TRIGGERnometry - Are Women Safe on Our Streets? Emma Webb & Ella Whelan

Episode Date: March 21, 2021

Commentator Emma Webb and Ella Whelan who is a journalist, commentator and author of What Women Want join is in the studio. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ ADVERTISE on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisson. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. We have two brilliant guests for you today. Emma Webb commentator and Ella Weillan, journalist commentator and author of What Women Want, Fun Freedom and Enter Feminism. There we go. I got that all right, not the first time, I'll be honest. Welcome both. Hi. It's good to have you back and Emma, we've been meeting to have you on the show for a long time.

not necessarily the best circumstances to have you on the show. There's been some tragic events, and that was one of the reasons we wanted to have you on the show, the abduction and a murder of a woman here in London. Our international audience may not be familiar with it. And the conversation that has ensued from that, vigils, protests, policing, will get into all of that. But we wanted to talk about the broader issue of women's safety, first and foremost. And it's the thing that, you know, as two guys in particular,

when we talk to women in our lives who may be not feminists or not even, you know, almost every woman has some experience of being harassed, being followed, being mistreated in some way. What is the situation in terms of women's safety in 2021, Emma? Well, I, so I personally, as you say, you know, most women have at some point walked home with their keys between their fingers at night or had someone harassed them in the streets. but usually the person who, in my experience, is, you know, a nutcase, could be a woman, could be a man. I think that the women's, obviously women's safety is something important, and we should talk about it. But I think the way that we have been talking about since the murder of Sarah Everard is just completely off the wall and unrelated and to do with many other things other than the actual murder itself.

So, yeah, I think it's not an issue necessarily to do with sort of men particularly. It's not, as people have been calling it, an epidemic of misogyny. It's not systemic misogyny. I think that women's safety is something definitely worth discussing. But the hysterical overreaction to the Sarah Everard case, that case is quite unusual in the scheme of the sort of, thoughts of, like, homicides against women, people would be calling them femicides, usually tend to happen from someone that the woman knows, and women are less likely to be murdered in public than in the public space than men.

So I think those are two very separate issues, and all of these different things to do with everything from cat-calling to murder and kidnap have just been clumped together recently. So I think there's an awful lot to unpick. Ella, what's your take on it? I mean, it is a complicated picture, and I think you have to be honest and brave enough to say that it's a complicated picture,

and there are many people today who just want to package it out very neatly, whether that be saying, there's no problem, this is hysteria, or saying, like Emma says, that, you know, the femicide is on the rage, and we all should, you know, we should entertain ideas like curfews. I mean, the fact is, girls are told from a young age by their parents,

in particular, in a different way that boys are told, to be careful on the way home, you know, my parents told me to think about what I was wearing, not because they had some kind of misogynistic view of controlling women, but, you know, out of a sense of safety and care, and you know, most women do, all the women I know anyway, have experiences of not necessarily being assaulted, but having your heart rate quicken, of thinking twice about taking the quicker route home, which is darker or the longer route home, which is along main roads. all that is a truth and it happens

but at the same time you have to acknowledge as Emma has said that statistically the likelihood of any of us ending up like Sarah Everard which is a worst nightmare to end up like that is incredibly low so of 1,500 women that were murdered in the last 10 years between 2009-2018 by men

it was about 8% of them were murdered by strangers through kidnapping or someone on the street attacking them So that's a really small percentage. So the likelihood of one of us going out on the street and being attacked like Sarah is statistically incredibly low. But that doesn't quite answer the question of why women are feeling afraid. And for me, the concept of safety isn't just about what is the physical threat that might happen to you. But it's also about how do you feel yourself?

How confident are you? And the tragedy, the continuing tragedy of what happened to Sarah is that what I think a lot of contemporary feminists are now kind of given into is the idea that women should feel deeply terrified, that actually that their fears, their greatest nightmares of ending up like Sarah Everard, are reality. And what that really is doing is, you know, giving into the MO of men that want to hurt women, is that allowing, is kind of asking women to live in fear, which is what these men want. They want women to be afraid. That's why they commit these crimes.

It's not just, it's not just coincidence. They didn't just do it for the hell of it. They do, you know, most of them do it to make women feel afraid. And so, you know, safety, you know, statistically, you are going to be very safe on the street. And as much as most women are afraid, also most women fall home out of clubs and walk home on their own. And, you know, I can imagine numerous situations that I put myself in as a teenager that would make me wince now. But I did it without a thought when I was younger because that's, you know, you live freely when you're young. But the question is, you know, what's, what is better to compound women's fears that are in some cases irrational or to say, you know, actually we want to reclaim the streets, we want to reclaim the night, and be as comfortable on a public spare as a man is from 3pm to 3am. I think the latter is far more progressive than the former. And why do you think the murder of Sarah Everard sparked this particular movement?

Why do you think was it, was it at lockdown, was it because it was a police officer who has been charged with this crime, although he hasn't been convicted as of yet? Well, I was thinking about it in relation to the murder of George Floyd, you know, in a similar situation in which there is a long-standing problem with police brutality and racism in America, and George Floyd is certainly not the first black man to die at the hands of a police officer. Why did it particularly take off in relation to him and why was there such mass movements with Black Lives Matter? Why has Sarah Everard hit a chord?

