Love Lives - Laura Bates on how misogyny is damaging our relationships

Episode Date: May 12, 2022

This week, we’re joined by Laura Bates. She is the founder of the Everyday Sexism project and bestselling author of several books about violence against women, including her latest: Fix the System Not the Women. In this episode, Laura joins Olivia to discuss how systemic misogyny affects women’s relationships, why we need to keep talking about sexual violence in schools and beyond, and what men can do to help.https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/lifestyle/laura-bates-misogyny-relationships-rape-b2078179.htmlCheck out the Millennial Love podcast on all major platforms and Independent TV, and keep up to date @Millennial_Love on Instagram and TikTok.If you, or someone you know, have been affected by child sexual abuse, call Childline on their helpline for children and young people who need to talk. Phone: [phone]The Victim Support helpline provides emotional and practical help to victims or witnesses of any crime, whether or not it has been reported to the police. Phone: [phone] (24/7)Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know a thirsty man until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like, and now that's what my grandma's on. Thank God phone a friend with Jesse Crookshank is not available on Facebook. It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com. Just a quick warning before we get started. This episode of Millennial Love contains themes of rape and sexual violence that some viewers may find distressing. that some viewers may find distressing.

Hello and welcome to Millennial Love, a podcast from The Independent on everything to do with love, sexuality, identity and more. This week I am very excited to be joined by the brilliant Laura Bates. For those who aren't familiar with Laura's work, she is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project and the author of several best-selling books about violence against women, including her latest, Fix the System, Not the Women. It's a brilliant book and I'm very excited to talk to her all about it.

We're going to delve into subjects such as how misogyny affects our relationships, why we need to talk more about sexual violence in schools and beyond, why we need to talk more about sexual violence in schools and beyond, and what men can do to help with this epidemic of violence against women that we are all currently facing. Hi Laura, how are you doing? Hi, I'm fine, thank you for having me. Thank you so much for coming, I've been following your work for years so this is a ac rwyf am geisio peidio â chael amser arnoch. Felly, i'r rhai nad ydych chi'n ymwybodol â'r hyn rydych chi'n ei wneud, a allwch chi ddechrau

gyda ni drwy ddarparu beth yw'r prosiect Sexism Cyfraith? Ie, mae'n syml iawn. Mae'n ddatabas o ddestunion pobl o unrhyw fath o lleoliad genedlaethol o unrhyw le yn y byd, pobl o unrhyw genedlaeth. Felly, efallai fod yn harwain seksual, efallai fod yn disgrw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw unrhyw o'r math sydd wedi cael ei gynnal. Felly, yn ddechrau, roedd ddyluniad y prosiect i gyhoeddi ymwybyddiaeth, i ddynnu pobl i ddeall bod hyn yn broblem cyflawniol mewn byd, lle maen nhw'n amlwg eisiau dweud nad oedd sexism yn digwydd o'r blaen. Ond nawr mae'r prosiect yn gweithio yn y llaw, felly rydyn ni'n cymryd y cyflawniadau a gafodd ni'r rhain i'w gynnal ac yn eu rhoi o'r ymwybyddiaeth o'r bobl â'r pwer i newid pethau. Felly, defnyddio'r storïau o bobl ifanc i gyflawni bwrw a chyfarwyr i roi cymaint o ddynion ar y gweithgaredd, defnyddio'r storïau using the stories from young people to convince ministers and MPs to put sexual consent on the curriculum,

using the stories from women on buses and tubes to work with the British Transport Police to improve the way that they respond to sexual offences and so on. And I guess to strip it back all the way to basically exactly what sexism is, because I think it's just one of those words that we overuse now, particularly in the media, to the point where for some people it's kind of lost its meaning so could you just briefly explain what is sexism and how does it affect our daily lives? I think when I first started the project I did it because I recognised it in the stories I was hearing from women and girls all around me they were being

treated differently being discriminated against or being abused because of their sex and that was what made me start using the word sexism it seemed very yn cael eu trafod yn wahanol, yn cael eu disgrimiadu o ran neu'n cael eu defnyddio oherwydd eu sex. Ac roedd hynny'n gwneud i mi ddechrau ddefnyddio'r gair sexism. Roedd yn debyg iawn i mi fod hynny'n digwydd. A gadewch i ni siarad am eich llyfr nesaf, Ffwrdd y system, nid y gwlain. Felly, beth oedd eich bod chi eisiau ysgrifennu am y pwnc hon yn benodol? A allech chi roi cyfnod cyflym o'r hyn sy'n ei ymwneud â hyn? Ie, felly, fe wnaethom ddiwedd 10 o flynyddoedd yn casglu a of what it's about? Yes, so I spent 10 years collecting and platforming and shouting about

these stories in the hope that that would be enough to affect change. I had this naive optimism, I think, that if enough of us raised our voices collectively, people would be forced to take notice and to listen and to change things. And what I think we've seen over the last decade is that people have been forced to sit up and they have been forced to take notice. And the public conversation has shifted thanks to the incredible, courageous women who have raised their voices, not just through everyday sexism, but of course, through other initiatives as well, like Me Too. Everyone's invited. But what broke my heart was that I didn't necessarily see the change that we needed. And instead of the change that it was so clear to me was necessary from institutions, from systems, instead it seemed that people were still looking to women,

looking to the victims themselves to be the change, to fix the problem, that women needed to be fixed, that we were the defective ones in every aspect of our lives, whether it's women being grossly discriminated against in the workplace, 54,000 women a year losing their jobs to maternity discrimination, and people think the answer is to send new mums on confidence courses, as if they're the problem. Or after the death of Sarah Everard, after the death of Sabina Nessa and Bobbie-Ann McLeod and Biba Henry and Nicole Smallman, these ideas from the police, from the government and elsewhere that we should be handing out more attack alarms, women should be more vigilant, that we shouldn't have taken that particular route, that we should be flagging down buses and learning the details of when we can and

