Knowledge Fight - #802: Chatting with Sian Norris

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

Today, Jordan sits down for a chat with Sian Norris, author of the forthcoming book Bodies Under Siege: How The Far Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global, available for pre-order now.

I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys. I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys, saying we are the bad guys. I love you. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Knowledge Fight. Once again, it's just me, Jordan. Today, I have with me, author, journalist, Sean Norris, whose new book, Bodies Under Siege, which I assume is a history of Stephen Segal's crimes. That has been a running joke between me and a couple of my friends. I believe it. I believe it. It's right there. You can't not do it. Exactly.

So, Sean, I want to welcome you to the show and I want to ask you the question we ask everybody, which is, what's your bright spot today? So, my bright spot today has been that my best friend was staying with me this week and I hadn't seen her for a couple of months because she lives in France and I live in the UK. So, it's been a really lovely week of like friendship and sisterhood and drinking probably too much wine and having really nice food. That's wonderful. That's a great spot. That's a great spot. It's better than mine. Mine is socks. My wife and I went to a novelty sock store in Canada and I've been wearing my, let me double check, deal with it, socks, which have pickles on them. I'm into it. That's what I've got. I think socks are important. Having new socks is like a much underrated pleasure in life, in my opinion.

I swear to you, I wear the same clothes every day. The only expression I have now is just socks. That's it. Ironic socks is my bright spot. So, Sean, I wanted to start by giving people a little bit of background on you. If I understand correctly, you started more as a fiction writer, short fiction and the like and then became a human rights journalist traveling around the world, kicking ass. How did that transition work? So, I mean, I'd like to think of myself as a fiction and short fiction writer, but to be honest, I didn't have that much fiction published. I had a few short stories published. And as many journalists and writers are, I'm constantly trying to finish that novel that will become a huge blockbuster hit one day. I think I was always really interested in writing and telling stories, and I really wanted to do that in whatever form it took. And I think alongside my sort of background writing fiction was also this background in feminist activism and human rights activism, particularly on women's rights, abortion rights, obviously, and LGBTQ plus people's rights.

So that really kind of led me to sort of bring those two skills and passions together. How do I talk about the issues facing women and marginalized people? And how can I use my skills as a writer? And that leads to human rights journalism. And so for the past couple of years, I've been a staff writer on an independent paper in the UK, but recently gone back to freelancing, which is definitely my happier place. I much prefer freelancing and having that extra bit of freedom. And yeah, and it's just sort of, yeah, like reported on human rights and women's issues from Bangladesh, from Kenya, from Romania, from the US, looking from the UK, if that makes sense, haven't actually been on the ground in the US, and obviously here at home in the UK. Don't worry about it, you're not missing anything. You'll be fine. It's garbage except for, I don't know, 20, 30 places. Everything else we can just get rid of. So yeah, so one of the interesting things that I noticed on that front is that with your short fiction, it is far more rhythmic in terms of your structure, your sentencing, all of those things. Whereas when I read this book, it is, I don't know, I would almost describe it as a hammer. You know, this starts and it keeps driving the point, the point, the point, you know, like that kind of thing. Why do you feel like there's a deliberate choice to, I mean, obviously there's a deliberate choice between the two, but do you feel more comfortable in one or the other?

I don't know if it's necessarily feeling more comfortable. It's just that they require really different styles. So I think what I wanted to achieve with this book was a couple of things in terms of form and structure. And I want to like get across the urgency. I mean, obviously we're in a slightly different place now because of the overhauling of Roe and the success of the Dobbs case in the US. But when I started writing this book, a lot of people didn't really take it very seriously when I was saying, you know, there's a real threat to abortion rights. This threat to abortion rights is coming from white supremacy and white male supremacy in particular. So I was very much like, I have to get this across. I have to really be urgent. I have to really, as you say, hammer home. What is going on and why this is an issue? And I wanted to be really, really clear and make my points really clear, particularly so that it wasn't just speaking to someone, like not speaking to myself. Like, oh, I know these issues because I've been buried in them and researching them and reporting on them for a really long time. So how do I really open it up and make sure that someone not as engaged? Although I think people who read the book are going to be somewhat engaged in women's rights issues just because unless they're into Steven Seagal and they pick it up by mistake. It's a real airport, you know, it's a real airport. You know, you see it right next to Bill O'Reilly's books. I totally believe that. Yeah. Nice little summer vacation read. Yeah. Whereas obviously when you're writing fiction, you can be a lot more playful and you can play around with language and shapes of sentences.

