Might Delete Later - Ep 17: Deborah Frances-White

Episode Date: October 8, 2020

Gina and Stevie chat to comedian, author, screenwriter and award winning host of The Guilty Feminist and Global Pillage podcasts - it's the incomparable Deborah Frances-White. This week they're discussing building bridges online, Choose Love | Help Refugees, oh and failing to do sexy selfies.👉🏼Remember you can find all posts discussed on Instagram @mightdeletelaterpod and we're on twitter too @mightdeletepod.Follow Deborah on Instagram @dfdubz and Twitter @DeborahFWListen to The Guilty Feminist, and Global PillageFollow The Guilty Feminist on Instagram @theguiltyfeminist and Twitter @GuiltFemPodBuy The Guilty Feminist bookFind out more about Choose Love | Help RefugeesFollow Gina on Instagram @ginamartin and Twitter @ginamartinukFollowing Stevie on Instagram @5tevieM and Twitter @5tevieMWant to help us make more episodes? Support Might Delete Later at https://supporter.acast.com/mightdeletelaterHosted by Gina Martin and Stevie Martin.Photo by Joe Magowan.Artwork by Zoe Harrison.Recorded and edited by Naomi ParnellProduced by Plosive Productions.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/mightdeletelater. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you love Might Delete Later? I bloody hope you do. You can support our show by using the new ACAS supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give and there is no regular commitment. Just smash that link in the show description and support us now so we can keep making this podcast. Thank you. Hello and welcome to My Delete Later with me. Stevie Martin, a person who simply does not like social media, and I would like to take our restraining

order against it, quite frankly. Me, Gene Martin, who likes it and would like to take it out to dinner and potentially a dutty-dutty motel room. Okay, right, so it's got full sex now. She's sexual, yeah. To our guest today, she's a stand-up comedian. She's a host of the podcast, The Guilty Feminist, which I'm sure you all know, and global pillage. She's also a screenwriter and a corporate speaker. she does kind of everything. She's an activist. You probably already know who we're talking about. It is Deborah Francis White. The woman does not and shall not stop.

I like this episode because Deborah really got stuck into Instagram and how uncomfortable it sometimes is trying to post a photo of yourself that you're like, is it too hot, though? Yeah. Do I look too good? We're stuck to love about choose love, which is an organisation that Deppah works really closely with. And just so much more TBH.

Steve, take it away. What's in my drafts this week? Are you asking? Yeah, baby girl, you know. Look, I've been doing some classic call-outs. If you know what a call-out is, guys, it's just when you ask Twitter for something. Did a call-out.

And whenever I do this, there is, every single time, there is always a man, and it is always a man, who replies something to the effect of, no, I haven't. You're like, why have you responded? Thanks.

I've now started to either just not respond, or I say, thank you for taking the time to reply to this. That's so great. The best way. So I'm going to just do that every time because I think it's a nice way of showing them like the complete futility of everything that they have done

while not being rude, but also not being kind. In my draft this week is hashtag digital detox day. And I went away with my partner for two days to say a little boffy. And I took two days off my social medes. I deleted the apps. And I just felt really great. because every, well, no, actually I felt quite stressed. I lied. Each gap, each gap was like, you know, I'm in a field, there's loads of sheep,

let's say, which is what happened. And Jodie went, I'm just going to go get my camera. And I was like, okay, I'll just sit here. So I went to scroll on my phone and I delete the apps. And it was like, no, don't fill every gap with scrolling. Like, just look at the sheep, like watch them. They move and do different things. So I was basically really enjoying, like, just watching stuff. Like at one point, Jody made a fire. And he was sitting in front of the fire. And he was, like, looking into the fire, like a little tiny Labrador. And he was so warm. and like happy with his fire. And like I was sitting in bed

and like I would have definitely been scrolling my phone and not been able to see that like sweet little moment. So I took these two days off with that campaign which was by Iron Hole, Zoe Sog and Jordan Stevens ran it.