can't be arrested and carrying drink spiking testing kits with us on nights out. We're prepared to look almost anywhere except at the systems that are failing women. And so for this book, I felt so angry about that. And I wanted to try and write a book that in an accessible way really proves that actually there is institutional misogyny in the systems around us. And that's what needs to change, not the women. It's astonishing that that stuff has all been happening so recently as well, because when you spell it it out it seems like such an archaic idea victim blaming and constantly blaming the women for the actions of violent men but like you said in the wake of all of those deaths of those women the advice was you know get a rape alarm wave down the bus all that stuff and it's and I think we internalize that as well

to a really damaging degree you know I had a really scary incident as we all have scary incidents very regularly. Quite recently when I was walking home from the supermarket in daylight, and there was a group of boys behind me, they must have been like 19, 20, and they were shouting and shouting and shouting. And I had music in, and I purposely didn't turn it down

because I didn't want to hear what they were saying, but they were screaming at me. And then I heard like really loud bashing, like I think they were knocking on cars, and there were of them and I turned and one of them ran in front of me and he was wearing a mask like a full mask I was absolutely terrified so I just started walking really really quickly and went into my house and then I remember because my house is on the street and you can see that I quickly shut all the shutters hoping that they didn't see which house I'd gone into and it was absolutely terrifying and got home and the first thing I did was just order a rape alarm off Amazon.

And it was just, it was the first thing that I thought I should do. And I definitely feel comforted having that in my bag. But it just, it just gets you so angry that that's what we have to do, isn't it? It does. And, you know, this is not to say that anyone shouldn't do that if that's what makes them feel safe. But it's the fury that we've all internalised these rules no one ever sits us down and teaches us you are responsible but that is what we hear and what we learn and I did a workshop that broke my heart recently with a group of girls who were 12 years old and 13 and one of them said we were talking

about gender and how our lives would be different and one of the girls said if I was a boy I wouldn't have to be scared all the time and she talked about walking home gripping her hockey stick in her hands at 13 in case someone attacked her and gradually the other girls started chiming in and they talked about walking with their keys between their fingers they talked about not wearing a ponytail in case someone grabbed it about wearing flat shoes about waiting after school in the winter so they could walk each other home, texting when they got home safe, all the things that me and my friends do on a day-to-day basis that we never stop to talk about and that no one ever taught us but that we've internalised as our duty to protect ourselves and it's so internalised that

even in our grief and our anger when women, we still couch it in those terms. I found it devastating after Sarah Everard that the thing that trended more than anything else online was she was just walking home and she did all the right things. And after Aisling Murphy in Ireland, she was just going for a run. And, you know, of course, I understand where that came from. This isn't to criticize anyone who posted that. But what that said to me was that was why it was an unspeakable tragedy, because in spite of doing all the right things and behaving in this perfect victim manner, they died. And of course, it explained why those are the cases that hit the headlines, because what we're really saying, if you take it to its extreme, is it wouldn't have been quite so tragic if she hadn't you know if she had been out drunk or at two o'clock in the morning or in a short skirt or meeting someone for sex or

whatever it was it would have been that little bit less tragic because we are prepared to accept certain levels of violence against women as as as a kind of baseline in our society and that's where we're starting from even in our fury we start from that point that it was angry and we were furious for that reason and that was gutting to me yeah it's a really really stark reminder I think and like I said it is it's maddening and it's so deeply shocking that we are still in this place um one of the things that I really liked about your book was the start of the book when you write about the list and it's it's it's something that I really liked about your book was the start of the book when you write about the list and it's something that I think we

all carry with us all the time and it's a really interesting way of putting it that I think will help us as individuals really wake up to the reality of this problem that we are all dealing with. So can you explain to us what the list is and what made you want to write it? And I guess if you're willing to share some of the things that were on yours. I mean, for example, mine would be that experience I just talked about. That would be one of the many things on my list. I wanted to talk about the list.

And the list is my name for this trailing kind of map of incidents that we carry behind us. Because I think that we're robbed of our lists. I think that we are robbed of being allowed to acknowledge and to grieve and to be furious about them by a society which from a really young age has forced us to doubt and second guess and dismiss and disbelieve even ourselves. So from childhood, women are so used,

and girls are so used to hearing, you're overreacting, you've got the wrong end of the stick, he didn't mean it like that. I'm sure that so used to hearing you're overreacting you've got the wrong end of the stick he didn't mean it like that I'm sure that didn't happen because you're a woman it was just a coincidence take it as a compliment I'd love it if someone said that to me get a sense of humor we are so often asked well what were you wearing and did you lead him on were you asking for it and because of that I think we have each so many experiences that we have partially buried and submerged and hidden in shame because our whole lives often by people that we love and trust even we're told you're overreacting don't make a fuss this is part of being a girl so the first thing

for me I think was allowing ourselves to reclaim that list because I think it's only when you start to recognize the enormity of it that you can see the impact it has on your life and it's only when we can see that framework and that structure that we can recognize things as external oppression rather than internal shame and error because what we're taught to do instead is to internalize it and take it on ourselves I was so stupid I never should have gone home with. I shouldn't have been there at that time. I should have been a good girl and taken the right kind of minicab. All of this prevents us from seeing the problem for what it is. And when I look at my list, you know, it's so varied. It's not just extreme. It's not just incidents of sexual violence, although those incidents are on my list but it starts when I was five

years old and my parents left my my grandparents house after introducing my new baby brother to them for the first time and when they came out to the car there was a package on my mum's the passenger seat of the car she opened the package and it was a sort of ancient ugly piece of gold jewelry and she said to my dad what what's this? And he said, it's because you finally had a son. And that was where my list started at five years old, not knowing that I'd already been deemed less than my brother for being a girl.