And I think because we, you know, it's a tricky point to make, but I think politically we've moved further into a realm of extremes which is not to get kind of wishy-washy liberal about it, but to say that, you know, you immediately, that people have a kind of knee-jerk reaction that they immediately jump to the kind of worst-case scenario. So we're not even talking about sexism. We're talking about misogyny at the moment. That we have people on the radio saying,

the police are institutionally misogynistic. You think, okay, I'm not a fan of the police, but the police institutionally hate women. I mean, misogyny is about a deep-seated, visceral and violent hatred of women. No, there's no evidence of that. It's very similar with the idea of white privilege that came out of those Black Lives Matters movement

in the wake of George Floyd's murder. The idea that all white people, you know, have a kind of innate violence within them that just exists as an abstract thing. We've now got this sort of conversation that all men, no matter of what their sensibilities or their behaviour or their track record or their beliefs, have an innate violence within them

that exists abstract. to their individuality that poses a threat to women. And, you know, at the same time, I'm also not surprised that it's kicked off because in the past we've had, of course, Me Too movement. We've also had everyday sexism, which was Laura Bates' pet project and has kept her in columns and books for years, which is the idea that women live under everyday sexism and live under fear. The kind of holler back movement, which was about reclaiming the streets,

there's been so many different kind of hashtags and campaigns. around women's safety, that it, again, this is kind of a sore point, but it can feel like there are lots of people who've been campaigning around this issue for a long time, and now they kind of have their, they have their evidence of, you know, one murder, but it's a terrible murder, they have their evidence to say, look, look at what happened to Sarah Everard, we told you that there is an epidemic of femic of femic homicide, and of course most sensible people can see that that's not the case. See, it's, it's difficult for us, because we hear,

of what you guys are saying, you know, obviously take it on board. But as I said, if we speak to women in our lives, that's definitely a part of their lives that they have to deal with, right? And I think you speak to any woman, that is a concern. Then again, the statistics are men are much more likely to be assaulted in public in the street than women. So, like, how do we even have this conversation? Yeah, I think cynically, I'm very cynical about this. I agree totally with everything that you've just said. I think that the way that, um, Obviously, we can talk about how the protests and things have been hijacked, but obviously in the same way that happened with George Floyd,

where after that there were certain people who wanted us to see systemic racism everywhere. Now there are some people who want us to see systemic misogyny everywhere. And so you have people like Baroness Jenny Jones immediately coming out and saying the solution to this problem is that we just should lock all men inside after 6pm, put a curfew on them, because that essentially implies that there is, like you say, something, you know, inherent to men, inherently violent, which I think doesn't chime at all with women's experience. So when it comes to having conversations between men and women and just in the public space about this, I feel like this really has no bearing on people's real

experience, women's experiences of these things. And also men as, you know, husbands, fathers, brothers, I think that the way that, as you mentioned, about everyday sexism, Boris Johnson coming out and saying that, you know, everyday sexism is something that's, you know, we have to figure out the root of it. And that's why we need to deal with misogyny in society. Sorry, just a thought about Boris Johnson talking about everyday sexism. We've managed to make the debate about something completely unrelated to the starting point. And that's the same as what happened with George Floyd.

And I think cynically, the reason why this is the case is because we have these ideas in the zeitgeist that are sort of whirring around. And with any, and as I mentioned, because they believe in systemic racism or systemic sexism, they will see that everywhere. And it creates this kind of panic. And when you have a situation

where policymakers are responding in a knee-jerk way to that kind of panic, not only can you not have a proper discussion about it, but you also end up with ridiculous policies that are built on the hysteria which it has no real sensible, reasonable relation to the actual facts. Well, you talk about the proper conversation. This is what I'm trying to work out,

because this is the purpose of us for being together. What is the reasonable conversation? Do we all just go, well, look, the reality of life is people get murdered, people get assaulted. You know, we can try and, you know, tinker with the criminal justice system, but that's about all we can do. And some people are always going to, you know, be the victims of that, and that's terrible.

But is that the reason? because it feels like we're slightly, you know, that's not, I don't know, maybe that's true, but it's like we're not doing enough. That would be the argument some people might make. Well, I mean, you know, it's true to say that more men are subject to violence, particularly in the public square, than women. But of course, context is key. So, you know, it's men committing violence against other men. And, you know, abstract from the whole thing, separate from it is that women don't go around battering people. You know, generally, some do,

but generally women don't go around committing crimes of violence against men or against other women in the same kind of statistics as men do. So context is key. I mean, you know, two guys brawling outside a pub is very different from the case of Sarah Everard. You know, that context is key in this. And I think discussions tend to lose that.

I want to live in a world in which we change the rate of rape, we change the rate of murder against women. I mean, in particular, this part of the frustrating thing is that if you really want to have a serious conversation about the instances in which women are in danger of murder, I mean, domestic abuse is the main one. And you can pass all the laws you like that we know that the problem with domestic abuse is that police officers don't take certain cases as seriously when women initially report that they are having problems with an ex-partner. So, you know, implementing a new law and making misogyny a hate crime doesn't change that fact. And there's this kind of weird sort of double thinking going on

where in the one hand you have contemporary feminists saying the police are discussing their institutionally sexist, they're misogynist, they're awful. But by the way, we want to have loads of them in the bar with us. We want to have them on the street watching us when we're walking about in case someone it's a hate crime. And we'd really like to have one on every street corner and you think, well, which one is it? Are these guys evil or are they your saviors? But at the same time, you know, this is, it's an uncomfortable conversation to have. because the reality is that women experience life different to men and, you know, in many cases, and there are lots of people who disagree with me on that. And there's some people who,

I think, have a real visceral reaction to men being portrayed as, you know, heinous and awful, which is the right reaction to have because they're not. And there are some people that want to say, for God's sake, this isn't a problem. Let's stop the hysteria. But look, sexism didn't just come about, like drop from the sky. Historically, it was about women being judged to be, lesser than men, you know, more in need of protection, more fragile, less capable of dealing with hardship. That was the root of sexism. That's why women weren't allowed to work. That's why women weren't allowed to vote. The problem is those tendencies haven't really been challenged in the modern era despite laws being implemented. In fact, they've actually been turned on their

head, and now more often than not, it's contemporary feminist arguing that either women need chaperones, which they have done in the wake of me too. I remember David Schwimmer. getting praise for saying that he'd invite a chaperone when a female interviewer would interview him. I mean, that's like straight out of the Victorian playbook, or that we need more police intervention. I mean, to take a really specific thing, you know, I've talked about this on a trigonometry beforehand in the past, you know, some of us who are interested in women's freedom are currently trying to get abortion decriminalised, which is making a position, which is stating a position that says the state should have no say in women's private lives. And then he's