And it was just really great and I've decided I'm going to do each weekend. I'm going to take one of the days off social. I'm also going to do that because very quickly read a study about three years ago that said how important it is

for your brain to have downtime because that's when it sorts out various ideas it's been struggling with with the week, various stresses. And with scrolling, we have now completely eradicated downtime. Because every time you have downtime, you're not having downtime. You're reading your phone. To our guest. Our guest, Deborah Francis White, excellent episode. Go to my at Might Delete Later Pod on Instagram to see all the posts that we discuss with Deborah. And also, big thanks. Shout out to Zoe Harrison,

who's giving us a bit of a brand new look on the old main grid. We're looking smart. We're looking sassy. Enjoy. Firstly, thank you so much for doing our podcast. It's so exciting to have you on. Oh, it's an unqualified delight. Each week we ask around what people would like to delete this week. What would you delete Deborah at Francis White? I would delete gender reveal parties.

Now, I'll tell you why. Today or yesterday, there was a fire, you know, in California's burning at the moment because it's so hot and there's a lot of bushfires. And somebody did some kind of exercise. Explosion. Now, for listeners who do not know what a gender reveal party is, it's when you you say to the doctor, doctor says, do you want to know if it's a boy or a girl when you're pregnant? And you go, do you know what? Don't tell me, but tell my baker. And they genuinely, this is what they do. It's mad. They say, and then you have to take this envelope, this sealed

envelope to the bakery, and you say, right, if this is a boy, make secret blue cupcakes that when you bite into them they're blue and if it's a girl pink because this poor child is being the imposition of gender is there while they're fetal. And there's all sorts of ways of doing at helium balloons that come out of a box and that kind of thing. But it means somebody down at the helium balloon shop knows before you whether you're having a boy or a girl.

You know, even if you do want to impose gender, right? But also the fact that they've literally now, you know, caused mass devastation and deforestation and people are now just like dying because somebody's set off. Now you have to tell your local arsonist before you know what your gender of your baby is. Could you burn down this forest if it's a girl or perhaps nuke this city if it's a boy?

Literally. But that's a very good, that's a very good delete later. I'll do mine really quickly. Nail varnish because it chips. Okay, done. Shalak. You can't peel it off. I've got hot.

I know. I love Shalak. It's so good, but it ruins your nails. And you get really tempted to peel it off because you can't take it off the regular way. And then you rip your whole nail off. Great. That's what I did. Gina, what's yours? I want to do like cleaning, yeah.

I don't have the time to do it. My house is always a mess. There's always more clothes in the laundry and then there are my drawers. I'm always running the same thing. And yet I'm constantly served these pictures of people with like white, stainless steel houses on Instagram.

They look amazing. And my house is just full of like crap. I cannot stand on top of the clutter. No. My house isn't dirty, but it's cluttered. And I'm desperately, like, what is this sort of stuff that keeps appearing? How can we keep a whole, we just need less stuff in the world? To kick us off and start with our little first chat.

Debs, can you tell us what your screen time is? I was nine hours last week, which is really bad because I was working on my phone all day. So I'm going to hope mine's gone down by last week. Yeah, see, I blame work because I do a lot of work on my phone. So I email on my phone. I write notes on my phone every time I have. have a thought. I don't think it's...

First of all, screen time, here we go. Daily average. What was yours? Oh my God. Mine's now six hours. It's gone up. What's yours, Gina? Mine was last week,

nine. Mine's now five hours, 42 minutes. Mine is seven hours 33. I don't think that's... That's too bad given... I work on my phone a lot. Yes. Sure.

That's the difference. And I'll watch like a... Okay, here's an example. I am. I'm reading a book on my phone at the moment, which I don't enjoy doing. If someone sent me a, I love the book, someone sent me an advanced copy of their book,

but I'm reading it on my phone and I hate that because I see messages pop up and I want to hold a book, really. I, you know, took a break and watched a half hour Netflix comedy. That was on my phone. I post activism on my phone. Same. You know, I mean, I post activism. What does that mean?

