Saturn Returns with Caggie - 8.4 Breaking Barriers with Gina Martin: Unravelling Gender, Shattering Patriarchy, and Leading Change

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

In this thought-provoking episode, we have the privilege of hearing from Gina Martin, a passionate author and activist who made headlines with her successful mission to criminalise upskirting. However, this conversation goes far beyond one achievement, delving into the core issues that drive Gina's advocacy for gender equality. Gina shares the inspiring story of her relentless campaign to criminalise upskirting, shedding light on the pervasive issue of disrespectful behaviour that had long gone unaddressed. The conversation delves deep into the origins of patriarchy and how it was historically constructed to control women, perpetuating gender inequalities that persist today.  Gina passionately addresses the need for a fundamental shift in how we raise young men and emphasises the importance of educating them about gender inequality. Gina's journey and insights are a powerful testament to the impact one person can have when they challenge societal norms and fight for justice. This episode invites us to question the status quo, challenge the roots of patriarchy, and actively engage in reshaping a world where equality knows no bounds.  Order Gina's book 'No Offence But..." here. You can find Gina at her website or Instagram. --- Follow or subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. Today I am joined by author and activist Gina Martin, who made headlines with her successful mission to criminalize upskirting. I didn't know what to expect with this conversation with Gina, but she kind of blew my mind, to be honest. It's one of the things with doing this show that I have the privilege of talking to these incredible people that are just making such wonderful change in the world. And Jean is definitely one of them. So some of the subjects that we explore, and she speaks so articulately about them, is sort of unraveling

patriarchy and exploring the historical origins of patriarchy and its impact on gender inequalities today. And it's one of those things that I think the term or the the word gets used a lot but we don't necessarily truly know where it stems from what it what it means and we also explore misogyny which kind of you know very much ties into that and how we can navigate these oppressive systems gina offers her insights on how women grapple navigate these oppressive systems. Gina offers her insights on how women grapple with multiple oppressive systems in society and what we can do to create real change and encouraging men to actively learn about gender equality and drive meaningful transformation

and how important that is to create spaces for them to do so. I hope you enjoy this inspiring conversation with Gina. Hello and welcome. Thank you so much for having me. This is very exciting because me and my friend arranged arranged to get satin tattoos when we were listening to your podcast a lot yeah and we were going through our satin return no i am so so do i can i say that i play a part in this yeah yeah me and my friend zoe were obsessed we were like sending episodes to each other and listen to episodes together from australia's uk and yeah oh my god i had no idea that you even knew we existed Send episodes to each other and listen to episodes together from Australia, the UK. Yeah. Oh my God.

I had no idea that you even knew we existed. Oh my God. So wait, when were you going through, because how old are you now? I've just turned 32 last week. Good age. Yeah. Strong age. So my second return was like, my second return was actually January 6th, the insurrection

in America 2021 so we started yeah did you find the podcast in pandemic or was it later I found it after I'd moved from London to Melbourne Australia and was starting to be like whoa this is a wild change like I thought this would be much easier than it is and so I would just walk around this new place I'd moved to didn't know anyone and just walk the dog and just listen to episodes just cane episodes for like hours because I I don't know if you know this but but I am obsessed with Australia. I'm like, I want to be Aussie. And everyone I meet that's Australian, I greet them as if, you know, it's like I'm like, hello, another Australian. They're like, you're not Australian.

Because I did live there for a little bit. It was just a bit far. Where did you live? I lived in Sydney. I did the like cliche classic Bondi beach and I loved every moment of it really yeah but what made you move it's really far my partner's Australian okay so we've been together for almost 11 years now so since we were like 20 and he's the best person that's ever existed, he's the

sweetest person that has ever lived. And, um, he was in London. We met in after a big breakup when I was 20, my friend was like, come to these hostels that I work at in Hungary, Budapest. And I was like, okay. So I went to these hostels and he was working there and we just talked for hours and hours all the time. And then I got there, eventually met him and he cancelled his flight back to Australia to meet me because he saw a picture of me and was like, she's cute, I want to meet her. And we just really got on really well, really liked each other. And then I was like, this will never work, you're from Australia. And he was like, I just really want to make something of this.

And I was like, I'm not sleeping with you. You're from Australia. I'll have my heart broken. And he was like, no, I want to be together of this. And I was like, I'm not sleeping with you. You're from Australia. I'll have my heart broken. And he was like, no, I want to like be together. Let's just try to be together. Even if it's just for a week or a month, let's just try and make this work. So I remember saying like, oh yeah, whatever. Okay.

Like, I really like you, but it's never going to work. Okay. And we, I went to Greece because he was working in Greece. That was our first day. I flew to Greece to see him for a week. And we've been together ever since. And he was in London for my work as an activist for quite a long time. He came to London and I started campaigning.

We kind of had to stay because I was running this massive campaign. And then eventually it was like, okay, this is, it's time now after the pandemic. And after I'd finished my campaigning for us to try and live in Australia for a little bit. And it's been kind of wild, but cool Wow that's such a lovely story and are you loving it there it's quite an adjustment but. It is an it's more of an adjustment than I thought I've been coming here for 10 years with Jord but to WA Western Australia where he's from and then we both moved to Melbourne because it was really important to both of us that we don't have a relationship where one person has to abandon their entire life

and move to where the other person's from I'm not from London I'm from like a small town in the north of England um and like we could go to a new place and be on equal footing together like explore something new and find our people together and yeah so we moved to Melbourne yeah I think so because otherwise there's they'll they'll they will build some level of resentment I think if you have to give up your life to fit in someone else's life each time and so it's way it's like I thought it was going to be I was like yeah maybe it'll be so easy that's fine what do you mean and then it's actually been so much more of an adjustment than I thought just because I don't have community here I don't have a support system here. My work is in the UK, like all of the kind of meaningful, purposeful things that I hold apart from my relationship

in the UK. But I've been building and being quite brave and trying to build a community of people. And I mean it with people I knew through Instagram and stuff here and it's starting to feel like somewhere that we really can create a base which is exciting there are a lot of Brits out there aren't there many in some way aren't they all Brits they didn't like it I'm like but all the hot Brits when I first went there I was like oh my god should we just send all the best looking people to Australia like especially around Sydney I mean I'm taking this on oh my gosh Bondi Beach yeah of course yeah yeah they're all very hot I'm like going down a sort of nostalgic road of Australia but anyway we digress we I would love for you to do to introduce yourself a little bit because I do want to go back to the beginning but I always like do to introduce yourself a little bit because I do want to go

back to the beginning but I always like people to introduce themselves in their own world in their own words the way that they sort of feel most comfortable for our audience that might not know yeah of course um so I would describe myself as a gender equality activist that works at the intersection of gender misogyny and sexual violence. And the reason I describe myself as that is not just because it's my job, but because I really do see activism as a sort of life choice, a kind of lifestyle. You live it each day. If you don't, even if you don't get paid for it, often you pay for it yourself. Like you lose money to do campaigns. And I started in activism in 2017.

