did the walk and I was like going up and like also down with the fear of God in me that he was like yeah this walk is called slippery stones and I was like you know what just break up with me there's no need to try to engineer my demise just break up with me why was you trying to engineer he's trying to take his show someone he loves yeah I know but I did not love it Speaking off, what is a place that you love that you always take people that marks there in entrance into your inner circle?

Oh, it will be a, I don't know why I said that, so like, I'm not going to say where it is, but there is a particular restaurant where me, where me, I'm not going to say where it is, but there is a particular restaurant where me and my whole family have been going. since it opened. So I've been going since I was an embryo. So that's quite a special thing. Like if I'm taking you for dinner at this place, you are part of the inner circle. And there are a few different pubs which mark initiation into the inner circle,

which again I will not be naming. Can you describe one? Why is it such an inner circle pub? Okay, right. There's one pub in particular where just get on really well with the people who run it there was also like quite a legendary bar fight there

you involved yeah the people who ran the pub wrongly remember me and one of my friends as trying to break it up whereas I think rather than us trying to break it up we saw our friends getting beaten up and then we jumped in So then when we went back to the pub a few days later to apologise and be like, we're so sorry that all of this happened and completely understand if you never want us here again

because they remembered us as trying to end the chaos rather than participate in the chaos. They gave us two free bottles of Prosecco. Should we move on? Yeah, we have a middle section. We have a mystery question courtesy of producing. Gisa Chow, who, as always, will be dinging my phone imminently. Before we get to the mystery question, we should remind people that if they'd like to hang out with us in person, they can come to our live show on the 16th of December at Earth Dahlston.

It's going to be festive as fuck. You can get your tickets on Dice. We are joined by very special guest, musician, author, podcaster, Jordan Stevens. And I'm going to come dressed as the grink. I've ordered a top that says, if I speak, and it's a baby tea, as I've threatened to do for so long. And if I wear it, I wear it. And if I don't feel like I can wear that top that day, I won't be wearing it. But the other thing about that is, by the time this comes out, tickets could well be sold out because they are nearly sold out. They are sounding like the proverbial hot cakes. Which is fucking great because it makes me feel really popular.

I have friends. No, we have, we have parasocial. Actually, I had such a weird parasychequer. encounter with someone, a special one. How did it go? I can't talk about it on the pod because I think that's actually cruel and a misuse of power,

but it was odd. I, by the way, I love it when people come up and say they listen to the podcast. Best thing ever, this was not that encounter. I like it when someone comes up to me and they always say it in a very surreptitious way. They'll go, I'm a special one, by the way.

As if we're all members of the French resistance in 1943. Do you know what I mean? We're resisting the end. And shittification of podcast content, I claim, and then someone will definitely think we're doing shit stuff. Right. Hit me with the question.

Let's ding. Ooh. Was it juicy? Would you say? Producer Chal says, I've heard people say there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. So does that mean I can buy whatever I want? the problem with this question

the problem with this question is I felt like we've answered it so many times but then the listeners won't have actually heard it answered so I'm going to try and actually say some things so there was something really interesting that came up in a downstream interview that I did with Roger Hallam so Roger Hallam for people who don't know he's a climate activist who co-founded lots of organisations that you will have heard of like Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and

Just Stop Oil. And we did this sort of quick-fire questions thing for the downstream newsletter, which you can of course sign up to if you go to the Navarra Media website. And I asked him what his favourite Bible verse was. And he was talking just a little bit about what he likes about Jesus. And one of the things that he says that he really likes about Jesus is when Jesus, is approached by a rich man who's like, hey, like, I can get into heaven, right? And Jesus is like, you've got as much chance of that as a camel passing through the eye of a needle. And what Hallam says that he really likes about it is that there is just a sort of matter-of-factness

about it. And then he said, look, there is no redemption for making certain choices in your life. And he was like, if you eat meat, if you eat meat, if you. you fly, there is no redemption for you. I'm not saying that in a way which is trying to make you feel ashamed and I'm not here trying to bring the fire and brimstone. I'm just uttering a fact as I see it. And I thought that that was a really interested. I eat meat. I eat meat and I fly. I don't fly like I take the bus. Like I'm not Taylor Swift, but you know, definitely fly more than Roger Hallam does. And I just thought that that was an interesting.