I post tweets and, you know, I Instagram. Exactly. that, it's the reading, it's the, by researching, it's posting, it's, I work out with my phone, it's meetings, it's WhatsApp, it's like, it's just everything. Here's an example. I've been writing a script, but when I write the script, I create a little soundtrack for myself. Oh. And like, so that it's sort of the relevant songs of the period or songs that I think would be the soundtrack to keep me in the space. Does that count a screen time if I'm playing that off my phone. Because I had a dance class this morning and I used the music. I had a personal training and I

used the music off here. It might count that a screen time. You're not staring at it though, are you? You're just using the phone. Well, if it doesn't count that a screen time, I'm in trouble. In general, I think we all have to be aware that probably anything over like, if an alien came down from the land of Jupiter, I was like, oh, they're all staring at their phone for four, five, six, seven, eight, nine hours a day. You'd be like, right, that's not good. is it. No, I'd have a... Who is this judgmental alien? What do they do on their planet?

I don't know. I reckon they've got bad habits. They meditate. I reckon they've got issues. Well, if they're such meditators, why are they here? You know, like, they've come to the wrong planet, mate. I don't want a wellness alien. I've got enough.

Oh, wellness alien. I hate it. I don't want this judgey wellness alien telling me that I need to meditate. I don't know what they do there, but, you know, right here on planet Earth, what we do is still have phones all day. Okay, if you could change one thing about Twitter. I would completely get off it. My dream is to become so successful

that I don't ever need to look at Twitter again. Someone else can do that for me. We said this before we were doing this recording, because I was like, the thing about Debra is I don't, I feel like she's surpassed needing to be on social media. Yeah. And it's interesting that you seem to not think that. No, definitely not.

Isn't it? Right, I see. I'm delighted that you see me that way. What would that look like for you? I mean, the brilliant Anna runs the guilty feminist Instagram account, but I often at it and I run D.F. Dubbs, and I put all my personal stuff on Diofubs and all my activism on Diff Dubs, and I've still only got half the followers than I have on Instagram.

I'm annoyed by that because I post more of my, you know, my cat pictures, my thirst traps. Why are my followers not interested in that? Why are they ever on the Guilty Feminist? I do also do, I do my most passionate personal activism. Like I personalise things and I really think about what I put. But I try and always remember to put at the guilty feminist and then share it on that story as well. I really do try. And when I say thirst traps, by the way, I am being, I'm risibly taking the piss out of myself.

I thought you're going to say I am being raunchy then. I was like, oh. No, I'm being rye. Rye, not raunch. More rye than raunch. Because I don't really do that. I don't, I can't take myself seriously enough. I just.

Good fashion and good dresses, though. I do fashion and dresses, but I don't do like, you know, ooh. Here's my tint. Here's my boob. Yeah. Yeah. You look so great. And you go to so many events and you wear beautiful dresses.

Do you ever put up a photo in you're like, is that a bit too sexy? Which is ridiculous. Yes. How do you deal with that, you know? I post, I suppose I post that kind of thing infrequently. But I, yes, I do obsess over whether people think I look good or whether I've just sort of thrown out something casual or whatever.

The best photos are like if someone else has taken a photo for me while I'm on stage that I like, I think that's fine because someone else has taken that. it's when it's obviously a selfie that I'm like, well, they know that I've taken 400 because that's what they do. But then that's what they do. So I'm like, you know, either what I've tried to do, I sometimes now post a picture of me where I don't quite like myself because I realize I don't see what other people are seeing.

They're not seeing that. I understand that. Like I'll, you know, friends of mine will go, oh, no, that's an awful picture. You know, I'll show them a picture that I think looks nice of them. And they'll go, no. And all of our ideas of ourselves because of our mirror management. are so different from what we actually look like. 100%.

What I try and do sometimes, if I, to get out of this head is I look at a picture of someone I think looks spectacular in a magazine. And I think, if I'm with that person, what wouldn't I like about that picture? And I start scanning it for the angle of the chin or the way the dress is falling over the stomach or the arm or like, blah. And I've just looked and gone, wow, what a dream. imagine looking like that. But I train my eye to go, what's that person honing in on? And I didn't even see it. And even though I am now looking at that thing, I'm going, it's gorgeous, it's lovely.