And from there, it goes through, you know, incidents of being rated out of 10 at school, being sexually assaulted at university, going to a university where a supervisor wore a black armband each year to mourn the day that women had been admitted to the college, being sexually harassed on my first ever summer temp job as a teenager by a much older male colleague and then called into my boss's office to be reprimanded because it was deemed to be my short skirt that had caused it. There are so many incidents that it's difficult even to think of them all.

But actually writing them all down in one place was very cathartic and it was very revealing. Yeah, I think what's really illuminating about it is that, and I'm sure it was the case for you, is when you really think about all of these things. I'm sure like, you know, every woman will have maybe two or three that spring to mind but when you really think about it there will be as many as the ones you have in your book and what is so shocking is that we have internalized those and to the degree where because you know at the time very often when these things happen because of shame and because of all of these reasons that we've talked about you deny your ability to allow yourself to be a victim yeah and so that's you know that's something that I've experienced, it's

something my friends have experienced and you know over the years we've had conversations where various things from our past have come up and I've you know I've reframed things that have happened to me and to my friends and and that's what upsets me the most I think is the fact that we then don't allow ourselves the ability to be affected by and to be traumatized by genuinely traumatizing things absolutely and also to have the catharsis of recognizing that we weren't to blame yeah and that's been a real recurring theme on on this podcast I've noticed people so often talking about reframing past events and that liberation of allowing ourselves

that because I know there will be people there will be sections of the media who will argue that trying to suggest we make these lists is a way of disempowering women, right? That it turns us all into cowering victims. And the truth is that we have lived through these experiences. We can't change that. But what we can change is allowing ourselves to recognise them. And of course, for many women,

these lists will look different for every one of us and for many they'll include incidents of racism of homophobia of transphobia of ableism and there is such complexity there in those intersections as well and the fact that no two lists will ever be the same I think is part of the fascination and the tragedy of it. Let's go back to I guess part of where all this comes from you write in the book that you know we are socialized from day dot to you know you gave a really good example of there of when you were five about how you know men are predisposed to aggression and women are predisposed to frailty and fragility by comparison. I think there are a lot of people who would unfortunately hear something like that and

say, don't be stupid. It's 2022. We don't live in that world. You know, what was that famous quote? And it's such a bad reference, but on Love Island, like a few years ago, when there was that argument between two contestants about feminism, and the guy was like, what do you mean? Our prime minister's a woman. That was his line. So what do you say to people who deny the extent of the problem with that kind of line of argument? Well, just, I mean, just statistics are the answer for me. All you have to do is look at the stats and it completely speaks for itself. You can't argue that we've achieved equality.

Well, six out of our 23 cabinet ministers are women, a third of our MPs, a quarter of the members of aelodau o'n Gwasanaeth Llywodraeth, 18 o'n 108 cyfrifwyr yn y Cymru, 5 o'n architegtau, 10 o'n arbenigwyr, gan fod gan dynion 28% o'u rôl siarad yn ffilmiau, ond yn fwy na 3 o'r menywau sydd yn cael eu cymryd eu llygaid ar y sgrin.

Yn enwedig, gan fod gan dynion yn cael eu cael eu cael ar y llawr bob 3 diwrnod ar gyfer arfer, mae 500,000 yn cael eu hwyl i'w ddynion sexually assaulted every year in the UK alone 85,000 raped one in four women will experience sexual violence you know I think at that point you you ask well how how much more do you need to hear and that it is starting from so young and that it's starting at school and that's what normalizes it because on average one rape per day of the school term is reported as happening inside a UK ac mae hynny'n ei leoli. O amgylch, mae un rhaid i un o'r ddau o'r term ysgol yn cael ei ddysgu fel yn digwydd yn ysgol y DU. Ac mae llwyth o'r girfeydd yn dweud eu bod yn profi asiantaeth seksuol, asiantaeth seksuol,

yn ystod ysgol. Felly, rydym yn siarad am girfeydd hynny'n cael eu cymdeithas yn ymddangos i'r profiad hwn, ac fe fyddant yn debyg nad fyddant yn defnyddio'r term asiantaeth seksuol i'w ddisgrifio, oherwydd maen nhw'n cael eu bod yn dweud mai'r bantr, mae'r bobl yn bod yn bwysig, mae'n debyg ei fod yn ei hoffi, na fyddant yn gwneud cwm. the term sexual assault to describe because they're told it's banter it's boys being boys he probably likes you don't make a fuss can you give some examples of things that happen at schools that that girls would be likely to dismiss because i know so many of the experiences that i think about and talk about with my friends did happen at school when we weren't as aware about this stuff and you know i think kids today have a greater awareness you know obviously everyone's invited as a great example of that but when we were at school it was just not something that anyone talked about you know we were also rated out of 10 regularly we used to have this horrible like gangway in

the dining hall where the women would walk down and there was a point when the boys would come and pull their trousers down and they'd be holding up their tray so they couldn't pick up their trousers or they would be shouting out numbers byddai'r bobl yn dod i ddod a dynnu'r trwsiau iddyn nhw ac yn gwneud ymgymryd â'u tref felly na fyddai'n gallu cymryd eu trwsiau neu fyddai'n sgwrsio am niferoedd, yn cymryd y gwreiddiolion wrth iddynt ddyddio i lawr y dynol. Roedd yn hollbwysig iawn. Mae hynny'n enghreifftiau eithaf amlwg, ond a ydych chi'n cael unrhyw enghreifftiau mwy ymddygiadol o ffyrdd y mae hyn yn ei ddatblygu ym mhrofiad ysgol? Ie, felly ym mhrofiad ysgol, yr hyn rydym yn ei glywed amdano yw llawer o sylwadau

