Media Storm - S4E14 Violence against women is a man's problem: Gisèle Pelicot, Rebecca Cheptegei, and millions more

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Content warning: rape, sexual assault, and gender-based violence Headlines about gender-based violence are sadly not rare. But over the last week, two harrowing stories have sent shockwaves around the world. In France, pensioner Dominique Pelicot stands trial for recruiting 72 men to join him in drugging and raping his now ex-wife, Gisèle, over the course of a decade.  And in Kenya, Ugandan Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei burned alive after being set on fire by her ex-boyfriend, Dickson Ndiema.  There has been much reporting on these stories - and not all of it good. Joining us in the studio to pick apart the headlines is Daniel Guinness, Director of Beyond Equality - the UK charity working with boys & men; and writer, researcher, and workshop facilitator Nathaniel Cole. Men are being erased from the problem, and excused from the solution. So this week, Media Storm is flipping the script - because if violence against women begins with men, it can also end with men. We also speak to Bryony Ball and Meggan Baker, the co-founders of SLEEC - Survivors Leading Essential Eduction and Change. Plus, your week's media storms: the New Yorker article casting a shadow over the Lucy Letby inquiry, what news talkshows can learn from the Jeremy Kyle inquest, and how to judge AI findings of BBC anti-Israel bias.    Hosts: Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia) Music: Samfire (@soundofsamfire) Assistant Producer: Katie Grant Episode research: Camilla Tiana Support Media Storm on Patreon! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Chris Hadfield, astronaut and citizen of planet Earth. Join me on a journey into the systems that power the world. No politics, just real conversations with real people shaping the future of energy. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Before we begin, please be aware this episode contains mentions of rape, sexual assault and gender-based violence. Hi, I'm in a terrible mood. Why are you in a terrible mood?

Florence of the Sheed is playing lungs in full with a full orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall tonight at the BBC Proms, and this is the second time I failed to get a ticket. We literally timed this entire recording around you being able to be at the computer trying to get tickets when you need to. Well, apparently I was 17,000th in the queue or something. So anyone who went to see Florence last night, I hope you had a great time. I'm crying. I'm really sorry, except I'm not sorry because now you can help me edit tonight. Yay.

There's a bright side of life. You going would have been me up late and alone editing this episode. Oh, like I was last week. Hey, that was my dad's birthday. That's true, that's true. Happy birthday. Papa Malinson.

Papa Malison. Sounds like you're from a family of Smurfs. Okay, this week a Papa Malison turned... 25, he said. 25. For the 41st time. Ah. Well, this week, Papa Mal turned 25 again. But that's not the only thing that happened in the world. The Boeing Starliner spaceship returned to Earth without its crew.

The two astronauts will be stranded on the International Space Station until February. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump went head to head in the first and possibly only debate between the presidential candidates who had never actually met in person before. And Christmas is coming early for Venezuelans, but they're not that happy. President Maduro is attempting to distract people from his ruthless repression by advancing Christmas celebrations to October. How do you such delusional men keep getting into power? I'm just going to say that the media has some part to play, probably. Speaking of powerful men, I do want to add one headline.

Oh yeah. Mephasa died. For real this time. Mephasa? Mephasa, King of the Jungle. You have forgotten me. No. How could I? You have forgotten who you are and so forgotten me.

Oh, Mufasa. The actor, James Earl Jones, who also voiced Darth Vader. He died, age 93, which is very sad because Mufus was my first crush. I actually cannot tell you how many people say the same thing, that like they had a crush on a cartoon animal. So I'm not a freak. No, you're not a freak, honestly. Oh, Begira.

Begira. Who's Begira? Begira, the panther from the jungle book. Oh, now you're a freak. I actually hated animals who talked in films when I was a kid. You hated animals who talked. I think it's because I've never had a pet. No, it's darker than that.

I think there is something very wrong with you. Okay, let's stop talking about hot animals and talk about media storms. Quite keen to talk about an old story that's returned to headlines, Not because I really know how I feel about it, but because it sets a lot of questions buzzing in my mind, about our media, about our justice system, and about the relationship between them. Quite keen to know what listeners think.

About what? So on Tuesday, an inquiry began into the case of Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby is the nurse who was convicted to 15 whole life sentences for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others between 2015 and 2016, Which titled her the UK's most prolific child serial killer. Yeah. The inquiry is supposed to work out how she did this,

but its opening has been clouded by speculation about the reliability of the evidence used to convict her in the first place. And this speculation has been happening for some months, right, since that New Yorker article came out. When was that? May, yeah, it was a 13,000 word New Yorker article and it called into questions various aspects of the prosecution's case. A key one was about data, which I will summarize because it's a general media storm theme,

how different data can look depending on how it's processed and presented. So basically, the evidence used to convict letby had to be circumstantial because no one actually saw her harming a baby, and no doctor was able to clearly identify foul play in the causes of death. But the prosecution presented a graph that posed incredibly convincing circumstantial evidence. It listed 24 suspicious events at the hospital, which included the deaths of the seven babies, Lettby, was convicted of murdering. Plus 17 other instances of babies deteriorating. The graph cross-checked these with the staff rotor and found Lettby was the only nurse on shift for each one.