Before that, I was working in advertising for sort of six years in London. So I was a copywriter and art director. So I would like come up with the ideas for ad campaigns and working at agencies. And it was a really full on industry with very little pay at the time. and it was a really full-on industry with very little pay at the time and I was at a festival in 2017 with my sister waiting for a band to come on stage when a group of guys in the audience were hitting on me and my sister and we kind of said no multiple times quite clearly and they obviously got agitated by that and to teach me a lesson um they worked together to take photos up my skirt like one of them put his hands between my legs without me knowing and took these photos of my

crotch and sent them around to everyone around me and stevie in the crowd my sister in the crowd um and i kind of saw that and i was at a point in my life where i'd had a series of experiences um i guess at the hands of men that i've been made to feel very unsafe i just had a series of experiences, I guess, at the hands of men that had been made to feel very unsafe. I'd just had a stalking case, year and a half stalking case dropped three months before. Was that with someone that you dated? That was with someone from school. So that was a guy from school who I hadn't seen since I was like 12. And he had found me on social media and kind of essentially stolen a load of pictures of me and created all these kind of gut fake imitations of me and was spreading rumors about my life with

loads of people I saw then I saw him outside my house he called my mom he spread a bunch of rumors about my partner in Australia with people my partner used to know he had like all the information on my life he'd obviously clearly gone through and found all these relationships from years before. And that went on for like a year and a half. And I became really fearful of him and had a case with the police. And that went on for a year and a half. And then that was dropped by the CPS. I had hundreds of screenshots of information and evidence of what he was doing and was told essentially that until he hurt me, there was nothing they could do. And so when the upskirting happened three months later, I was so frustrated and so angry that I essentially did the things

that we ask victims and survivors of sexual violence to do. Like we have such a long list of expectations for them in situations where women and marginalized people are assaulted. They have to complete this list of perfect exemplary behavior before we take them seriously as a culture. But we don't ask that same expectation of the perpetrators. You know, it's like, I got the evidence instantly. I took the phone, I had the picture. I got into a fight with one of the guys. I was looking and he, this six foot four guy who I'd taken the phone off, who had the picture on his WhatsApp. He turned around when I took his phone and he grabbed me. He was like shaking me

and I kind of slapped him, but way not as hard as I wish I'd slapped him. And I remember being like ticking a list off in my head, like, look at everyone around you, like get like, look into their eyes so they can see how terrified you are and ask them to help you because you need to have like so many witnesses here for this to be taken seriously. And like, don't let go of the phone. And I was like looking at everyone being like, help me, help me. And he was shaking me. And I passed the phone to this woman that I still don't know to this day next to me. And she took the phone and then he got in her face and then she slipped the phone into my hand. And these two guys in the crowd who I'd been staring at while they've been shaking me just

looked at me and were like run and they moved all these people out the way I was in the middle of a 60,000 person standing crowd in the middle of the day so I was like how do I get out but they kind of moved two people aside and were like run so I ran through the audience essentially like fully crying just like knocking people out the way with this guy chasing me and ran to the security exit. And I always know where it is. And my whole life I've been, my partner, my boyfriend, it's like fire trained and everything. So he's always been like, know where the exit is. And I've always been like, okay, yeah. Okay. I've done it, George. Of course I knew exactly where it was. And I ran straight to it with this guy chasing me and the security guard circled me

and he jumped over security guard tried to like fully punch me in the face and the security guard said what's happening I said he's been taking pictures of my crotch with his phone like I have the phone and he said put it in my pocket the security guard said okay did that asked if I wanted to see the police said yes then my police were on the scene so it's festival they came and I remember so clearly being like oh my god I'm so glad it's a female police officer with a male police officer because she'll understand how much of a big deal this is. Sadly, in my work since then in parliament with female politicians, that's not the case. It's not always the case. It's not the fact that because of the gender, they understand it more, especially in a very

male dominated industry and institution. You find sometimes that women assimilate to the point that they react similarly to men. And she came over and he came over and they separated us and he looked at the photo. They both did. They said, we had to look at it really sorry to make sure it was you. It shows more than you want it to show. It's not a nice image, but if you'd chosen not to wear knickers, we'd be able to do something because it was a graphic image, but you chose to wear knickers. There's not much we can do. You won't hear much from us. And I remember just in that moment being like, I've been told my entire life by movies, by TV, by people around me, by teachers at school to wear more clothes, to be the regulator of boys' behavior and men's behavior,

that if I covered my body, I would be safer. So how is it now the fact that I'm talking to an institution that's meant to be protecting me? And they're telling me that if I chose not to wear underwear, they could prosecute with a graphic image, but because I did wear underwear, it's my fault. I actually can't do anything anymore. That's mad. Wild. so they didn't even kick the guys out they just were like okay carry on separate us more like carry on and I kind of wandered back into the crowd and like did this kind of must have been in the days I was but it was weird because I was so inside I was like shaken and so upset and I was crying and there was this moment where I sort of remember clicking out of it and being like no I'm gonna perform that I'm not scared or fearful that that didn't rattle me

and I kind of carried on I sort of performed being fine for the rest of the gig and then I went home and was like what would have like I can't I can't do this anymore like I can't how many times do I have to do like follow the correct quote-unquote avenues and processes and then just be left on my own essentially victim blamed like I'm so exhausted by all of it you know and that was not the first time that was you know I'd been I'd dealt with something on the rape culture pyramid like that was the straw that brought the cameras back and so I ended up looking into the law with a friend who was a law student and found out that obscuring wasn't a specific sexual offense and decided to essentially because I'd rather be in motion and be fearful and scared than be sitting

still and be fearful and scared like I'm already scared anyway so why not be fearful and scared than be sitting still and be fearful and scared. Like I'm already scared anyway, so why not be scared and trying? Created a campaign to make up skirting a specific offence, which was a social media campaign that then turned into a traditional media campaign. And then I partnered with a law firm, took that to parliament and worked for two years in parliament with ministers and political parties and created a solution to the changing the sexual offenses act that was based on scotland because upskilling had been a sexual offense in scotland for 10 years but not here and eventually pushed that through

as law and that changed in april 2019 but that was the first campaign i did in activism and since then i've changed instagram policy with naomi policy with Naomi Nicholas Williams and worked a lot around who are we my work I guess tries to answer who are we outside of the systems of gender and hierarchies that we've been told we have to be and how would we move through the world and who would we be if we weren't following those cultural scripts and what harm do those scripts do interpersonally and systemically and so now I work in lots of different ways on that question essentially. Thank you for sharing that and I think that you know it's horrific what happened to you but I think by like you said doing something in motion even though you were fearful has helped and inspired so many people that have gone through something similar. I'm