I'm not seeing that as negative. So I try and train my eye to look at what you wouldn't like about your photo and I still love the photo. Good to know you're doing that on our Instagram. Yeah, great. You can see a very small head. You can see how small my head looks next to my shoulders. Can I, look, you're speaking to someone that, you know, I am affectionately in family photos called Gulliver because I can do off a national monument. Oh no, no, no, I can. My head, next to

other women's heads, it's just, you know, my head is three times as big as anyone else's. In the times before, and the long ago, before COVID, I dressed up a lot. I had my hair and makeup done a lot for, you know, all sorts of events and things like that. And I, that is who I am. I'm a very femme person. That's, that's genuinely me. So I fell into somewhat of a depression in the first month or so of COVID, not just, I mean, because the world was gone and all my friends were not, you know, I couldn't hug my friends or I was worried that I couldn't go and see my mom or, you know, if I needed to. And, you know, it was, it was really, that part was obviously the real reason I was depressed. But occasionally I'd look at myself because I was seeing myself on all these Zoom calls. And I was like, you just become obsessed with yourself.

and I was just like, this isn't good. And also I wasn't making those efforts that I had made. So I wasn't seeing my whole real femme done up self. Your whole expression, yeah. In talking of lockdown and Instagram Live and all those kinds of things, you did this show, The New Normal. Tell us a little bit about that. And what was the kind of thinking around that?

Because obviously, your entire industry change when lockdown happened. So I decided to do this show called The New Normal. and that was also to sort of make sure I had contact. Also, I felt for the first week or so, I felt like no one's hearing from me. I just really went into myself. And I'm sure lots of people who listen to the guilty feminist might be looking to me to say, what could Deborah, come on, say something encouraging or inspirational and funny or depressing or anything, just say something, you know, about how you're feeling about

this because, you know, I do a weekly podcast. and I had lots of podcasts at the bank, so I didn't need to make any podcasts, but I wasn't saying anything. So I thought, right, let's talk about this every day. So every day I did an Instagram live show and I had the same, well, very similar set of questions where I was asking people how they were doing

and what their strategies were for their mental health, for whether they were reading or binging anything, what their lowest moment had been. And it was great. And virtually every day, they were archived on YouTube, but virtually every day someone cried for the first two or three weeks. Yeah, virtually every day. But it was good because we were sort of...

Carthartic. Yeah, and I think people that a lot of the listeners had, you know, seen and knew well and, you know, admired, they were seeing... The most popular question was, what's your lowest moment? Because I think in those, in that stage while I've locked down, what people were live streaming were their best moments, understandably, of course. No one wants to live stream themselves under a duvet crying. But they were like, I remember.

remember early on people were putting up screenshots of themselves on house party with their best mate and sometimes I'm like oh I know everyone in that and I didn't get invited to that or yes I have that here's it we're all made margaritas and we're wearing funny hats and I'm like oh my god they're having such a good time I've got loads of hats to contribute and no one else to yeah and I felt like crying I was just like you know and I did cry and it was just a state of mind it wasn't a real it wasn't real but it's really easy to think everyone else is having a lot of margaritas and banana bread and, you know, all of these fun online quizzes and things like that and that you're not coping. And so to hear every single day, you know, people saying, oh, actually

I'm binging BoJack Horseman, I'm loving it. But there was a time when I sat on the kitchen floor and cried because we'd run out of milk and I'd already been out for my owl for the day and I thought I really shouldn't go out again. And, you know, something like that. Well, you know, Cindy V came on and very poignantly talked about mourning her mother in lockdown because her mother. had died not long before lockdown and how difficult that was. And also she'd had COVID herself. And, you know, it's a remarkable episode because it's, what I feel those early episodes are, it's just like raw humanity.

It was like people opening their chest and going, and showing us a part of them, we had never seen. And we may never see again. It was just a sort of unique period of time where we were so raw, we were unable to cover it with our normal. Okay, let's get into your posts and your first tweet you ever did on the 7th of November 2008. And it's simply, is joining Twitter. In those days, it was Deborah Francis White. Yes.