They basically then calculated the odds of this being a coincidence, and it was so, so small as to be almost impossible. But many commentators, including scientists and including the Royal Statistical Society, flagged that this is not really how probability works. If you treat these all as independent events, statistically, yes, the odds of them coinciding are incredibly unlikely. But if you factor into that connecting threads, for example, that they all happened in the same hospital with the same staff shortages and other problems, the likelihood's totally different. Critics of the data also say that compounding factors were not included in this equation, such as the fact that, in general, Leppi picked up more shifts than other colleagues, or that all deaths on the units should have been included in the graph,

not just those deemed suspicious. Look, the details go on and on. The wider point here is that, you know, juries don't really understand data. And the New Yorker article actually points to two similar cases about nurses from the Netherlands in Italy, and both nurses were acquitted because this probability argument was simply deemed as not admissible grounds for evidence. So data is actually not a science.

It's more of an art. Exactly right. The New Yorker article also raised questions about whether sensationalist media coverage in the UK can damage our judicial process. In this case, letby's arrest, trial and sentencing were all widely published across our media, The Guardian published more than a hundred stories about the case.

The Daily Mail had headlines like, She has thrown open the door to hell. Clickbait doesn't necessarily favour context. We know this. But of course, media access to trials in the UK is an essential part of our open justice system. 100%. But another key part of this open justice system

is that we need to be able, not just to report on what's happening, but to critique it, to challenge it. And that's where it gets tricky in the UK. The New York article itself was actually blocked in the UK. But listeners have to understand why the article wasn't and still isn't available to UK readers. It isn't because it was singularly targeted, but because all media in the UK is subject to careful reporting restrictions

designed to protect the integrity of the judicial process. Yes, this is really important because there was conspiracy-ish misinformation going around that the New Yorker article had been gagged by our courts or something. But in fact, the New Yorker voluntarily removed it from UK access because a retrial had opened into one of Letby's convictions. This retrial had a jury, and it's important jurors are not swayed by the media or by anything other than court-approved evidence. And that's why news outlets in the UK are under strict restrictions

not to publish anything that could prejudice jurors in the run-up to a trial when jurors still have access to that media. But the issue being, by the point of a retrial, the jurors have already seen a lot of very emotive reporting from the original trial. But these restrictions leave little room to critique it, even if that critique is valid. Exactly. And a lot of the critique in this article, is valid. It raises valid questions about our justice system and our media coverage. Questions like,

I don't know, should juries be used in really complicated medical or statistical trials? Or maybe should they be given, I don't know, statistical training? This is the whole point of media getting access to these trials. It's to scrutinize and spot potential flaws in the system. It's not just to write up these stories as like entertainment pieces. But without foreign media intervention, our media, in this case, would have no doubt dismissed these critiques as conspiracy theories. Right, because the main places here where I've seen those questions asked is like comment threads or chat pages like Reddit. So that's a bit of a catch-22.

Like how do journalists navigate the line between respecting court verdicts and questioning court processes? Also, if you read reactions to the article, a lot of people are angry. They reject it totally. because it's coming from outside the UK, because they see a US news outlet critiquing our courts and our NHS, very emotional.

But there is, of course, good emotional reason for a backlash besides this UK-US bashing. You know, there's victims and families involved here. Totally. And you're right to point that out because they are definitely the missing voices in this story. They actually can't speak out, however upsetting, and offending they may find this all,

because to do so would rob them of their privacy. As the lawyer representing them pointed out, they have to choose to remain voiceless. And that must be so hard, and it makes it so hard for those of us spectating this media storm from the outside to remember that at the heart of this are real people. Yeah, like I said, I really don't know where I stand. I just know that I have questions.

One thing I do know is that few things, Things make better headlines than a baby serial killer. But one of those things is a mistrial. And headlines are going to push us towards those conclusions whether they are true or not. Maybe that is my takeaway. Have you ever watched Jeremy Kyle? Quite a lot as a kid, because if I was sick and couldn't go to school, my parents would just take me to work with them and sit me in front of daytime TV. Yeah, it was quite regular.

viewing when we were of teenage age? I know this story. It's the inquest into the death by suicide of Steve Diamond. It was days after he appeared on the Jeremy Kyle show in 2019 and he failed a lie detector test about

cheating on his partner. I literally never understood as a kid why people went on these shows and failed tests. Except remember that these tests are not totally reliable. Yeah. But you raise a point about what kind of people go on these shows or are selected to go on these shows.

Now, it's important to say that the inquest concluded that there is insufficient evidence to suggest Steve Diamond's treatment by the show was the direct cause of his death. He had a long history of mental health issues. But it also heard WhatsApps he sent to his fiancée saying, I hope the Jeremy Carl Show is so happy now as to what they have done to me. They are responsible for what happens now. I hope this makes good ratings for them. Which reveals something about his experiences on the show.

I guess a major issue with shows like this is the conflict of interest between the duty of care shows have to not cast people who can't emotionally or psychologically handle it and a duty of care to de-escalate situations where someone is highly distressed contrasted with their commercial incentive to actively look for people with certain vulnerabilities, and actively inflame distressing situations because it makes better TV. Right, and back in 2019, when this happened, a whistleblower leaked behind-the-scenes footage to a parliamentary select committee who found there was a clear conflict of interest in this area.

