Off Air... with Jane and Fi - The pinnacle of their podcasting career (with Caitlin Moran)

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

It's the last podcast before Fi goes on holiday, and she's 'slipped slapped up' a bit in a hot pink jacket (as a tribute to the forthcoming Barbie movie). Jane talks about her dad’s awful 21st birthday tea party and the trickiness of sticky back plastic. Caitlin Moran joins to speak about her new book What About Men? If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail]. Follow us on Instagram! @JaneandFiAssistant Producer: Elizabeth HighfieldTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, right. Clunk! Oh blimey, that's the producer. Lucy has sent us an email. Hi there, being a long time listener, being the operative word here. I wholeheartedly agree with your listeners today that you don't need to be on screen as well. Let's keep it nice and simple without cameras. Always enjoy listening and constantly want to chip in with, oh, yes, and that's so true.

Forgetting that I'm not actually talking to friends. Genius, don't know how you do it. Well, I'll tell you how we do it, Lucy, because we're really average. That's what we've hit upon. A rich seam of mediocrity, which we will mine until somebody spots what we're doing. So don't tell anyone. No, please don't, Lucy.

And we're not on screen today. We are keeping it nice and simple without the cameras. Although, ironically, today's the only day where I have actually tried to slip slap up a bit. Well, you look lovely because you've got, is that a hot pink jacket? I don't know. I don't really know my pinks. I think it's a bit Barbie pink, actually. Well, I was going to say, is it a tribute to the forthcoming Barbie movie? Well, it's quite a longer length jacket and I think it's a little bit Under the Moon of Love.

Shawoddy Woddy. Yeah, well done. It is, because do you remember, they all had kind of three-quarter length jackets. Well, they had drapes, didn't they? Because they were, what were they, teddy boys? The Moon of Love. Good band.

Well, I couldn't do more than half an album of Shawoddy Woddy, I don't think. I can't really name another tune. Under the Moonoddy Woddy, I don't think. I can't really name another tune. Under the Moon of Love. No, Tiger Feet was mud. Yeah. Quite a lot of hits.

Yeah. So if you were ever in Shawoddy Woddy and you're listening, let us know. Jane and Fee at Times.Radio. Listen, it's not that. I mean, it could be. Cardinal Black, they got in touch. So why shouldn't a reformed member of Shawoddy Woddy be listening to our fare? It's very true.

Obviously, what we're hoping for one day is that either Penny or Rod is listening. Because that's, certainly for me, that would be the pinnacle of my podcasting career. You're talking about the Rainbow people. No, I'm talking about Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster. Oh, I thought you were talking about, oh, that's Rod and Jane who sang on Rainbow.

Yeah, no, I don't want Rainbow on. Thank you. Okay. So Bungle, forget it. She's not interested. Right, so you're away next week. I am. But don't worry, everybody,

because Jane Mulkerrins is going to do the Two Janes podcast with me next week. And Jane actually was looking, she was on our Times radio program today because she has a proper job she's associate editor of the Times magazine and she was talking about um Fiesel Bet Noir Joan Collins who's in the Times mag uh this week who does she is got she's got the most beautiful bone structure Joan Collins hasn't she and And she just photographs brilliantly well. And her age is kind of insignificant in a way because she just looks brilliant. But she is 90.

And I quite like the fact that Jane was saying she really didn't want the piece to be Joan Collins at 90. But I just think it's worth celebrating if you get to 90. It's an incredible thing we're not that far away from my father's 90th birthday so um it's in september so and it's i'm being entirely um serious about this it's you do have to make plans you know we very much want to mark the occasion so we've made plans you sort of i mean he himself was saying, well, you know, is it that we can't? I said, Dad, you know, if you're not for whatever reason, we can just cancel it. Yeah. So is he saying, make sure that you've got a refundable deposit? Yeah, that sort of thing. That's the kind of thing, isn't it?

He would have said that all the way through, wouldn't he? He probably would, actually. He is haunted. Poor man, actually. He had a truly terrible 21st, which obviously is some time ago now. Because I don't think, I think 21st, are they really a thing anymore? I'm not sure that they are particularly. But they were, sort of were, back then. I'm talking about the 1950s. And he'd just come out of the RAF because he'd done his national service.