yn amlwg, yn amlwg, yn amlwg, yn ymwneud â'r pethau mwy gwirioneddol, sy'n bod yn digwydd yn unigol, ond sylwadau, yng nghyd-ddiadau'r pethau mwy gwirioneddol sydd yn digwydd yn unig. Ond sylwadau sylweddol am, er enghraifft, ddiddordeb biologiwch eithaf ddifrifol, chi'n gwybod, nid yw'r gynharach yn dda ar rhai pethau. Mae llawer o tywylliant anti-feminist yn ystod y cyfnod sy'n digwydd ar hyn o bryd yn ysgolion, ac mae llawer o hynny'n cael ei ddodd ar gyfer yr hyn sy'n gweithio ar-lein ac mae'r mab mab yn aml yn cael ei ddodd ar gyfer hyn ar-lein, felly mae llawer o bethau am argyfwngion rhaid i' ddweud yn dda. Mae MUTU yn gwrthgyfartal, mae dynion yn llwyddo bywydau ddim ar gael ac mae dynion yn cael eu llwyddo i gyd. Mae'r math hwnnw o ffeib i rai o'r pethau rydym yn eu clywed yn ysgolion. Ond hefyd wrth ddod o'r ysgolion eu hunain,

es i i ysgol dim ond diwrnod diwethaf lle roedd y gynorthwyo gwasanaeth sex ydyn nhw wedi cael ei roi oedd y gwyliau ystafell yn cael eu rhoi peth o ddynion ysgol, ac roedden nhw'n cael eu ddysgu i fynd i ysgol ar y bysgol, a'i llenwi ac yna'i ysgol ar y bysgol arall, ac yn parhau, ac roedden nhw'n rhywfaint o flwffi, fel bysgol ysgol Gwyl, felly ar ôl ychydig ffyrdd o hyn, byddai'r dynion yn ei gadael, yn ystigio a'i falch i'r llyfr, ac roedden nhw'n cael eu ddysgu, dyna'r lesen rydyn ni'n ei ddysgu heddiw, mae hyn yn cyfrifol i ddynion, and fall to the floor and they were taught that's the lesson that we're learning today this represents a woman's worth if you sleep with more than a few boys you become worthless oh my god and that was happening you know not a hundred years ago but just recently and very recently

a young woman contacted me to say that at her school she'd recently been ushered into the auditorium with all of her peers to hear from an external speaker who came in to tell them that abortion was a deathly sin, that almost every woman who's ever had one regrets it, that it's likely to give you cancer, you know, pictures, blown up pictures of foetuses, misinformation about development, the whole works. How is that even legal? It's happening in loads of schools. I think people have no idea about a lot of stuff that's going on. ddatblygu, mae'r holl waith. Sut yw hynny hyd yn oed yn leol? Mae'n digwydd yn llawer o ysgolion. Dwi'n meddwl nad yw pobl yn gwybod am llawer o beth sy'n digwydd. Mae hynny'n wych. Dwi'n cofio, unwaith,

dwi wedi gweld pobl, chi'n gwybod, ymgyrchwyr anti-abortiwn, y tu allan o clinigau. Mae llawer o clinigau yng Nghymru, lle maen nhw'n dod i ddod yn gyffredinol iawn. Ac nawr mae yna rhai o leoliadau buffer, ond nid yw'n un o ran y dynion, sy'n siarad o folwmi, hefyd. Ond rwy'n cofio mynd i gynorthwyo i edrych a gweld beth oedd yn ei wneud,

ac roeddant yn rhoi'r lliflets hynny, gyda nonsens cyffredinol arnynt am bethau meddygol, a diagraffiau a phethau sydd ddim yn gwbl yn gwbl. Ac mae'n wych i mi fod yn ymwneud â phlwyddo hynny i blant, sy'n mynd i gael eu cymryd. Ac dyna'r broblem, dyna pam mae sgwrs yn bwysig iawn, And it's wild to me that they're plugging that to children who, you know, that's going to stay with them. And that's the problem. That's why school stuff is so important, because it sets a precedent for the rest of your life. That is then you'll spend years trying to unlearn. Absolutely. And what's at the root of that is misogyny. children's lives because if it was these people would be investing in all sorts of health care and children services and good sex education and prevention but

you know the thing that really really just crystallized it for me was in Walthamstow where Stella Creasy's the MP and was standing up and trying to get a buffer zone put in place and they went after her because she was pregnant and the abuse that she had based that centered on her pregnancy and on her previous miscarriages the abuse that she received as a pregnant woman from people supposedly absolutely thrilled about women being pregnant was so extreme and it was the ultimate proof of the fact that this is never about whether a fetus is a human being it's about whether a woman is it's about whether women are really human beings. That's what the whole abortion Born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM.

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but when I have questions, I get to phone a friend. I phone my old friend, Dan Levy. You will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know what thirsty meant until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like a node. That's what my grandma's on. Thank God Phone a Friend with Jessi Crookshank is not available on Facebook.