What was my second tweet? His second tweet was, is election lagged? Could the next US election be held at a more convenient time for Londoners? Political. That was a joke. That was a joke. A good joke and a good point. And I wanted to ask, actually, because I, in my head, Facebook,

statuses had is but Twitter didn't but when you linked Twitter and Facebook which a lot of people did people would do the is to try and link it and then very quickly find out that the linking didn't really make any sense it just meant that you had like loads of Facebook statuses. I think I was probably just in the Facebook head. I did link them pretty quickly and then people mutes me on Facebook because I was tweeting and I was like oh okay I've got to delink these I've got delink because Twitter will take a certain amount Facebook won't and Instagram apparently like I didn't understand how to be cool on Instagram. I mean, I still don't and I still don't care. But someone told me, no, no, no, you're only meant to, you maximum one picture a day,

but you shouldn't really post that often. And it's really all about the stories. In your feed, you shouldn't post that often. And only an amazing picture. This is interesting, because the Instagram business weekends away tell you to post four times a day. But how much do you post on Instagram, what would you say? Oh, well, I post quite a lot of stories. I do a lot of politics on my stories. I do sort of fun things on my stories. Because you know that they're going to disappear. It's so much more chill. It's easier, isn't it? And it's good for timely stuff. So if you're doing stuff that's political or to do with activism, timely stuff that you want to, okay, this is happening right down. Now, let's do

this next. Let's take this step. That makes more sense on stories on feed. It doesn't make as much sense. May I also ask about Twitter? How often do you delete tweets? Only if I discover I shouldn't posted that. Right. Like today I posted, I retweeted that a little girl was missing, like a teenage girl was missing. And then somebody said, hey, you know that that you just retweeted. It's to a person.

It's not to the authorities. And how do you know that that's not an abuser trying to find out where she is? And I was like, I don't. That's a really good point. So, and then somebody else said, yeah, this is something to be aware of. and you shouldn't tweet something, retweet something just from an individual looking for another individual. So I said, thank you very much. That's a good note. And I tweeted and I deleted that tweet. Oh, so like an un-re-tweet. That's a very good.

So many people would reply to that and be like, don't do much retweet. I'm just trying to help. It wasn't my fault. That wasn't my intention. It's like, yeah, great. Just say thank you. And then edit and delete. Mostly I have realized that the more that you do that, the more you do that, the more you just go, thank you, noted. I mean, sometimes if someone's trying to make me do something that I think, well, that doesn't feel or seem right to me, I will push back or I'll just ignore it. But whenever you try and go, oh, well, I was just trying to help, blah, blah, blah, blah,

it's always lands, it's always defensive and it doesn't need to be. That person is telling you that to fix a problem. So I'd rather just go, thanks, well-spotted, good note. Like, you know. So much easier. But, I mean, that is helpful. I think that is helpful. I do want to know that.

And I think it's kind of a compliment that they think that when someone says that to you, if they follow you, especially, they've assessed that someone like you would need to know something like this and they've assumed you don't know it or you wouldn't have done it. So that's a compliment. So it's sort of like it's like really kind of more high five sister. Yeah, that's a positive way to see it. Should we go on to your proud post? Yes.

Yes. All your proud series of posts. So last year, the Guilt of Feminist has been very involved with refugees and choose love for some years now. We went out to Calais and did some podcasting out there. And then lots and lots of Guilty Feminist listeners started to go and volunteer in Calais. And it became, you know, like the main source of volunteers for a period of time. And Josie, who, Josie who runs Help Refugees, which is. increasingly they're changing their branding fully to choose love.

So Josie who runs to choose love said to me, you know, the campaigning that you do and the way that you explain the situation has been very, you know, there's a really great and symbiotic relationship with choose love that's really working. So we'd love to take you out to Greece to a refugee camp there so you can see it and you can see all of these, because what she's love to do is fund all these grassroots. So, you know, out there there's a company called Watershed. And what they do is provide sewage and showers, you know, lose, keep the drains running. If something overflows, you know, they fix that up.

Now, if they didn't do that, they'd be typhoid. So they're absolutely integral. But most people are not going to donate directly. They're too small to watershed. They don't have the campaign, you know, head. And they can't be doing that. They can't be on social media all day. They need to be actually digging trenches and putting in loos and fixing showers and stuff.

