Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Problematic Uteri

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

Jane and Fi are joined by Lauren Fleshman, the celebrated American distance runner and author of Good For A Girl My Life Running In A Man's World.Also they discuss the delights of the hotel breakfast buffet and an appeal to get themselves invited onto a men-only Whatsapp group.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Producer: Sameer MeraliTimes Radio Producer: Rosie CutlerPodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Monday, Monday That's us, isn't it? It is Monday. Welcome to Monday. Welcome to Monday. It's been a beautiful day today, so we shouldn't complain too much. And I wanted to do an urgent question on the programme. Oh, it was so biffed, wasn't it? Well, I'm going to use it now because nothing's wasted.

Nothing I've thought of is ever just chucked in the bin. I use it. No, I have noticed that over the last seven years. I wanted to do an urgent question. I wanted to do an urgent question about daffodils. Because I have this theory that... Jane's got a theory, everybody. Those one pound bunch of daffodils,

I want to know about the economics behind them. I want to know about where they're grown. I think some come from the Netherlands. I think some come from Cornwall. But it's like a thing right across British retail at this time of year is the one pound bunch of daffodils. And you get about seven or eight in a in a bunch for a quid and I absolutely love them I mean I I seriously mean

that they pay quite a big part in maintaining my mental health over this can be quite a depressing time of year I think they're colourful I think they're perky and I think they say winter will end and I said I went never without daffodils. Yeah? Yeah, no, that's fine. But you said earlier you thought it was environmentally a bad thing to do. Well, I don't think that we should be. I'm not sure that cut flowers are at the top end of the environmentally sensible things to be buying.

And it troubles me. Do you know what? Most things that you can buy whole handfuls of for a pound trouble me because I'm not sure how everybody gets paid. Well, that's one of the reasons I didn't want to talk about them because I think they are a positive for me and I know that I'm not alone there in valuing the colour of those daffodils. So you've got the ground that they were planted in as the bulbs.

They must be given all sorts of stuff to keep going. Yes, so you've got the farmer and then you've got the people who cut them the people who trim them the people who package them maybe that's all one and the same person the person who probably drives overnight to a supermarket someone who unpacks them in the supermarket someone who puts them out in the shelves and someone who's on the till if you're lucky because the supermarket that i would buy mine from doesn't have anybody on the tills anymore. They do not have till. You have to go and use one of the unexpected items in the baggage area.

And I feel like an unexpected item in my own baggage area quite often in the supermarket now. But anyway, so that's 10 people involved in the process for a quid. Well, I think somebody out there will know about the economics of these daffodils. And then they'll get in touch and we'll be able to book them as aid. Well, I think somebody out there will know about the economics of these daffodils. And then they'll get in touch and we'll be able to book them as a guest. Yeah, OK. So if you are that person,

it's janeandfee at times.radio. Also agree with you on the self-checkout because apart from anything else, you almost always need to call for help, or I do, because I can't work it or something goes wrong or the barcode doesn't work. But also sometimes, Jane,

I mean, not just the once, I've got home and thought, I haven't paid for that. Not all of it, but there'll be something. I think, oh, I'm not sure that went through. And I haven't deliberately shoplifted. It's not my kind of vibe. No. But sometimes things just have gone in and I think,

no, I'm not sure I have paid for that. So I don't know whether it really works out. And I always like having a bit of a chat with someone on the till. Can I just say that for my urgent question, the idea that was biffed as well, was just there's a grey area in my head about what's allowed in music videos now and what's allowed in other forms of artistic expression. Because Sam Smith's got a video that is by no means the most explicit music video that you and I have ever seen in our lifetimes,

which are long. Some of Madonna's early videos are quite fruity. Fruity, I miss them. Thank you for using it. But it's just, there are a couple of scenes in Sam Smith's music video that if younger children watch it, they do have questions about it, which are just quite hard to explain so i just wanted to do something about where the boundaries are in that but but you know that got biffed as well didn't it so it's quite sweet actually we're both try-hards i mean we come in we've got one idea

we've got ideas we've put the idea to our laughably referred to as our team. And they say no. They say, hmm. They just look, oh, bless them. Here come the old ladies with one of their ideas. Anyway, an interesting guest on the podcast today, American athlete Lauren Fleshman. And should we do the emails first before, Lauren? What do you think?