It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. ACAST.com I want to talk to you about gender roles a little bit. Rwyf eisiau siarad â chi am rolau genderaeth ychydig oherwydd rydych chi'n ysgrifennu am sut mae cysylltiadau a'r ffordd rydyn ni'n eu cwblhau yn cael eu effeithio gan y stereotypion genderaeth y mae gennym ni gan ddysgu o ddiwedd cyntaf. Felly, allwch chi ddweud i mi ychydig am sut mae hynny'n gweithio a sut mae misogyniaeth, rwy'n credu, mewn gwirionedd yn agored yn anghywir ein bywydau rhomant, yn enwedig rhwng ddwyloed, d suppose, in a wider sense, hinders our romantic lives, particularly between straight men and women. Yeah, it's interesting because even now when we have this perception, I think, that we've achieved a great deal in terms of equality, that we have these very modern, supposedly equal relationships. The reality is that women are still doing 60 percent more household chores and extra labour than men are.

They're doing about 70 minutes extra a day. During the pandemic, that facade of equality just completely crumbled when women were twice as likely to have to lose or resign their jobs because of the added pressure of childcare and domestic labour that was taken on during lockdowns. There is so much proof I think of the fact that our relationships are not equal but we have this kind of belief that they are and I think it's something almost people think of as shameful to talk about so it's difficult to to get into it but the reality is that we still live in a world where we are fed these fairy tale princess

stories where the ultimate pinnacle of female achievement is the entrapment of a man, where other women are portrayed as rivals for men specifically, never as potential love interests, where platonic friendship is completely degraded by comparison to this idea of a kind of heteronormative nuclear family arrangement as the kind of ultimate goal. And because of that, and also because of the fact that these experiences of sexual violence and sexism are so normalised, we end up in this bizarre situation where having somebody who does the bare minimum is portrayed to us as this ultimate win, this great goal. And it doesn't help that society goes absolutely mad if a man is seen to change a nappy,

you know, or make brunch. That drives me insane oh yeah I mean what's that famous one with Daniel Craig when he was wearing a papoose and he was holding his kid and it's like yes that's not a news story a man is holding his child like not even changing a nappy which is also a news story I remember that's something like Gordon Ramsay or some guy confessed to changing a nappy and it was like oh my god this person has changed a nappy it's like what that is yeah is the bar that low but it just goes to show how deeply embedded all of this stuff is and it's still like you said like it's just still ongoing yeah um and i think it affects our sex lives as well yeah because we grew up in a world where girls are slut shamed where from

such a young age you know when you for example, revenge pornography or a sexting scandal as it's more commonly known happening in a school, you see the boy coming out of it as this lad, this stud, this player, the girl is a slut and a slag. She's very frequently forced to even move schools because of it. And then you kind of follow that through to this point where we have a situation where 91% of men orgasmed in their last sexual encounter versus 64% of women. And you think we are living in a world that it treats men's sort of sexual needs as something to be celebrated, as something natural. And it sort of suggests that women's sexual appetite is somehow unladylike, that it's unseemly, that we shouldn't be talking about it, that it's embarrassing.

And so is it any wonder, and it kind of comes back, I think, to this thing where we take things which are broader societal problems and we internalise them as our own fault. Because I think lots of women would say things like, oh, I just don't feel that comfortable asking for what I want in bed. And so we sort of suggest it's our problem you know oh I just don't speak up enough but if you look at those statistics there's obviously something at play here that's much bigger than that it's not us it's the system yeah I think what's really important to remember as well is that you know we talk so much about

these you know in in the media kind of bubble, we talk a lot about, you know, the importance of female pleasure and, and female sexual autonomy. And we highlight all of these problems and shame, but I think actually, very rarely is the root of the problem, i.e. misogyny addressed and attached to those. And actually, all of the problems, all of those problems come back to that. But I think it's, it's, it's's irritating because I feel like there was a period of time when we were talking about that, but then I feel like the word patriarchy came about and it got overused to the point where people didn't even want, like if you say the word some people will just immediately switch off. And I know plenty of people who would. And I know plenty of people who would. How do you think we go about reframing that and getting people, I guess, back on board with what's really going on here?

Well, I think partly it's about specificity. So when we talk about patriarchy, we're talking about something so big that it's almost difficult to kind of pin down what you mean but if you try to really divide up the kind of institutions that you're talking about what we're really trying to say I think when we use the word patriarchy is this is something systemic this isn't individual it's a systems failure and it's the way that the world is built around us not the way that we move through it that is the problem so for me showing people what that means in practice is a useful way to move forward. So saying actually 2,000 police officers have been accused of sexual misconduct in the last four years alone or saying only one in 18 Met police officers accused of sexual assault ever sees a formal process brought against them or half of Met police officers found guilty of sexual misconduct kept their jobs. That is a clear definition of the system problem

that we're describing and then it's really important for me to link that to the kind of outcomes and the societal impact so I think I believe that that systemic that institutional misogyny is linked to the individual cases that we've encouraged to see as isolated incidents, that we're told that Wayne Cousins was an aberration, a bad apple that nobody could have seen coming, when in reality his colleagues nicknamed him the rapist and he'd been three times accused of indecent exposure, or that the officer who shared the photos of the bodies of Biba Henry and Nicole Smallman did so in a WhatsApp group with 41 colleagues, that these are system

issues, they're not isolated incidents, and that the only way to fix them is to recognise that and to join those dots. And I think that's really crucial. And then to link that to the external impacts that just 1.4% of rapes actually reported to the police result in a charge or summons. So the broken system results in a complete failing, a devastating failure to provide any kind of justice for survivors. I think we need to talk about the broken system in that way as well because that stat gets used a lot and I think it's often it's not really understood as to why that is. There are lots of reasons you know we've seen the way that women

are victim blamed in the court of law when they go up against people with a sexual assault allegation. But even the process of actually getting to court is incredibly difficult. I remember I reported a sexual assault two years ago. Yeah, two years ago. No, last year, last January. And I went through the whole process. The police were very good to me. The police, I was surprised, were actually very kind and helpful but then I was assigned a specific officer who was put in charge of the case and she had like a half an hour phone call with me and basically explained, basically talked me out of going forward with it

because she said, you know, the chances of you getting a conviction are so low. Here's the stat. You have to go through all the trauma of doing a a video statement we have to bring him in for a video statement he's going to know you've accused him of rape and then you're probably not going to get a conviction and then this guy is going to know that you've accused him of rape and he knows where you live and he knows your name and he can find you on instagram and all this stuff obviously that scared the shit out of me so i was like nope fuck that nope not doing that and i'm like if that's happening to me imagine how much that's happening and that's putting people off.