And I think that's one of the things I really enjoy about writing fiction, although I haven't done any for a while. Like, keep saying, as I say, I'm going to finish that novel. Right. Well, I mean, the last interview I did was with Jeff Charlotte and his book was written, I mean, obviously it's different because it's written from a man and it's talking about very, very similar issues from a different lens. And from his creative writing background, you know, or creative nonfiction background, you can definitely see how he's trying to craft these stories within the story in order to kind of do a little. I mean, I'm not not belittling him. It's an entertaining book in that way. And then, like I said, from from your point of view, from your perspective here, this is not entertainment. This is a fucking emergency, you know, we got we got to start riots is is the way that I felt from that. I think as well as points in the book where I do try and kind of create or paint a picture of what was going on. For example, there's a section on the January the sixth instruction and I try and like go into like what it was like what it looked like from watching it on the news in the UK. But at the same time, I wrote most of the book during the pandemic and in the lockdowns, which meant there wasn't a lot of opportunity to go anywhere.

There was a point when I went to North Bristol and I was like, wow, it's like the furthest I've been from my house for for months. So I think there was that kind of, you know, there was a potential to sort of in another time to have gone to different places and described what I was seeing and kind of embedded myself more in in communities and movements but because of the restrictions of the pandemic, it just wasn't a possibility. I think that even from that perspective and that's what I want to get into next about the book is you start off by kind of listing out the the main characters. Because when we are talking about so our show I know you have no idea who we are which is fine. We cover Alex Jones of Info Wars exclusively for way too long. And our character lens is going to be through that. You know, and you're talking more about a global, I don't want to say conspiracy but a grouping of different people who are interested in restricting women's rights in different places around the globe.

So I wanted to I wanted to give you an opportunity to kind of give some of those greatest hits. As far as Kenya, the, the organizations there. I mean, the I wanted to hear more about the Dutch. What was it? Let me check. Yeah, everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wanted to definitely hear more about that. So could you could you kind of do that for us real quick?

Yeah, sure. So the sort of. I mean, if I go back a couple of steps, the way that I looked at this research in the way I wanted to structure the book was to show that there is a pipeline between extremist anti-abortion ideas that kind of faster and ferment in, you know, very dark spaces. You know, far right neo Nazi groups and extremist anti-abortion groups. So in the UK perspective, I mentioned organizations like patriotic alternative, which is a far right group based here and a center for bioethical research UK, which is a branch of a US organization. And it's a very small group, but it's very extreme anti-abortion group in the UK. That's one of my naming conventions is that very simple. Oh, we're just the bioethics commission. Also, we kill babies, you know, like we hate people and all that.

You know, yeah, I get it. Yeah, they've got such a benign name. And yet their actions are really, really extreme. And, you know, they they've become very well known for like displaying very unpleasant and graphic abortion imagery outside MPs constituency offices and also outside clinics and things like that. And then I kind of look at the sort of more mainstream organizations, which I kind of think of as the next stage in this pipeline. So you get this sort of extremist ideology. And then it's laundered by more mainstream groups who, you know, can go to the UN who go to the European courts of human rights who take amicus briefs to the Supreme Court in the US. And so people like Citizen Go, which is a Spanish organization Alliance Defending Freedom, which I'm sure US listeners will be really familiar with that very influential and very influential on the whole row debate. And then from there, these organizations kind of take the extreme anti-abortion ideology, clean it up, put it in a PowerPoint presentation, which shows you are well wearing a seat.

And the anti politicians and the politicians then kind of enact a lot of these policies in terms of restricting abortion rights or pushing really anti immigration policies and saying that the way to resolve things like demographic winters or so called demographic crises is to restrict women's reproductive freedoms. So that's when we look at places like Hungary and Europe, Poland, obviously, which has a very strict anti abortion ban, and also issues in the UK as well. And I guess like some of the organizations that I really focused on, you mentioned in Kenya, I've done a lot of work on this organization called Citizen Go, which as I said is a Spanish group. And they're sort of made us operandi is to get people to sign petitions, which focus on a whole range of sort of anti gender initiatives. I mean, it's a really random selection, everything from, you know, right, reverse this way to a Netflix show that's got a gay character in it. Right. Well, that's what you talk about with them is why the fuck are they there? Who fucking cares? What is a Spanish organization doing? I mean, essentially, once again, colonizing Kenya's idea structure.

Well, this is, yeah, this is where I get really angry about it all because one of the sort of things that Citizen Go has done in Kenya is it's got a representative in Kenya. She's a Kenyan woman. And, you know, she's addressed the United Nations about abortion rights in the country and LGBT rights. And they argue that abortion and LGBTQ plus people's rights are like a Western imposition on traditional Kenyan values and traditional African values. And of course, this completely ignores the fact that Citizen Go is a Spanish European organization imposing its ideology and its motivations on Kenya. And when I was in Kenya last year, you know, I was talking to a gynecologist who's quite high up in the sort of medical profession over there. And he was saying, we've always had abortion in Kenya. Abortion is traditional in Kenya. So the idea that these global North organizations can go into the global self and try and spread their ideology and spread their ideas and then claim somehow that they're, you know, presenting true African values is really offensive. And it's offensive to the amazing, you know, pro-abortion activists who are working really hard in Kenya and in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

And of course, Citizen Go is also very active in Latin America and they're kind of very close to the Spanish far-right party Vox as well. That leads me to my next question. Is there anything white people can't steal? I don't think so. That is the correct answer. We're going to just go in and, you know, take your rights movements and, yeah, tell you, tell you what your histories are and tell you what your values are. I mean, it's surprising that Kenya used to be filled with white people who have the traditional Spanish values that we always thought. It's so crazy how that worked out. Absolutely. And I think in terms of particularly we're seeing a massive backlash against LGBT rights in East Africa at the moment. And, you know, a lot of the laws that we see against LGBT people are really rooted in those colonialist era laws from, you know, the 1800s.