The committee pointed out obvious power abuses in these shows that persist even if people do know what they're getting into, as ITV said in its defence at the time. For example, the fact that even when contributors leave and they sort of, storm out and they try and take refuge backstage, they had cameras thrust in their faces or how the host could use provocative and, quote, sometimes abusive language to rile up participants in the moment. But then, you know, that can be edited out of the final broadcast to make it seem like they're overreacting to nothing. Oh, it makes me think of X Factor, which we always watched as kids. And even at the time, I remember being really, really upset that they would

bring on people who were not just terrible singers but clearly have huge emotional issues and they'd bring them on just to humiliate them even as a kid that seemed really dark and really wrong to me yeah and i think that's you know being exposed now and following the death of steve diamond in 2019 the jeremy karl show was cancelled and i tv introduced guidelines for all its reality tv shows including love island also offcom the media regular later, strengthened the broadcasting code to make it harder for shows of this sort of bullying nature to exist. So I guess the question now is, five years on, have those rules worked? Is TV fixed? This is actually why I brought the story up, because while changes might

have been made in reality TV, I think so many of the toxic tropes that made the Jeremy Kyle show commercially successful, but compassionately terrible, are being exploited more than ever before on news TV and radio. Like on these panel debates. Yes, you see what I'm getting at. So I've actually worked as a booker myself on these news debate shows. And let me tell you,

the brief isn't to find people with average and well-rounded opinions that accurately represent British public views. It's to actively seek out the most extreme and the most emotional opinions to create this artificially inflamed and binary debate because that's way more alluring or addictive for viewers.

Right, and that surely increases the chance of bringing on people who are mentally unwell or vulnerable or who've been subject to radicalisation. And so often these people do get humiliated on these shows or targeted by the public backlash, aside from the flip side issue, that they are normalising radical opinions and polarising our society. Right, and we've talked about reality TV safeguarding of sources, but what about newscasters, duty of care. They don't have to follow the same rules. Which is probably why Jeremy Kyle has

now moved over into news, if we can call it that. Since being cancelled on ITV, he's moved to Talk TV where he hosts exactly these kind of news opinion shows you're talking about. And it's why platforms like Talk TV and Talksport and GB News managed to create hours of outrage content this week about the decision by a substitute England foot. coach to wait for it, not sing the national anthem before an England game. Oh, God. Because I don't know, this isn't North Korea. Anyway, here's a few fun clips.

England manager says, I won't sing our anthem. How about get another job then? His excuse is that he needs to focus. And I think, no, I think he should be distracted and we should lose and he should sing the national anthem. That's more important. Maybe it comes from a position of a bit of bloody. for the people that you're working for in the country, that you are, you are representing

as the national team manager of England, you are representing 65 million people in these, in these aisles. So I don't just think it's a few disgruntled, one-dimensional, Jurassic dinosaurs. And it's all this colonialism rubbish. And unfortunately, with this woke culture, and the whole of the establishment has been indoctrinated with this, haven't they? You know, into the home office. It's Stalinistic, isn't it? It's very simple. If you cancel free speech, you live in a dictatorship. It's as simple as that.

Exactly. Well, that's what we've got. If I was the FA, I'd say to him, you sing the national anthem or you don't get the job. Am I right? So in answer to your earlier question, Matilda, no, TV is not fixed. I also read Kirstarma just moved Maggie Thatcher's portrait in Downing Street to a different room

because he didn't like her staring at him all the time. That would create hours of content. Please, God, no. Here's another media storm. The BBC breached editorial guidelines over 1,500 times in Israel Hamas conflict report claims. The summary of the story is that BBC coverage was, quote, heavily biased against Israel.

Okay, that sounds really major. Like, why don't I know about it? Because, not that I stalk you at, Bedtime or anything, but Telegraph, Fox News, G.B. News, New York Post and RT aren't your go-to choices for bedtime reading? And that's where it was reported. I wish you stalked me at bedtime. But no, they're not my bedtime reading choices. And also by RT is at the Russian state-controlled TV channel. Yeah, it is. Okay, so why is this story only appearing in right-wing papers? Is this like a left-wing?

blind spot or is it right wing propaganda? Good question. If you were reading this story, what would your follow-up question be? Okay. I like this as like Media Literacy 101. Which, if any, teachers are listening, we do actually provide that service. Yeah. Okay, well, I guess I'd ask, where did this so-called report that the headline quotes come from?

Correct. Gold star for you, Helena. My face. I actually do want a gold star. I'll bring it to you at bedtime tonight. Okay. Well, the report comes from a group called The Campaign for Common Sense, who brand themselves as a free speech intolerance advocacy group.

They shared their findings with the Telegraph and it was re-reported from there and the report has a strong guise of credibility. It was conducted by a team of lawyers. It used AI to analyse 9 million words from BBC coverage, starting from October 7th. Okay, on one hand, the Campaign for Common Sense, I mean, that sounds straight out of the, like, anti-woke textbook. Spoiler is.

But on the other hand, that sounds like quite an extensive data sample. And AI word analysis seems quite impartial, I guess, as a way of assessing the data. So then my next question would be, if they conclude there is heavy bias, how exactly are they measuring that bias? And that's where it starts to look pretty fishy. The key findings that apparently demonstrated bias, as quoted in the telegraph and others, With it in the BBC coverage, the term war crimes was used four times more in association with Israel than with Hamas, genocide 14 times more, and breaching international law six times more. Okay, but like is a news outlet only impartial if it reports equally on each side's aggression, even if one side was more aggressive? Like, this is absurd.