Why don't we do, you've got a very good email there that I think probably warrants a bit of a chat afterwards. So shall I do just some slightly shorter ones that don't need a reply? It's not that they aren't as good. This one comes from Jan, who says, you mentioned in a recent podcast episode that you weren't sure if taking a holiday when retired would have the same thrill as taking one when you're working.

I'm here to say, yes, it does. After the past 13 years of retirement I was a teacher and didn't officially retire as such. I just stopped, I hope you told your class, at 55. Felt fabulous. I've realised that the lows of life outside work, either those related to illness, relationships, concerns over children, being fed up with the world in general and politicians in particular or just general malaise, mean that getting away on holiday still provides a much-needed time to reset. And no matter if it's short, like Jane's one-week limit,

or longer, like several months overseas, or somewhere in between, like a three-week road trip around Tasmania, go Jan, there still exists that delicious pleasure of stepping outside of your own life for a while new experiences new people new thoughts whether you're tripping around or sitting by a pool reading a book waiting for the buffet to open all awaken something in us well jan i'm delighted to hear that and especially just that little uh detail of waiting for the buffet to open because we were talking about this on our Departure Lounge holiday slot today.

There is something about the breakfast buffet that delights all generations. It's a thing of glorious wonder, isn't it? Well, I mean, I could stay in it all day, realistically. I don't actually require another meal. I mean, in the sense that there's everything in the breakfast buffet if you're in quite a good hotel. And do you find that on a Monday you're slightly unambitious, but by Friday you've just all go?

A load in the plate. All go. You've got a slice of melon, a smoked cheese, a glass of carver and maybe just some pats of butter just to eat. Not to spread on anything. Now, let's do Lauren now then. This is Lauren Fleshman, who was our guest this afternoon. She's the author of a book called Good for a Girl, My Life Running in a Man's World.

Now, she had a whole lot of success, actually, as a distance runner. She was the American 5000 metres champion twice and she competed at three World Athletics Championships. She didn't make the Olympics. Life contrived to make that impossible for her. She had injuries and other setbacks. So in a way, well,rived to make that impossible for her. She had injuries and other setbacks. So in a way, well, she'll talk about it in the interview, she's perhaps less celebrated than those track athletes who make the Olympics. But that doesn't mean she wasn't hugely talented because she absolutely was. But she also found out along the way that her body was sometimes playing tricks on her and that she felt that the female body was in a way just not quite taken seriously by the athletics establishment.

So quite a lot to get into here. She also, by the way, is now a highly successful businesswoman. She invented something called a picky bar and did tremendously well and sold that business relatively recently. And she's also an athletics coach as well. So we started our conversation by getting her to tell us about the sheer pleasure of running, the absolute joy it gave her as a young girl. Running is often the first thing we do as soon as we can

or before we're even ready. It's natural. And I just loved it. I loved being able to beat all the boys in the neighbourhood. And it's the foundational skill for so many schoolyard games. And I was hard to catch. So I loved that. But I also just loved the way it tuned me into my body. It made me feel like an animal. The faster I ran, the less I had to think my body would just take care of it until I got tired, of course. But I felt that it was something I was kind of born to do. And you mentioned beating boys. And the plain fact is that

back then you could, you really could. It wasn't a problem. No, I mean, there's no sex based performance differences prior to puberty. And I was a child of the 90s in the girl power revolution of you can do anything that the boys can do. And so I was surprised when that turned out to be not totally true. Tell us a little bit about your family setup, because your mom and dad are very significant. And your sister, I think, is in the mix as well. Your dad was hugely proud of you. But he was somebody with what I think you might call quite old fashioned ideas about women and certainly about female athletes. Yeah, definitely. He was an example of a lot of men still today. I mean, studies show that men want independence and strong-willed daughters, but they don't value the same