And when Britain was going stomping around the place telling everyone how to live their lives and how to behave. And we don't seem to have stopped doing that. Yeah, it feels to me like anything that's more than 200 years old should probably be updated. But, you know, I'm looking at windows trying to install a new version and I'm saying no. Maybe I'm on the wrong side of history here. That is entirely possible. I do want to throw in something that is very almost kind of insidious here is that a lot of religious organizations that you talk about in the book present themselves in the United States and in the UK as one thing. And then when you see their behavior in other countries, it is, I mean, disgusting. So can you, like, as I was saying, like the Dutch reform church was it?

Oh, yes. So not to everybody, the Dutch reform church. Yes, I believe that's what it was. I got it in my notes. Yeah. So the Dutch reform church was very is the church that the Divos family were members of. So obviously, Betsy DeVos was Trump's education secretary during, well, I don't think it was all of his presidency was it? I got so confused that people were changing jobs every two minutes. Yeah, I think she might have been the one that made it the whole way through. She might have won the race. It's a survivor.

Yeah, it's possible. I mean, when you're a billionaire, it helps. It does help. And I mean, she was education secretary at a time when from anyone could see the administration was really going after so called wokery in schools from, you know, a backlash against positive representations of LGBT people, a backlash against, you know, any materials that talk about black history, talk about the enslavement of people in America and African American people. And obviously, she also put in her firing line at the protections for sexual harassment for schoolchildren. So there was a lot of really reaction reactivity going on from Betsy DeVos when she was education secretary. And then when you look at the sort of background of her and her family, you start to see, OK, well, she was part of this thing called a Dutch reform church, which is very reactionary church, very anti abortion, very anti LGBT. Her, her foundation that she runs with her husband funds, anti gender organizing, anti gender campaigning all across the world, as does the foundation that is linked to her family, the Prince family. So, you know, made a name as Prince.

And I think this is when it gets really interesting secretary formerly known as Prince. Right. Yes. But it gets really interesting how all of these families are so connected and these funding streams become very connected and they're coming from this really shared ideology and how they use that money from, you know, all sorts of different sources of wealth to try and influence abortion rights all around the world. So I think it's really concerning that these, you know, again, really just in a very, very wealthy individuals have taken on this ideology and are trying to import it and, you know, force the ideology onto more. I mean, I don't like the word more vulnerable populations, but that is kind of the terminology we use, I guess. So, you know, once it might not have the same health infrastructure or the same infrastructure around women's rights. And yeah, it's a really dangerous combination. Well, I mean, you know, it's hard not to say vulnerable when the reason for the vulnerability is because they've been denied so much by the people who are also destroying them now.

So it's not as though it's vulnerability. It's it's fucking trauma throughout that entire time. And that's why I there was a line that I really, really appreciated, which was without access to reproductive rights, women can never be free, which is a good line. But I was wanting to ask you, what does that freedom actually look like? Do you know what I mean? Like right now, I would argue that the vast majority of human beings on this planet believe in some form of restricting women's reproductive rights one way or the other. So how is it that we see that actual freedom for reproductive rights? So to me, it's that freedom is it it's sort of about reproductive justice.

So the idea is that when we're when we have reproductive rights or reproductive justice and women can be free. And that means that we have the choice to control our infertility, the choice to end a pregnancy that we don't want to have the choice to continue a pregnancy that we do want to have. And then when that baby is born, that wanted baby, we can have access to secure housing to education to social welfare to to work. And for that work to be flexible and to be supportive of the family that you want to have. And I think that's a really important aspect of women's freedom. It's not just about saying, oh, you have a right to abortion. It's also about saying that you have the right to, you know, the families that you want and the support that needs to be in place for you to achieve that. And I think fundamentally, you know, I say that we can't be free unless we have reproductive rights.