I mean, you're right. The reality is that there have been, like, by most estimations, well over 30 times as many Palestinians killed as Israelis during this violence. So next to that, the fact that four times as many mentions of war crimes, or even 14 times as many mentions of genocide, this in itself is not evidence of bias. No. I'm just going to read out the BBC's response because I think it addresses the problems with the study pretty clearly. It says, we have serious questions about the methodology of this report.

particularly its interpretation of the BBC's editorial guidelines. We don't think coverage can be assessed solely by counting particular words divorced from context. We are required to achieve due impartiality rather than the balance of sympathy proposed in the report. Yeah, there's so many problems with the methodology. I'd also like to point out that the man who led the study, Trevor Assison, runs Israel's largest international law firm. Are you being serious right now? Yes.

But other people choose not to see these glaring and obvious methodological issues. The telegraph is packed with quotes from MPs and peers who say stuff like this is evidence of what we've been saying all along. Intelligent people legitimising a study whose methodology no intelligent person can call evidence.

Why? Because it agrees with them. Affirmation bias. That's one of the biggest things allowing disinformation to spread. Ultimately, the story about this report tells us more about the outlets that are reporting on it than the outlet it's reporting on. And one other point to be made for listeners is that it's like clause at the end of the original headline. So blah, blah, blah, comma, reports claim. Like this story shows us how easy it is to present non-factual statements as headline-worthy news

by couching it in the caveat report claims, which isn't to say that there's nothing to them, just that they have to provoke questions. Where does this report come from? Who led it? Who funded it? These are just some of the questions we should be asking when we see headlines ending in report claims.

One final super quick headline, which is mostly an excuse to plug our series opener, about assisted dying, which we recorded with terminally ill people, and I hope I'm not overstepping to say. I think they would have been pretty offended and upset at this headline. Oh no, what is it? It's a story about an elderly couple who have chosen to go to Switzerland to die in each other's arms after she was diagnosed with dementia.

Euthanasia or assisted dying is legal in Switzerland, and the technology the couple has opted for is a two-person air replacement container named Sarko. The couple referred to their choice as assisted dying, but the story I read in the Metro put much more aggressive words in their mouth with a headline that was not a direct quote but phrased to sound like one.

It read, We've signed up to die in suicide pod to escape horror of dementia. Oh my God. And it just made me sad and it made me think. That people need to listen to our episode on Assisted Dying? Well, yeah, that will explain it. And it is best said in the actual words

of the people actually facing this issue themselves. Now on to our main topic of the week. It's not unusual for headlines about gender-based violence to dominate media coverage. It's an unfortunate reoccurring theme. But over the last week, two stories from two countries outside of the UK have reopened a global conversation about violence against women and girls. MediaStom has tackled many topics surrounding gender-based violence, domestic abuse, rape justice,

misogyny, and each time we've spoken to survivors, activists, those who have lived it. But there's other people with lived experience who are being left out of the conversation. They're being glossed over as the problem and erased from the solution. So this week, we're flipping the script. Because if violence against women begins with men, it can also end with men. An Olympic athlete has died in Kenya after her boyfriend allegedly doused her in petrol. A pensioner accused of drugging his wife and then inviting dozens of men to rape her. Two million women and girls every year of victims of male violence.

I think my sister is her husband's property, yes. What is government doing to tackle this misogyny? Welcome to MediaStorm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Helena Wadia and I'm Matilda Malinson. This week's Media Storm. Violence against women is a man's problem. Welcome to the studio and to Media Storm. We are lucky to be joined by two very special guests.

Our first guest is an educator, researcher and activist who is passionate about, changing the cultures around masculinities. He is the founder and managing director of Beyond Equality, a UK-based charity that works with men and boys to dismantle harmful stereotypes of gendered socialisation in workplaces, universities and more. Welcome to the podcast, Daniel Guinness. Thank you for having me.

Our second guest is the co-founder of SwimDem Crew, a writer, researcher and workshop facilitator working across masculinity and relationships and sex. education for young people. You may have watched his TEDx talk about his work with young men and boys called Why We Need to Change the Way Young Men Think About Consent. Welcome to the studio, Nathaniel Cole. Thank you for having me.

If you've seen today's topic reported in the news, you've likely seen the common catch-all-term violence against women and girls. It's so common, we barely think about it. We talk about how many women were raped in a given time frame, not about how many men raped women. We talk about how many women were cat-called, not about how many men cat-call women. We talk to teenage girls about a school dress code, but don't teach boys not to objectify their bodies. Daniel, why do you think men have been rendered pretty much invisible in much of the discourse around gender-based violence?

That is a very big question. I think it's a big question because actually we have a whole system that has been about putting men in a position of power, in a position of control in relationships in particular, but also more broadly in society. society. And so we end up with this idea that we've got evil people, bad people who do these horrible, horrible acts of violence and that everyone else is actually just a good guy. And really, that conversation that people like Nathaniel and myself and others who are in the space can have, says, hey, we need to look at this bigger picture and we need to actually brave enough to say, well, this is men's violence. It's not just a couple of men. And also

there's this broader group of men around them who either knew about it and didn't do anything or minimalized it, looked away. So it's that fear of really looking at the bigger problem that actually implicates many of us, if not all of us. That is a reason why we prefer to just go, oh, it's really sad for this one individual, can't believe that happened. Let's not look at what actually drove this to happen. And Nathaniel, do you agree? Do you think it's that kind of thing where we're almost a bit scared to implicate all men in this? Yeah, I think so because for everyone to and men to acknowledge why men are violent, that's a really big mountain of issues and systems to dismantle.