curious to know what some of the obstacles you faced during this campaign were in the sort of more unexpected ones. Because I know you mentioned that, you know, we presume that women, if there's a woman there that they're going to understand and have the same mentality as us, and that was something you had to navigate but what were some of the other things that shocked you during this journey there's a reason i no longer work in political campaigning and it's because one of the things i struggled with the most was seeing how british politics actually works and how parliament actually works and just how completely unequipped it is to meet human need and how corrupt it is and the misogyny at every level and it became really hard to

continue stay hopeful enough to feel like I could finish it because it was like how am I going to come like I had a conversation with MPs about like I had to teach them that being in the background of a photo on someone's holiday photo isn't the same thing as someone taking a photo of your genitals without your consent like that like that's the level of conversation like and so much condescending and so much you know I'd go to have a meeting and the receptionist would be like completely ignore me and look like nine feet behind me at my lawyer who was a man and be like who's your meeting with and I'd be standing at the desk like it's I've just asked it's my meeting like and you know and that's me like and I'm not an anomaly in the house of parliament I am younger

I am northern and I am from a working class background, but I'm also a white woman and I'm also a white person and I'm not disabled and I'm not trans. And I, you know, like, can you imagine what it's like for people who are, you know, multiple intersecting identities that are oppressed in society? Like, I don't know how they do it because that place is really inhuman. And I struggled with that so much, I guess, just the thing behind the curtain and the hope that I sort of lost from seeing that. But the other thing that I think was so difficult was just the relentless amount of abuse that came my way for what I was trying to do. And from the public, from the public, yeah. From men? From men, yeah.

From abuse from men, harassment from men 98% of the time. And then sort of mocking, disparaging messages from older women about how they were fighting for fundamental rights and that this isn't a big deal and what were you expecting and why didn't you just wear trousers and, know just all of that kind of victim blaming mentality that we have been socialized to believe so keenly I mean that's an interesting one because I guess generationally how have you found that older women their sort of perception of feminism and equality and progression is vastly different to our generation because they may feel that they put up with a different set of circumstances and

therefore can't really relate or feel that they're like two different things do you see what I'm saying? Totally I think the context the context that women in my mom's generation, let's say, or my grandmother's generation grew up in is so, is so wildly different to the context that I have grown up in. And so I understand that there's challenges for being able to understand the lens through which feminism is, or gender equality work is is moving now I get that there's either I've met all types of women in my work and there's either older women let's say 60 plus who the feeling I get from what they say to me is I had to put up with that so you should too keep your mouth shut and my feeling there is if you have gone through an

experience of harm and you've come out the other end with well I had to deal with the harm so why don't you have to deal with the harm you didn't come out of that experience well because we can't our job is to prevent is to try and prevent harm and heal people from harm our job isn't to be like if I experience that then it's very valid that you should experience that too. If anything, I don't want girls to experience or women to experience what I've been through. I want them to be free from it. I also want them to be free from having to fight it too. Like I shouldn't have had to change the law. I had no political legal experience. I think that it's not consciously like, oh, I went through it. You have to too. It's more relative to their experience. They probably see

that they didn't deal with it in the way that you did in terms of didn't fight back and took it, took it on themselves in some way. And this is, I guess, one of the really complicated aspects of all of this is when we talk about misogyny and internalized misogyny, the shame piece that women often feel and so if you and I'm sure you know our audience is majority female there's perhaps many listening that have had something and I can speak from my own experience that you're like you blame yourself for how are you not meant to when society's told you that your entire life yeah and this and by the way this doesn't have to be as extreme as what you went through which is quite clearly in my eyes

black and white right and wrong but there's so many more nuanced um experiences that we have where let's say with men whether it's male friends friends, um, of like the, the boundaries I'm being clear and like people not knowing how to kind of look after each other. And then, you know, I'd say even from the way I grew up to now, and I'm, you and I are pretty much the same age, I'm two years older, but how much has changed in the conversation in a way that when I was like going out and started drinking in London, it just wasn't, you know, it was kind of. And then I look back, I'm like, well, that was my, I don't think there's any more where I was like, oh, well, whatever happened to me was my fault because I wasn't looking after myself or whatever. I wasn't looking after myself or whatever. And I was speaking with someone about this recently, and they were like, it's never your fault. Like you should never have to go through life feeling that if you got too drunk or something that something really awful could happen. Like

that's what's fundamentally wrong. And so to kind of go back to what you were saying, I think with the older generation to pierce that bubble of reality of what they've lived with is a kind of internalized shaming that has just become the norm for them to kind of reawaken all of that is almost too painful because if they would if they were to kind of go they'd have to inspect that experience for themselves and that's really painful and hard. So it's much easier not to do that. And the intergenerational piece that has to happen in gender equality work and does happen between younger feminists and older women, when you put two women in a room from different generations and you give them the actual time to ask curious questions about their experiences and talk compassionately about their experiences. And, you know, 1991, like marital

rape was made illegal. Like these women were growing up in a completely different society to we are. And often they're probably looking at us being like, but structurally look at the protections you have that we didn't have. When you get them in a room, what, and for long enough with the right facilitation the right curiosity for long what ends up happening is essentially you have you you have two women who find affinity and similarity in their experiences their feelings the outcome of those experiences feel the same for both of them and they're able to be like a safe space for each other. But I think without that space to start to unpick the feelings and the experiences and notice the similarities, even though those two contexts are very different,

it can be slightly combative. And that's what I've found. But I think there's a lot of shame. I think women hold so much shame. And so like each time, you know, I had a woman come up to me on the street and when I was campaigning and shout some stuff at me about this, you know, I had a woman come up to me on the street when I was campaigning and shout some stuff at me about this. You know, she said like... Yeah, I was doing Vox Pops for Parliament and we were asking people questions and she came over to me and was like, you girls these days get angry when some guy puts his hand on your leg and like screamed at me and walked off.