It's because the driving force behind the anti abortion movement is to control women and to control women's bodies and to put women's bodies to work to reproductive exploit us for reproductive labor. And as long as we're saying that that is possible for someone else to control and own our bodies, then we can never be free. And when we say that actually I get to decide what happens to my body. And again, that expands beyond just having an abortion that can be who I want to have sex with, how I want to have sex with that person, you know, whether I want to have a baby at all. It's like when we give up that space when that right has taken away from us, that very bodily freedom is denied to us. Right, right. I mean, but that's that I suppose is my question. I mean, I feel like our society when I'm reading through your book, it is hard not to continually make these connections that basically our entire culture is in some form or another, based around commodification of women's bodies,

control of women's bodies, the sale, you know, I was thinking that the, you know, we've often described sex work as the oldest profession. And the more I think about it, the more I think that is the entire basis for capitalism, selling women's bodies in one way or another, without their consent or control. So in, in essence, if we want to have full reproductive rights, it has to be the entire system that goes. Right. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I would say so. I think one of the really interesting things to look at is Sylvia Federici's work and she wrote this book called Caliban and the Witch, which looks at the links between reproductive rights or reproductive exploitation and the roots of capitalism. And reading that book was just such a light bulb moment for me.

It was like one of those moments being like, oh, okay, this all makes sense. This was planned. This is how it's supposed to be. And I don't like it and I want to change it. Yeah. But it's absolutely not a bug. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's absolutely about that. This idea that women's bodies are put to work in order to create the next generation of workers. So women's bodies need to be constantly reproducing. Otherwise, the capitalist system collapses. And there's really interesting stuff, both in Federici's work and in Angela Davis's work about how that links to the enslavement of African American people. Black women who were enslaved, you know, if they ended a pregnancy, that wasn't seen as her having an abortion or anything to do with her body. That was seen as her stealing from the enslavement. So as soon as you sort of, these connections are suddenly like, okay, because that's what women's bodies are for in this society.

And to deny that to say, actually, I'm not going to play a part in that. Actually, I want to have control over my own body. I don't see myself as a reproductive vessel. It's like, whoa, that is too much. You cannot have that. That would, you know, that is women's freedom and that allows freedom for everyone. And so it has to be stopped. Right.

Right. And that, I mean, that takes us directly into the, the twin incel and aggressive monster characters in your book. The fun, the thing that I can't get out of my head about that is how obsessed incels are with controlling women's bodies. But it's, it's like, they're, they're also miserably unhappy all the time. And they blame their inability to control women's bodies for that misery. But it wouldn't make them happy. Do you know what I mean? Like, even if there was control, even if they had complete control, it would only be a different form of misery. How is it that that is so constantly exploited by people who are only benefited by it?

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, I find the incel subculture endlessly fascinating in a grim way. I actually tried to enroll in one of the incel websites and get my own incel profile. But you have to like, um, apply and you have to give a statement as to why you want to be an incel. And they rejected me. Oh, what was your story? They were like, I think I just said something like, oh, I used to be red pill, but now I'm black pill.

And, you know, I just, I just think I really messed up. I thought you were a fiction writer. Come on now. I bet you have got more language about abusing women than they do. I know, I think I went too heavy. Crazy. But, um, I think, yeah, the interesting thing about the incels and the reason that I included them in the book is because they represent this, this idea of white male supremacy and the belief that women's bodies need to be exploited for reproduction in order to defeat this so-called great replacement, which is a far right conspiracy.

I'm sure your listeners know. Oh boy. Yeah, exactly. And so that was kind of the interesting aspect I found in the incel movement was how they were replicating this great replacement conspiracy theory and melding that with their desire to control women's bodies. You know, there were people who were going, oh, in the perfect society, all men will be guaranteed a wife and back in the past, you know, women knew their place and it was to have been married and to have babies. And then obviously the kind of usual disgusting incel stuff where they talk about what they do to women's bodies. But yeah, I think you're right. It's like, I mean, one of the, I wrote an article at the turn of this year about how the incels really don't like Andrew Tate, who's this kind of man who's just been arrested at that time, well, in December in Romania.

Yeah, I will say this to you, the audience that we have is so completely familiar with many of these monsters. Okay, that's great. I don't have to explain. Every single one of them. Yeah. But what I thought was interesting was that they position Andrew Tate as someone who exploits men like them as in men who are incels, because he promises them this lifestyle where they can get women and they can, you know, gain women into having sex with them. But actually, and then, but he's doing it by asking them for money and asking them to like give him money and then he will teach them how to get women. And so they actually see him as this really bad character because he's exploiting them.

And in that way he's a bit like a woman because that's something we can all agree on. Andrew Tate is like a woman. It's about time that we all got there. It's been too long. So it's interesting again how, yeah, these kind of systems exploit incel misery, but also, I mean, I spent a lot of time on incel forums and I just, the hate that they express is so extreme. And I remember the first. It's like their brains are fucking wild. The only thing that will make me happy is a woman.

And I hate women so much. It's like your entire existence makes no sense to me. And, you know, there's a lot of really disturbing trends as a result of that in terms of their obsession with, you know, very, very young girls, because at least they're not, you know, they haven't been corrupted by womanhood. And I think it's a really, yes, I think it's very tempting sometimes not to take in so seriously because they are just so awful. But actually, some of the things they say and do does require some kind of analysis and recognition. In your book, you go through a lot of that. And part of the cycle, the spinny bet round thing is that the disillusionment with capitalism strengthens the grip that these extremists have on people like incels. And it's like that, that damaging thought process they have on one place makes them rife for grifting from another from another angle.