provocation to the sort of sweeping arm of, well, there's no ethical consumption. He's like, well, climate catastrophe is climate catastrophe. That climate catastrophe is a product of consumerism. Consumerism is a system, but it's powered by our acts of consumption. So what do you want me to do? I don't think ethically consuming actually exists. I think ethical consumption is the same thing as corporate sustainability. I think they are just little bombs that we have put on a wound

to try and make ourselves feel better about the way that we operate within certain systems and I had an interaction recently. Someone who worked in corporate sustainability, it was really interesting, corporate sustainability, and it was really interesting to try to watch them like veer between, this is good, it's as good as it gets, and like, this is a crockers, shit and it was a crock of shit and but it's fine to accept it's a crock of shit in my view I guess the question that chowell is also asking is this question which is well it's all a

crock of shit so do i just can i just do whatever i want if it's all worth the same amount and it's like no i think ethical consumption itself is an oxymoron and not possible but that doesn't mean that there's not like harm reduction in the ways we consume to borrow a phrase from drugs and carcerality. So what does that harm reduction mean? Well, exactly. It would look like consume. It looks like the definition of ethical consumption,

which is consuming in a way that isn't so big and greedy that it is accelerating things at a faster lick. But I don't think there's a way to consume, like to consumers to gobble up, to consumers, to extract and gobble up and to hoover up. I don't think there is a way to consume in the current system, the way that I consume, that is ethical. So, but there is ways of like, you know, I can take the train instead of the plane. I can fly, like I fly once a year.

That's still not ethically consuming, is it? I buy things from Amazon. That's not ethically consuming. Even if I take that down, it's like, but I could take that down. I could, I could reduce the amount of stuff I buy from Amazon. I could reduce the amount like I can I do much less high street shopping I buy from Vinted but I'm still still not ethically consuming it's still consuming loads but it's it's slightly less bad but I don't think there's any there's like a full way I could ever be like pure unless I did

what some people do which is live total awkward in a commune where you're doing your self-provision and I do think there's a world where we we aren't in the middle of a climate crisis where we've just like we've lost the battle to not heat by 1.5c and the new thing is about adaptation and I think that was possible but humans can't think further than the end of our noses so we just didn't want to give up the things in the short term I mean look I think I think there's so much in what you said and so I'm trying to work out which aspect do I pick out

well you can pick up a new aspect have a new aspect act what's in the box it's box box box box box box someone sent me that me in the other day of I was saying like oh we could do like a third thing And they sent me the meme of like Mr. Burns being like, oh, you could have what's in the box. And everyone's like, box, what's in the box? I was like, God, that's, that's just like politics. It's like, you can have this thing that you know, you can have this like, no, you could have free Wi-Fi.

Oh, you could have what's in the box. It's like, box, we always want the box. I thought you were doing a Formula One meme. I thought you were doing box, box, box. No, this shows the separation of our worlds. But I feel like Simpsons would be the vet at the middle. But I do, yeah, the Simpsons is very much in the box. middle of the, middle of the Venn diagram.

Um, okay, so I think there's like one thing, which is, um, again, this is perhaps a very Roger Hallam way of thinking about it, but when we talk about global heating in terms of degrees, what that does is obscure the consequences of that, which is billions of people are going to die who wouldn't have to. They'll die sooner than they have to. they'll die more impoverished than they have to, they'll die because they've been displaced, they'll die because of wars over resources,

billions of people are going to die. And particularly in the rich global north, we can make choices to insulate ourselves from the knowledge of that scale of death. And I think a very good example of how that can happen is the extreme difference between those who consume media about the genocide in Gaza and those who never ever see it. So the genocide in Gaza is possibly the world's first live streamed genocide. And for people whose algorithms present them with that content, their engagement with it can sometimes,

and I don't mean this disparagingly, can sometimes bored on obsession. Like there's just so much of it and there feels like there's a real moral imperative to bear witness to it. And on the other side, and I can think of people in my life who fit into this category.

because they've never trained their algorithm in that way, you know, because they're not highly engaged with that part of the new cycle, they know literally nothing about it. And maybe because of their politics and maybe because of the things that are important to them, what they do know is every time someone of migrant origin commits a sexual offence in the UK, right?