I was like, actually, okay. I actually don't, but cool. actually, okay. I actually don't, but cool. And the, the, my reactions that was like, I don't, I'm not really hearing a say that I'm hearing a woman, I'm hearing anger. I'm hearing pain from a woman in a different generation who has held in so much and put so much in boxes and hasn't had no space to discuss this stuff and no means to discuss it, no tools to discuss it. And there's been minimized whenever she wanted to probably a whole life. And so that's redirected at me, but it's not about me. It's actually about what patriarchy in the world has done as her experiences under patriarchy in the world that she lives in. And so like, you're right. I think it's complex,

but like, I would love to be able to create more spaces for that kind of intergenerational. Well, that was going to be my next thing, because I think, you know in the way that obviously as human beings you and I sitting on this whilst we're doing it through technology I hear what you're saying because of the way you're communicating it the the your voice all of these things that tell me so much more than just the words whereas when it's online I feel like it's then taken through the sort of lens of someone and altered according to how they're going to see those words and then it creates this kind of you see it happening all the time this snowball effect where things get taken out of context or misinterpreted but so is there a way that you think that we can use the online

space or how we can operate it slightly differently so that we don't start like kicking off each other all the way and missing that we all share the same objective or we or we might and we're and we're missing that it's a hard one because I agree with you that there's that like flattening that happens yeah all of that nuance is missed in the work that I do there are so many challenges in terms of people meeting me at where I am with the work because we were never taught critical thinking skills in school we were taught to get thing to get the right questions right get them out of points fill in a box then pass we were never taught critical thinking skills in school. We were taught to get the right questions right, get the right points, fill in a box, then pass. We were never taught how to think about our bodies. We were never taught what positionality means, how like who someone is makes you feel suddenly less than or makes you feel a certain way about yourself, but actually has nothing to do with you and your humanity. We were never taught about gender. We were never taught about kind of the kind of basics of these structures that we are living under that affect kind of every part of our lives.

And so we don't have the literacy and the tools, I think, to have, we weren't taught how to have compassionate, curious conversations around these types of topics there is that there's also that these topics make us really uncomfortable because as soon as like you just said you know you just hit on in terms of talking to an older woman about this kind of stuff like when you say the word gender people are like oh I don't know enough to talk about this or like, Oh, I think I have an idea of what this means. What does she mean by that? Does she mean trans people or like what? It's just instantly intimidating for a lot of people. And we

know that as soon as we engage with anything to the feminism or gender equality, we'll have to look at ourselves. And that's really hard because we don't really want to look ourselves. We don't really want to look at all our behaviors or why we are the way we are now. That feels like hard work. And so online for me, although it's been amazing for organizing, has been this place where the work I do is just consistently misunderstood. Like, you know, I'm in rooms with people having like teachers and parents having two hour conversations and activities and discussions around misogyny and the history of how it was built into systems and how in schools are young people are learning girls are being sexually harassed for the first time in schools and boys are being taught they have to be a certain way to be a man and all these really important

conversations and people are showing up and they're so passionate about it and they leave feeling alive but when someone sees your work on social media, that's not what they think you're doing because they can't see that part. They can just see the interview you did or the podcast you did. So people with gender equality work, I don't think social media has the tools

to allow us to have the kind of conversations we need to have online. I just don't think it's built for that. I think it's built for quick headline discussion and not all of these topics we work in are so big that social media can't possibly contain them because they're just too much. They require so much of that human contact. Yeah. And it's also catered towards, I guess, things that are triggering in a way, because it's like whatever creates momentum where people then start like

attacking it so I don't know whether the intention is I doubt that it was malicious to begin with but it's kind of as a consequence had that because of the way that it's made in that addictive kind of form yeah it's built like that and also everything we say is public right so when you comment some to someone you know on some level that people are going to see what you're saying and it's going to say something about you as a person so you want to be seen to be saying the right thing or doing the right thing when people are in dms they move very differently to how they move publicly that's true but also I'm shocked by what people say to each other I always think and I as as much as I'm someone that's I'd say generally quite passive I don't love confrontation and yet online if someone says something to me I will I will go back at them and

I will put it up on my stories and I will publicly let people know what they've said if they've said something unkind because I literally feel that it's I'm sitting in my sitting room minding my own business and someone's come in and just told me what they think I'm like I don't give a fuck get out you're like why are you in my house I didn't invite you here why did you make the effort to come here and tell me that like and it's so entitled the way people just cast these judgments about people that they don't know it's very odd but then like you say on the other hand it's the the sort of virtue signaling that and the using the buzzwords in and regurgitating things without really embodying it, practicing it or knowing even what it means a lot of the time, right?

Yeah. And it's that kind of degradation, I think, of accountability and what accountability models do look like when you're in the room with someone. They don't exist online, right? Like that lack of actual connection. If I say something to someone, I'm going to get a response. And I know if I'm standing with them in real life or sitting in a room, I can't just check out when I get uncomfortable. I can't just leave when I feel like this no longer serves me. I can't, I have to be with a person and get through that with the person in front of me. I don't have to do that online. And so there's, there's a level of disconnection and a lack of accountability that means that we are seeing, I think, a microcosm of society.

But we're seeing a microcosm of society with a very smart recognition that there isn't really any accountability here. So I don't really have to move how I would move in real life, which is wild to me because, although to be fair, let me be really honest here. Like, I think I move a lot better than 90% of people online, but there's still moments where someone gives me, you know, can I swear? Yeah, you can swear. I'm 32. You can do what you like, girl. I was like, can I say shit? Can I be honest with you, sorry. Oh my God. Like they will come at me

and give me shit and I'll be like let's go and like I know that's my ego kicking in to be like look at how I can take this person down because I know my shit and then I have to be like wouldn't it be better to leave him in a field like just screaming into nothing like why do I I don't have to prove to myself that I know my shit by arguing with these men so like I don't move in the same way I would offline, even though I want to say I did a second ago, if I'm really honest, because it seduces me too. I guess you've got to decipher in each situation, whether it's worth engaging or sort of a futile pursuit, because some people literally just want to shit on each other and that don't waste your energy on those.

But it's sometimes hard to tell. But you mentioned about, you know, having those conversations in rooms where you're really unpacking like misogyny. And that's something that I want to get into because I feel that it gets thrown around a lot. I can see it everywhere subtly. I can see it everywhere subtly. And yet I sometimes struggle with the language of how to unpack it or where it even stems from. Because even in like the kindest of people, it just comes out in little flickers where you're like, oh, that's so not in it from my perspective in keeping with who you are,

but it's come from, it's come from conditioning and I, yeah, I struggle with knowing how to check it. So I would love for you to kind of open up that and a bit of the history of it and your, your sort of take on it and yeah, unpack it for our audience. Of course. Oh my gosh, where do we start? 400 years ago. No. Go for it.

I'll imagine. The easiest way for me to define how I see misogyny, there's a good way of looking at it, the difference between sexism and misogyny, right? There's a good way of looking at it, the difference between sexism and misogyny, right? If we understand that our society was constructed by a very specific group of people, those people... My dog's barking.

That's all right. If we understand that... You're a centric. Yeah. She agrees with me. I'm even a feminist dog. If we understand that our society was built, the systems in our society, the institutions from banks to education to law, our society was built by a very specific group of people who had a very specific amount of economic power.