And that is the top down feedback loop that I wanted to kind of talk with you about. There are so many different financial backers for all of these horrific organizations. And they push this message, and then the people below them get the message and reinforce that and it creates that feedback loop that only increases the extremity over time. The thing that I am trying to figure out is where does it start. So in your in your like a globe trotting adventures, does it start at the top or does it start at the bottom? Where's the chicken or the egg in this scenario? That's a really good question. I know.

And I don't know if I know the answer. I think it's, it's really difficult to define because the sort of as I said, the argument I try and make in a book is that these ideologies kind of ferment in these far right corners and have become mainstreamed. But in order to, for these ideologies to ferment in the first place, they need to, as you say, start somewhere that needs to be the egg that hatches. Exactly. And I mean, and I think one of the sort of complicated things of abortion rights is how it has been a very long standing row, you know, rows, 50 years old, before it was overturned, you know, that kind of the backlash against row started even before it had come into law, right? Sure. People were organizing. Well, I mean, it goes back even further before that, you know, abortion was legal in the United States.

In the 18th, yeah. In the 1860s. And then it, you know, it's almost like every 50 years, some assholes are good enough at propaganda to convince people that abortion is so wrong that they have to ban it, or they have to unban it, you know, it is, it's just a never ending cycle. But I think that's interesting as well, because one of the points that I make in the book is when abortion was bound in the States in the 1860s, it was coming from a position of anxiety about women's and political empowerment and rising rates of immigration. And this is where we are now, you know, the panic around abortion rights is coming from this great replacement conspiracy theory, which was we have herited by mainstream politicians now. And, you know, women's political empowerment, this is like post me to women are supposed to be doing better than ever. Like, and yet, suddenly, so now it's like, oh, oh, shit, we've got to take her rights away, we've got to have this backlash. And we've seen that throughout history in Weimar Germany, pre sort of the Nazi era. In 20 early 20th century Italy before fascism, women's empowerment, growing immigration becoming higher up the agenda, and then bam, we ban abortion rights. So I think in terms of where it comes from, it's kind of like the ways in which political narratives take hold on these sort of intersecting issues around race, gender, sex and immigration.

In order to kind of ferment insecurity and fuel anger and fuel resentment, which then allows for this backlash to happen. And so it's that kind of meeting point between the activists and the politicians and the funders that creates this whirlpool of hate and anger. And, but I, yeah, whether that starts with a politician who stands up going, we've got a problem with immigration and as a low birth rate, or whether it starts with the guy online going, I'm really, there's a massive replacement and women are aiding it because of their all of their abortions. It's the same thing. It's just a different way of phrasing it. Well, I mean, you know, it is, it is like they wouldn't be able to exploit the anxiety people have over being replaced. If there wasn't anxiety people have over being replaced. And they wouldn't be able to create that anxiety whole cloth unless there was already anxiety there. So at the end of the day, the problem is everybody's fucking anxious all the goddamn time, because nobody knows what's going to happen.

And that anxiety again comes from instability around politics, economics. You know, the final chapter of the book sort of looks at the impetus of the 2008 financial crash for why we're having this backlash and it's well because that the stability that we've kind of gotten used to in the global north was really, really shaken. And the ideology that we'd all been living with fell apart. And then we were like, okay, what do we do now? Like in the UK, we've never really recovered from the crash. Like our wages, our economic output is still really, really poor. And so people just get directly to the crash, right? Yeah, I mean, it was, you know, I very feel very strongly that we don't talk enough about the crash and its impact because it's helped shape so much of UK politics and, you know, politics across the region. And if you say it created this anxiety that was then filled with bad actors going, oh, well, the real reason you're anxious is because women have gained some rights and a real reason you're anxious because there's like too many immigrants coming in and a real reason you're anxious is because of Black Lives Matter and drag queens telling stories in libraries. And it's just it builds and builds and builds and then politicians who want to hold on to power exploit all of that.

Right. Why is it that their message seems to be a lot more popular than it's the fucking bankers, you know, it feels like that should be the message all the time is that it's the fucking bankers again, damn it, they got us, you know. I think it's kind of too pronged, really. The first is that it's much easier to punch down, right? Like, it's much easier to blame someone who you think is, is, is left. If you're a man and you don't like women, you're going to throw it at whoever's in range. Yeah, that makes it. Yeah. And you know, you're like, well, actually, why does this woman have stuff that I don't have? She should get down. She should be pushed down and I'm going to push her down. And the other fact is that I think there's this still a really strong belief that, you know, if like if you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you work really hard, you can be as rich as a banker. And you can, you can be as powerful as, you know, that's all the result of hard work and not the result of capitalist systems that exclude and enrich. And so I think there's this reluctance to kind of punch up because number one, it's harder to take on a whole huge system. And number two, you think, oh, well, I wouldn't mind a slice of that pie. I'll just keep quiet and then maybe they'll give me some.