So their level of obsessional engagement because they're being served the content, it's that thing. And I think that sort of shows you that, you know, there are lots of people in the climate movement who say things like this will become impossible to ignore. I think what the genocide has shown is that it's very easy to ignore all sorts of suffering because either it's eliminated from your field of vision

or the story gets reframed as something else. So the kinds of displacement that will see because of the climate crisis, that's going to become reframed as a crisis of immigration, you know. And so that's how you understand it. And I think that if we're going back to the question in the way that like chow phrased it, it's what kinds of moral, ethical and political obligations does that create for us in the present? And the thing is, is that I know in my consumption habits, in particular eating meat, but you can

even if I took that out there are all sorts of things I do as a person who lives in the rich West which means that I'm gobbling up more than my fair share of the world's carbon budget like every single day I can feel and I know this about myself

that I actively try not to think about what those obligations might mean for me I've probably bummed out I'm sorry No, it's just like these discussions always bum me out But I think that's so telling Because so many other people feel bummed out By these discussions and therefore don't engage in them

That's one of the reasons we do just consume mindlessly To try and drown out the noise It's self-soothing Consumerism is self-soothing It's not just self-soothing Which I think is actually a very crucial difference And something I've been thinking about a lot recently The separation between the act of numbing yourself

And the act of soothing yourself because soothing yourself would be to take proactive steps to change behaviours that are distressing you and you know yes stop shopping at Amazon yes getting more involved with your local like climate movement or get more involved with your local economic movements that would make you feel like you're actually you can't push you can't stop world leaders doing what they're doing

but you can your local area be proactive I think that is soothing that is self-soothing I think what I do, which is, you know, tamped down, ignore, maybe go buy something else, occasionally volunteer, that is numbing. Going on my phone watching TikTok, that's a numbing thing. You'll disconnect it. And I've been thinking a lot about numbing, like how nuts.

So sorry, this is slightly a tangent, but the idea of, you know, when we go on our phone, yeah, it's a little dopamine feed, but it's a numbing out thing. You're disconnecting your brain from your body. You can be on your phone, you can forget where you are, you have no connection, it's dulling your senses, you're no connection to the world around you you're fully on there it's a way to totally numb out the same way then it's addictive the same way that you know other numbing out things are like alcohol drugs alcohol is a drug but same thing so it's it's a numb out mechanism and i think that's that's been one of the most successful we're like little rats you know constantly like just give us more of the give us all the dopamine to like flatters out numbers out or give us more of something else that numbs us out video games whatever anything to escape from the burning reality and the question because we feel so helpless in the face of it.

So it's not soothing. It's numbing and that's the difference. And the question I think is like rather than ethical consumption, it's like how can we consume in a way that is actually maybe a bit soothing and makes us feel less like we're directly contributing because the more you feel like you're directly contributing to this problem, the more you're going to go numb out to try and tamp down those feelings, in my opinion. I think that's a really important distinction.

I, what you are selling? I buy it. I buy the distinction. Yeah, you're consuming, are you consuming like? Mmm, delicious, delicious distinction. No, I think that's a really valuable one because also the ability to self-soothe is a sign of emotional maturity. Yes, I don't have emotion.

Because that's about self-knowledge, that's about being able to take a degree of responsibility for yourself, it's about being able to seek out that which is nourishing and helps you lead a sort of psychologically sustainable life as opposed to I'm just going to numb out by injecting whatever addictive, substance or dynamic it is that I turn to. So I buy that. Thank you much.