characteristics as highly in a partner. And we just are still struggling with what to do with the empowered woman. So seeing that as a child during this time of history where it really did feel like everything was available to me as a young girl and a future woman and then seeing modeled for me in my home that my dad really was the one that you know had control of the remote. He had the first serving and the last word and that was confusing as a kid. And he watched sport. He absolutely devoured it. But actually, back then, there wasn't a great deal of women's sport to watch, was there? No, there really wasn't.

The Olympics was the chance to get to see female athletes on display and not just their athletic prowess, but also their bodies and the aesthetic of female athletes and the feminization of female athletes on display. And that was really powerful for me just to see that there were professional sports bases that someone like me could grow into. But it was discouraging to see so little on day-to-day TV. There's still a massive difference in the amount of women's sports coverage and men's sports coverage. When it's not an Olympics, at least in the U.S., it's about 5% for women. And that's pretty horrible considering 40 40 of the pro athletes are women and we have a just seriously a very long way to go we can get bamboozled into thinking women have

equal coverage but but it's a long way from that tell us about your your journey then to success because you competed twice as i said said, at the World Athletics Championships. That is quite remarkable. But it came at a price, didn't it? I mean, and those chances to compete at the Olympics, things didn't work out for you. And just how crushing was that? Oh, it was absolutely crushing. I've been, when I retired, the New York Times called me the fastest 5,000 metre runner in history not to make the Olympic Games. I kind of became something I was known for because it's so tough. We in the US, at least we have one day where you perform. There's no committee that determines the team.

You have to show up on the day of the Olympic trials at your best and finish top three on that day or it doesn't happen for you. You can be the American record holder, the world record holder. It doesn't matter. And so it's just an enormous amount of pressure on one day and hard to get all those things right. And my story talks about the main force that kept me from, I believe, making more teams, Olympic teams, etc., was being at war with my body, feeling that my body wasn't right, that I was too big to be the fastest distance runner. I needed to lose weight. And this is something that I examine in the book is this systemic pressure on developing females to change their body, erase their body, erase the parts of them that are female when it's not necessary to do so. And it's extremely harmful. In the setup that you were involved in, I gather that the boss would usually be a man

and there would be an assistant coach who was usually a woman who was around to help the female athletes and to presumably talk to them about periods. Yeah, that's the current setup in the US. Well, we from 50 years ago, before we had legislation requiring equal opportunities for women, there were 90% of the coaches of women's athletes were women. And that was mostly club and intramural sport, not professional sport, obviously. And then once it became part of the NCAA and professionalizing, men wanted those jobs, they were higher paying jobs. And we still haven't earned our way back to half of those jobs as women. We're at 42%. We've been stuck there for many years.

And so the most common thing, 80% of coaches are men in the running space still, is to have a female assistant who can talk to you about the sensitive issues and do the emotional labor. And the expectation is that we don't expect our male head coaches to be educated and informed on the basic female bodied experience, puberty, breast development, menstruation, all of that stuff. It further creates sort of a stigma around those things when the main coach in charge won't talk about those things or acts like they're icky or uncomfortable. Can we talk a little bit more about body image as well? Because I think, as you've already alluded to the pressure that you felt to be less than yourself to be a thinner version of yourself and imagining yourself to be stronger when you're thinner I think probably as an older woman we know that that's that's not going to work but also just

seeing other athletes around you all the time with their bodies on display. It's quite problematic, isn't it? Why do women have to run in shorts? Oh, well, we run in these little tiny underwear, basically. There's some women that wear tighter fitting shorts and the occasional rare bird that wears a loose fitting short. But the expectation is that we wear very tight fitting bathing suit bottoms and a crop top, which puts our whole body on display. And in a sport where women's bodies are constantly commented on and objectified, and we're trained from a young age to be very concerned about what our bodies look like, that puts an extra element on female athletes when they're trying to just focus on competing,