And I think people are scared to, I say people, really I mean people in power or men in power are scared to acknowledge that because then that means less power for them as far as they're concerned, less control, less money and I guess less manipulation. of others. So at the moment, men in power have what they want, what they need. And I don't think they have any interest in changing that. They'll do what they can to kind of keep the scales tipping in their favour. You know, we unfortunately see it a lot in schools where all boys I work with are really obsessed with money, control, being stronger, all these sorts of things. And they're just absorbing a message that's being given to them from really big players in our

society. It's striking to me that you both start from a position of men are implicated and you don't have a defensive reaction against that. I have found when I do have these conversations with men, that is the first place I'll lose them. As soon as there's generalizing language or a suggestion that they are implicated in something just because of their gender, I lose them. And that is, I can understand why, especially men who really, really, really don't feel obsessed with power or money or have been raised in really progressive, egalitarian, respectful ways. Of course, there's, you know, the hashtag, not all men, but I'm not just thinking of, you know, the really extreme defensive hashtag not all men, men's rights. I am speaking about your average good guy

who shuts down at that implicating of men. How is it that you are, you are. are able to talk about it in that way. How do you have this conversation with boys without putting them on the defensive? When I speak to boys, I ask them to speak to the women in their lives about their experiences of sexual harassment and violence and see if that will line up with what they actually think. Because when I come into the classrooms talking about sexual violence, boys just talk to me about false accusations.

They want to focus on the fantasy and the stories about lying and all this sort of stuff. Because that's more exciting. that's way more exciting than thinking and knowing that you, your friend, your father, your uncle can all be capable of harming someone. The hashtag should be not all men, but all men. I think I'd start by saying that I really, really strive not to be defensive, but there's still times when these conversations come up when I do get that feeling of like, oh wait, am I going to be on trial here or something? And I think what's crucial about the sort of approach that we would take as educators is not to say, like, straight off, you shouldn't have that emotion, but rather actually help someone understand where that emotion is coming from

and how can they get to a different spot. Boys will be dealing with a lot of insecurities. They're trying to figure out who they are. They're trying to figure out who they're attracted to. There's this expectation that they put on themselves and their peers put on them, that they'll be somehow like this incredible Casanova, despite having never had a conversation before. You know, that can feel like an awful lot of pressure and expectation.

But I think one of the really key things that we do as educators is to give them that sense of like they are important, their identity is important. And if we have a conversation about masculinity, these expectations about what it is to be a man, that isn't a conversation about them, but it's a conversation about how they relate to that. how they're influenced by that, how are they pressured by that,

and help them navigate that system of expectations to do that differently, do it better, do it better for them, do it better for others. So moving from individual responsibility to systemic responsibility, men's violence against women is an ongoing systemic crisis, and we can contextualise what we're talking about. In England and Wales, 2 million women and girls every year are thought to be victims of male violence. One in 20 people will be a perpetrator of violence against women and girls.

In a global survey from UN women, 33% of women under 35 said they had been sexually harassed online. This is compared to 11% of men. Globally, about one in three women worldwide, have been subjected to either physical and or sexual violence in their lifetime. Most of this violence is intimate partner violence. Daniel, do you think that young men understand, the scale, the global and the shocking scale of gender-based violence. There's a huge range within young men. You walk into a classroom and there can be someone who actually,

we know you could be doing this job in a couple of months, you know, with an appropriate training and whatever else. And then at the same classroom, there's people who are fixated on some of these myths that exist in our society. Myths like, it only happens, you know, this is a dark alley type. of a situation. It's not happening within relationships, within, you know, friendship groups or families. And quite often, there is no understanding of the scale of this, or the scale is understood, but the impact isn't. You know, it's a number on a page, and it's a big jump, you know,

because you need to step outside of that privilege of your own existence and your own experience and really try to connect with someone else. And sadly, what we're getting now is a lot of people in the media and in social media tapping into that defensiveness and tapping into that sense of insecurity and really just feeding quite harmful, really embedded narratives that are taking the boys off in a different direction.

And there's a newer element to this now, social media. According to research from this year carried out by King's College London's Policy Institute and the Global Institute for Women's Leadership, Gen Z boys and men are more likely than baby boomers to believe feminism is harmful. For reference, Gen Z is generally considered people born from 1997 to 2012, baby boomers

1946 to 1964. The study which polled over 3,600 people, showed 16% of Gen Z males felt feminism had done more harm than good. Among over 60s, the figure was 13%. one in four UK males aged 16 to 29 believe it is harder to be a man than a woman. The Director of the Policy Institute said of the study that this is a new and unusual generational pattern. Normally it tends to be the case that younger generations are consistently more comfortable with emerging social norms as they grew up with these as a natural part of their lives.

But, you know, this group, Gen Z, they are the first to really derive most of their information. from social media. Now, the same study also found that of those surveyed, one in five men aged 16 to 29 who have heard of Andrew Tate say they have a positive view of him. Andrew Tate, for anyone who doesn't know, is a British-American social media influencer who has millions of followers, 10 million on X alone.