What are you going to do with buying that? What are you going to do with it? What am I going to do with my lovely new, you know, con-smatic idea? Yeah, exactly. I think that, I mean, look, here's something which I think for a long time. We did have a discussion about this, which is when I think about fashion and when I think about the fixation on appearance and clothing and beauty, I have a fascination with and a love

for the craft that's involved because it's not something I can do, right? I'm not, I'm not very good with my hands. I'm not a particularly visually imaginative person. These, these aren't skills that come naturally to me. So, you know, the skill and the craft that goes into creating objects of beauty, I think, wow, that's impressive. But not just the fashion industry, which is easy to sort of condemn, so I'm not going to bother with that.

but the fashion preoccupation I think well isn't this obviously bad for us the fixation of on the self right so being so fascinated with yourself that you know the compulsion to keep on adorning the feeling that um you you have to be constantly changing how it is you present yourself because of too many other people do it the same way as you

that's bad but if not enough people do it whatever way you look at it whatever shape that fixation with your appearance takes I just think that's clearly not communist do you know what I mean and I don't want to take that to an extreme and be like comrade we must all return to the boiler suit like I'm not saying that

but I think that when you look at all the different ways in which people on the radical left have absorbed various bits of liberalism and I'll talk about that in terms of liberal identity politics there was also a turn to trying to embrace something which is like creative and fun and sometimes that means like

well of course you can really love fashion and like really care about how you look and I'm like well I just don't think that that should stop being a sight of criticism and thinking about like why is it? Why does it matter so much to me how I look and how other people think about the things

that I'm wearing? Like why? Because in the void where like a political self goes we instead of inserted just the individual in my opinion. And I fall completely victim to this. I was talking to my therapist as I want to do the other day and we realised

that there's a premium placed on in my family on not just intelligence like it's beauty and brains and that's a problem because I thought it was just brains and then I realized, oh no, it really, the aesthetic and the appearance and it's not just like traditional beauty,

it's the idea of being put together at all times, it's the idea of if you don't fit into a certain, it's not even like if you don't fit into a certain convention, but there is definitely comments made. Like I didn't lick my issues with weight off a stone, did I? I got it from society, but I got it somewhere else first. And there's definitely stuff there. about the way my self-hood is reinforced

and how when I learned to dress better, when I learned to present myself better, when I learned to do my makeup, I felt much more whole and complete and worthy and my self-esteem goes up. And when I managed to contort my body into a certain aesthetic, I feel really good.

And the moment it falls out of that, I get very panicked. And linking all those things together to the self-worth rather than linking it to say, you know, why don't I feel guilty that I don't do more politically at the moment, but I do feel my self-esteem is pretty good because I'm doing all these beauty and aesthetic things. And that is a terrible place to be drawing it from. Because I think my self-esteem should be far more based on, am I living up to my values, well, maybe these are my values, am I living up to my values by actually going to

contributing to the society around me in a proactive way? And rather than, oh I got a new necklace and it looks slay you know so and it's funny because in a couple of days my wardrobe my full, in two days my full wardrobe will arrive my full wardrobe will be shipped down and I'm actually quite scared of how large it's going to be like I think I've forgotten how much I accumulated

and I am going to have to do it because I cleared loads out and I'm going to have to do another clear out because living living so I've been subluttering for the last six months and it meant that I had to take two bags with me. By the time I moved out, thanks to my vintage activities, I had five bags of clothes. Some of that's because I don't like packing very neatly and my mum had helped me pack the first two.

But most of it's because I just accumulated more because I couldn't bear to live on the wardrobe I had, which is a terrible way to live. My ancestors had like two dresses. They had one pair of trousers. They darned and redaned. And they were fine. And it's not like they didn't like beautiful things.

Like my mum's wardrobe was far more constrained. into the mine. And she loved beautiful things. There is such a greed that we have been taught. There is such a need for novelty. And some of my friends who love to consume just like me, it's funny because I was talking to one the other day and I was checking the label on something. And she was like,

oh, I never checked the label on things. And I know that she spends so much money on clothes. I'm like, how do you know what's in it? How do it? Like, that's one thing because my mum is from, she was born in 1950s. She really cares about fabric composition and has, and finally it's kicked in for me as well. It's like, I need to know if this is worth the money. And it probably isn't

even worth the money. I'm paying for it. But I'm not going to, I'm no longer wanting to pay 50 quid for, well, maybe 50 quid, but like, I'm not paying 100 quid for like 99% polyester. Are you trying to, you are trying to rob and mug me. And I think if I actually pay attention to like the composition, that that does then lead on to like a more ethical consumption in the first place, because one, you'll consume less. Two, you are thinking about how it's produced, where it's going to be produced likely the way it's produced because 100% will, yeah, you can make them in the factories in China if you really want, but most people aren't doing that.