You know, other feminists come along and say, actually, we want misogyny criminalise. We want the state invited into our lives. We want to have police involved in our everyday decisions. We want to have authorities involved in the way in which we make choices about how we live. And you just think, you're ruining all the progress that was ever made in the past about women becoming independent. And I think that, you know, there is the problem that women have a different role in society to men, that there are still vestiges of sexism in some areas, whether it be in relation to child rearing

or indeed a relation to bodily autonomy. And you're compounding that sexism by suggesting that we are victims for men, well, you know, victims at the hands of men. That is what they said in 1910. That is what they said in the 1800s to stop us from entering public life. And it's just being reconstituted

and slap a bit of blink glitter on it and put a press statement out from the Borset Society. And I'm meant to eat it up. And it's just, it's sickening, actually. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world, so let me tell you about something that's actually right. Sleep, specifically getting more of it, better quality, the kind where you wake up and feel like a human being, rather than someone who's been thrown down a staircase. Most mattresses are just layers of synthetic foam and crossed fingers. You're spending a third of your life on the thing, and most people have no idea what's actually in it.

Avicardo green mattress is different. Their mattresses are certified organic, built from natural materials. designed to actually support your body properly rather than just hold you in one position until morning. The craftsmanship is real. These are mass-produced objects. Someone has put thought into them. I'll be honest. I'm not the person who thinks carefully about where he sleeps. My dating history will tell you that. I'm the person who's been on the same mattress for eight years and called it fine. But the older I get, the more I notice that fine isn't actually fine. Your body tells you, if you're going to invest in anything for your home, your bed is the one that.

that pays you back every single night. Avocado products are made, not manufactured, and thoughtfully crafted with real materials to deliver lasting comfort and support. Go to avocado greenmatress.com slash trigger to check out their mattress and furniture sale. That's avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger.

Don't you think as well, and maybe it's me being slightly conspiratorial about this, But don't you think that we've just become, there's a creeping desire for authoritarianism in a lot of people. We've seen it in lockdowns. And you see it here, they just go, we should have a policeman in every bar,

in every nightclub. And I'm like, you know, my mother grew up in Venezuela. That's what they have there. That's not a good thing. Yeah. I mean, in particular, sorry, in particular, the undercover cops thing, I mean, on Andrew Maher,

the weekend after the news of Sarah Evard's death came about, Jess Phillips, Labour MP, was on, and she was talking about the fact that, you know, she said, something like, I go out and I see so many wardens giving parking tickets, you know, to cars. And I think, why can't there be the same level of attention giving to women? So you think, one parking ticket attendance tend to be, so universally accepted as one of life's greatest menaces is really not a good example. But also, you know, the idea that I would want more men watching me, because most of the, police officers are men, or that we've just had the scandal with the spy cops of police officers being revealed to have not only had sex with women in the Green and the environmentalist movement,

but families with them, undercover cops. It's been a huge scandal. And so now you want to put, stick these undercover bastards in the club. I mean, will a woman ever be allowed to sneak off to the smoking area to kiss someone that she hasn't met before without someone looking around the corner? I mean, it's disgusting. I've just got this image of coming. out of a bar or someone and policemen going, excuse me, if you left your girlfriend outside, there's a ticket on her or something. Yeah, treat women like cars.

Great idea. It was not problematic enough. Let's take it up a notch, which is this whole conversation about not all men, which is essentially, I think people, some people, quite reasonably going, well, educating me about not raping people isn't going to reduce a number of rapes in the country

because I'm not a rapist, right? Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So how do we have that kind of, conversation without looking like a dick basically is where I'm trying to get out. I don't think it's easy to have that conversation or without getting in trouble, particularly as a man. But I do think that it's because obviously the people who are going to commit the crimes like the guy who potentially, we don't know, because he hasn't been convicted of anything yet, the guy who cop who may have murdered Sarah Everard, you know,

people like that are going to commit crimes no matter what you do. You can, pass legislation and you can try to deal with people who are cat-calling and wolf whistling and you can clamp down on people's freedom of speech and destroy the relationships between the sexes in the process of trying to do that and to as we've seen in so many other areas of hate crime raise the temperature so that everybody feels increasingly restricted which is quite ironic because they're talking about like the over-policing of the protests but at the same time they also want to over-legislate in areas like that I think that is a bit of a weird double standard that they've got going on there.

But I do think that it's pretty much nigh on impossible for a straight man to talk about this subject because you've already been demonised as we saw with the, you know, you need to be locked inside after six o'clock. There's not really anything that you can say because it will be viewed in that particular framework that's already being promoted.

So yeah, I think one of the reasons why it's important for us to see things in a slightly more complicated way and there is no nuance in the debate. We need to move away from that understanding of these things as being systemic so that you guys can have a voice and we can have a reasonable discussion

and we can talk about, you know, the wives and brothers and, you know, who care very much about women and who shouldn't be talked about as if they are somehow complicit in the crimes of a very, very small minority of men who would commit those crimes regardless of what you do about misogyny in society. It's also a complete misunderstanding of what is happening

when someone like the alleged murder of Sarah Everard commits those crimes or when someone rapes a woman. Particularly in relation to rape, there's been this sort of real blurring of the specificity of his in terms of consent classes and things like that. People now see rape as just this thing that someone happens to kind of fall into because they're not educated about. I mean, it's perverse.

It's completely not, you don't have to. kind of get into the graphic ins and outs of what happens in rape, but if the person who's doing it knows what they're doing is wrong, either that or everyone is completely inebriated and it's still wrong. So it's quite clear to know when you are committing immoral acts. And the idea of putting, as Emma says, you know, everyone through a consent class, as if it's like kind of health and safety training and you just need to know not to step over the red line.