and they're in the fishbowl, and there's the cameras, and now they have to worry about what their butt looks like hanging out the back of their bun hugger little briefs so i think it's a it's rule coded into just about every sport that female athlete uniforms have less fabric and are tighter fitting and you can get disqualified for wearing other things there was a situation with i think norwegian um volleyball that wore shorts instead of a bikini in the beach volleyball olympics and they were fined and I mean that kind of thing is just absurd to me but why does that still exist Laura I mean why why now we have wonderful voices like yours in sports

can't the change be quicker sooner well I Well, I mean, immediate, really. I mean, you would think so. We need more research about it. But oftentimes women can be the greatest defenders of our own oppression. We have associated these tiny little kits with professionalism. We've been trained to think of them that way. And you will find some of the biggest defenders of those kits to be women. It's similar to high heels or a lot of other things. Like I bet there were women who were defending their corsets and foot binding, right? Like these are things that they get

ingrained into what our identities and what we think our value is. So we have some work to do on the inside and then we just have to, but then we can't just change the rules. I mean, really we just need people to like look at the data and see that it's creating unnecessary harm in mental gymnastics. We know for sure it creates a risk factor for eating disorders and eating disorders are the second deadliest mental health disorder in the world behind only opioid addiction. So we know that this is serious. It's worth changing rules so that women can compete with that freedom, the same freedom their male peers do of not worrying about those

things. You're listening to Off Air with Jane and Fi, and our guest is Lauren Fleshman, celebrated American distance runner and the author of Good for a Girl. Now, I reminded Lauren that she'd written a very successful letter. It often circulates on social media called A Letter to My Younger Self. And I asked her why it still seems to resonate with so many people after quite a few years. Well, it's the fundamental truth of a female bodied experience in puberty and our sports systems that we have right now that we emphas emphasize are at their ages 13 to 22. There's a ton of emphasis on high school and college age sports. Women were excluded from those actively for a long time. And then once we were allowed to do them, we were kind of put in the system the way it was. We had no control over shaping it in any way.

Well, what a male body is doing between ages 13 and 22 is dramatically different than what a female body is doing during those years. And what all the rewards and incentives and the clever refrigerator magnet wisdom, you know, you get out what you put in, effort equals results. These things are based on a male experience.

And because we don't recognize that a typical female bodied experience looks more like improve for a few years, experience body changes. Those aren't immediately performance-enhancing. So we plateau for a little bit typically or even decline in performance temporarily. Once we adjust to all those new changes in our body, then we can rise again. And our peak is in our late 20s and beyond. I mean, we really have our greatest years are waiting for us on the other side of puberty

in our adult woman body. But because we don't talk about these changes in the woman body, they're stigmatized, they're silenced. Girls feel like they're failing. They feel like changing a changing body means that they're going to that they no longer have what it takes. I mean, there's all these horrible myths that get passed around. Coaches will say things like puberty is the one injury a girl can't come back from. And they look at like a girl body changing into a woman body as a career ender, when really it's

just this little tiny window of time on the way to a bigger story. That if we just support girls changing bodies through that time, and we normalize these changes, then they can get through to the other side healthy, still enjoying sport leave or they carry a story with them for a lifetime that they did something wrong. They didn't have what it took. And that's the part that kills me the most is the stories that so many women carry about themselves. And what about the impact of pregnancy? There's some very interesting stuff in your book about sponsors and how they deal with pregnant athletes and the possibility of of pregnancy in other stars it's not something they look forward to is it particularly no I mean it's a uniquely female bodied experience right so when I signed my contract with Nike there was no language around it and when I asked it's because like oh it's just one contract it's all the same boilerplate language just copied and pasted so the language was built around a male athlete experience in their body as an athlete, and just copied and pasted like everything else has been to female