And then you're getting all of this attachment of shame and all of these other things that we've spoken about. And then you get shoved on a waiting list for, you know, therapy, which takes seven months. I mean, it's wild, like seven, seven months to 12 months if you're lucky. And so this is what's like really going on here. And that's just the initial stage, you know, and it just gets worse if the case gets further and further along, doesn't it? Absolutely. And then you're talking about the CPS, which is another completely failing system. And that's the thing, these systems all interconnect. So you've got other systems where there are this kind of indignity on indignity, there's injustice on injustice. So you've got

migrant women who are reporting an assault, and instead of investigating the perpetrator, they start to investigate her right to remain. You've got women who have no recourse to public funds, because they're migrant women who aren't able to find any kind of support. You've got frontline women's services who should be there to support those women on those endless waiting lists, who've had their funding slashed and are desperately grappling to keep their doors open, especially those which are buy-in for minoritised women. So at every level of the system, these failings interconnect. And then you say, OK, how do we change the system? What do we need? We need politicians, right? We

need politicians who are prepared to ring-f fence this funding, who are prepared to take big picture changes like ratifying the Istanbul convention, policy changes, looking at misogyny as a hate crime. And you go, but only six out of 23 cabinet ministers and a third of MPs and a quarter of members of the House of Lords are women. And you go, well, you know, maybe maybe that won't stop them from caring about this stuff and tackling this stuff. bydd hynny ddim yn eu ceisio eu bodoli am y peth hwn a'r peth hwn ac yna rydych chi'n edrych ar y ddewisiad y maen nhw wedi cael eu canfod i fod wedi gwneud yn unigol i ddynion yn yr holl eu cyfnodau i Covid-19, sy'n ddim syniad i chi pan fyddwch chi'n cydnabod nad oedd unrhyw ddyn wedi arwain y brifysgol Covid am 6 mis yn gyfnod, ac rydych chi'n meddwl sut y gallwn ni ddatblygu unrhyw un o'r systemau hynny pan maen nhw i gyd yn cyd-dynion ac mae hynny'n ddewis i mi fod yn bwysig iawn edrych ar y math o ddelwedd byd-eang. so interlocked and that's why I think it's really important to look at the kind of global picture.

On a more personal level when we talk about sexual violence between men and women I think well first of all I want to ask you about the false allegations of rape and how small a percentage that is because that is very rare isn't it? It's incredibly rare, vanishingly rare. It's in terms of statistics, certainly no more common than false allegations of any other type of crime, which we almost never hear about at all. And even in those cases, if you look more closely, what you find is that even where false allegations are deemed to have happened, very frequently it's because of very complex needs. It's because somebody has accused someone of a particular allegation

and it's turned out that the offence was in fact a slightly different offence. So it ends up being registered as a false allegation because it was a rape rather than a sexual assault or vice versa. You know, there are technicalities. It really isn't this huge dangerous issue. In fact, a man in the UK is 230 times more likely to be raped himself than to be falsely accused of rape. God, that's wild. That's how little the problem is. And the thing that you said as well that just really struck me was how little we hear about other false allegations of crimes.

I can't think of any other one. Right? Like if someone's house is attacked in an arson attack, nobody goes scrolling back through their Instagram to see if they ever went to a fireworks display and they might have enjoyed it. And yet that's what we're saying, you know? Mae'n ddifrifol. Mae'r llawr wedi'i ddysgu yn yr atgyfwng, ond nid yw'r un arall yn ddysgu yn yr atgyfwng. Nid yw'r un arall yn ddysgu yn yr atgyfwng, ond nid yw'r un arall yn ddysgu yn yr atgyfwng. Nid yw'r un arall yn ddysgu yn yr atgyfwng, ond nid yw'r un arall yn ddysgu yn yr atgyfwng. Nid yw'r un arall yn ddysgu yn yr atgyfwng, ond nid yw'r un arall yn ddysgu yn yr atgyfwng. Nid yw'r un arall yn ddysgu yn yr atgyfwng, ond nid yw'r un arall yn ddysgu yn yr atgyfwng. Nid yw'r un arall yn ddysgu yn yr atgyfwng, ond nid yw'r un arall yn ddysgu yn yr atgyfwng. wild but we're so used to it that we don't necessarily even notice it yeah um so that i guess brings me back to what i wanted to talk about with with between men and women and who

are in relationships and when there are those incidents of sexual violence within the context of a relationship which again i think is one of those things that is incredibly complicated because you're in a relationship with this person there are so many factors at play here as to why they shouldn't sexually assault you obviously no one one should sexually assault anyone, but the last person you would expect to sexually assault you would be your partner. And that has all sorts of other ramifications. So how can that manifest and how common is that? So the reality is that sadly it is very common. We know that around 85% of rapfyrwyr yn gwybod