I mean, it's just a real dumbing down of actually human relationships and what is involved in that. But also, you know, to the kind of not all men thing, I mean, look, if I'm walking home, you know, from Whitechapel late at night and I hear a footstep behind me, that's too close, I'm not going to say to myself, he's probably just an accountant and he's got two kids and everything. I'm probably going to think, oh, who's that. But then, you know, that's the instinctual reaction. It's taking personal responsibility, which is a good thing. Yeah, but, and, you know, that's the instinctual reaction. And we can talk about, we have talked about the rights and wrongs of women feeling afraid, sometimes nest. out of necessity sometimes. But politically, that's different. So when you're on your own and an individual, we feel all kinds of things because we're subjective, we're emotional beings. Some people like me are able to, you know, wear steel toe caps and kick people that get in our way. Some people

are not. And I would never... What did you point to me? Stay away. I would never demonise or put shame on a woman who was afraid or timid or anything like that. But politically, when you are talking about a collective response to something that's outside of our subjective opinion, you have to take a firmer stance. And so you kind of get called, it's like you're an asshole now if you say we should start standing up for ourselves. I mean, this is what, you know, I wrote about this recently. In the 70s when Peter Sutcliffe was, you know, routinely murdering and raping women,

Yorkshire Ripper. And, I mean, talk about terror when there was, you know, particularly in Leeds and, you know, the towns and areas around that. Women were absolutely terrified, rightly so. The police were useless, the police were not only saying that all women should stay inside, they were saying that the women who had been murdered, who were prostitutes, were asking for it because they were prostitutes, some of them, not all of them. And the feminists at that time came out and said, we're going to reclaim the night, and you're going to get out of our way or we're going to trample on you. And it was a real assertion of, I have lots of problems with feminism throughout the ages, but in particular,

that assertion of women's freedom was one of the most inspiring things because it was about saying whatever we are individually, collectively we are strong. And that's where men come in because if I am in trouble on the tube or somewhere where I can't, you know, physically as a woman, I can't battle this threat to me. I want to know that other members of society are willing to step in for me. You know, big woman, big man doesn't matter. But in driving these wedges between the sexes, what we're actually breaking is social solidarity, which is, you know, in a different conversation, we could talk about the dystopian fact that any time a crime happens

now, everyone takes out their bloody phone and films, rather than getting stuck in. And it's that similar drive to be isolated from, anatomized from each other, that this kind of discussion about men means, I want men to feel empowered to, you know, feel free to interact me, to come onto me, to flirt with me, and also to step in and save me sometimes,

to be free individuals who look out for each other. And if you're telling demonising men, and saying, you know, Tim Stanley said this. I'm in the politics live the other day on the BBC. You know, actually, he said, I think men have an innate kind of violence inside us. I mean, what does that mean women have an innate? Do I have an innate weakness inside us?

Yeah, exactly. It's like you were saying earlier. It's basically creating this culture of, like, fragility, that women, you know, we're not big girls and we can't look after ourselves, which is just not healthy. It's the absolute opposite to empowerment. It's telling women that they are the victim.

And if you believe in systemic sexism, then you believe that so long as men exist, women will be the victim. And that the only way to change that is to change the law, is to have the state intervene to try and liberate you from this inherent masculine violence. And it just, it's a kind of, like you were saying about George Floyd earlier, it's a kind of mythology that we've created, a kind of post-modernist mythology that is seeping into every area of life.

And, you know, we saw this with the protest, movements in response to Sarah Everard, that they latch themselves on, whether consciously or unconsciously onto this cause. And like with the Misogyny bill, the Misogyny Amendment that has been discussed in Parliament recently, that bill doesn't actually mention women. Or misogyny. Well, it doesn't mention women or misogyny. It's being referred to as a misogyny amendment. And the government said that they're going to get the police to start recording misogyny as a hate crime. But the bill itself doesn't actually mention women. It mentions sex and gender. And it's the same as with the maternity bill recently, it didn't mention motherhood.

So at the same time as we're having these conversations about misogyny, we're disempowering women and erasing them. And so you have people who are protesting ostensibly for women's rights in response to the Sarah Everard case, whilst at exactly the same time diminishing women's sex-based right. It's just completely the math. Yeah. Do you watch problematic content online? Of course they do. They watch trigonometry. Many ISPs log your internet activity and sell that data on to other big tech companies or other advertising companies. I know that is why I use ExpressVPN to hide my browsing activities. I bet you did. ExpressVPN is a simple app which you can have on both your computer and your smartphone which hides your traffic into one channel and direct it through a VPN server,

which means your ISP can't see anything that you're doing. Look, the question I want to ask is, will it slow down the videos that I watch? Definitely not. That is one of the reasons it's been rated as the number one VPN app by CNET and WIRE. I don't read those publications because I'm not a nerd. Stop handing over your personal data to ISPs and big tech companies, which are just going to use it and sell it on. Visit expressvpn.com slash trigger. That's EXPR-E-S-V-P-N.

Dot com slash trigger. I love it with his palphings out. But it gets even better than that. ExpressVPN are offering Trigonometry fans three extra months free. Go to ExpressVPN.com slash Trigger to learn more. But don't you think part of the problem is that we've stopped having good faith conversations? Totally. And you can really see that by the solutions that come out of it.

And every solution to this particular issue has been terrible. And that's just a reflection of the conversation we're having. Well, I mean, the Jenny Jones suggestion of the curfew, she initially made flippantly as a kind of a joke. Yeah. And then within... Mark Drakeford was like... Yeah.

Within hours, Mark Drakeford decides this is his moment to kind of virtue signal. And then it hits the papers. and then it becomes, and then she kind of doubles down and writes this article saying the response to it tells you what you need to know about sexism in the world and you know how disgusting that people laugh at this idea. And suddenly it becomes reality. And suddenly you kind of are not laughing about it.

I mean, despite the ridiculousness of having a curfew in lockdown anyway, it's like no one thought of that. But suddenly this thing that was a joke and was flippant is now potentially going to be made law. I mean, the thing about the misogyny amendment is that it's not that, you know, there was this tussling with it, and Claire Fox makes a great point about this, that there was tussling with it about whether it was going to be part of the domestic abuse

that's going through the House of Lords at the moment, whether or not it was going to be part of the police, the police cracked down bill that, you know, Pretty Patel's brainchild, or whether it was going to be its own law. And basically what's happened is there's been maneuverings in behind the scenes. Stella Creasy's had a word in some minister's ear. There's been some hands shaken across the parties. And the minister now has assured the House of Lords that they don't need to talk about this amendment, because what's going to happen is they're going to roll out. The government is going to roll out the program that happened in Nottinghamshire

to make misogyny a hate crime. So that's it. It's done. It's done. And it doesn't matter how much you or I say, criticize it. It doesn't matter how we feel about it. Meaning even the undercover cops in bars, I mean, it's probably been happening for years. And the government can now just come out and say that that's what they've been doing for years.