athletes once we were allowed to participate. But, you know, one of the things that female bodies do sometimes is get pregnant. And especially when you overlap the peak athletic years with peak fertility years, like those things come to a head at some point and decisions need to be made. But the old policies of not supporting pregnancy, of suspending an athlete for getting pregnant, not paying them, but also demanding they continue to exclusively wear the kit, show up for appearances on demand. Those were norms in the industry until very recently. Those things are, I mean, should be illegal, frankly. But now we have had some big advocates in the sport who have done a really good job of shifting those things, like Alison Felix,

Alicia Montano, and Kara Goucher, track athletes that have told their story on big stages and had put pressure on the industry to change those things to provide at least some level of pregnancy support. But it's still all very confidential. Contracts are confidential. We don't really know women are being protected. And Lauren, along the way, have you found enough allies in your male counterparts or not really? Yeah, I think that the I think that men are excited to support their female peers. They just aren't given the information. And frankly, the women aren't either.

And one of the biggest surprises of writing this book is how many people go, wow, I didn't even really know that that's what was happening to my body. Like their own real lived experience, they thought that they didn't know if they could really even believe their interpretation of events. And so like, how do we expect our male peers to show up and support we need consciousness raising on the whole of like what is a typical female athlete experience in their body through

the sports system and then what forces are they facing societally that may be different from males and then what can we do about it together to make sport a place where everyone can thrive? I think one of my happiest sporting memories of all, my entire life actually, would be England winning the Women's Euros last summer. It felt like such a moment for all of us who as little girls have played football and love football,

but never dreamt of an occasion when they get over 90,000 people at Wembley cheering on, of all things, an England victory in a final, because we haven't had much success of late. But what is really interesting is that, and it's an unfortunate thing, is the prevalence of a particular injury amongst female footballers. I know it does happen to men as well, the anterior cruciate ligament injury. Now, why is that more common in women than men? And is it something that concerns you? Well, I'm not a doctor. So all I know is the research that I've read on it that may be outdated now. But you could have someone else that is an expert on that. But what my understanding is,

there could be multiple factors, we have a different hip to ankle ratio, like angle. And so that just means that the way that our legs are hitting the ground, we're moving, the forces are moving through our body in a different way on our joints. So it could be that just our physics of our movement create a different risk. Also, women are still required to play on turf way more than men. And turf is notoriously a more dangerous place for ACL injuries. And even professional women are still relegated to turf fields that we would not do for men. So these are things that like, also contribute that we need to look at. Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting. And you make very clear in the book that you're certainly in favour of trans people participating in sport. But the clear central

message of the book appears to me, and you can certainly correct me if I'm wrong, that women and men, their physiologies are very different, and they need to be treated differently. So how do you feel about the participation of trans women in women's sport? Well, I think that sport is not just split by sex. And there's this myth that we've created two categories based on sex. We haven't. We've created two categories based on gender. Historically, women's sport is a gender affirming space for cisgender women. We go there to be in community with other women. We go there for a lot of reasons that are way more than just who's going to win this race, right? Most people aren't there to win the race. They're there for the community

and stuff like that. And so trans people have a right to those spaces to participate in sport in gender affirming ways. If we decide to rearrange sport fundamentally to actually be sex-based categories, then that's a different conversation. But that's not actually the way sport is separated right now. It is an overlap of sex and gender into two categories. And so I think that it's not humane or correct to exclude trans people from those spaces. And people don't think about how much you're missing out on if you exclude trans people from those spaces. You're missing out on teammates, friendships, and lifelong experiences. And anyone who's played in sport knows that every one of your teammates, every one of your competitors that you become close with impacts your life.

And I think we should be in the business of including as many people as possible, not excluding. Can I ask you really briefly, Lauren, if you don't mind, whether you believe, as Vladimir Zelensky does, that Russian and Belarusian athletes should not be allowed to compete in the Paris Games? I think this is really tricky. I would like to say that it's a clean thing. I think this is really tricky. I would like to say that it's a clean thing. Yeah, we shouldn't let any country who's behaving in the games based on our colonialism or actions in various parts of the world that maybe weren't on the right side of history. And so I just think that it's easy to point fingers. That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep them out of the games, but I think that it is something we need to think about because we need to be able to apply it broadly if we're going to be doing that and then who who are the ones that get to decide which country's behavior is acceptable or not

Lauren Fleshman who was our guest this afternoon and a very eloquent one as well and it is worth noting that as well as all of the running that she's done and the writing about it and the encouragement of other athletes she also set up this business making what she called piggy bars. That was the brand name for them. Well, it was because her partner, Jesse, who's a triathlete, had a kind of nervy tummy. Yeah. Yeah.

And not always a very healthy relationship with food. So the piggy bars had nut butter and proteins in them and stuff like that. And she sold the company for $12 million. She just started it in her kitchen. There's a lot of bite in a bar, isn't there? Do you ever just think, I say to my kids all the time, can't you just invent an app? What are you doing? And they're just gawping at somebody else's genius. They've still got time. And they're just gawping at somebody else's genius. They've still got time. No, they could do that.

I mean, they're moving on. I'm not, as I keep saying, my child is 20 on Sunday. So my teenage years, my parenting of teenagers, I've only got six more nights of nervy tension before I can forget the whole business. She's on her own. I'll check in with you the same time next week and see how those first couple of nights have gone. Right, we've got a really brilliant email here from Tina in Germany.

It says, from Germany with love, and we'll accept that as a beautiful sign-off. Take it away, lady. Well, what happened last week was we had a very interesting email from a woman whose husband was a member of, and he's a lovely bloke and she absolutely loves him, but he's a member of a WhatsApp group with other men and they exchange stuff, not all of which is terribly respectful towards women, porn videos and sexist jokes and all the rest of it. And he's aware of it because he's told her, but he hasn't left the group. And she's very aware that these are his friends and she loves him. And she just wanted to offload the whole thing, really.

him and she just wanted to offload the whole thing really. Anyway, Tina says, my husband and I used to live in Australia. My husband went out with a few mates to celebrate a birthday back in Oz and after a few drinks the conversation turned to women and wives. The lack of fulfilling sex lives and all the other ways in which the wives and girlfriends weren't meeting expectations. My husband felt uncomfortable with this development of wife bashing and the sexist undertones and did eventually speak up when his mate mentioned that women were biologically different to men. So some things like caring for people were just easier for women. Women, he said, were not cut out for management roles and decision making because of the problematic uterus present in their bodies. My husband told him this was an utter load of crap and then left.

I wish the story ended there, but unfortunately the mate turned up on our doorstep the next day and yelled and swore at my husband, asking him to admit that women just are different and that they're therefore less capable of certain things. The anger involved in this surprised me the most. Why was he so adamant and so angry that my husband wouldn't fall in line? It still astounds me to this day that a man in his 40s in this day and age can have such a sexist attitude and be frankly stupid. But a shout out to my husband for speaking up. We've got two daughters and my husband wouldn't take any talk, be it online or in person, objectifying or degrading women.

And he'd be just the same if we didn't have daughters. From Germany with love, as he's already said, from Tina. Thank you for that, Tina. And well done to your husband. But I still think what he did was commendable. husband. But I still think what he did was commendable. But it was very intriguing that you got that reaction. Now, I'm not going to say that's because it was in Australia, but I suppose we must take note of the fact that happened to occur in Australia. Yeah. There's a little line that I agree with Tina about wholeheartedly as well, which is her saying, I don't think anything will change if men don't change the way they talk about women. And that's what started off the whole conversation wasn't it it's how men talk about women in the company of other men that I think we're starting to know so much more about and that's the bit that

has to change because there is a different conversation by the time they know a woman's watching or a woman's listening or a woman's in the room so it's how men talk to men that seems to be incredibly still incredibly problematic even when on the surface they seem like really nice guys so do you think men would be shocked if they were if they knew how women talked about them but i have genuinely jane never been in a conversation with my lovely lady friends where we've talked in a very crude way about men. I mean, there has been, you know, a fair bit of, you know, he's not doing this and he's not pulling his weight there and all that kind of stuff. Has there? I must have. No, there has been. That's just being honest.