And he just didn't have any friends around at home because they were all at various stages of their own lives, some of them doing national service and he just didn't have any friends around at home because they were all at various stages of their own lives some of them doing national service too so he had a tea party with his mum and dad and his mum's best friend oh okay so you see what i mean yeah we do need to do something when the big day has not had a big celebration since then well my mother tells me his 40th was a big do but i've got no memory of that because i'd only have been about eight uh my mum said oh I made him a collage don't you remember? Well I said no and she said we can make him a collage now and she said she wouldn't. Oh okay. I think to be fair I think she put a lot of effort into that

collage 50 years ago. And nobody's seen it since. She just can't be bothered to relive it. Well fair enough I mean a collage is difficult. There's a lot of cutting out, there's a lot of sticking and there's a lot of moving around and then you've got to find some, if you do it with you know sticky back plastic, that's very very tricky not to get the bubbles. Anyway she's a busy woman she hasn't got time to do any more. Cecilia says I was listening last night when you were talking about grief for the child you've lost. And this was about a listener whose childhood transitioned. And she was being very honest about the fact that she slightly mourned the life that she had imagined her child would have. I immediately started thinking about Claire Dyer's new book, Yield.

And then you mentioned it. I met Claire on holiday and have become friends with her and have several conversations with her about this subject. She is an author and creative writing coach and radio book critic. She's used to being on local radio, and I was wondering if you want to explore this subject further, you may want to interview her as she's very articulate on this subject. Why don't you contact her to see?

Love the show, Cecilia. So sorry. Well, I mean, she sounds like she's a little bit too proficient actually might show us up but you never know we might yield to that request too and i would say because our book club book the usp of our book club is going to be you choose the books and jane and i and all of you read it i would say as well that if you come across somebody who you think I'd really, really, really like to hear a bit more from them, we do very much take suggestions, don't we?

Yeah, we absolutely do. Yeah. Because unbelievably, we can't keep track of everything. We try, don't we? I mean, I'm more or less. Well, you do Monday to Wednesday and I do Wednesday afternoons to Thursday evenings. But we can't. You know, the weekend is free. Switch off. You speak for yourself.

I've got my radio time as column to think about. So busy. Unbelievably busy. This is actually on the same subject, but it's sad, really. Hello to you both. Thank you for opening a conversation about being the parent of a trans child.

I'm a single parent to my newly trans daughter. It's been 18 months now, and I feel similarly to your correspondent. I was listening on my way to work just now, and my heart broke all over again. I had two proms this year. My son, who's just done his GCSEs, outwardly confident and dapper in his suit, and my daughter, who went to the college but because of various issues coming out being one left after two months. I come from a medical family and although they are broadly supportive they're also sceptical as they know that gender

dysphoria does go hand in hand sometimes with neurodiversity my daughter has add and autistic traits she feels the need for hormones but the wait for an initial assessment with the nhs is years i feel like i'm drowning and unable to help her at all i would love to hear the stories from people who've been in this situation and are through the other side because at the moment says our listener i can't imagine what the future for my daughter looks like and I think that's an important email to read out just to acknowledge that this isn't all plain sailing by any stretch of the imagination and we've had some really great efforts from you in terms of soothing the frazzled nerves of parents who've just found out they're in

this position but if you can offer that listener any advice at all or just consolation that yeah this bit's really tough but then it does get slightly easier because it's very difficult. It really is. Are you getting to something? Yeah. We talk about Prime Minister's questions don't we every week, Deputy Prime Minister's questions. As it is at the moment. As it is at the moment yeah and Mari Black is the moment, yeah. And Mari Black is the SNP MP, who at the age of 28 has decided that she's been in Parliament too long. And she has been there eight years, because she was only 20 when she was elected,

which just seems... I mean, I live with a 20-year-old, and she's adorable, but could she run for Parliament? I would say wait a few years. I've got to be absolutely honest um and i'm actually personally nothing to do with her politics but i do think maru black is a particularly articulate and witty person in politics and there just aren't that many of them there really aren't i mean sometimes those exchanges in the house of commons are they are truly the banter from hell

aren't they they They really are. And you get that kind of heightened reaction. So people laugh at things that are just not funny. But she was properly witty the other day when she told Oliver Dowden that she felt they'd both be leaving Parliament at the same time. Her of her own volition and him because he'd lose his seat. Anyway, this is from Bea in Northumberland who says, I've just listened to

the rather moving interview on the news agents podcast that maury black mp gave to emily mateless i felt another sigh thinking about some reporting of her decision to leave matt chorley among others seemed to comment on your program today that what's really behind her decision to leave westminster is her unlikely success at re-election. To me, that feels like another micro-aggression, belittling what she was really saying. What I heard from her was that she's burnt out because she's been working in an old-fashioned male preserve institution. And I thought she was really eloquent in her assessment that unless it changes, our democracy and our union are at stake. A younger

generation will have no interest in preserving a place of work that benefits the nasty playground antics of the public school mail and doesn't address the needs of people in the real world." And I take what you mean, but actually in Matt's defense, I mean it's it's simple maths I think, well simple politics, that actually Mari Black might not, might well not have won her seat at the next election because Labour in Scotland are really catching up with the SNP and might well do a lot better than them at the next election.