But that was the government saying we're going to throw funding at a particular position. to put cops in bars. You think, when did you consult me about that? When, you know, these things are going to have. They're able to justify in the same way that they justify the COVID measures because they say it's an emergency. We have an epidemic of misogyny. We must act now.

And if people start saying, you know, we have to do something, someone will be like, well, here's something. Yeah, okay, we'll do that. It's not a good idea. And it's not going to fix the problem, but sure, we'll do that. Sadiq, can't put out a tweet saying, you know, this is amazing. We're going to have safer streets for women.

And someone of a young female black comment and commented underneath and saying, are you going to do something about misogenoir, which is misogynaw is misogyny, particularly against black women. And then I saw someone else tweet saying, well, aren't we going to make misandry a hate crime and hatred against men?

But this is the logical, this is what happens. Anyone who has a gripe, I mean, when I was at school, loads of people used to make fun on the colour of my hair and called me copernob and stuff, you know, whatever the female equivalent of that. And I could have said that was damaging to me, me and I want it to be made a hate crime,

because the whole thing about hate crime... I'm taking my tears. But the whole thing about hate crime is, and they admit this themselves, it's based on the perception of hate from the victim. So if I get boxed in the face by a man, and I think that it's because he hates women, rather than he hates what I was wearing,

or whatever it is, then it gets registered as a hate crime. But that's no accurate way of understanding whether or not he actually does hate women. I mean, just because someone someone shouts, bitch, does that mean that they hate women? Or is there something more complicated going on here? So in terms of we're told that it's this like means of accruing accurate data about misogyny,

I mean, can't a police officer fill out frigging form without, without passing a law? Well, you went to thought, thought crime territory because you're trying to work out what the person thought when they committed the crime. From the perspective of the victim. Right, exactly. And even if it's not on the lighter end of it, where it's just speech being restricted, if it is trying to ascertain the motive, of a person who has committed a crime in itself, like kidnapping somebody or domestic violence, and then you ascribe a misogynist motive to that

on the basis of someone's perception that can't prove that objectively, because as you say, it's entirely based on perception. And it's the definition of hostility, which is just ill-feeling towards, you know, to be hostile to something in the way that you would understand it in a normal conversation, rather than any kind of like restricted legal sense. And so then you end up with the police essentially sort of prying into men's souls,

which ends up going down the Orwellian thought crime. That sounds great. But guys, I wanted to go back a little bit. We've got into the legal side of which, which is very interesting. But I just wanted to come back to one thing, because I feel there's one thing that we're not actually talking about that maybe is true, which is, you know, Ella, you talked about the fact that, well, if you say that men are more aggressive than this,

and then that means that women are the opposite of that. But isn't it true? Isn't it true that, you know, guys are more aggressive, guys are stronger, guys are more likely to commit crime, and therefore women are more vulnerable to that because they're, on average, smaller and weaker and all of that? Like, we're not accounting for that in this conversation, are we? Well, I'd always reject any kind of move towards seeing things

in a kind of biologically determinous way, because I think that while it is obviously the case, although, I reject it, but it's true. No, obviously, I was just, I was laughing because actually now the question of sex, you know, biological sex difference has been called this question, but completely different culture phenomena. Yes, yes. We've covered that for any well, as you know. But that, you know, it's obviously the case that most women are physically less able to hold their own inner fight than men. But that doesn't, I think that, you know, natural instincts, I'm much more, I think I'm much more subject to, context environment. So I'm, you know, much more of the kind of philosophical view that people make

decisions because of the situation that they're in and because of the context that they live in and the circumstances they find themselves in. It's my great Mark's quote. But, you know, how do you take ideas of, you know, what's macho or masculine or feminine? There are, you know, this is the whole thing of kind of criminalising, making problematic toxic masculinity. Because there are some good things about being aggressive. You know, aggression can be a driver of progress. Hate can be a driver of progress as well, actually, politically particularly. But then also there are things, you know, femininity gets just passed off as this kind of, you know, wishy-washy, fainting couch kind of scenario. But obviously, you know, there are different conversations

about women being much more emotionally intelligent than men. And actually, as I say, many times, I would far rather sit on the top deck of a bus with a bunch of teenage boys at the back than I would have a bunch of teenage girls at the back, because teenage girls can be mean, really mean. And they can, you know, they're actually far smarter, far quicker than boys. And so I think we get into these, we kind of get into the woods about what people naturally are like, rather than actually celebrating, it's kind of tells you where we're at politically today, rather than celebrating the concept of agency, which is about saying it actually

doesn't matter what I am in Aitly, that because I can use my rational agency and my mind and my decision-making capabilities. I can override my nature. So my, you know, that my nature might be to run when I'm in danger, but I can override that and make decisions about what I'm going to do in that situation. And of course, you know, I just categorically deny and reject the idea that men are an innately, you know, that there's some kind of predator instinct to make them want to be violent against women. I just don't think there's proof of that. And I think it's nonsense. It's like treating people like monkeys. But whatever kind of instincts that we have

that we either pick up from the environment or nature or nurture, we should be championing the fact that people have the confidence to use their rational capabilities to make decisions that sometimes break from the norm, which is why, you know, yes, the kind of explanation for sexism in the past was that women were less able for contemporary life

because we were more fragile. But of course we've said, whether or not that is true, and I'm sure you could have a brilliant debate with biological determinists about that, I don't care. I'm going, I don't care, you're not going to get to close those doors for me on the basis of that. So it's pushing forward the idea of agency, which has been kind of sorely lost in the contemporary discussion. Emma, what do you think about this? Because I wasn't suggesting that men are more likely by nature to be violent against women, but men are more likely to be violent than women. Well, it's a hormonal thing, isn't it? Right. testosterone. But,