Tate is currently facing charges in Romania, which he denies of human trafficking, rape, and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. He has talked about hitting and choking women and has self-described as absolutely a misogynist. Now, it's easy to dismiss people like Andrew Tate as evil and disgusting, but I think the question that needs to be asked is what gave room to the rise of people like Andrew Tate?

How and why did he manage to gain a following of young men? I think there's a tech regulation sort of answer here and, you know, what the algorithms are pushing to people and the huge weighting that's given to things which are controversial. There's also here the sorts of insecurities and unmet needs, particularly of young men, that Andrew Tate positions himself, you know, a bit of a charlatan, but positions himself to solve.

And the solutions that he's pushing through are very palatable to a lot of young men because they're ones of, you don't need to think through things too hard, you should be in control and also there is a conspiracy against you called feminism and that's actually what's holding you back here

I think ultimately what they do is prey on the insecurities of young men that are vulnerable of adult men that are vulnerable now you take the misogynate influences away the insecurities are still there whether it's about body image money and unless we deal with

what creates those insecurities there will always be someone or something to pray on them. Essentially, I think it always goes back to, you know, financial crisis and living in recession, you know, if the society has a poor quality of life and less money to do what they need, you will always have, you'll create insecure and vulnerable people that will be prayed upon. Now, unfortunately, gender-based violence is not uncommon in our news, but we particularly want to focus today on a couple of big stories that have made headlines this week.

The first is a story so harrowing yet so important to talk about. It's a horrifying sexual assault case playing out in France, adding to a larger French reckoning over abuse towards women. Dominique Pelico is accused of drugging and raping his now ex-wife, Giselle, over the course of a decade. He's also accused of recruiting at least 50 other men to rape her while she was unconscious. He's alleged to have recruited the men on a chat room

and filmed the suspected attacks. Dominique, who is 71, is being tried in the southern French city of Avignon, along with 50 other men on charges of aggravated rape. Some of these defendants have admitted guilt, while others have denied it. Another 30 suspects, as yet unnamed and untraced, remain at large. So far, police have used roughly 20,000 images

Dominique took of the assaults to determine that 72 men have been involved in raping Giselle from 2011 to 2020. In an act of untold bravery, although Giselle had the option of a private trial, she decided to make the proceedings public in order to support and raise awareness for other victims of similar crimes. We want to read out what she said about her case. I speak for all women who are drugged and don't know about it. I do it on behalf of all women who will perhaps never know. The identities of the defendants haven't been revealed, although authorities note that they range from the ages of 26 to 74,

that many have partners and that they come from a wide spectrum of backgrounds, including firefighters, journalists and soldiers. How was this discovered? In November 2020, Dominique was initially investigated for taking photos up women's skirts at a supermarket in southeastern France. Police searched Pelico's computer and found a folder with thousands of photos and videos of himself and other men raping Giselle while she was unconscious. The police informed Giselle of their findings. She says, my world fell apart.

Chazelle had been to the doctor, both with and without her then-husband, multiple times. Records show she reported hair loss, weight loss, gynecological problems and memory lapses, so much so that she feared she was. might be developing Alzheimer's or another serious illness. First of all, we want to just ask you your response to when you first heard about the story, read about the story, and particularly about the allegedly 72 men who partook in various forms of these sexual assaults. Was there a level of shock when you heard about how many men were involved? When I heard about the number of men involved, was I surprised this is one of the worst cases I ever heard. In that sense, I was surprised.

Was I surprised that things like this happened? Sadly, no, because we do see this happen in many parts of our society, in many different places in the world. And it links to these broader structures, which say to some people, some men here, you're entitled to do anything you can get away with. It's just incredible that not only were those people, okay, recruited from internet chat room,

But a lot of these people are also from the same area, the same village. They bumped into each other at the bakery. These people are embedded in communities. And the levels of entitlement and lack of concern for someone else's well-being are horrific here. Yeah, I mean, I can't believe that no one knew about this. And 72 men were involved. I mean, how many men were approached but said no or, you know, just saw it and didn't respond. You know, this silence.

Nathanio earlier you said, yeah, not all men, but all men have a role. Is this what you're talking about? I mean, what was your reaction to this? 72 men? Like, when I read it, I was horrified and I felt sick, but I was not surprised at all. A lot of people look at paper and say, good, honest men. And for us, we need to understand that good, honest men can do anything. Me, I can do anything. Dan can do anything.

We're all capable of serious harm. It's the choices we make that prevent that harm. I think probably the saddest thing, or one of the sad, the most frustrating thing, actually, for me, is the men that turn the way and don't whistleblow that don't go through with it and just leave it there and think they can go back to their normal life. And going back to, like, not all men, but all men,

it's like these men are still had insecurities that were created and then presented with an opportunity to get their one up so that they can feel better and they can feel like a man by imposing themselves on a woman. which is what many men and sexual abuses do. And we have to understand why someone would think of that is what being a man is about. That is what sex is about. That is what, you know, feeding their needs is about.