So he wasn't wrong to say that. But I also take Bea's point that she, I heard that interview on the Newsagents and I thought she spoke very powerfully about that just the madness of Westminster I mean these swords and general fandango business that goes on day in day out that it's just odd and we did talk with Matt just about the kind of ambition that you have at the age of 28 which I think is still quite a burning ambition. And I would imagine that if you are going to have to fight an election where you're not guaranteed a win, where you're not in a very,

very safe seat, and loads of MPs are, then you might review your ambition and just how much, you know, fire you want to burn, you know, in that particular environment. And I agree with you, you know, without backing her politically. I think she's been a really extraordinary voice in the House of Commons. And that kind of constipated humour that you referred to, I think is so deeply, deeply, deeply off-putting to so many people. I would just say well done to her for having cut through it. I can't wait to see what she does next because she's not going to go and build duck houses

and stuff like that in her retirement. She's not saying that at all. She'll do something extraordinary with the next decade of her life. But how incredible to have gone into the Houses of Parliament at the age of 20. I mean, I'm not sure that I could string a whole week together of work at the age of 20. In fact, some weeks I know I couldn't. So she's been amazing to do that.

Yeah, I had never done a day's work at the age of 20. Did you not? No. Did you not have holiday jobs? Oh, Jane. I know, it's awful. I mean, I'm in no way proud of that. In fact, I'm actually completely, deeply ashamed of it.

But I didn't do a stroke of work until I'd left university. Wow. I'm amazed. Some would say. You can fill in the gap there. But, yeah, it's extraordinary and bad. God, I've been a recruitment consultant. Can I help you with your secretarial needs?

That was telesales. Oh, that's... How do you do that? Well, I mean, it's soul-destroying, but then when you do get a lead, it just feels like the best thing in the world. Well, when somebody at the end of the phone says, oh, actually, yeah, no, we do.

We do need somebody next week. So what, it's cold calling all day? Yeah, all day. I did that for one summer at university uh worked in worked in a pizza restaurant where i ended up being uh not renewed on my very short-term contract because my arms weren't big enough to carry two pizzas at the same time and it wasn't fast enough that would have been why i didn't work yeah no it was quite funny because i'm sure there'll be some legislation now that I could have brought into force.

Either make your pizzas smaller or give me a chance. I had to go back, do you see what I mean? You know, if I had four pizzas on the table, I had to do two runs to the table. You do have, well, I think we both have quite a short arm. I can't help now but look at her arms and I suppose they are admirably

short. They're not for the world of pizzas. I may just have been rubbish at that job. And I'd worked in a coffee shop. And actually, I really enjoyed it. I liked chatting to the punters. Funny that. So I was given some managerial responsibility there, Jane, which felt appalling, actually, at the age of kind of 17 or 18.

Managerial? I had to run the coffee shop while the proper manager went away for the summer. I know. I'm astounded. Yeah, well, that's not very nice. No, I mean, genuinely, that seems like an enormous responsibility. Well, looking back on it, it was actually. But I was...

Hang on, what kind of coffee was served in Britain in those days? Well, so we did have a cappuccino. We did have a proper Italian coffee machine. It was an Italian coffee shop. Which part of the world was this? This was in southwest London. And a variety of cakes were served. And I wasn't very good on the coffee machine.

And because there was a time of year, and the farming community, I hope, can back me up on this. There's a time of year where the milk in this country just won't froth. It's either got too much fat in it or not enough fat in it or something. So there were a couple of weeks where I couldn't get the cappuccinos to froth. And the type of clientele who was coming into the coffee shop, they didn't like that at all. Well, I can imagine. They really didn't like that at all.