And those were white, cis, straight, upper class men. And what essentially happened is their thinking was systemized. Their insecurity was systemized. And by that, I mean their scarcity mentality. So this idea that there's resources and I want to have those resources and I don't want anyone else to have them because I want to consolidate that power. And so that thinking, that insecurity, because that's essentially what that is, was systemized into, you know, economics, politics, everything, every system that we live under. When you have a very specific group of people who have built an entire society and have pooled all of their resources and had that scarcity mentality to control all of the resources, what that means is that every other

person who exists in any other identity group doesn't have the same economic, political, every other person who exists in any other identity group doesn't have the same economic, political or social power as that group. And it means that every step from, when we start, when we're born, education through, you know, marriage, through economic power, we are, there is a hierarchy in which women and people, people of other genders, so trans people, non-binary people are always coming last. And then that is compounded because that system was created within the context of white supremacy because it was about white men. So then if you're a black woman, you're way, way further down the hierarchy. If you're a black disabled woman, you're way, way further down the hierarchy and life is made more difficult for you because there are so many barriers and so many systems that were never ever built with you in mind. Sexism is the idea or the reality, it's not an idea, is the reality that people should hold certain positions only and move through the world as a society only because of their gender. So because they're a woman,

because they're a man, because they're trans. And misogyny, I see as the enforcement arm of patriarchy patriarchy is what we've just explained that system built by men for men and by enforcement arm I think of misogyny as like the police force of patriarchy so patriarchy says as in the context of a woman like me you like a cis woman it would say you're a cis woman you have to be a mother be attractive servitude this is the way you should live your life because of your identity that's sexism and if you don't do it you step outside those parameters at any point both in small ways or in the jobs you do or in the dreams you have misogyny will enforce you back into that box and that's that hatred so it says if you do anything unexpected outside of these parameters, those parameters are

built up and dreamed up, right? Because sometimes they're this, and then sometimes they're that. Like, we want you to be sexy, but don't be too sexy enough. We want you to be trippy, but don't intimidate me, right? So those parameters change all the time because they were never real to begin with. They were constructed to control you. And when you step outside of those, misogyny is a hatred of women that do that it's the hatred of the of women existing in any way that patriarchy deems unacceptable which is pretty much anything you can say you can dream up really everything yeah but that's why it's that's very bizarre thing and I guess recently when I watched the Pamela Anderson documentary it sort of epitomized it that, but I think all women experience it, that you will be celebrated in some way or encouraged to be sexy, not sexual,

but sexy. But then if you are sexual in a way that's just for you, that's unacceptable. And so it's all these like, you know, like, I don't quite understand this rule book. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. And then, yes, I definitely feel that and a kind of ownership over women as well. And this, I do think that generally speaking, my take on it is that men feel out of control by women in that they can't control themselves so when they start to feel that even though they're kind of drawn to them for it they want to in some way like contain them because they're frustrated at their own inability to control themselves so they try and control women and sort of keep them in a box to behave a certain way

does that make sense it does but I would actually go one further I would say that and I do believe that this is the case based on research and what I've been doing my book and stuff which is that men's ability to not control themselves is something they've been taught men can control themselves they can control themselves when it matters to them they is something they've been taught. Men can control themselves. They can control themselves when it matters to them. They can. Sexually, they've been told their entire lives that they are entitled to women and to women's bodies and to women's time and space.

And so there's this belief that, oh, we can't control themselves. That's a myth. Men can control themselves. I guess I don't mean can't control as in like, oh, I just went and had sex with that person because I can't control myself. I mean like their desire for women makes them feel

perhaps in some way inferior. When you say desire, do you mean like sexually or just their proximity to women? I think on some level they kind of want to worship them and idolize them, but then feel threatened by what that could mean if the power shifted. I don't actually mean in the physical act of like anything sexual, of course that ties into it, but I just mean in the sort of,

I do think a lot of men like want to adore women, but then are afraid of it. Right. I agree. Because I think if you look at modern masculinity and that's what we call toxic masculinity. So this restrictive idea of what it means to be a man, which is essentially be successful. Don't ask for help. Be emotionless. Get women. a man, which is essentially be successful. Don't ask for help. Be emotionless, get women. That's what we're taught in movies and religious institutions and books and men and boys are taught. That's what it means to be a man. And that's a very, very simplistic, restrictive view of what it means to be a man. Every man's masculinity is different. Just like every woman's femininity is different. But if you look at that modern version of masculinity that men have been conditioned or consistently being socialized into, it is actually just, I believe, the complete removal of anything feminine.

That modern masculinity is not anything to itself. It is just a complete rejection of anything feminine. Totally. And what that does is leads men to feel completely lost because it's like, well, who am I? I can't get these rules right. They don't make, they make me unwell because we know what masculinity scripts do to men. We know what the suicide rate is like. They don't make men happy.

And they see women with close interpersonal relationships, with profoundly emotional connections to other women, uh, organizing, affirming each other, trying to break out of these stereotypes that we've been given. And that I think there's this kind of like, I know that that's better for me to have some, to not be in this restrictive masculine ideal, but I can't get it. And I don't know why I can't get there. And I'm, and I'm envious of that. I'm envious of the emotional connection that women have together of how, how many times have you been in the room and had a conversation with a girlfriend or a woman in your life

and it's completely changed the trajectory of how you feel about a situation all your life. Men don't do that. They don't get that. And so I do think that men revere women. And I think that, I think there's a very complex relationship with revere and envy and therefore hatred of women.

That is very complex to unpick. That's really eloquently put. And I completely agree. encouraged not only encouraged but their their shame to kind of embody their femininity which I believe they all possess just as you know we all have the masculine and the feminine within us but it's also society as a whole I don't think values the feminine no it's been constructed yeah and this is just my opinion but observing things at the moment whilst i think it's incredible that women are able to do what they're able to do you can see that they're occupying a lot of like i don't know and i think you see when you look at someone like andrew tate i mean thank god he's like

wherever the fuck he is now but but the reaction. I don't know who that guy is. I just fucking hate that guy. I'm just going to tell, I don't even know who he is. I did that for a while. I was like, I actually don't want to give him any airtime, but then I just think it's a fantastic observation that in, in the way that we're progressing so much that someone like that becomes popular with men.

And you're like, okay, well, what was, yeah, I just want to ignore it on many levels. I'm like, but what is going on here to make that happen? And I do think it's like you say, it's that, that toxic masculinity, the denying of the feminine, but then also women perhaps embodying more of their masculine kind of taking up these spaces doing becoming very successful financially and independent and how threatening that can be because it's not being balanced out yeah there's there's a scarcity mentality especially with it'd be remiss to not note the fact that we live in capitalism which which only cares about profit, doesn't care about human need, and effectively says self-ascension is the only way you survive in this.