This is a story so harrowing for so many reasons. The length of time the abuses took place over, the amount of abuses, the lying, the gaslighting, the list goes on. The case is also somewhat unique in the fact that we know Giselle's identity. entity. Naturally, there have been many reports and many headlines about this story, and not all of them were helpful or responsible. We wanted to read this one from The Telegraph. Woman takes public revenge on men who raped her every night on her husband's orders. Daniel, what is wrong with this headline and what are the stereotypes that this headline falls into? For some reason,

her act of seeking justice is somehow framed as like an emotional taking revenge. Like she was almost like a villain or a, you know, that's the sort of place that we use that revenge word for, which just removes a lot of the accountability for the men who follow in that sentence, right? And that's even further the case because the men who've raped her and who've done these horrific acts are positioned as if they did it on somebody else's orders. And it's like, oh, they didn't even make the choice themselves. No, they got in their cars, they drove across, they made a plan, they followed through with it, they walked away and, you know, they also like hid all the evidence, right?

It also, to me, I find it outstanding how this got past a headline editor and then a sub-editor and then the publisher and the writer of the article. Like, just the list goes on that this, at least four pairs of eyes was on this in the Telegraph Newsroom, probably many more. and yet it still got published. Yes, at least four very important pairs of eyes would have signed that headline off. And on that point I mentioned at the start of the podcast about powerful men or people serving powerful men and wanting to kind of continue that status quo,

I think that's how you end up with a headline that can position of a victim and survivor of horrific sexual violence as someone is more powerful than 70 men and they're literally controlling the narrative there with their headlines as well. We also want to focus on the reporting of this story in a Daily Mail article. The headline reads, they were a happy middle-class family

looking after the grandchildren while pottering in the garden but a terrible secret was waiting to be revealed. As French rape trial grips the world, how teen sweethearts fell in love before the ultimate betrayal. Daniel's looking really confused right now. It's like, what is this story?

Is this a children's story? That's presented as a love story. There's tragedy where like it sounds like someone else has come into their happy life and ruined it. And that couldn't be further from the truth. The villain was, you know, there all along. It romanticises one of the most terrific sexual abuse cases we've ever seen. It sounds like a movie they're talking about or something. This chronicling of it turns it into entertainment and this plays into, you know,

there is this obsession with femicide in the entertainment world at the moment. And the spin, it's not just that the spin. is dramatised, it's that it's actively sympathetic. I mean, the article says, Mr. Pelico, the once warm and dedicated father and husband is now on trial. To call this man warm and dedicated seems entirely inappropriate. I mean, not to mention just unjournalistic.

It's highly subjective. But also, could you, it comes across a sympathetic. I mean, Daniel, what do you think is the effect of this kind of reporting? His abuse didn't happen when he got found out. his abuse happened over a decade, right? And that's what's hidden by this article. The active manipulation, the active deception is just completely wiped off the page. I think what's important, it would be maybe reframe it as like the man who presented

himself or pretended to be, you know, warm and dedicated, or what was the illusion of a happy and supportive life, whatever that first sentence was, like a happy marriage and happy family life. And I think that can be an important point to get across, that actually there is this surface that we sometimes see from individuals and from situations that looks like it's happy and well-functioning and supportive and whatever else. But there can be this other story that's actually there the whole time underneath. There's a book called Murder Gender and the Media by Jane Moncton Smith. And in Jane's book, she explores how stories of domestic homicide are told in the news

by police, by the courts, and she draws from over 70 cases. And Jane's research shows that men on trial for killing their partners are likely to get a lighter sentence if they reference love. So that's a real insight into the way the idea of romantic love can justify and excuse the killing of women by their spouses or partners or the violence towards women by their spouses or partners. and lead, yeah, not only to sympathy, but actual lighter sentences for those people.

And that's a decision made by a judge, right? Like, that's how far these ideas are penetrating into our society. Another story that dominated headlines this week was that of Rebecca Cheptake. Rebecca was a marathon runner, a Ugandan Olympian who lived in Kenya. She recently competed in the marathon in the 2024, Olympics. She died last Thursday. Her former partner, Dixon Indyema, poured a can of petrol over her and set her on fire. Rebecca's father told reporters last week that Indyama had been

stalking and threatening her and the family had informed the police. Indyama has since also died from injuries sustained in the attack. Police were treating Rebecca's death as murder, with Indyama named as the main suspect. Some reporting fell into the common mainstream media trap of erasing the perpetrator. We'll read out some headlines. BBC News, Ugandan athlete in hospital after Kenya petrol attack.

The cut, what we know about Rebecca Cheptigay, the Olympic runner who was set on fire. Washington Post, Olympic marathoner set on fire during attack in Kenya. What do these headlines signal to you? What's missing?

Who's got the lighter in their hands? When they use this passive voice, Without spotlighting who the perpetrator is, you know, in their makeup and in this case their gender, it's a really good way to push things to the side. If you make a story that is active and say man rapes women, police men rapes women, that challenges people's perceptions in their heads of men, of what they're capable of. It's really frustrating. In Kenya, it does have a specific, I guess, manifestation of distance-running athletes that are women.

Men befriend them and offer to coach them often without quality. identifications, become partners and then seek to control their finances. And then when those women want to leave those relationships, they are murdered, they are abused. If they fall pregnant, they are forced to have abortions because they are the breadwinner of the house, controlling none of the money. You know, unfortunately, she's added to a list of other distance runners training in Kenya that have been murdered by their partners. And what an important context that is missed out of all of these not only, headlines but articles. You said who's holding the lighter.