So people have access to basic, very, very basic things for their hygiene and, you know, they can wash stuff. And, you know, so I made these posts because the camp that I visited in Greece had had a big fire and they suddenly needed thousands of pounds or people were not going to have shelter for the night. They were not going to have loos. they were not going to have enough space to care for their children. It's terrible, terrible situations. But these posts at that time, we had to raise money very, very quickly. I think it was 25,000 pounds or euros like overnight we had to raise. And choose love or asking for help.

And people were posting pictures of the fire and they were posting pictures of sadness. And they were posting pictures of devastation. And understandably, I understand why people were doing that. And that is valid to do. So this is not me criticizing anyone else's posts. but I just thought pragmatically, we've got to raise this money. And I know that when lots of bad things are happening in the world, I sometimes for my mental health,

I feel like I have to scroll past, like I can't cope with that as well. There's too many sad things, too many sad things, too many sad things, but I have to be in a frame of mind to receive it, engage with it. And I thought, I need people. And what I felt was everyone who had a disposition to, or were in the state of mind today to respond to something very sad and very tragic, were already seeing those other posts. Yeah.

So I thought, what is something that nobody is posting that's going to catch the eye of different people or people in a different state of mind? And so I started to think about all the, in an attempt to individualise, I started thinking about individuals that I knew who were refugees.

So I did a series of these posts and I posted these little four square with their portraits on it of these four surprising people that you'd think, they grouped together, what's the answer to this? And the question was, yeah, what does Milacunas, Albert Einstein, Tom Stoppard and Madeline Albright have in common?

And I did these, you know, different four people each time. And the answer is they're all refugees. And so that immediately, because it's a celebrity post, it's like, oh, you know, what does Sigmund Freud have to do with Bob Marley? Yeah. You know, I don't know. What have they got in common? What's Regina Spector got in common with Judith Kerr who wrote when hit the star pink rabbit and the tiger that came to tea?

And so people stopped on it because it was a quiz and it had celebrities in it. So then the post says at some point in their life, they were refugees. At one point in his life, Freddie Mercury was a refugee and so was Gloria Estefan. So what happened to those people that they were able to come into their fullness of self? and be the artist or the thinker or the scientist or whatever that you know and love. What happened? Something must have happened. And the answer is somebody helped them.

And from that I came up with the slogan that I'm working with Choose Love on now, which is being a refugee is just a chapter in anyone's life. It's not who they are. It's definitely a chapter in your life which will define you. Absolutely. It will be part of you forever. But it's not the only thing about you. It's not who you fundamentally are.

Doesn't that lead on to your post you regret? Because from why I gather you've got a comment underneath one of these kind of four people. What was the comment? I did. So in that next, I think it was 48 hours. I posted all sorts of different versions of this. So I was sort of extrapolating out and coming up with this campaign. And somebody wrote underneath the one about Einstein,

you shouldn't put Einstein as an example because he wasn't very nice to his wife. And he left her for another woman. He was quite, you know, emotionally abusive to her. And I happened to know a bit about this, actually, because my friend, Monica Boleski, who has actually been on the podcast when I was in LA, an episode that came out recently,

had written a screenplay about his wife, who was treated very badly. and she has done a lot of research and thinks that they came up with a lot of the ideas for the theory of relativity together and that he took all the credit but he did give her all his Nobel Prize money and as a sort of payout

which she wanted, she sort of demanded it but so there's some possible evidence around you know like we don't know for sure because of course women are always written out of history and our achievements are written out of history but there's you know it looks like Muleva did yeah he did he didn't treat her well and he possibly stole her ideas.