So like you have, when you look at like feminism, certain sects of feminism, which essentially say, be like a guy. So it says, you're a great feminist if you become a CEO, you get loads of money. Isn't that reproducing what patriarchy has done? I'll even build something better than that. Well, this is what I mean. And it creates its own problem because it's perpetuating the issue. It's like progression in a way, but is it actually? Yeah. We don't want to just invert the harmful system that is already there the other way we just create something that's then broken in a different way right and that's

what like you said it's so systemic and also for women to you know like we don't have to go back very far when women weren't able to even work so obviously we've had to adapt to men's way of being the whole you know day of the hours we work is structured around the male hormone system as opposed to the female one like it would all look very very different but all these things that you're saying it's like but if they if they are what the world runs with and these these structures have been in place for so long. How can things actually change whilst they're still in existence? This is the big question in our work. And I think for me, the change doesn't look like the jobs we have or the way we interact with the systems and the

institutions the change for me looks at how we view our relationships how we view harm how it's it's the community reciprocity that has to be built across identity lines that changes the way the system works not like who has how many CEO jobs or who isn't in this position. That's just, essentially, that's just patriarchy in heels, right? Like looking at how do we view, I know it sounds really wishy-washy, but it's like essentially abolitionist sentiment, which is like, how do we prevent harm from the very beginning? How do we change the way young people see themselves in terms of how do we prevent harm from the very beginning? How do we change the way young people see themselves in terms of how do we allow them to see themselves as people

before we allow them to see themselves as their gender? Like how do we allow them to see themselves as a full human and not be consigned into this idea of how they should act and love and be as they grow up because of their gender? Like these are very philosophical questions about how we interact as people in a society that tells us every day who we are. So for me, the answer becomes, how do we create communities, spaces where people can see each other as the people that they were before the system told them who they were meant to be. And that changes everything

if you could do that, because that changes the decisions you make, the way you spend your money, the roles you take, the places you work for. If people's actual perspective and the way that they view their positionality in society and their social location changes for the better and everything becomes a little more human, essentially we have to go back to where we've come from, then that changes everything. That changes how industries are run. That changes how systems are made. That changes the kind of laws we write.

You can't start the conversation at the industry level because it's almost too late. We have to start the conversation about how we are understanding our basic humanity and our basic relationships with each other under this system to then start to change society and culture cultural change and where does that begin oh my god early as in schools like I work with a charity I work with a few charities that do work that I think is like transformational work. And they, Beyond Equality is one of them. They do workshops with young people in corporates, universities, in schools around masculinities mostly.

boys in rooms who are doing exercises, um, interactive, uh, activities with each other, essentially group therapy sessions where they're kind of unpicking what being a boy means, what being a man means, who they want to be. Would you rather be respected or feared? Is being respected the same as being feared? What does a woman mean? What does a man mean? How do you, um, what did you learn from your dad about what it means to be a man? What did you, what are you fearful of? Like all these really philosophical, deep questions for young people, they jump at it. They are desperate to have these conversations. And this is university level. This is high school.

High school. So this is like 11 to like 17 but they also do it in unis as well all the way through unis and then they do it in corporates too but it starts as young as like 12 ish um but you see in these rooms people given spaces which seem very simple to the untrained eye but there's spaces in which there is there is no wrong answer where there's no objective there's nothing they have to get to to win or to get points or to ascend there's none of that it's just this like bubble where they get to exist as exactly who they are they get to ask a load of questions about themselves about other boys about what

it means to be a boy in the world. And they can say the bad thing out loud that they believe so that they can, as a group, and with a very highly skilled facilitator in the room to lead them, get to the healthier conclusion. And you find that young people, if you give them the time and you give them the space and the safety, they get to much healthier conclusions in those spaces. They don't get to healthier conclusions in the institutions as they currently stand that tell them that they have to be a certain way. They have to get the right answers

and be the popular one or be the smart kid or be the whatever. But in these spaces, they do. And if we could get funding to get that into every school, like I can't even imagine the difference that we would have culturally with a generation of boys and generation of girls growing up who have done this work. Yeah, I mean, it would be incredible.

But this is perhaps a little controversial, but on the conversation of gender, would it, if young people were then, you know, having an understanding of the way the world operates and you were given, if you're feeling like an insecure teenage girl, let's say, you are going through puberty and feeling uncomfortable in your own body, and you look outside at the world and you think this doesn't look very, I don't know, doesn't look very good to be a woman in this world. And then someone encourages you or gives you the opportunity saying that you could be a man or could be a boy. Would it not be fair to say that because of the way society functions that it would make someone want to be something other than who they are in the spaces that they're in firstly they're voluntary so they come to them themselves because they're interested secondarily the way that they identify is central to the the work so you've we

we've never had a child ever come into one of these workspaces and be like I'm a girl but that sucks I'm not gonna be a girl like that just doesn't happen and I know it sounds like it could logically but it just doesn't happen because just like you or me you either are what you identify or you're not you're either a kid who already has feelings about their gender and doesn't understand their gender. And those feelings about not understanding their gender don't come from looking at the world. They come from like a very deep reality that they feel something is wrong. When I look in the mirror, I don't recognize the person I'm seeing. There is something deeply intrinsically wrong here. And actually there's a deep understanding for trans non-binary

kids that the world is much more dangerous for them than it is for cis girls. And that's the truth, you know, don't even have healthcare, trans non-binary young people. So there isn't really a space in which kids are given the options to change gender or to question their gender. It's to question the way the world tells them they have to be because of it and that's the distinct difference so sorry say that again there isn't there isn't a space in which kids are told to question their gender that doesn't exist mostly because facilitators the one rule about being a facilitator is you're not allowed to tell a child what to think at all you're only allowed to ask questions and they lead the entire session so it's completely led by them and their feelings and you're just meant to

allow them the space and time and curiosity to figure their stuff out that they already feel but they're too afraid to say or explore and what sort of age is this start happening because um yeah it's hard to know when someone's sort of formed as who they're going to be because obviously we go through so many phases through adolescence of discomfort in in our own bodies so how is that kind of yeah we know that between two and three babies essentially toddlers can identify the difference between a boy and a girl so they they have a very rudimentary understanding of gender so they'll say things like you know boys smell or they'll say things like you know like these ideas that they already taught because i've seen them on tv shows or in books or whatever

um so we know they can recognize the difference in terms of the societal differences they look Like, you know, like these ideas that they already taught because they've seen them on TV shows or in books or whatever. So we know they can recognize the difference in terms of the societal differences. They look at a boy and go, that's a boy. They look at a girl and that's a girl. But they'll start to apply things to boys and apply things to girls that they believe to be true at like three. That's already been conditioned. Yeah. Like boys are smelly and like girls are pretty or whatever at like two or three, which obviously is fundamentally not true. And then, you know, by the age of sort of seven, six, seven,

young people have a very, very set idea about gender from what they've seen and heard around them, whether that's the toys that they're given or that's the games they're encouraged to play at school whether that's the toys that they're given or that's the games they're encouraged to play at school or that's the way that they're dressed because of their gender or that's the the tv shows they see they they can they can they know the roles that boys are meant to play they know the roles that girls are meant to play in society and so then when they get to like 12 or 13 and there's all these hormones happening and there's all