I mean, these headlines completely strip the story of any perpetrator. And this is a problem that's not just in the media. It's echoed in the police investigation. It's echoed in the prosecution case in the courtrooms. Listeners can go back and listen to our investigation, rape justice, what happens to the 98%, which is about how, you know, the vast majority of cases never make it to trial. And we literally speak to prosecutors and to police investigators who say,

Yeah, you know, all of the focus is on the victim. We take the victim's phone. We scan through all of her photos, all of her messages. We don't really, we can't really take his phone. He can just say no comment. The case as well. The defense. It's all, what about the victim?

What's her sexual history? You know, what are her sexual preferences? So when the headlines do this focus totally on her and they strip the story of a perpetrator, that is replicated in our justice system. And what it means is there's no accountability. We need to swing the focus. Thank you both so much for joining us for this incredibly important and enlightening conversation. First of all, Daniel, just tell us where people can follow you,

and do you have anything that you want to plug to listeners? Listeners can find me via Beyond Equality. We typically Beyond underscore Equality on all the social media platforms. While we've been talking about big cases maybe abroad, this is also related to workplace harassment and there's a really important new legal responsibility for workplaces to actually be doing everything they can to prevent harassment within their workplaces coming into effect in October. And what that means is we can actually start focusing some of these very preventative conversations and I think it's a good example of how we can think more socially about preventing

some of these other problems and it's really important for employees to actually get on top of that and take action now which is positive and nathaniel where can people follow you and do you have anything to plug i'm nathaniel a cole on all social media platforms and i'm launching my project next year which looks at marginalized boys in second year settings of college or sixth form about how their identity impacts their view of relationships and sex It's been amazing to do so far. I've had boys in circles crying with each other that have done things I've talked about things

I've never talked about before but also relating that back to how they view themselves, how they view women and girls. It's been really excited so far. Welcome back to Media Storm. That was a, that was a, That was an intense conversation. Loved it, though.

It was so refreshing to start that conversation without the initial barrier of having to justify that, like, this is actually a problem and just jumping straight to, okay, we accept this as a problem, what can we do about it? Yeah. It was nice. It was like therapy.

It was hard, though, finding guests for this episode. Oh, yeah. This was definitely one of our hardest weeks. So surprising because there's plenty of men out there. Just apparently not many who talk about violence against women. violence against women, I should be saying. It was far easier to find women who speak out about it. Most of the men also who work in the space

have lived experience of the issue in terms of, you know, their mother or their sister experiencing it in the household that they grew up in. Right. Yet realistically, statistically, every man will know a woman who has experienced some form of gender-based violence. I guess what I've really liked about this conversation is that both Daniel and Nathaniel linked the specific stories of gender-based violence that we hear about in the news

to a wider culture of gender roles that are learnt and can be unlearned, crucially. And I would really urge listeners to Google the rape culture pyramid if you haven't seen this before because it sums up this issue in a really good graphic. I found it so helpful. We should post it on our Instagram story. We will do that. Go to our Instagram, find it.

So we've highlighted the issue. Mm-hmm. How do we change it? Well, there are solutions, luckily. There are things we can do. There are people working towards educating and including men. So please do check out the work of Beyond Equality and the workshops that Nathaniel runs. You can find them at nathanielcold.com.

And we wanted to highlight another organisation that works in the same space called SLEC. SLEC stands for Survivors' Leading Essential Education and Change. Helena spoke to the two founders, Megan and Brieney, about how they work with men to dismantle gender-based violence. For a long time, we focused on survivor support, which is a necessary part when we're talking about male violence. It's really important that we're providing spaces and time and support to those

that are impacted by that and experienced that. But what we realised was that there is a need to break the cycle of violence. There is a need to break the cycle of harm. and how do we do that? It's working directly with those that are most likely to perpetrate it or to uphold it. And so we launched our emergency men's learning course, which was online, which was a space for men to come to really begin to understand their own internalised relationships to patriarchy, to sexism, to male violence, to rape culture.

And for us personally doing that as women, as survivors of male violence, of sexual harm, I think that provides an opportunity for men to experience, learning in a way that's rooted in honesty. Our kind of focus is to create spaces where this is the place to kind of say what you need to say in terms of asking us questions and we can unpack and explore that together. So you created this course and did men sign up? They did. When it first happened, if we're totally honest in the media and within culture,

there had been a shift around misogyny and male violence being more in focus. Men basically being like, I want to get involved. involved and do something about male violence. I want to challenge male violence. And so we had quite a big uptake in men in our first course. But if we're really honest, it's a lot of work to get men signed up. I think also what's interesting though is one of the reasons men don't sign up to the course is that most men think, oh, it's not for me. Because they think, oh, I'm not, you know, the bad guys. I understand what is right and wrong. We keep promoting this course is for all men and it's kind of that not all men thing they're like oh this this is for like those men

those other men that do cause harm with the lack of kind of understanding that we all cause harm have you seen positive results from your work with men? I think for me it's like how powerful it is when you open up a space to say are you allowed to be vulnerable and you're allowed to talk about these things and you're allowed to say how you feel as well in response to these things and how this also impacts you and that sigh of relief of like oh I can actually actually talk about this. I can actually like be vulnerable, the power of like allowing for that. That was Megan and Brianie from SLEC. And if you want to sign up or get involved on a course, you can find out more at sleek.net, SLEEC. Thank you all for listening. Follow MediaStorm wherever

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