what we never talk about when we talk about masculinity is virtue and character. So we'll talk about masculinity and toxic masculinity and about men's strength as if it's somehow inherently a danger, not just to women, but to everyone around them. But we never talk about the way that that strength and masculinity and the sort of trappings of being biologically male can be a good thing. The fact that, you know, my male friends often walk me at home. home or walk me to the station because probably they can better protect. I mean, you pointed at me because I really can't fight. And so people, you know, will often walk me home because, you know,

they can use their strength to protect. And that's a very traditional way of looking at things. But I think you're right about the agency point. I do think, though, that it's important not to talk about people as groups full stop. So talking about, you know, obviously you can make generalisations about groups of people. But if you're making unmitigated negative generalisations, not just about a group of people, but about something to do with them that, you know, that is completely immutable, like a man's masculinity or, as we saw with the Black Lives Matter protests about whiteness and trying to find whiteness in everything. Because I think when you think like this, you start seeing it everywhere.

And the effects that that has, other than denying people agency, and actually in a strange way, almost denying criminals of their moral responsibility, because you say, well, you know, they did it because they had this violence in them because they're male, which is just completely absurd when you think about it in that sense. I think that, you know, that to deny people their agency, but at the same time, you know, I think that seeing the, these things everywhere in society is bad for the people who are told that they're fragile, who are told that they are somehow, you know, weak in relation to that.

So, yeah. But, I mean, it's not to get all kind of Judith Butler about it, but there is, you know, there is biological reality in terms of the physicality of our existence. But then I do. I was staying away from saying explicitly. But I do, you know, I am open to the conversations about the fact that. the gender is in many ways a construct to go down the judith brother right but that you know their the contestants is part of the interesting thing about us and the women's role is different

today than it was 20 years ago than it was 120 years ago and the same with men i mean we talk with the you know men have changed over the last sort of 30 40 years drastically i mean my father's generation is completely different to my husband's generation now you know there will be some places, particularly among, you know, working class guys who've been doing, for example, the same jobs for years where the behaviour is relatively the same and people still have those kind of very positive masculine, which actually, as it happens, women can adopt as well. I tend to go down the matroo route too often, more often than I should. But that, you know, actually men have changed. They've become more open to their feelings, which a lot of the time kind of makes me sick

because there's a, you know, there's the whole fetalisation of being open with each other and I tend think people should shut up more than they do. But we are, you know, we react to the world in which we live in. And if you really believe that we are hemmed in by the trappings of our physical existence, then what's the hell of, what is the point of politics? What's the point of any belief in any kind of change? We are malleable, you know, creatures. We can outside of us and shape ourselves in the process.

And so denying that flexibility by saying that men are, innately and have always been the enemy and women are always the, you know, the damsel in distress, just, you know, give up, go home, don't ever engage in public life ever again, because what's the point? Sorry, Francis, I would disagree with Ella, but she'll knock me out. Go ahead. Is the fact that we've all just lost our minds over lockdown? So we've stopped being able to have a rationing conversation because we've all gone mad and I include myself in that. Well, I mean, yeah, the atomisation in that way. The look she gave you was brilliant.

Without any comment on the state of your mental well-being, I think that part of the trend of lockdown to be, you know, in a previous lifetime before we ever talked about coronavirus, I'd be very critical of people that said that, you know, being online all the time on your own affects you, that you become more of a kind of keyboard warrior, all that kind of thing. I'd say, oh, people are more intelligent than that.

And I still think people are more intelligent than that, but we've had a mandated, mandated isolation for a year now. And, you know, I've just waxed lyrical about what kind of malleable creatures, human beings are. We're also social creatures. And when you end up being in isolation for too long, you lose perspective. It's a similar thing that politicians who stay in London too long have no idea what the lives are like of people in Wakefield. It's the same thing, if you're in your four walls for too long, and you don't know what life is like for your neighbor. You don't have conversations with people.

I mean, you know that I work with the Academy of Ideas and we do the Battle of Ideas Festival that was cancelled last year, but it is on this year, thank God. And part of the importance of public events like that of actually rubbing shoulders with someone, physically, with being in the same room with someone, is that you pick up on, you intuit things. And especially in relation to personal relationships

between the sexes, so much more happens in our understanding of each other between the lines of what's not said. So I can say to you, you know, a man came up to me yesterday and he said to me, hello, beautiful. And you could think, oh, that's a lovely thing, you know, and that could be a really wonderful experience. And I could have really enjoyed that. But if he was saying it to me that close to my face, then it would be a completely different context. It would be a completely different feeling.

And if we aren't actually, not to fetishize kind of physical interaction, but if we're not actually in the public space, in the public sphere, interacting with each other, All of that nuance and context gets lost. And that's why you said, why are we kind of jumping to extremes of passing laws? It's because all of these politicians that are pushing for these laws are doing it on Zoom. They're not even like, you know, it's ridiculous. I can't remember where I'm stealing this from. But someone said that the thing that reigns in people with an authoritarian instinct is that they'll be sitting like a revolutionary in their room.

And then they'll go downstairs and they'll speak to the shopkeeper. and they'll have an exchange. And that simple interaction of negotiation where they realize that the shopkeeper isn't this horrible capitalist enemy, but is just a nice neighbor that you interact with every day, that that makes a big difference. Actually, I think that, and like you said,

not to fetishize interaction, but I think that actually seeing people in the flesh forces us into a nuance that we were already not inclined towards. It was the last bastion of, there was the last resource we had for giving us that nuance. And then as soon as we were shut inside, all of these ideas, these slightly authoritarian instincts that were bubbling away underneath the surface,

just immediately got their claws into everyone's brain. And so any opportunity then to actually get out of the house for the last year really has been protesting, to go out with other people who are hyped up in exactly the same way that you are. And then to, as we saw with the protests over the last couple of days, the Black Lives Matter guys came out.