these boundaries that they're suddenly they've got a bit of freedom but they're still quite boundaried in the institutions they're in they start to especially boys um try and push boundaries and ask questions and start to kind of shake shake the the room the table a bit like they want to figure stuff out and by that point we know from the data they've already seen porn online but by 11 the average age is 11 for seeing porn often hardcore porn online 11 years old and they're in schools where they're with kids of other genders and they're starting to navigate hierarchies you know that's the popular kid this you can't do this because he's in that class or he's and they they don't have any of the tools

to navigate those healthily because all they've seen are these gender roles and then also a fair amount of adult content online that they shouldn't really be seeing without any tools to be able to analyze it healthily so we're getting in there or beyond equality i'm training facilitation here for a different charity but we're getting in there at like 12 or something and often we're hearing parents say like that's very young and we're saying that they already know they're already looking at this stuff online you can either have them already learning about sex and dating and success and what it means to be a boy what it means to be a girl and not have a conversation with them and they'll get the wrong messages or you can allow us to have a conversation with them where we with safety allow them to question those ideas and arrive at their own conclusions which

happen to be often a lot healthier when you give them the space to do that so I think this work could be happening you know a lot younger but right now it's happening kind of 12 and up and what are some of the conclusions that they reach with this kind of questioning are just the most like beautiful stuff that you can imagine like oh um I've realized that actually like I don't have to um like date chase girls I don't even really interest in that in girls that much I just feel like I should't have to um like date chase girls I don't even really interest in that in girls that much I just feel like I should it makes me feel uncomfortable like I feel I feel nervous and scared like I'm uncomfortable I realize I don't really have to do that I've been told I have to do that is that okay that I don't have to do that yeah you can do whatever you want

whenever you're ready interesting and do you feel that it's particularly important for boys because I was listening to some podcast the other day I can't remember whose it was but it was saying that if you want to look at um toxic masculinity look at teenage boys and I was like oh that's a bit you know teenage boys are quite sweet and then there was something about how actually when you get them together it like you say it's that pushing of boundaries, like who's going to egg each other on, who's going to do like go and pull that girl's hair or whatever it might be. Whereas individually, they're far less likely to because they have awareness of the consequences of their actions and behavior. Absolutely. And often, and they're both right. They are sweet and they're also boisterous and can be really problematic and like that's the duality of being human like they are both and you're right you find I've been in

schools where groups of boys have been I was doing a talk and a group of boys who were like 18 or something were like making rape jokes about me while I was doing this talk and having notes around and I was like knew I could kind of tell it was happening but I didn't know what was on the notes anyway teachers were like this was happening we're super humiliated. We're super embarrassed. I had to be like, right, firstly, don't be embarrassed because you can't expect your school to be free of this when society isn't free of this. Like it's the water we swim in. So this isn't an indictment on you as a school. Secondly, the worst thing you can do is take these boys and be like don't say

that stuff again because their minds won't change they'll just learn not to say it yeah so how is it not yet let you hear it yeah they'll still say they'll still think think it their behavior and actions might still lead to harm but they just will learn not to say it in your earshot of you or be that brazen with it so how are we going to actually change their mindsets and there was like a bunch of calls back and forth of how they could handle it and you know I'm limited in that respect to be able to help them because they're going to handle it themselves but I gave them some advice and they they took um they ended up doing a workshop with Beyond Equality with all the boys together and like you know kind of long-term holistic sort of looking at masculinities and

stuff and mental health and all that kind of stuff. But they said that they took the boys into the rooms individually and they were like, well, we don't know what to do because all the boys have come in and like, they've all just like cried. And I was like, right, because they've been told that they have to act a certain way and that they have to be dominant and that to put women and girls down makes them more of a man. And they've been taught all this stuff. And they're all trying to be the cool guy in the group. And they're causing harm in doing it.

But when you separate them from the group, they don't really know who they are or why they even did it. Because they were just told to do it by a bunch of messages. But they've never examined, like, do I enjoy this? What does this do for me? What does this do? So you're right. Like, teenage boys, they are learning. And do for me? What does this do? So you're right. Like teenage

boys, they are learning. And that's why we see that overt nature of, um, I wouldn't even call it toxic masculinity. I would not because that's wrong just because I feel bad calling it that, but like that kind of patriarchal entitlement and boisterousness that essentially performing what they think masculinity is. We see that a lot in teenage boys because they're trying to figure it all out. And it's only when we give them the space in that really important developmental moment to be like, Hey, do you ever feel like you have to get girls to be seen as a cool guy? Do you ever feel like you have to like, uh, be like violent or like boisterous to be seen as a cool guy? Yeah, I do. Well, this offers us another way. So let's have

a conversation about this. And then they're like, they're like oh cool okay they see other boys be vulnerable with them and they go like oh I can do that too and that's actually quite cool and I actually feel ultimately I just like this version of me more yeah because I guess like you know those boys if it's left unearthed they become the ones that then go on to make decisions in parliament or whatever this is the cycle continues so it is at that point where they're still very I guess malleable and they can change quite easily their perspective and they want to they want to at that age we don't like with adults adults try and get the question right whereas boys will be like miss I thought this at the beginning I don't know why I thought that now you're like cool it's really good I guess my next thing would be I think that's fantastic but what

about the sort of men of our age a bit below and a bit above what um what's the sort of solution there this is the painful one because the reality is exactly that you're like cool for the next generation I still have to live in this generation and yeah there was a real hard struggle I think in that men with patriarchal tendencies or with sexist tendencies in our generation in our lives are harming women around them yeah and it is always seen as the women around them to do the work for them to get them into understanding it and so in my mind sometimes it can feel like for women of our generation our options are the worst option is you know be harmed at the hands of a man. The middle option

is deal with the underlying sexism and misogyny every single day as a woman in this world. And then the kind of best option is like be with a man who is compassionate, understands it, wants to learn more, but you have to still facilitate his learning because ultimately sexual violence, the experience of being a woman or a marginalized gender in the world will always be theoretical to cishet men it can't not be because they've never experienced it and so that there's so often isn't that push they didn't get it yeah there's not that push and there's also shame because they know they belong to the community that most perpetrates this so they instantly feel like they've been indicted, like they're seen as a perpetrator.