Like, what's being farmed out is going to be the polyester stuff. So I do think starting to care about those things and starting to care about value that you're getting will help you on that way. But there is no ethical consumption. There's no ethical consumption. We're so greedy. I mean, no, we are so greedy. Why are we so greedy?

There is no ethical consumption and yet we still have all. obligations to think about what we consume, right? So that's the answer to Charles' question. And then I think there is something about how our need for numbing is, I think, a direct result of all the other kinds of alienated and atomized ways in which we're living. Yeah. So we're not getting enough of like these things that we really need, which is a sense of being valued by our community, being valued in terms of our labour, being valued by, you know, our loved ones. We exist. Valied by ourselves.

Cairious state. But all those things, I think, really impact your ability to value yourself. Yeah. 100%. Sorry, go on. You continue. Oh, I was going to say, and like in terms of the numbing versus soothing thing, I was thinking just a little bit about grooming, by which I mean sort of.

of like, you know, the process of beautifying yourself, but also animal grooming. So one of the ways of which animals soothe each other is grooming one another, right? So they groom each other, they groom themselves. And I've got a theory, which is if you focus, and if you focus here, right, if you look at anyone's face and you really focus on the groove just below their nose. On my filter, please don't. I have bad X-ma there. No, no, but if you look at someone's filtration, you suddenly really see that we've evolved from apes and you really see the sort of ape-like quality in human faces and hands and expressions and movements in a way that I really like. I really, really love seeing that. And I'll just, I'll do it to myself when I'm on the

tube. I'll look at, I'll look at someone. I'll just like focus on the filter on a bit. And I'm like, we're all monkeys on this zooming train under the ground. Isn't that crazy? Trapped on the train. But those those grooming behaviors, I think. that we do with our loved ones and I was thinking about the difference between how I feel when I'm grooming myself or like I'm looking in the mirror and I'm trying to do something with my hair which is I don't actually feel relaxed and often I feel like oh I just need to fucking get this thing right versus when my partner is touching my hair or striking my eyebrow or something like that which is a really profound experience of being soothed I feel soothed

when that's happening. And so, yeah, just thinking about the ways in which what consumerism is really good at doing is taking these social needs and social behaviours, creating the atomised and lonely version of it and saying you should do that thing. My bum out level has been reached to here. I've gone up to here with my bum out level.

It will cheer you up if next time on public transport, just pick a random post and focus on the filterum and you go, would you look at that? That is an ape with beats by dry headphones. What a funny thing to see. That sounds like, what was it, NFTs? You're just doing NFTs. Oh, the board ape, your club. Yeah, you're just doing NFTs. That wouldn't actually see with me due to the complex I have about my own filterum. So I would never scrutinize people's foot. Because it's when I get my exma. So I don't want people to keep my fortune The thing that me and my mum are both really good

My mom does an excellent one My mom does an incredible monkey face So if you ever need to make her toddler or a baby laugh My mom is like Smash Red Button monkey face So it's both the sort of like puffing out of the cheeks But she can also crinkle up her eyes In a particular way

So she'll be not I can't do it as well as her But like No one can see what we're doing right now and thank God and thank God for that because my monkey face wasn't very good

but my mom's monkey face is excellent and I think that's maybe where my the pleasure I take in remembering that yeah that's a childhood callback

that we are simian that we're essentially simian are we simian or are we dancer right and now on to content note sexual violence we have a dilemma we have a dilemma and yeah content note for discussion

of sexual violence if you have a dilemma how do you send it to us you can send it in via if I speak at Navaramedia.com That is if I speak at Navaramedia.com. Yeah, send us your dilemmas. We will get to them.

We'll do a dilemma special scene because we've got more building up. Some of them we say, if you haven't heard them, you've probably solved it yourself, but some of them we save for when we have a guest you can particularly speak to it.