Right. And this person put underneath sort of as if I didn't know, well, you won't know that, you shouldn't put Einstein. And I did know and I thought, that's not the point of this though. I am looking, I'm doing, and this is my third post now where I need a four square of refugees. He wasn't the first one I went for. But, you know, so I just sort of said, oh, actually, I know about that and I hear you

and that would be a good thing to talk about on the podcast. But right now we need to raise 25,000 for a pound for cheese. There's an immediate goal there, and that history doesn't delegitimize that entire idea and concept when it's doing something brilliant for something that needs to be immediately dealt with. But what I said to her was instead of just saying, thank you, good note, I'm going to drive forward with or just DMing her. In the end, I did DM her because she really got angry. And I DM to and she said, I'm just trying to do what you do on the guilty feminist and, you know, stand up for women. And I said, I do get that.

but right now a lot of the people in the refugee camp are women, a lot of the most people who are famous from history of men. I mean, I had balanced out men and women, but that's true because of the history of the world and the patriarchy. And right now, I need to raise 25,000 pounds. So can we get on the same team? Because I absolutely hear you, and I absolutely point. And I think I knew at some point I'd get Monica on to talk about Einstein.

So I knew that this was pressing. But the other thing, and this is hard, this is hard to sort of frame and say. But I did say it to the DMs. I said, here's the thing. Some men in refugee camps aren't very nice to their wives. Some people in refugee camps, the loveliest people you've ever met, some aren't. Do you know why? Because refugees are people.

And some people in your street aren't very nice to their wives. But it doesn't delegitimize their chance to allow their family to live somewhere. They're not going to die. What element of the interaction did you regret? Because it feels like that seems fair enough. I let it escalate. I patronised her in the first instance. I think I went...

Like publicly as well. Yeah, I think if I DM'd her and just gone, hey, I absolutely know what you mean, you're right, but he was a genius. And we have lots of things we wouldn't have without him. Even though he wasn't nice to his wife, like, I just can't make that leap with you. It is also like it's this thing with which I feel like I see quite a lot of

with when I dip my toe into like reading about sort of activism and reading about sort of things. like that that we're talking about now, where someone will kind of put underneath, yeah, but what about this? Or, oh, but did you know? And it's like, okay, but we, like, the world is incredibly flawed. We're all incredibly flawed living on it. And when somebody is doing some good for a specific thing, unless, like, there's something hugely wrong with the cause they are talking about, and that's actually going to make things a lot worse for people. It discourages other people from doing something good as well. Because I'm like, but I'll get it wrong. And you're like, oh, but you can't get it. You shouldn't be able to

get it wrong if you're just doing some good. Well, that's sort of what I should have said to her in the DMs. I should have said, hey, can we just get on the same team? And the thing is I did really quickly. I thought, she's angry now. I can neutralise this. But I pride to myself and being able to build a bridge. And I can't always do it.

But as long as I've had a decent crack at it, I'm building a bridge. I'm usually okay with that. And I've done this before where people were arguing under my, you know, left wing people are all arguing under my thing. And I've just said, okay, can we all agree on this thing? Can we all agree? The one thing we agree on is we don't want refugees to be left in the middle of the ocean to die. So can we all repost this and agree that we don't agree on all the details, but let's all repost this because we've got to raise the money. And when I've done that, people have gone, yes, we can all agree on this and we're going to do it.

Find that common action. Because it was my post and lots of people under my post would go, oh, Deborah, you're doing a great thing. I think my manner to her was patronising and I regret it. I think I should have said, I should, should have DM'd her and said, I absolutely get what you're saying. I agree. Einstein was both a genius and a bastard. I'm trying to find examples. Do you know any other examples? Because I'm trying to raise this money really quickly. But I sort of said something like, do you see why that's not the point now? And that's passionising. And I wish I hadn't. And especially typed. When you don't say it. Yeah. Yeah. You can't see the nuance. In the pub, exactly. You'd see the face and you go, no, no, but you know, you don't get what I mean. And then someone would go, I'm going to get around in. And there would be

neutralising because of social norms, but on social media, it escalates so quickly. And I don't mind being attacked by, you know, if a mental rights activist comes on and says feminism is cancer, it doesn't affect me at all really, because I'm just like, you're not on my team and the bridge I'd need so much wood and so much time and energy to build that bridge to you right now. I don't have that kind of time, you know, but all bandwidth for you right now. And it doesn't matter because you're not on my team. It's when people who are on my team come after me.

and their first instinct is very aggressive. It's just the way on Twitter that there's sometimes this assumption that you need to go in as hard as possible even when it's an ally. And I think, I've been listening to Barretem Day's Thurston's podcast, which is incredible if you haven't listened to it.