Sure. Sure. Well, I mean, then I suppose I want to ask what kind of messaging do you think could actually break through? You know, instead of instead of allowing the messaging of, you know, punch, hey, let's hit women. That's the easy, easy message. It's been working for thousands of years. What kind of message can we push through that? So, I mean, I think a lot of people reach for the really obvious message that like patriarchy hurts men too. And, you know, capitalism hurts all of us. But I think we need to like start putting forward. Yeah. And I'm always like, yeah, patriarchy does hurt men too, but also men benefit from patriarchy. And that's why we've got it like, you know, two things can be true at once. So I think we just need to like, and I felt like this, going back to 2016 when it was the referendum in the UK over Brexit, the remain campaign, which I voted for came out with such negative messaging. It was all just like, if you vote for Brexit, the whole economy is going to collapse and everything will be terrible and turned out they were right.

But there was no sort of positive vision for what remaining in the EU would look like. There was no sense of like, if I vote remain, it's going to create a stronger Europe. I'm going to have access to, even if they just said, vote to remain in the EU and you won't have to queue at the airport anymore. Like, you know, like that's just like a positive vision. And I think that's what we really need to start doing for women's rights and human rights across the board. So one of the really exciting things that happened last, I think it was last year, was there was a referendum in Hungary about LGBTQ plus rights. And the pro LGBTQ campaign went out and they told really positive stories about gay people's lives or LGBTQ people's lives. And they spoke about how your friend or your son or your daughter or your auntie could be gay. You know, it was like, we're a community, we're in your community, we are all part of this. And they won, like the referendum, the result that the government wanted, you know, didn't happen.

They, the government failed to enact some of the repressive legislation that they wanted to enact. They obviously have put in some other things. And I think going out with that really positive message, like gave people a reason to vote in favor because they're like, yeah, actually, my next little neighbor is gay and I really like him. And we have a really great time and we both like, we talk about our dogs and as opposed to always kind of going, everything's terrible, everything's terrible, things are going to get worse, things are going to get worse. And it was one of the things that there was a film called Yes, which was about the Chilean referendum. And it was this, that was the sort of message of that film of like, show, show what a positive difference can be made if you believe in human rights and you support human rights. You know, you have, you know, women won't be dying. You'll have like healthy families, happy communities, like the people that you love will be better cared for and have, you know, better mental health and we'll have stronger economies and all of these things can happen.

But I think, and for understandable reasons, we can be very negative because things are very, very bad right now. But if we're going to win, we need to start showing what winning means and what change could look like. Right. You know, I think when you say things are really, really bad right now, you are 100% correct. But I find it hard not to go through your entire book and see that there's an almost unspoken thing that is alluded to throughout the entire thing, which is, I would say that part of all of this and maybe the largest part is that the largest part is the structure and the system and the male monopoly on violence, on physical actual violence and that there's really, I mean, no, no strategy to deal with that. So is it, is it something honestly where it should be, should we find a way to lessen their ability to commit violence or honestly, I mean, it's terrifying. And what you wrote in the book makes me feel like maybe I should start learning how to use a gun. Do you know what I mean? Like this is real shit. You wrote a hammer and you have to take responsibility for making me want to get a hammer.

Oh, no, you don't get a gun. I'm going to worst thing. So I guess like in terms of the United fucking States, okay. Yeah. In terms of like men's violence against women, I mean, obviously, that underpins that that is underpins gender inequality. Like, you know, again, we can't be equal, we can't be free. So long as men use violence against women to to control and and subdue women. But I think again, it's about making that case for like why women's rights are important. You know, we know that the more equality women can get the more we have gender equality, the more we can impact and reduce the levels of male violence, you know, more because women are respected and seen as human and seen as having equal value to men and so there's no reason to be violent towards us. And I think it's again, it's about really striving to see women's rights as something that is positive for society and positive for men as well. Because yeah, like, it doesn't have to be this way and and you know men's violence is a sort of tool of patriarchy and patriarchy is so linked to capitalism. But if we fight for a fair and more equal society, you don't need to keep control through violent means because there isn't that need for control in the first place.

Right. Right. That that makes me go. I mean, see that that lessening violence kind of thing and that it is part of the patriarchy. You know, the story you tell of doctors letting a woman die of sepsis because of an abortion ban that immediately brought me to the Milgram experiment. If that makes sense, you know, like, how is it possible for a doctor to watch someone die just because an authority says that's what you have to do. You know, it's it's a passive version of continuing to increase that voltage. Yeah, so the cases that I write about in the book obviously happened in Poland where we've got a very strict abortion ban. And obviously there was the case in Ireland in 2012 when Savita died and then obviously around the world, you know, thousands of women died as a result of unsafe abortion or not having access to safe abortion. And I think what's so disturbing and and this is, you know, the stuff about Poland and Savita is is a really a message to the United States like because this is coming to your doors like women will die as a result of dogs. And the reason they will die is because you have told doctors that they will go to prison if they act.