eu llyfrau. Felly, yn ironigol, mae'r gwirioneddol ffermwyr yn fwy siŵr wedi cael eu hwyrn ymlaen yn y llawr ar 2 o'r o'r gwaith yn y gwaith yn ystod y diwrnod a'u gwneud popeth o'r pethau anghywir yn hyn na'i gwneud yn ei ffyrwyr yn ei bed ei hun. Ac mae hynny'n beth anodd iawn, ond yn beth pwysig i ni ei dderbyn, rwy'n meddwl. Mae'n hefyd yn gyfnodol. Felly, yn ein cymdeithas, mae gennym y to grasp I think. It's also complicated so in our society we have this perception of rape as something that looks like one particular thing but because our understanding of consent is so shoddy a lot of people don't realise that removing a condom during sex without telling you or claiming to have put a condom on when he hasn't is a form of rape. A lot of people don't understand that at any point during a sexual encounter,

a woman can, or anybody, someone of any gender can say, stop, I want to stop now. And that if the person doesn't stop, even if it was originally started as a consensual encounter, that that's rape. So part of it, I think, is that people almost don't trust themselves because we're so bad at teaching consent that people have been raped and don't know if they can use that term to describe it. But partly I think it comes back to the normalisation, a lot of which I think at the moment is influenced by online porn. So when I'm in schools at the moment with young people, which I visit schools about twice a week, so I work with tens of thousands of children,

and it's really common to hear phrases like rape is a compliment really it's not rape if she enjoyed it and I get emails from girls that say things like one that is indelibly imprinted on my brain I'm my name is Nicola I'm 13 years old and I'm so scared to have sex that I cry nearly every night because a boy on school showed me sex on his mobile phone and I didn't realize until I saw it that when you have sex the woman has to be hurting and crying oh and I know that sounds extreme but I think a lot of people don't realize how widespread videos of women being abused and being raped and being coerced and controlled are on the most mainstream easily accessible porn sites a really

good study from Durham University recently, led by Professor Claire McGlynn, found that one eighth of the front page, you know, mainstream porn website videos showed illegal or coercive acts. So this is completely widespread. It's mainstream. 60% of kids have seen porn by the age of 14,

a quarter by the age of 12. So this is stuff that they're seeing. And you end up in a situation where I went to a school and they'd had a rape case involving a 14 year old boy and a teacher had said to him why didn't you stop when she was crying and he'd said because it's normal for girls to cry during sex. So part of it I think is that we are taking these completely skewed ideas of what sex is and what's expected of us into our adult relationships. It's so difficult because I feel like I want to try and talk to you about what's changing and what positive things are happening but a part of me

is struggling to do that because obviously it's been how long since Sarah Everard's death and we've seen there have been so many other incidents of women murdered and the way that like you said Oherwydd mae'n amlwg, mae wedi bod am lawer o amser ers y diwethaf Sarah Everard a gweldwn yna lawer o unigolion o ddynion wedi cael eu llwyddo, a'r ffordd mae'n cael ei adrodd gan y cyfryngau a'r ffordd mae wedi cael ei ddechrau, nid yw'n rhoi llawer o gobeithio i mi. Beth o ran yw'r rhesymau i fod yn gobeithio, ydych chi'n meddwl? Mae llawer o rhesymau i fod yn gobeithio, mae hefyd llawer o rhesymau i fod yn anghywir, ac gall y ddau bethau hynny fod yn cyd-drein. There are a lot of reasons to be hopeful. There are also a lot of reasons to be angry. And those two things can exist side by side. I feel hopeful. I feel incredibly encouraged and inspired by the girls I meet at schools. We know that hundreds of new feminist societies have been started at schools over the country in the last few years.

I'm meeting girls who are so much more clued up and empowered than I was at their age about what's happening. It is still happening and we can't gloss over that, but they are fighting back. You know, they are raising their voices. They aren't refusing to be silenced. We're seeing amazing organisations and charities who are doing incredible work battling this. You know, We're Pregnant and Screwed is a great example of a quite new organisation that is so scrappy and coming out absolutely fighting against the treatment of pregnant women during the pandemic. And I think just in perhaps the last year, we've seen the first glimmers, perhaps, of accountability, of a sense that this cannot be allowed any longer to slide in the resignations of Cresta Dick a Philip Allitt,

a oedd yn y Prifysgol Cymru a'r Prifysgol Cymru sydd wedi dweud nad oedd Sarah Everard yn rhaid i ni ymgymryd â'r aros amdano. Y ffaith eu bod nhw'n cael eu hwyluso i ddysgu, dwi'n meddwl, ar ôl llawer o flynyddoedd o ddiffyg a chymorth, llawer o flynyddoedd o ddyluniau polis, yn dweud nad yw'r Met yn ddigon cymhwysol. Mae angen llawer o ddys so much dismissal and refusal to acknowledge the problem. And of course, there's a massive risk in celebrating any one person going as if it solves the problem. Obviously, it doesn't. But it does

suggest that perhaps there is a hardening in our public preparedness to accept being fobbed off anymore. And so that makes me hopeful that we are starting to scrutinise systems and to hold institutions accountable. And I think we just have to keep driving that focus. It's not about the women. It doesn't matter what she was doing. It doesn't matter what she was wearing. It doesn't matter where she was. And focusing there, you know, I'd like to never, ever hear the words isolated incident ever used ever again. Yeah. I think the anger actually helps, doesn't it? Because it does, it motivates people.