They were then joined by Extinction Rebellion with their bongo drums. You know, everybody wants to come out and sort of like join in with this kind of, it's the thrill of being in the crowd and the carnival atmosphere of it. And I think that if you don't have those day-to-day interactions with people that are different from yourself, either at work or if you're religious, you know, like at church or somewhere where you're able to come face to face with people that are not exactly like you, Without that, you're just going to be naturally bent to an extreme position.

And I don't think there's anything that can sort of like get us back on kilter. It's also been very interesting in the way it's exposed people's biases. You see people going, Black Lives Matter, fantastic, anti-lockdown, disgusting, women's vigil, brilliant. Do you see what I mean? And it doesn't seem like people are consistent anymore. Well, I mean... Anymore. It's true.

I mean, in relation to the... I mean, there's been so much of us. positive for us about Priti Patel's moves to criminalise protest, essentially, by saying that the basis of whether a protest can go ahead is if it makes a safe enough level of disruption, noise disruption. I mean, there was shock and horror, I think rightly so, at the way in which women were treated by the police at the vigil, Sarah Everard's vigil, on the weekend. Four people were arrested at Clapham Common that night. In January, 16 people were arrested in Clapham Common on an anti-lockdown protest. So abstractly, if the thing we're horrified about is police with their

kind of elbows and their knees on people's backs arresting them on the basis of protest, it's been happening all year. See, this is the thing where I disagree with you, and maybe this comes back to our little discussion about biological determinism, what do you call it, I don't think most people will ever be comfortable with the picture of police office bloke's kneeling on women's backs. It's just a look. Well, I'd just tell you that at an anti-lockdown, talk about coincidence, at an anti-lockdown protest, I don't know whether it was in January, but certainly previously in the year,

there was a red-headed woman who looked very much like Patsy Stevenson, who was punched, pushed to the ground by a police officer and very violently arrested. And it was... Yeah, but she had the wrong opinions, didn't she? But this is what I'm talking about. It's, you know, it was the... There have been... I've been on arrests about the student movement

when I was one of those people that, you know, went out at a drop of a hat about serious things like cubs at the time you know there was there were mass arrests there were mass kettles there was kind of you know and there was a sense in which people especially at that time students you kind of wanted to be arrested and there's this sort of there's this spoiling for fight there's this push and pull which is there is this you know that people seem to be there has been a chipping away at the right to protest for a very long time

for various reasons and you know but from government, but also people giving in to the idea that you should have just a one-day strike with the nurses or trade unions rather than cause disruption. But that doesn't, you know, if we are outraged because the cause we like is the one that's being trampled on by the police officer, then you're doing it wrong because actually you need to support the right of far-right people to protest. You need to support the right of climate, you know, climate emergency protesters as annoying as I find them, of feminists, of, you know, flat-earthers, of whoever it is. Because this is like the issue of freedom of speech,

which you guys have covered so many times on this, on trigonometry, is that it is... She didn't know what to call it. I was going to say podcast, but I forget that we're being filmed. On this thing. But it is an inalienable right

that has no ifs and no butts that you have to either defend for everyone or you defend for no one. No, I agree. You were talking about the far-right flat earthers. I'm like, oh, it's our audience. Fantastic. No, and Extinction Rebellion,

we just had the co-founder on the show. But Emma, I wanted to ask you, because you've done some great work on covering the protests that followed the vigils. I'm assuming you weren't at the vigils itself in Clapham. I wasn't at the first one, but I went to the protests afterwards. But you went to the ones afterwards. And this is what I want to, I mean, you've changed my mind on that point, actually, about the people not being comfortable with women. Maybe it was the way it was covered. Well, no, I think you're right on that, that it was particularly, yeah.

Yeah. But what did you make of all of that and just how it happened? how people responded, then the protest, and you talk about other people coming along and jumping on board. Just give us your thoughts on that in the last five, ten minutes. Yeah, so I wonder actually, in relation to what you were saying about the footage of the women being nailed on, I think obviously that's quite shocking

because of the gender dynamic and also because of what happened to Sarah Everard. But I wonder whether that is partly to do with... We almost seem to be sort of obsessed with stories and telling ourselves stories at the moment. And that really played into what happened at the protest. So I noticed that at the vigil, from the footage, obviously I said I wasn't there, the footage of that and some of the photograph showed some people with Akab,

all cops of bastard signs and defund the police signs. So they went to the vigil with their placards in hand. They already had them clearly when they got there. I'm guessing they didn't just sort of spontaneously school them. And Ak, by the way, sorry to interrupt, is an Antifa slogan, basically. It is, yeah. And there were also some suggestions that there were some people there in identifiably in Black Block, the Antifa Black Block. And so now the police have come out and said that I think it was 26 officers were assaulted,

including one female black officer who was racially abused. So maybe that vigil, I initially came out condemning the police's aggression towards the women because I don't think that vigil should have been illegal in the first place. I'm totally in favour of the right to protest. So I don't think any heavy-handed interaction with protesters is ever a good thing. But maybe there was more to what was going on there than necessarily was initially reported. And that really played out the next day because people mobilised like that. As soon as I arrived, it was quite clear that it had no longer had anything to do with Sarah Everard.

It was like the whole crowd was absolutely strewn with these ACA war copse of bastards signs. They were shouting no justice, no peace. The socialist worker were there. The revolutionary communist group, big imperialism banners. It turned into a kind of like far left rally that was a bit like BLM with a bit of women's rights sprinkled into it. And going back to my point about the stories, I think that to some degree, because of the natural resonance that that had for people with what happened with George's. George Floyd, footage of the woman being kneeled on by the police, the fact that the person

at the centre of the investigation is also a cop, that it played into the stories that people were already obsessing about. And so the mobilisation of people coming out with those signs, I don't know whether those people, you know, were the same guys who came out to protest in the Black Lives Matter rally or not, but they had people who, I presume, with the organisers, reading out an Asata Shakura poem. which the crowd was then repeating back to them. And Asartar Choucault was from the Black Liberation Army.