What you've just said about milk is not something I've ever heard before. Okay, well. So if you are a dairy farmer, I'm going to leave that to you and jay more karen's to sift through the enormous number of emails saying she's bonkers don't let her back in do you need a follow-up and does the same thing apply to oat milk are there times of the year when the little oats just just the almonds they can't get fat enough They just can't get fat. So our guest today was Katlin Moran. Now Katlin Moran is a woman who, is it fair to say she divides people? I think some people get her

and love her and find her in, I mean she isn't personally I should say, she's a very engaging person. Her writing is appealing to, is it appealing to a relatively small section of the population who love her to bits buy everything she does read every article she writes um because she has the she's no doubt she also has the power to piss people off partly i think because she says things that some people think are far too outspoken and a bit rude and in the case of her new book she's talking she's a woman and she's talking about men yeah she was one of the first journalists to uh hit almost a million followers wasn't she on twitter which just seemed like an incredible thing to have done about that yeah right yeah back in the day yeah and uh her celebrity watch uh some people just can't live without that and And I find that extremely funny. And I think what you're referring to is the boundary

that she pushed in modern feminism, where she started talking about things that actually older feminists probably hadn't talked about, which was your body, how to enjoy your body, and how to not be so tongue-tied about your body that you form a sentence like the one that I just have. Let's just have a moment of silence. Why don't we appreciate what...

I'm still thinking about the milk. I'd love to have been a customer in that coffee shop. Anyway, look, she's written a book about men. She has, which is going to be huge. It's going to be enormous. And there's already been some predictable pushback from men, though not entirely from men, saying if you're going to write about men, you need to talk to a proper cross-section of manhood, boyhood.

And the suspicion might be that Catelyn moves in particular circles and speaks to particular sorts of men and boys. And I think that's probably fair enough. I think she'd acknowledge that herself. Yeah. Why don't we get to the interview? Because she was really interesting in the interview. More interesting than we can be about her.

I suppose you're right. And you are on holiday. It's almost like she wants me to get a wiggle on, but she couldn't quite say that. Just get to it. Right. So we've been talking to Kat Limoran about her new book, What About Men?

And I asked her if she thought men would actually read it. I think my suspicion is that women will buy it. It will be wives of husbands going, look, this chapter where it says men don't go to the doctor. If you talk to GPs, they'll say that if a man comes into the surgery and they say, well, why are you here? If it's a woman, they'll list a load of symptoms. If it's a man, they go, my wife made me. There's a whole chapter on kind of men not taking care of themselves. Now, I'm just going to take you up on that. So generalisations, they're a thing, and Lord knows I make them. Oh, I'm just going to take you up on that. So generalisations, they're a thing, and Lord knows I make them.

Oh, I love a generalisation. Generally, I'm a fan of every one. I have been married to a man who was never away from the doctors. I mean, he couldn't go more than a week without seeking some sort of consultation. So I don't think it's always true that they don't. You have some rare subsects, obviously.

The hypochondriacs are on Google all the time going, I think I've got tennis elbow, I think I've got housemaid's knee. And you're like, no, it's just a cold. But do you think that you're on safe territory when you... I'm not going to say that it's full of generalisations, but there are some in there. There's the one about how men never talk about emotions.

And the truth is, the three of us in this room, we don't know what men talk about when they're on their own because we've never been there, have we? Well, this is why the men that I spoke to, like, kind of... So when you look at the stats... So the basis of this book was, one, I'd run out of things to talk about from the point of view of the ladies' life. My menopause is still not yet happening,

so got to part the books on lady things for a while. And secondly, I cancelled all of the plans that I had to write this book as quickly as I could when I kept increasingly hearing... First of all, for the last ten years, I've had people going, but what about men, whenever I'm talking about women what about men what about men first I was quite tetchy like yeah I'm here to talk about the women it would be the ultimate irony of feminism if women had to solve all of women's problems and then solve all of men's problems but then I was

doing an event on International Women's Day two years ago uh half women half men all around about the age of 15 and 16 and the boys basically hijacked it and started saying things like it's harder to be a man than a woman now the women are winning and the boys are losing okay what what makes them think that well this is the content of the book literally going through and seeing seeing what the complaints are and there's a whole chunky list of stats which when you look at them a whole makes you think there is a problem with men that we are not addressing so boys are most likely to be medicated at school for disruptive behavior they're most likely to be excluded they're least likely to go on to further education they're more likely to become medicated at school for disruptive behaviour. They're most likely to be excluded. They're least likely to go on to further education.