And when it's louder than ever, and it does feel like it's getting louder and louder and louder, that is what does incite change. And it provokes conversations with people who might not have necessarily thought about these issues before. Finally, I want to ask you about what men can do to help you know I think one of the things that I saw trending on Twitter a lot in the wake of all of these horrible murders was you know talk to them at how many men in your lives have asked in women's lives how many times have they asked you how are you doing how like you know what can I do yeah and no one I wanted to ask me

that and loads of people say nope I haven't heard any men talking about Sarah Everard's death. I haven't heard any. So what can men do? There is so much that men can do, I think. At every different level of society, obviously, men who are in positions of power and authority, men who are gatekeepers can get started on fixing these systems. And the way to do that is not to come up with their own half-baked ideas about new CCTV cameras, it's to go to the frontline women's services who have been working their expertise in this area for decades and to look at the solutions they have already laid out on a platter in their reports and recommendations, start there. I think for men who aren't necessarily in those positions there is so much. The first thing I think for men who aren't necessarily in those positions there is so much. The first thing I think for me is that there is a critical mass of men, the majority

of men, who aren't behaving in this way themselves but don't necessarily have any idea their scale and nature of the problem and informing themselves is a really good way to start, to put themselves in a position to be able to help and that doesn't necessarily mean requiring that the women in their lives relive their trauma to educate them. The Everyday Sexism website has 200,000 testimonies and it has a brilliant search function so they can go and they can put into that search bar perhaps the the area that they work in, perhaps the area that they live, perhaps the field that they work in. If you're an engineer type in engineering and

immediately you can see what your colleagues are dealing with. Type in the area that you live and suddenly you're enlightened about what your female neighbours are going through. That, I think, is a really important first step. And once they've educated themselves, I think they have such a role to play in educating other men and younger men. So bringing these conversations into those male dominated spaces, whether it's the WhatsApp group, whether it's the locker room, whether it's the football pitch, whether it's the work group that you're in, starting these uncomfortable conversations. And if it feels uncomfortable and awkward and difficult, just think how it feels for us to live it. And, you know, I'd love talking to your son about consent and healthy relationships to become the new telling your daughter not to wear a short skirt there's something that all of us all parents but I think dads especially I'd love to see getting involved in that in role modeling and talking to young men about this it doesn't have

to always look like waving a banner or going on a march there was one man who wrote to the project and he said I've been reading these stories and it's really shocked me the impact on women I'd never thought before about how it makes women feel when they're shouted at in the street and he said I determined that the next time it happened I would do something about it I was I was sure and then I was walking down the street and I saw some men on a building site shouting get your tits out at a woman in front of me and he said I panicked and in the moment all these grand speeches and statistics flew out of my head and the moment was passing and I didn't know what to do so I lifted up my t-shirt and showed them mine instead and I know that's really silly and it's small and it's simple but actually job done

it sent the message you're not doing it to me are you so why are you doing it to them so it doesn't always have to look like a kind of grand confrontation it might be a quiet word with a mate actually it might be checking in with a woman then asking her what can I do I've noticed this thing happening at work do you want someone to support you do you want to report it you know do you want me to speak to him there are so many things that men can do and and I think learning and listening is the first step finally it is time for our lessons in love segment so this is the part of the show where I ask every guest to share

something they have learned about relationships. I think Laura from you it would be really great I mean you're such an expert in this area through all of the books you've written and all of the research you've done I guess what's the one lesson that you would want to share with listeners who might who are not very well versed in this subject? And something that will help them, I suppose, if they are either a survivor of sexual assault or dealing with the ramifications of violence against women, as we all are, I suppose. Well, I think the single thing I would most want to share with survivors is that this was not and is not and was never your fault and that you're not alone and I know they sound like very simple things but actually they're things I think it can take a

very long time to allow yourself to let sink in and I think for girls and for young women the single thing I would like to tell every single girl in the country is the legal definition of sexual assault. Because a week before I started the Everyday Sexism Project I was sexually assaulted on a bus and at the time I never would have used those words to describe a man grabbing me between the legs and the idea that I had the right to report it, that I was legally protected from it, that it was sexual assault, none of that crossed my mind and I see it now with the girls I work with who've been grabbed and groped and pinched and slapped and tucked and tickled and they would never use that word to describe it

either and so they're disempowered by not knowing that the law says that it is a sexual assault if a person touches another person the touching can be anywhere on their body if the touching is sexual in nature the person being touched doesn't consent and the person doing the touching doesn't have reason to believe that they consent. And I'd love to just have everyone know that in the country, everyone of every gender, because I think sometimes that very simple and basic information is missing. It's missing so, it's missing so much and it's so strange because it's such necessary information and it blows my mind that we weren't taught this at school or at university you know at university when most people are having sex for the first time why is this not part of the program for

students for freshers week and we're learning pythagoras and all the times you've used pythagoras since you left school or or pi or trigonometry or whatever it is. It's so odd we teach students everything about map reading and you know everything they'll need to navigate the world physically. We teach them everything they need to know to make change in a shop and these practical things and yet relationships are a near universal life experience and we leave young people completely unprepared. We're completely failing them. It doesn't even make any sense. It's utterly bizarre. Well, thanks to people like you, I think hopefully things are changing and we are educating people

a lot more about these things. And it's about time. That is sadly all we've got time for today. Thank you so much, everyone, for listening. If you are a fan of Millennial Love, you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast or wherever it is that you get your podcasts you can also watch us if you are more of a visuals person you can watch us now on independent tv and do share and subscribe and like and do all of those things so that more people can see and hear our episodes you can also keep up to date with everything to do with the show on Instagram. Just search Millennial Love. And I will see you soon.

Bye. If you or someone you know has been affected by child sexual abuse, call Childline on their helpline for children and young people who need to talk. Victim support also provides emotional and practical help to victims or witnesses of any crime, whether or not it has been reported to the police. As a FIS member, you can look forward to to the police.