So they don't even want to engage. And that's why I work with men who do this work because for so long, it's been centuries, it's been women doing the heavy lifting. I'm trans and non-binary people, very historically, doing the heavy lifting on gender and sexual violence and for far too long. And it hasn't been men. And it's not the people who live under the system of oppression's job to deconstruct the system that

they never built. We never built this. We didn't want this reality. So unfortunately, you will never see in the mainstream, the men who are doing this work because it's not self-serving to show them. Like it's not interesting. We don't want the fluffy, lovely stories about the men who are doing this work because it's not self-serving to show them. Like it's not interesting. We don't want the fluffy, lovely stories about the men who go into rooms of 50 men and help facilitate their mental health. Those stories don't make the news, but those men exist. And I'm really good friends with those men and they create phenomenal spaces and platforms for men to do this work. And for me, that's why I'm always like, where are the men? There's always space for you in this movement. We want you to to join this movement but you have to be doing the heavy lifting alongside us because we've been doing it for centuries so thankfully those spaces now exist more than they ever have

like it would like beyond equality and like with tomorrow man here there's lots of them but you have to dig to find them which is the hard thing yeah Yeah. And I, you know, definitely in the space that I occupy, I see a lot of it popping up, which is fantastic. But then I noticed that a lot of the audience from Saturn Returns, like the women will come to a show or something. I'll be like, I can't have these conversations with my partner. Like they think all this stuff is really weird. So how does it, how can it start at home? Because obviously obviously like we've covered throughout this conversation having the language and the understanding of these concepts and then also being mindful of each other's shame and all of these really really complex elements how can we have those conversations at home in a way that doesn't feel very charged yes Yes, that's such a good question. Quality over quantity.

So I think a lot of women feel like I have to call out everything I hear. I have to educate everyone I come into contact with. That's my obligation as a woman to other women. And the reality is you can't do that. You'll be exhausted. You'll get frustrated. You'll never be able to have a constructive conversation again because it's just too exhausting and it's just too hard. You're living in this reality. So to consistently feel like you have to change everyone's minds is just too much of a burden. So who are the men in your life that you can count on one hand

that you see a level of vulnerability, compassion, curiosity, who would want to know more about this stuff, who probably would do the learning, who would want to know more about this stuff, who probably would do the learning, who over a slower, longer period would show up in multiple ways. And those are the people that you focus on. So for me, that's my partner, my dad, two of my very close friends who are guys. If I can be a support to them to figure this stuff out and have, and I can have conversations with them when, when they come up in calm moments, if someone says something that is sexist or hurts me,

I'll tell them that it hurts me calmly. And then I'll revisit that conversation at a much more calm, constructive point. When you're regulated. Yeah. Because apart from the fact that I'm not gonna be able to articulate myself because this is too emotional for me. I live it every day. They're not going to listen because there's too much shame. There's too much defensiveness.

And compassion is kind of the, the best way to get defenses down and defensivism down. And men are always going to be defensive coming to these conversations because they feel like they're already part of the problem and they probably know in their back pocket that at some point they've made sexist jokes or they've done sexist things they know yeah yeah yeah yeah and they don't want us to see it because if if we see it it's like they're a bad guy and we all cling so so hard to this idea that we can't be a good person and do harm which is obviously completely true you can be a good person and do harm, which is obviously completely true. You can be a great person and also harm people all the time. Like that's, that's what it means to be human. That's part of being human. So pick those few guys in your life that you feel like you want them to understand this, um, reality and offer them conversations and calm moments. Go into those conversations with the framing of,

if I didn't care about you and believe in your ability to grow, I wouldn't be having this conversation. I'd bite my tongue and bitch about you later, but I don't feel like that. I believe in your ability to grow on this. I know you care. And so I want to be here to be part of that with you. And then offer them resources where men are talking about these things like the man enough podcast or you know justin baldoni's book or jj bowler's book masked off that shows them a way they can engage with this work that is also beneficial for them as well as women because then it becomes less like us versus you and it becomes both of us versus patriarchy because we're both going to benefit from this. So that kind of calm, compassion, that curiosity, and that quality over quantity, quality over quantity for me is how I approach it because otherwise I'm burnt out. I'm exhausted and you get more hope from it because when you focus on someone that you love that might get it

and they start to get it in small ways, see that it's possible whereas if you're doing it with 50 people and arguing people on the internet and trying to tell your racist uncle every week you're exhausted and be like it's never gonna work you know you need to create that hope for yourself I think that's such great advice and really really yeah useful for our listeners so thank you very much. Gina, this has been such a pleasure talking to you. I've absolutely loved it. Me too. Thank you so much for having me. Do you have any, I sometimes ask this and don't worry if you don't, but do you have any sort of

advice for our listeners that if perhaps what's resonated, what we've discussed has resonated with them? Is there any sort of final takeaways yes if you're a woman and you're feeling frustrated at the state of the world please know that there's a place for you in gender equality and feminism always and that all you have to do is pick up a book by bell hooks or watch a documentary or follow someone that you're interested in or go and volunteer there are like a million ways to be involved in this work. And there's always space for you, whatever your skill set and whoever you are. I love that. Thank you. And we'll put a link to your new book.

It's out now, isn't it? It is. It came out last month. We'll put a link to the show notes for that. And yeah, thank you so much for all that you do and for joining me today. It was a real honour. Pleasure. Thanks for having me today it was a real honor pleasure thanks for having me it was so lovely I hope you enjoyed this conversation I was so yeah I just loved speaking with her and I felt that the way she shared her story so vulnerably really touched me. And I think that we've all had experiences like that, perhaps not that extreme or perhaps we have, but I hope that by her sharing that and showing that, you know,

she didn't just take it lying down. She actually did something incredible that's going to help so many women and address something that, to be honest, a lot of people would have just shied away from when she was faced with the pushbacks and the sort of insensitivity of it all when people just dismissed her as if it wasn't a big deal or like why was she being so sensitive and all these very sort of subtle things that are still very embedded in our society that make women feel like they can't speak out. And whilst I know that this is a very complex area and it's very nuanced, it's important that we have people like Gina that are able to speak when we can't articulate it or when perhaps we don't have the courage or confidence to it and support them in what they're doing to make real change.

But what particularly hit home for me and I think will resonate with you guys is, you know, how important this conversation is to engage with our male friends and for young men. And to really encourage those spaces to start thinking about the stuff because so much of it is on autopilot it's just behavior that's observed and passed down and repeated and if that continues we're never really going to see real change and I think that that you know she made that very clear that that's where we can make a difference and it's that generation below us that have the opportunity to really change these systems that have been existing in this very patriarchal way for such a long time. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Saturn Returns. I hope you found it useful and thought-provoking as I did. And if you did enjoy it, I would love it if you

could share it with a friend or share it on social media. Actually, I like it when you guys do that because it lets me know that you're listening. So again, thank you so much for all your support. We have some new offerings at saturnreturns.co.uk if you guys want to check that out. We've been busy building that website and it looks fantastic and you can sign up to the newsletter so you never miss an event or an episode and we drop astrology information in there it's some advice from me and yeah I hope that you guys sign up so you don't miss anything but as always thank you for listening and remember you're not alone goodbye