There's one called We're Having a Moment, which is six episodes. It's like a limited series. And there's a new one called How to Cicisserson. And he's an African-American, comedian, actor, writer, and activist and Black Lives Matter activist. Absolutely brilliant guy.

And he had on a guest who was saying in order to build, if you're an ally, I mean, I don't expect, you know, a trans person to have to sit and justify their humanity and their existence, their identity to somebody else. But as an ally, I'm not trans, I'm cis. So it's my job, I think, to build a bridge and not immediately shoot that person down

because I need to win over more people to make the life of trans people easier, not harder, because I've now alienated someone who might have been ready to go, go, oh, of course. That's exactly how I feel all the time. One of his guests, Valerie Kaur, had some very pertinent questions

that allies could ask people who were on the other side of the divide or in some way holding a hateful view or a view of hate that were very, very helpful. She said, can you ask the person whose worldview is so different from your own? If you're an ally or if you are even, you know, if I was talking to a mental rights activist that I thought I can build a bridge to you. The questions I thought were really good.

How are you misunderstood? And what are you most afraid if your world view fails? And that's a really empathetic question, but also allows them to go, well, people think we hate women and we don't because of da-da-da-da-da. Okay. So if your worldview failed and mine succeeded, feminists, what's the worst thing that could happen? And then what you'll find is, because she was saying there are no monsters, there are only wounded people. I really agree with that. That's such a good way of putting it. And she was very acknowledging that if somebody's standing on your neck or kneeling on your neck,

you are not obliged to look up and think, oh, how are you feeling? But if you want to make the world a better place and you're an ally, if you're a white person and other white people are going, well, I sort of see the point, you know, but, you know, or, well, I'm afraid, you know, I just think racism's racism, no matter if someone's black or white and they were racist to me. For me to gun them down when I'm another white person, my job should be to make the world a better place for black people. It's not my job to get as angry and emotional about it

as if I were the target of their racism. And create also, like it's up to us to create a space with people from our community who are on that journey of learning to create a space that's like away from those marginalised who are always doing the work. It should be me with other people in my community and we can be talking about it and they feel like they can get things wrong and I can say, well, I used to do this too and now what I've, it's all of that, but you can't do all that on social. I think that's a really good lesson is to take it away and call people in.

Or to certainly take it off the DMs where it's exposed, like take it off the offline and try and go to DMs where it's exposing. And also it's easier to go, I see your point. and not feel like you're losing status when it's not in public and other people aren't going to come and shine in. Thank you so much, Debra. That's so, like, interesting and so rich. It was fascinating.

And the work that you're doing is excellent. And also, obviously, I mean, I feel like everyone listening listens to your podcast. So it's almost pointless. But, like, please go and listen to the girlsy feminist. Pillage and is there anything else that you want to promote? The Guilty Famous book, we cancel tickets to shows very much at the moment if at all. So if anyone wants to give to our Patreon, which we only set up because of lockdown, that would be amazing.

Or if you could buy my book or some Guilty Famous merch, we would love you forever. There we go. Perfect. Well, thank you for coming. We love you and we really appreciate it. Thank you. Bye. What an absolute cracker of an episode.

Please do follow Deborah Francis White on Twitter at Deborah FW, which stands for Francis White and Instagram, DF, Dubs. Yeah, she posts a lot of cool stuff on there and a lot of stuff that you can get involved with to help in regards to what she was talking about with Choose Love. So do follow her. Also, follow us, might delete later pod on IG and might delete pod on Twitter

and also emails any guests you'd like to see on the podcast, might delete laterpod at gmail.com. Look, give us a subscribe. Give us a lovely review. That would be delectable. And remember, social media can be a really great place for activism, for hot selfies for thirst traps and for learning.

But it can also be a place for sadness. Oh. I haven't thought it through, but quite bad sometimes. It's all right, because if you feel quite sadness, you can just delete it later. Hey! See you next week. Hey!