She's on the FBI's most wanted list for being convicted for killing a copp and went on the run to Cuba. And so I don't think the crowd necessarily realized that they were basically echoing the words back. Maybe even the police didn't realize it. So it was quite clear that the protest had been hijacked by at least far-left ideas

whether or not the entire crowd had turned up for that particular reason, I don't know. And then obviously in the subsequent days, you had the Extinction Rebellion guys turned up and sisters uncut, which is a whole other story. Yeah, I mean, I don't have much of a problem with far-left rallies. I don't either. When you said a revolutionary communist party, I was, hmm? I mean, the thing, it's funny, you know, the thing about these,

as you're describing the protest, well, I went to the one on Sunday with my side. about freedom of protest because as the days have gone on it's become more about they're using the slogan, kill the bill, not the police as some people on Twitter

have suggested, but the anti-protest bill. But it is like, it's like a kind of everything about the kitchen sink type protest. There was, there was speeches from people about the nurses strike,

which is, you know, let's talk about it, but at a protest about Sarah Everard, maybe not. There was, one speaker talked about a Muslim women's accent, to resources, again, you know, the relation to Sarah O'Rourald, is very tenuous there. There were Labour MPs getting up in grandstanding about getting Cressida Dick resigned.

I mean, it's just, it was everything. It was, and there were people holding placards saying, we're intersectional or we are nothing. You're like, well, this is a protest about women. Anyway, the whole thing was, it was confused. But I think, and, you know, in particular, you mentioned the SWP. I mean, the SWP, when I was at university, were broken apart by a rape scandal, because one of their head guys in the SWP raped a woman and they've, they all dealt with it in the kangaroo court within the party and that's why masses of people, including my husband, left the SWP in the, in this sort of

around 2014. So when I saw their placards at this particular protest, I was like, what the fuck? Why are the SWP here? Well, there is a bit of an eye on rule with these things. The guys who bang on about women's rights usually have something. Well, I don't know about that, but. But it was the same with the sisters uncut. They had a list of people that they said that they'd like, were remembering or paying homage to in some way. And in that list were people that had transitioned from male into being female, but before they had transitioned, they had raped and murdered women.

So, yeah, it's a mess. It's a mess. It's a bit of a mess. Sorry, Al, what was it from? I have been critical of sisters and cut in the past, but one thing they did well at the protest that I was at was that Zara Sultan, the Labour MP, made a massive grandstanding speech.

about, you know, crest of the dick and how evil she was and this, that and the other. And then sisters uncut got on the megaphone and said, this is not an opportunity for Labor grandstanding. This is our protest. This is not Labor's. And I was like, yes, because obviously Labor had abstained on the police bill up until now. And so the whole, you know, there's so much hypocrisy going on. There's so much opportunism going on. But the main question is, what are these protests trying to achieve? And you have to look at the, in the same breath, they say the streets should be free for women. And they also then, say, but we need to educate, educate and legislate, educate boys and decriminalize misogyny

and bring in new laws. So this is the central dichotomy of everything we've been talking about today, is that there is a toss-up between women's safety and women's freedom. And the contemporary feminist movement has gone down the route of women's safety, which means protection, which means restriction, which means denying all risk. And what we've lost is the real F word, not feminism, which is what I talk about in my book, but Freedom, which is freedom to, as Camille Pallier says, and I quote it every time I talk about this and we'll do it every time in the future, the freedom to risk rape, the freedom to risk danger,

the freedom to do all the things that men do with the kind of potential and the understanding as an adult that those things might come with harm in the future for you. But that being free with all its costs and all its consequences is always going to be preferable to being cosseted, to being safe. and the fact that so many women, so many prominent professional women today can't see that and instead buy into this incredibly craven, winging middle-class crap that I think contemporary feminism is that gets me so irate is depressing. And I think there are many, many, many, many more women out there who are watching this thinking,

what in the hell are they going on about? Amen and a-women. A-women. Well done, mate. Yes, A women indeed. Guys, we've run out of time, unfortunately. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm sure this issue is something we'll continue talking about. But in the meantime, we've got one more question for you.

Which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society? But we really should be. We'll start with you, Ella. My bugbear at the moment is LTNs, which you might think are a very specific local issue. Low traffic neighbourhoods. Mainly because my life in Hackney has been made a misery because of, and I love driving around in my little white van

and shocking people, particularly if I'm wearing lipstick in the van. But I can't do that anymore because of LTNs. But actually the reason why it's interesting, people should talk about it, not just because it's being rolled out across the country, because the central question of low traffic neighbourhoods is what we've been sort of talking about this evening is who gets to decide on political decisions.

Is the climate emergency, as people call it, reason enough to make people's ordinary working class off in people's lives of misery in their own neighbourhoods? Who gets to decide who owns? our streets. Is it the councillors who don't give really a figure about local residents? Or is it the residents themselves? So, you know, if you're interested in democracy, if you're interested in environmentalism and all that kind of thing, look up low traffic neighbourhoods and look up where they're happening. It's not just in Highbury and Hackney. It's across the country and it's really pissing me off.

If you will permit me to be very predictable, I think the thing that people are talking about it, but not as much as they should be is NCHI's non-crime hate incidents. So recently, Harry Miller is obviously going through the Court of Appeal at the moment, trying to get non-crime hate incidents removed from the guidance of the College of Policing. And so really I think the thing that we should all be talking about is these unaccountable quangos who seem to be making a kind of parallel law for us all, particularly in relation to free speech. So the College of Policing created these NCHIs wasn't.

something that was passed as a law through Parliament. And so I think that is the thing that we should all be talking about because there are unaccountable quangos that are surpassing the proper parliamentary scrutiny and the legal system as it should be. And they have no democratic accountability. So that's what we should all be talking about. There's quite a bit of that going all around, isn't there? parliamentary scrutiny and all the rest of it.

Ella Weeland, Emma Webb, thank you so much for coming on. And thank you for watching at home. We will see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or a live stream. and they all go out at 7 p.m. UK time. Take care guys and see you soon.