They're more likely to become addicted to drugs, alcohol or pornography. They make up the majority of the prison population. They make up the majority of the homeless population. And suicide is still the leading cause of death for men under the age of 50. Now, although obviously in recent years there have been more emotional conversations with men, we've talked a bit about men's health, that's a stat that has not changed. And when you look at, so I've had people going going this is a generalization that men don't talk about their emotions i've got 10 builders in my house at the moment all working class lads who've been listening

to me on the radio talking about this stuff and one of them just came up to me went yeah i've got five friends who've committed suicide i'm 25 they're all men and one of them uh committed suicide after he'd broken up with his girlfriend and the last conversation i had with him he he told me he'd broken up with his girlfriend and i never thought to even ask him why like men don't ask follow-up questions he was like i don't know why really any of my friends took their lives because i don't know how to have those kind of conversations okay and actually i don't want to misquote you but there is a part in the book where you talk about how a man can only feel safe onburdening himself to a woman, if he's heterosexual, I should say.

I don't know whether it's different for gay men, and I don't suppose you do either, but they are in a safe harbour with a woman they trust to unburden themselves, but they couldn't ever do it to a male friend? I don't think the chat tools aren't there. It's been really interesting doing the... I've done the first couple of live dates

and the people who are coming up at the signing afterwards, most of them who want to have a conversation either work in educational support services for young boys. And they're saying around about the age of seven, that's when you see this massive divergence. Before then, the genders aren't that much the difference. You would get boys crying in school and girls. At seven, suddenly anything that seemed to be a girl's thing,

boys are generally desperate to get away from. And that includes things like talking about your emotions asking questions the difference between the ladies and the men's toilets is the basis that this book rests on if you go into the women's toilets with a problem 20 minutes later three complete strangers will have given you life advice they'll have handed you a tampon they'll have told you to come out in the dance floor and dance your woes away and you'll have made three friends whereas from what i understand that's not generally happening in the men's toilets you toilets okay come out saying i've made a friend there's a part of me that wants to believe you about that women bonding instantly thing but i'm not sure what do you think which bit the bit about you can be on a train with strange women

women who are strangers to you not strange women although both has happened to me in fairness and then you can suddenly find yourselves in these in-depth conversations so i do i do believe that to be true i think there's something we i think we can access our vulnerabilities in a way that we then use to our advantage sometimes actually and and i think that some men struggle to do that but i'm so curious as to what you think has held the younger generation of men and boys back when they can see the patriarchy changing in front of them they can see feminism changing in front of them they haven't got the same societal pressures that the men you and I know of our own age group have had so if they can't grasp a different way of being now,

then do we just accept that men are permanently, physiologically different? But then where is the template to change? This is the thing, like in the last 10 to 15 years of feminism, we've seen such an incredible expansion in the kind of women that we see in public life, in cultural life. You know, women are now off in space. You've got people like Michelle Obama

signing out stadium tours talking about anxiety. Yeah, but obama was married to the president of the united states she wasn't the president of the united states but she's now actually far more successful than the former president of the united states like she fills out arenas and you know very little of that chat is about barack like kind of if you look at the the lexicon of female heroes and role models we have now that are all templating conversations and how quickly feminism is to grasp on a new issue and start talking about it like three years ago no one was talking about the menopause now it's everywhere tell you what you can't move for it literally everywhere i know i'm jealous i want mine to come i'm so bored with the perimenopause i'm in this kind of holding position oh i don't know i'll just make the most of it if i were you i'm sure i'll enjoy it when it comes

make the best is always my motto but like and when you look at what boys are saying when boys you know this you know the this, you know, the rise of people like Andrew Tate, if you read Laura Bates' book, Men Who Hate Women, these Facebook sites have 300 to 400,000 young men on them. And I think a lot of that is because, because we've been so concentrated, quite rightly and correctly,

on the problems of women and young women and young girls over the last 20 years or so, that we don't realise that most of the conversations that a 15 year old boy will have overheard whenever the word man is mentioned it's things like typical men typical straight white men oh the patriarchy toxic masculinity and so the only person who's saying anything positive about men and going it's okay to be a boy masculinity isn't in itself a bad thing is someone like andrew tate so he brings with him a whole bunch of baggage which is not going to

solve those boys problems yeah so much baggage so um you you note in the book the number of young men who believe that in a sense feminism's gone too far hasn't it it's just it as you've just said it has left them behind but what do you think then kind of solves that problem do you have to wait a whole other generation for some brave men to be what? Well, the offer I make in the book is just pointing out like, and if you think women are winning, like if you think boys are losing, then still statistically, we have less money than men, there is the pay gap, one in four of us will be sexually assaulted, like kind of we know the structural economic political problems behind women. But the one thing we have got that might