And also we get updates, which we love. If you want your update, read out, tell us, otherwise we won't read your update out because we assume it's just fine. But thank you to the special one who recently updated us on the outcome of their dilemma

and we wish you the best of luck it sounds very exciting and we think your decision making sounds really good for you and you know who you are and you know who you are Ash who's reading this out you or me I think you should read this out

cool right so again content notes sexual violence we have been told we need to be more specific about our content notes and trigger warnings so this is specificity specificity for you very hard for me to say hello both i'm a confused and upset special one i love and i'm close to two men in my life my brother and my close friend they know that i have suffered countless instances of male sexual

violence and have just come out of a relationship which further deepened that trauma one of the thoughts i can't get out of my head is that they are complicit in male sexual violence generally i know this way of thinking is partly a trauma response dangerous everywhere black and white thinking, but I also don't think I'm wrong. Why? Because they probably watch porn, where they haven't made sure that women and genuinely the people they're watching are safe. For example, some porn actors could be victims of sexual trafficking, not consenting to the acts, underpaid, having their content shared further without their consent. I've talked about ethical porn at a high level with the close friend, but was too afraid to ask directly if he watches it or other

porn. I assume not. He's made it clear that he's got round giving his details into websites. complying with the Online Safety Act by using a VPN. Given you have to pay for ethical porn and give bank details, logic follows those more ethical websites aren't the ones he's using. I've tried talking about it with my brother years ago, but he shut the conversation down. I get that siblings talking about sex feels weird to him. I've had the same reaction from a different friend in the past

and an unwillingness from two previous male partners to try ethical porn, or at least play for porn. It therefore feels like the men I love or have loved are prioritising their pleasure and avoidance of shame at seeking that pleasure because doing research and inputting bank details makes it more real at the potential cost of women's pain which is just what men who've raped and harassed me have done prioritise their pleasure and egos at the cost of my pain.

How do I approach this? I don't want to lose this friend or the relationship with my brother but I'm also thinking that learning to trust some men is important to my healing from PTSD for which I'm undergoing therapy and I feel really fucking angry that they may be complicit even though I get that patriarchy and capitalism are systems which set men up to harm women directly and indirectly. So I need to channel my anger more at those systems than individual men.

I just wish they'd work for their shame, learn to do the due diligence on the provenance of what they're watching, and talk to me about it. But if they don't, it feels like they're just standing by, and most upsettingly, watching and enjoying women experiencing sexual violence. And as a woman who's experienced sexual violence, that is abhorrent to me. Please advise or at least discuss. Gratefully, a special one. I'm saying all of this with a lot of love, special one, because healing from the trauma of sexual violence and violation is one of the most difficult things you can do in life.

It's messy. We are not perfect when we're doing it and we shouldn't expect ourselves to be. But I think that you, because you're in a particular stage of healing, the things that you are asking of your brother and your close friend, it's coming from that place of woundedness and trauma and hypervigilance rather than, you know, a conversation about how do we lead more feminist lives, how do we navigate our political obligations to one another?

I think that where this is coming from in the particular fixation on porn, I think what it is is you're looking for some kind of guarantee that you can allow men to be close to you without being at risk of some kind of sexual violation. And I think that what's happening unconsciously is a bit of a story of well if I can get guarantees on these things if I can be vigilant enough or be in control enough around the behaviours of these men

who are close to me I can trust that they're not going to hurt me or hurt other women and that's not really how trust works the point about trust is that there is a gap between what it is you know and what it is you hope will happen and that gap is bridged by trust and I think that conversations about porn and porn consumption, whether there is such thing as ethical porn consumption or not, I think all of these are really legitimate conversations, but I don't think that that's actually where this is coming from for you. I think it's an expression of hypervigilance, is my take on it.

What do you reckon? I think exactly the same I've written it also down that you've become a stand-in for the pornographic actor and you're trying to change the ending of what happened to you by getting them to not watch or watch ethical porn I totally get it

my friend has this very funny phrase once I asked on my Instagram story I was like asked about everyone's alcohol drinking consumption habits and I said not for journalism, just have interest my friend still says the words to me Not for journalism. Just out of interest.