But there's never been a derogatory, degrading conversation. And I don't think I've ever heard a woman, you know, specifically say he's just not capable of doing anything because he's got a problematic penis. So problematic uteri, which is what Tina described the man as saying. Incidentally, that's the wedding band that nobody ever booked. You know, that's different, isn't it? To just saying, I'm having a bit of a hard time because you won't load the washing machine. Yeah. Yes, it is. It is definitely. I think it's very interesting because we'll never know what men talk about when there are no women there.

And they won't really know what we talk about. But if you are a man, I mean, it's unlikely, but if you are a man and you're listening... Well, maybe somebody could invite us to infiltrate a male group. Yeah. What would your nom de plume be? I think the trouble with us is our height would slightly give us away. I'm talking just about a WhatsApp group.

It's not actually turning up in person. I think our height and I think our physique might give us away. Nothing wrong with my physique, love. Well, you're working on yours because you're going skiing, aren't you? So you're trying to bulk up. It's not going terribly well.

No, no. Well, you say that, I'm sure it's fine. This is an anonymous one. Can I just do it as an ending? Because it's really lovely, actually. You say very kind things at the top. So thank you, anonymous. I'm usually a bit slow in catching up with the podcast,

but I have just listened to the discussion about the transgender prisoner Isla Bryson. In all these discussions, I always think that what we're missing are the voices of the trans people themselves. My youngest is beginning to socially transition at the age of 15, becoming more feminine in their appearance. They've talked about wanting to be a girl since they were seven. They are the most gentle, kind and unthreatening person you can imagine. They experience harassment

and bullying from boys at their school on an almost daily basis. The idea that my baby could be seen as a threat to anyone breaks my heart. But I feel this perspective is lost in the debate. And Jane and I would both agree with that. And actually going right back to the conversation that started off this podcast, we and our team are in agreement that we would like to hear on the programme, because we have got a platform and an opportunity, exactly those kinds of voices, because by their very nature, they, I think, can sometimes self exclude themselves from the debate, because it's a very difficult process to be transitioning and to have those feelings and those thoughts when you're young.

Why on earth would you want to put your hand up and be part of this incredibly loud, very aggressive, rather violent discussion that can be going on at the moment? So we will be making an effort to hear exactly those kind of stories. We will, and we both feel very passionately that we want it to be a safe space for all comers, for everyone to be able to express an opinion and share their own experiences, because Fee's right, it doesn't need to be a safe space for all comers, for everyone to be able to express an opinion and share their own experiences.

Because Fee's right, it doesn't need to be vile. It shouldn't be horrible. And we're all in this together. And we're on a very steep learning curve at the moment. Yeah, we are. That's where we are. OK, Jane and Fee at Times.Radio. We can't talk about Happy Valley

because Fee hasn't seen this penultimate episode. No, but I'm going to go home and watch it tonight and then we'll be able to discuss it tomorrow. Neil! I'm trying to do Neil. Goodness me! I'm worried for his vocal cords. I'm worried for his... Get your haircut, Neil. Right, that's tomorrow.

Oh, and our guest on the programme is very interesting, Sarah Polley, the director of Women Talking, which is an Oscar-nominated film. So that's tomorrow. Lovely. Have a very good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Good night.

You have been listening to Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell. Now, you can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or you can download every episode from wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget that if you like what you heard and thought, hey, I want to listen to this, but live, then you can, Monday to Thursday, 3 till 5 on Times Radio.

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