make you think we are winning has been feminism this brilliant crowd source network of things where if you have any problem you can go online and there'll be a blog or a book or a film or a movie star or a stand-up comedian dealing with that problem instantly and there is not that resource for boys there is that half of the upbringing that i've done of my two teenage daughters was actually done by the wider network of feminism whenever i got something wrong they could find another resource i don't know how i would have raised teenage boys because that conversation is not happening well i don't have boys if he has does have a son you have daughters as well don't you so i i confess i don't know what i'd have done if i'd have had sons as a blood to her love to have had a son um but i do want you do talk about the lack of conversations between fathers

and sons in those areas that women i think most mothers would routinely discuss with their daughters yeah so but how can you as a woman get into that space and start those conversations happening well that's what i've tried to do in the book basically like what i observed that you know i think i managed to do in how to be a Woman is invent a different tone in which you could talk about being a woman one that was more playful more warm that was accessible at the point where I wrote How to Be a Woman there was obviously feminism existed and was amazing but it had become very academic and dry and generally non-accessible to someone like my sister who works on a council estate and thought Barack Obama was called Barry Obama and asked how he was doing in 2012 so So you want to make it, it should be a popular culture phenomenon. If you're making the offer of I can make your life

better, you need to be able to get hold of it wherever you are. So in the book, that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to show templates for conversations and tones that would allow, for instance, I don't know how, you know, how fruity we can get language-wise here, but like, you know, for young girls having pride in your vagina, for instance. If you go on Etsy, there's all this merchandise about being proud of your body, proud of who you are, the body positivity movement, big girls with their rolls and their stretch marks posting pictures and all their friends going,

yes, queen, you're on fire, this is amazing. The idea of there being merchandise for boys to be proud of their bodies or proud of their genitals, a fat boy posting a picture of himself in his swim trunks, posting a picture. His friends would not be greeting that with, yes, you look amazing, body positivity.

No, they wouldn't now, but throughout history, men's physique has been celebrated in art and in all sorts of other ways. And most of us didn't know we had a vulva until relatively recently. I know, until I heard it on Newsnight a couple of years ago. I think it was Woman's Hour, actually. But also, I think they're on the back foot there, actually,

and it's a really important point to make, that if a young man does try and do that, A, they fear ridicule, largely from girls, actually not from their fellow men, and also they fear appearing predatory. So you've got a long way to go before boys can actually have the same playfulness about their bodies that we in our generation might

have accomplished and on top of that the fear of homophobia which is like i've looked into the history of previous men's movements that tried to sort of come up at the same time as feminism and they were usually stymied by a fear of homophobia so becoming more emotionally open hugging you know talking about your bodies and stuff would just be disrupted by people just going well that's quite gay like kind of like are you coming on to? Which is why it's interesting that this younger generation of men, even though they face a lot of problems, do genuinely seem to be more tactile. You know, I see boys at my girls' school hugging, you know, being more affectionate, and that's come hand in hand with the fall in homophobia that we've seen.

So these things are shifting. But, you know, as you say, the fear that you'd be seen as predatory talking about your body, I think that's a massive problem because if you're making a boy who's 15 feel that just by being who he is and having a body and want to talk about it is threatening, that's a thing that culture, politics can't fix that. That's a cultural problem where we need to find a new way of talking about these things, where boys don't need to feel the same kind of shame and guilt about their bodies as girls did 20 years ago.

We are talking to Katlin Moran. Her new book is called What About Men? And we wanted to get on to the impact of porn, particularly on young boys. Yeah, no, well, that was so one of the chapters which seems to be getting the biggest response is a boy called Sam. And who I've known since he was three. And I talk about him in How To Be A Woman which was published in 2011 where I was talking in that book about pornography but its effect on women and going, you know, this is very much the male gaze that my understanding of female sexuality

is it tends to be much more psychedelic, much weirder, much gentler kind of, you know, more of the mind and I hope that by the time the girls and boys that I know, including Sam, are of an age to start looking at pornography there will be something more wholesome and brilliant and tender out there for them.

And there isn't, is there? Well, the boy Sam now is 22. And as he says in this chapter, by the time you wrote and published that, I was reading that where you mentioned me and I was laughing because I'd already seen hardcore porn. So he started watching when he was 10, didn't he? Yeah, I think, yeah, 8, 9, 10.