She's like, that's the most hypervigilant, like, alanonic thing that I've ever heard in my life. Can you just tell me what you drank? Just out of interest. Just out of interest. Just so I know. And it was doing a hypervigilent. I was seeing, like, the people I interacted with on a level, like,

some of you are drunk, I think, when you DM me. And I was proved right. And it was, yeah, it was. that kind of thing like gauging and I have a hypervisions around alcohol particularly when I'm out so I really get it and it's like this idea of oh if they have two drinks they're safe if they have four drinks they're not safe because they probably have a problem with drink and it's like this constant on and you've got this with because my trauma is around well part of it is I hate the word trauma but you know I mean my things a lot of my stuff is to do with alcohol my albatross

you know well yeah my albatross one of my albatrosses one of my albatrosses is to do with alcohol. Another albatross is to do with, you know, rejection and avoidance and the certain signs we look for where we're hypervigilant around someone's language changing, someone's body language changing, the way they're talking to us, the way they're texting us. As Ash says, your hypervigilance is around. I guess this idea of sexual habits, care, when it involves anything to do with sex. And I'm very sympathetic to how you feel about pornography because I also feel quite similarly that it is, you know, increasingly it's just a net bad and desensis and I don't think there's much like, you know, we're talking about ethical porn, like what is ethical

porn even? But I think the way you're going about it is not going to change anyone's minds and it just makes you more resentful and more jaded about the fact that you can't trust any men in particular. Because you're not asking these questions of women. If you're asking me, do I watch ethical porn? No. I barely watch porn anymore. But when I'm watching gay porn, am I watching ethical well no does that make me a sexual threat i don't know it definitely doesn't make me someone who's practicing what i'm preaching you know like there's but i don't think anyone would look at me or talk to me and think this woman is engaging in sexual violence but under the the sort of like standards you've set or the the rules you've got i would be but i don't think you'd view me as a

sexual threat so it's like applying that to the men around you especially the close men who could actually be some of the ones who help you with the trustee again is difficult and no one is perfect no one is no one is going to always live up to your expectations i'm so sorry and it sucks to learn that because we want to be we want to and with men especially it can feel really dangerous when they don't because because because because we're dangerous too in different in different ways um i would recommend special one maybe going back and having a listen to the episode that we did fairly recently called Help I Can't Stop Hating Men

because we talk about a lot of this stuff in detail which is about how do you build relationships of love and trust and, you know, reciprocal respect with men can be romantic, can be friendship, can be anything. And one of the things that for me that I talked about in the episode that was really important is part of why I trust the men in my life isn't because I've got guarantees

that they don't have any bad thoughts it's because we have a relationship of enough mutual vulnerability that sometimes they tell me about what those bad thoughts are and they talk to me about those things that they're very ashamed about and are locked into or can't change and I also share with them my bad thoughts

because guess what? I too am steeped in original sin and like, you know, have toxic slop just sloshing around my brain. And it's not that we've created an entirely judgment-free environment because that doesn't exist. It just means that judgment and obligation is also being tempered by other things, like curiosity, empathy,

patience, affection, love, all of those things. And I think this is the thing about hypervigilance. It's like this overdeveloped muscle. And it's not about saying, well, never be vigilant. It's not about saying, well, never think about risk. It's not about saying, well,

never form judgments about people that you let close to you. But it's overdeveloped and other muscles are underdeveloped. And that's part. that's part of, I think, the process of recovery from experiences of sexual violation or violence. Yeah, I totally agree. I don't know why I left such a long gap there.

I was just trying to think of a way to wrap up without seeming callous because it's something that can be talked about for ages, but at the end of the day, it's... I think we've given enough food for thought. Food for thought. The children are eaten. The children are eaten well.

Children are eating, well, maybe they are. Maybe they haven't eating gruel. They might not think they're eating well. Could be gruel. Okay, who've you been, Ash? Gave it away. I've been an ape with anxiety. I need to get a new laugh, man.

My man, I like your laugh. My laugh used to be, when I was younger, I used to hiss like a bus, like, I just laugh like that. I just cultivated that. And now I cackle. I love a good cackle And my favourite qualities in people Is if they've got a laugh

That you can locate them in crowded rooms by Love that about people I love a big booming laugh Okay right This has been if I speak We're off Bye Bye

Thank you.