And so you have doctors who, you know, want to help women they want to do the things that they used to do they want to perform surgical abortions that will save women's lives. But if you're constantly being told that that could result in you going to prison for life, and you think there's a teeny tiny chance that this women will pull through and abort the baby the fetus naturally. Then of course you're going to keep holding and holding and holding until there's no options left. And you're saying, of course, see, that's that's why I get back to the Milgram experiment. Yeah, what what level? Why do you think that it's okay to give this random person 300 volts because a doctor told you to press the button? Why do we say, of course, why don't doctors just say, fuck you put all then break and see how that fucking goes. I mean, that's that's what you need really, you need a mass movement of medical professionals to say that they're not going to comply with the law.

And I think the really scary thing about that I've seen coming out of the anti abortion movement in the US is they're already preparing for when the women start to die by saying, oh, well the law allows the doctors to intervene and if the doctor doesn't intervene and that's the doctor's fault. And it's like, no, the law is really murky, the laws are not clear. There's not a moment in the law where it's only like now you can intervene and everybody will agree that this was the moment. So by creating these bad laws and failing to recognize the medical realities of women's bodies and not respecting doctors expertise. This is, this is what happens, this is the result of those bands and, you know, I remember really just thinking when the women in Poland died because she was the same age as me when she died and I just kept coming back to that was like you're the same age as me and you're, you know, you've died because you weren't allowed to have a surgical abortion that would have saved your life. Like the, the horror of it is, I still really, really feel the horror of like that news story and what the woman's mother said and the video of her, you know, it's just a really horrifying. I don't even want to say tragedy because it's not a tragedy when it's deliberate. It's a murder. Yeah, that's a murder. That is a state sponsored execution.

And to look at it any other way is doing a disservice to her, I would say. Yeah, I think, you know, the voices of the women and their families need to be prioritized. And I think one of the things that makes me so particularly angry about what's happening in the States is when in 2012 Savita Halapovna died, that was a trigger for change in Ireland. It was like, okay, this cannot happen again. We cannot keep going through this. Something is going to change. And, you know, six years later, they overturn the abortion ban and now they're safe legal abortion in Ireland. I think what happened with the Polish deaths and what will happen when women start to die in the US is like this is the start. This is the start of, you know, the process. There's no change coming. This isn't the end of something bad. This is the beginning of something that is going to get worse and worse. And that's really frightening. That's a really frightening state of affairs. Yeah, I mean, it does feel as though if we are in a state sponsored execution territory, the next step for everyone is going to be denying immoral laws and simply refusing to comply with them.

And it feels like we shouldn't be there. But again, your book really hammers home that it is going to be the state that enforces the patriarchy continually. I mean, it is. That's just what's going to happen. The state wants to do that. It's part of their jam, if you will. And so your your book makes a very unspoken argument for beginning to just ignore immoral laws. Otherwise, we're just going to be at the at the fucking Hague at the Nuremberg trials all over again saying no, no, no, I was just told to do it. You see, I feel I'm such a law abiding person. Yeah, I'll say one revolution. Yeah, you're going to have to, you're going to have to pick one or the other. I feel like you can't do both anymore. That's not possible. There are some cases going through in the States right now of women, you know, taking action against incidents when they've been denied abortion care in life-threatening situations. And hopefully, if nothing else, that will start raising the alarm, you know, forcing people to take action and maybe overturning some of these bands. But we shall have to see how they get on. So you are advocating for a change within the law?

Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm advocating for there not to be any abortion bans. Like my position is that abortion is health care and therefore it should be regulated as health care. You know, in the in Britain, abortion is still governed by criminal law, which is completely, you know, inappropriate. And as long as we see abortion is something that's around a moral issue or a criminal issue is always going to be vulnerable to these kinds of bans and these kinds of restrictions. But as long as if we start talking about abortion is health care and valuing it as women's access to health care, then we can start to have real change. I know that it's very regular, but there is nothing funnier to me than weird old men wearing wigs and robes arguing about whether or not abortion should be legal. So I'm sorry that the justice system in Britain is so silly. I find it insane that we've given nine people wearing Moomoo's almost infinite power forever. That seems a little bit crazy and nobody continues. Nobody's just talking about how stupid that is.

Like on a fundamental level, there are 300 odd million people here and we're letting nine assholes take the future. It's a really, I mean, from a, you know, across the pond, it does seem like a really weird system. But then I say that for coming from a legislature where someone wearing a big black robe bangs on the parliament's doors with a big stick at the beginning of every year. And not just that, but the Queen House make your law still. It did for a while before she died. Yeah, at least we get a bank holiday when the King gets coronated. That is, that is the, every serf's life in the history of the world. We're all supposed to be so grateful. We're supposed to be so grateful that we get this extra day off. The pyramids is like, finally, we get a day off.

Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, it's a very, I find the Supreme Court system very odd. And it's clearly up for abuse. That's, that's what we can see if you have political appointments in a judiciary that is open to abuse. And that's what we're seeing in different legislators around Europe as well. I think there's a sort of feeling that it's only in the US, but actually political appointments in the Supreme Courts in different European countries is also having profound implications on people's rights. Of course, of course. And that, that brings me to, I, yeah, I think we're, I think we're coming up at an hour, so I won't keep you too much longer. But I did want to say, while you've, while you've done your traveling and your reporting, have you seen examples of it going a better way, as opposed to the way the rest of the world seems to be going? Your book is a little bit relentless in negativity. You know, but we took out the positive example taken out of the first breath. So obviously the main example is Ireland. You know, what we saw in Ireland was just an unbelievable show of what happens when you don't compromise on advocating for reproductive rights. When you, you go out there and you say, this is what women need and deserve, abortion is health care, and every woman should have a right to control her own body.

And we saw feminist organizations and human rights organizations come together as a coalition. And I spoke to one of the, the leaders of the coalition who's like, you know, after the day after the referendum, we're all back to rowing again, you know. Of course, of course. This time period is like, why, we have one goal and we're going to unify and we're going to go after it. And, you know, it was never a given that the yes side would win the referendum. It was always felt very touch and go. The no side, so the, the ones who wanted to keep the Eighth Amendment, the ones who wanted to keep the abortion ban, went at it with everything, you know, just very, very vicious campaigning, very graphic campaigning. You know, US actors coming into Ireland to sort of spread the anti-abortion message. Again, none of your fucking business. Why are they there? Right, right. But it didn't work. It didn't work. And what worked was telling women's stories and championing women's and, and you know, women and pregnant people's experiences and, and refusing to say, refusing to compromise on it. And now Ireland has more, you know, has a liberal abortion laws. Similarly, in the UK, we've, we've seen progress in that abortion was finally decriminalized in Northern Ireland. So Northern Ireland was not covered by the 1967 abortion act, which allowed for abortion in certain circumstances in the rest of the UK.

And it's took a lot of like political campaigning and, you know, some problematic political campaigning to get it decriminalized in Northern Ireland. And then in the Britain, we've had, you know, buffer zones implemented so people can no longer go and harass women outside of clinics. We've had changes to the law that allow women to take abortion pills at home. So we have seen like positive progress on abortion rights in our little corner of Europe. And I think one of the messages of Roe as well was that while it's been a disaster for the US and has emboldened the anti abortion movement around the world, it's also kind of put some fire into the pro-abortion movement in that, you know, we could like, other nations have been like, okay, we need to actually do some more to protect abortion rights in our own constitutions. And when I reported on Roe being overruled back back in last year, I spoke to Leia Hockter from the Centre for Reproductive Rights and she was like, look, this is really terrible. But one thing to remember is that since 1973, I think 53 countries have improved access to abortion, and only four countries have rolled it back. So, you know, progress is happening. And that comes from, again, being really vocal by demanding abortionist health care, by not compromising, by saying that women's lives matter and women's bodies matter and women's health matters,

and that women's freedom matters. And I think, yeah, there is optimism to be had, even though we're going through a real backlash. Yeah, so I think what you're saying is that the political strategy should be like, hey, we're done arguing with each other for a little bit and let's just go fucking hard on this issue. Unite for at least a day to do this thing. You know, let's just focus on one fucking thing for once in our lives instead of changing the narrative every week. Yes. And I think the, you know, the left in general and feminist movement in general could learn a lot from the tactics of the Irish referendum. You know, actually, we can, there's a famous phrase that Joe Cox said, the MP who was killed, there's more that unites us than divides us. You know, we have more in common than what divides us. And I think we should remember that as a left movement and a feminist movement. We've got common goals and we can fight for them and we can move towards them. And yeah, it doesn't mean we have to like each other. It might mean we disagree on some things, but actually, if we're fighting for women's freedoms, then we have to really go for that. And you know, I come from the British left, we're always screaming at each other. We've got a shared goal and a shared vision and we can achieve it. Well, I think that's a great place to leave it then. Sean, thank you so much for joining me. Your book, Bodies Under Siege comes out.

Our audience would like to know how best to support you directly. So is that pre-orders or should they, do you sell it yourself in some fashion? I mean, I don't sell it myself, but yeah, pre-orders would be great. So you can get it from the Verso website and it's available for pre-order. And I guess soon it will be available for pre-order and like all the main bookseller websites. I hope so. But I know it's definitely available for pre-order from Verso. And yeah, I'm hoping to come to the States at some point, but otherwise, yeah, it's exciting. Please go and buy it. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. Thanks for holding. Hello, Alex. I'm a first-time caller. I'm a huge fan. I love your work. I love you.