Yeah, I can't quite work out the timeline. But yeah, he was... Because the sad thing about your job you know we all like to think that we'll give the talk about pornography to our kids and that we're well informed and we think maybe sort of around about the time they go to secondary school it's probably earlier than we'd like to but that seems sensible the problem is that your child's seeing pornography for the first time he's absolutely predicated on basically the naughtiest kid in your school or class because it's the kid who's there with the phone going look at this this, this is weird, this is freaky, and that's when your child will start seeing pornography.

And way before we think we're going to talk to them about that. And the terrible truth is that because they are doing exactly that, they are typing words into a search engine, which is so far removed from even normal pornography because that's the game, isn't it? Have you seen this extraordinary, and we won't make any reference to it here, so what they're going into as their first view

is just insane levels. Horrible, basically, yeah, and stuff that would never happen. And I think that in the same way that, like, if you first light up a cigarette at a party as a teenager, there will be one person who will go, you'll get addicted to that, that's really bad. The first time someone looks at pornography,

we don't say the same thing. But the effects are actually more catastrophic than that because whatever you see in those young, febrile years when you're wet clay, that becomes your sexual imagination. Those become your sexual preferences. So if you're seeing this incredibly out there, weird, or damaging, or just non-pleasurable, misogynistic pornography,

that's with you for the rest of your life. And yet, armed with those images that you can't unsee, you're expected to go out in the world and create relationships with... I mean, it's impossible. Yeah, and the effect on both boys and girls, like the amount of young girls I know who are just going, I never want to have sex

because they've seen this violent pornography and they're like, well, why would I ever want that to happen to me? I don't want to grow up. If when you grow up and you have that sex, I don't want to have it. And boys when you grow up and you have that sex i don't want to have it and boys meanwhile they're supposed to turn up completely confident throwing girls around with these big hench bodies there's no space for tenderness or mistakes or laughter you know or silliness or any of the things that actually make sex fun you don't know how we've screwed up sex given that animals manage to do it like

on shed roofs in the rain yet we with our technology seemingly yeah um we must go back to andrew tape briefly because we can't ignore him because he has a huge audience and he is getting through to those boys who feel that no one else speaks for them or speaks to them no um and you quote him as saying he's right here when he says women are the gatekeepers of the sexual marketplace that is true and if you are a man who doesn't have a woman can't get a woman has been denied a woman as they might perceive it it's really tough well yeah but that's also market forces and also the reason that women are gatekeepers to i mean they're not gatekeepers to the sexual world like it's some kind of resource that's kind of you know they're gatekeepers to

their own bodies and the reason that a woman would not want to have sex with a man is because she's scared or she doesn't want to so the fact that that's not seen as a valid reason and somehow andrew tate is suggesting that we need to reorder society so that women have to like kind of have a certain amount of sex that they need to give out or else men will become angry is deeply dangerous so have you changed your view then do you actually have you begun to think that those young boys who spoke to you a couple of years ago and said it's actually tougher to be us than to be a girl do you think they're right well the thing i enjoyed most is going through it like a kind of like like you know a big old mum and going here are the things you're right to be worried about and in these i think i give eight reasons where it is harder to be a boy

or a man than a woman now but i'm also very strict about going look this is what you need to understand about sex this is what you need to understand about rape this is what you need to understand about strangulation this is what you need to understand about rape this is what you need to understand about strangulation this is what you need to understand about female fear so i very much see this as an extension of my feminism because if you if half of all women and girls problems is men angry men abusive men scared men confused men and you can't fix the girls until you fix the boys so i genuinely believe that the next part of feminism is sharing this resource that we've invented which is talking about gender which we've used to talk about women we now need to use it to talk about men and fix them alongside the girls why isn't there a man who's you writing a book that's this

i know i literally sat there for 10 years absolutely expecting that there would be but that's why half of the book is aimed towards mums who will want to show chapters to their teenage sons why don't dads care as much? They don't care. It's just that that culture of fatherhood, just like of men talking, just isn't there. Like, you know, the conversation we had before about sort of, you know, women talking to their daughters

about being proud of their bodies. How would a dad start a conversation with a teenage boy about, you know, his genitals and being proud of them in the way that mums do with their girls now? It would just seem, even saying it now, it sounds unthinkableable and mad but it was equally unthinkable and mad for mothers and daughters in say 1997 so it is a cultural thing you just need to find a new way of talking about it that makes everybody feel comfortable and also like they want to join that conversation you know the where i get worried about progress is where is it seen as a fibrous duty that you need to chew through in

order to improve your life to be a good person changing your life for the better changing your idea of boys and girls making them more comfortable in their bodies and giving them pride and joy should feel like the best offer in the world something you say in the book is something that i've often wondered about actually is you wonder why men don't fantasize about being able to give birth right because that is an incredible thing yeah a female mega power yeah but apparently it doesn't feature in male fantasies at all. I looked through all the research. I asked everyone I knew. I was on social media asking.

And like there was just this astonishingly weird silence. And in one of the previous books, I put that I think all the plots of superhero movies are actually male appropriation of the female story. Because those are all stories about teenage boys who suddenly their bodies go haywire and they're shooting webs or they've got this extra strength

or they're there to save the world but they never get the credit like Batman. That's mums. Like suddenly we're shooting these weird substances out of our body, milk, and we've got these superpowers and strengths, we give birth, but we never get any credit for saving the world.

And that's being... Before having kids, I never fantasised. Did you? Am I just different? You're an outlier, no no genuinely did you do you know my theory for what it's worth is this is going to sound absolutely crazy is that i think sport was invented because men didn't give birth so in the recent fandango about cricket for example which has kept some let's be honest middle-aged middle-class chaps talking for the last seven days they have talked of nothing else it's all over the times um if they had i don't know if they had the mega power to

give birth would they be that bothered about a dodgy a dodgy out so that's the theory in the ashes war as well yeah well there we are that was the great fleabag when i gave birth and i was a mother i was just like this is a woman's war you know you are risking your life it just go you think it's going to be over by christmas It's not. That conversation with Catlin Moran ended on the slightly odd note, it has to be said, of us trying to work out whether men had invented cricket and war because they didn't give birth. I think there's a dissertation in there somewhere. I'm quite glad I don't have to write it. I bet somebody has yeah and i'd be really interested to hear uh if you have had fantasies about childbirth before actually giving birth i did i was amazed that

you said that jane i didn't i didn't feel in myself as a young woman before having children uh that that childbirth and lactating and all those kind of things and i suppose motherhood that childbirth and lactating and all those kind of things, and I suppose motherhood, was a superpower. I think I regarded it in a slightly fearful way. You know, I felt that I wanted to do it, but I didn't feel kind of empowered to do it. This is totally unconnected, but what you just said,

for some reason, has broken a dream I had last night about Ted from Heidi High. Oh, my word. I know. do you know which one I mean I do well he was uh a shorter man a more returned man with a big moustache all I'll say is did he did he give birth did he have a little Ted why on earth was I dreaming about him last night anyway um okay so um it is well you see i'm not no i wasn't saying that i dreamt about giving birth but it is odd and i think caitlin's onto something here that men don't seemingly want to go conversationally to to being jealous of the fact that they're not the life givers i mean let's face it pre pre-relig pre-christian religion mother earth was worshipped yeah because yeah it's like we got the idea that actually the earth was female and nature was female precisely because of its

life-giving properties and then Christianity came along and said oh no God's a chap with a beard and that's what we've got to worship you can see that although I have a religious studies o-level it was only grade b I think some other religions have been left out a bit there but that might be be next term. I'm talking... You're right. Yes. Okay. Well, that's given you a bunch of profundities to chew on. Hugely. And how fantastic if any men are

listening and want to give us their version. I don't think anyone will be listening by the end of that. I don't think so. Well, everyone's gone off to look up fatty cows. And Ted from Heidi High. No doubt. No one's gone off to look up fatty cows. And Ted from Heidi High. No, darling, no one's doing that. You're probably right, it's just me.

OK, have a very good weekend. And Fee is off next week, but the remarkable and very astute Jane Malkerians will join me for Off Air, Monday to Thursday, wherever you are in the world. You'll listen whenever you like. And we very much look forward to being part of your day. Have a lovely week. Enjoy the James.

Goodbye. Goodbye. We're bringing the shutters down on another episode of the internationally acclaimed podcast Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. But don't forget that you can get another two hours of us every Monday to Thursday afternoon

here on Times Radio. We start at 3pm and you can listen for free on your smart speaker. Just shout Play Times Radio at it. You can also get us on DAB Radio in the car or on the Times Radio app

whilst you're out and about being extremely busy. And you can follow all our tosh behind the mic and elsewhere on our Instagram account. Just go onto Insta and search for Jane and Fee and give us a follow. So, in other words, we're everywhere, aren't we, Jane? Pretty much everywhere. Thank you for joining us.

And we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon.