TRIGGERnometry - Ella Whelan on Brexit, Feminism, #MeToo, Grooming Gangs & Abortion

Episode Date: September 17, 2018

Spiked Columnist Ella Whelan (@ella_m_whelan) discusses the Left, Brexit, feminism, #metoo, sexual politics, grooming gangs, abortion and a lot more with the guys at TRIGGERnometry. Find us 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 (@failinghuman) 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

And welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin. And this is a show for you if you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts. We ask the experts. Our fantastic expert guest this week is a Spike columnist and the author of What Women Want, Fun, Freedom and An Enter Feminism. Ella Weillan, welcome to Trigonometry. Hi, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. We really look forward to speaking with you.

And as always, before we get into the show itself, tell us a little bit about how you are, where you are today. What's been your journey? Well, it was a bit of a weird one, so I never wanted to be a journalist. In fact, I finished my university degree and my master's and thought, I never, ever, ever want to pick up a pen again, ever.

I was sick of it. But the politics is what got me in. So I was sort of flirted with student politics, and then I found spiked, and they were just saying something that no one else was saying, and I went to a few meetings, held a meeting myself, and then got into it that way. So it was the politics that really drove me to journalists

and rather than the writing, as anyone who's ever subbed one of my articles will know, despite an English degree, my grammar is still pretty poor. And what was your kind of political evolution? Because a lot of the things you talk about are quite... It's fair to describe these I'd spoken, I think, on many issues. What's been the journey that's led you to hold these views and to be willing to express them in public?

Well, I would previously have always called myself left of the left, but the problem is now I think the left is so kind of fastidised that I can't link myself with it anymore because I don't recognise it as anything left-wing inherently. So people kind of wince when I say I'm a traditional old-school lefty in terms of I hold certain views on equality, on money, on class. But I suppose what's made me outspoken to, is that things have gotten so mad.

I really think what I say a lot of the time is common sense and I get accused of being general for saying most people will think this and then give my opinion. But I do think that most people on the whole are looking at politics today and just completely alienated by it, don't understand how it's gotten so mad, don't understand how it's, or not don't understand, but can't fathom how we're having discussions about

the political ramifications of people's hairstarts, or the significance of what a politician had for dinner or any of these ridiculous things that are now kind of hot topics. Like me, I think most people are just sort of wanting to get back to looking at the big real issues. Well, it's interesting we spoke to Tom Slater, who you'll know from Spiked as well a couple of weeks back, and he was talking about the fact that if you look even as something like Brexit,

and by the way, both Francis and I vote remain. Because we're good people. He always likes to throw that in to piss off, I guess. I don't know why. Anyway, when we talk about Brexit, the majority position is the one that's demonized, which is quite incredible in and of itself. So when you talk about most people think this,

I think there's so many issues in which most people think something, and that is the position that is demonized, which is an incredible place to be in, isn't it? Yeah, but it shows how completely out of step the political establishment and to a certain degree the media are with public opinion.

So the fact that, I mean, I was a Brexiteer, And I see that as a pretty standard left-wing position. But the fact is the vote was announced, and then I think it was probably about 45 minutes afterwards. We got to celebrate in the spiked office for about half an hour, and then we were like, right, we're on the defensive. And, yeah, the biggest political mandate in British history has been systematically demonised and viciously demonised

for two years straight or whatever point we're at now. And I think that isn't coming from people. People aren't stopping levers in the street and hurling eggs at them and saying, like, you've put the country to hell. It's MPs and its political commentators who are really viciously against Brexit. I think that tells you about the separation. It's going on the kind of big lines in the sand between those who are the rulers and who make the laws and those of us who are ruled to a certain extent.

What I find interesting about Brexit is this. We get quite a lot of comments, and in particular, comedians who are sort of, that sort of very the left, so Corbynite left. And the criticism that they always put to me is you never get any left-wing people on it. And I say, actually we do, but a lot of them support Brexit.

And a lot of people seem to think that in order for you to support Brexit, you need to be on the right. But that's obviously a fallacy because there's a lot of people on the left, especially what you consider to be the old school Tony Ben-esque left. They all support Brexit or a large majority of them.

Corbin does as well, but that's not. Yeah, he does. He's just not honest about it. No, he isn't honest about it. He's kind of sold out his side of the left in relation to Brexit. I guess it's because the main leave campaign, the main faces of it were Tory MPs, or I don't think you can necessarily call them rabid right-wingers,

but there wasn't a vocal left for Brexit other than spiked. We had as big as we could be our campaign, and you had some Labour left, people who campaigned for Brexit. Brexit. But on the whole, there wasn't a coherent left-wing movement for what I thought was this great opportunity to break through years of mush and status quo and not moving anywhere in politics. Then you have this moment where lots of working-class people are saying, we want to change in

politics, and we want to have a greater say, and we want to shake things up, and the left's nowhere to be seen. And so not that I revel in the fact that that is the case, but I think it tells you a lot about where the left is today if they were so blind as to not see this as an opportunity to change politics quite dramatically. I mean, I remember in the two weeks after the vote, you had news about how the Tory party was going to disintegrate, about how Labor was going to disintegrate, Westminster was crumbling, everyone was falling apart. And I was like, yes, like, this is what I vote for. this is great. I mean, you know, I never have voted in general elections when I was young

grace to spoil my ballot. And then my mom was said, they never read the like essay that you write, you know. They just see that you haven't ticked the box. So anyway, and that was a conscious decision because I thought none of these people represent what I want in any way, shape, or form. I'm very, very against picking the best of a bad bunch. But Brexit was the first thing ever in my political career. I was like, right, this is something I definitely.

know that I care about. I'm 100% behind this, let's go. And that was, I think that was a lot of people's experience. I mean, the voter turnout for Brexit was ginormous in comparison to general elections. And you just see then the general election after it, numbers completely tanked again, which tells you what you need to know about how important this thing was and how tragic I think it is that it's being slammed to such a great extent. I think with that is also first past the post, doesn't really engage voters in the same way. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's certainly where I live, for example,

there's absolutely no point voting for anybody. I could vote for any party. It would make no difference whatsoever. I could vote for the party that's going to win, which always wins, which is, in my case, the Conservatives. I could work for the B&P if they still existed. It wouldn't make any difference, you know? So I think first past the post is definitely a part of that.

But anyway, I wanted to ask you, your book is called What Women Want, Fun Freedom and Ender Feminism. What's your beef with feminism? Sometimes on some shows, I get them to just read out the first bit without the sum of the title. That's the bit that always freaks people out. My beef with feminism is longstanding. And really, though that sounds really controversial and end to feminism, I think that is the most sensible way to go for women and for women's liberation.

Because I think feminism has become something that doesn't help women at all. Actually, in the book I argue it's something that is the main thing that's hindering. women's freedom today. I think it's become kind of what I call a middle class girls club. It's extremely elitist. It doesn't have really any interest in the political desires

of most working class women. It's actually quite disdainful of working class women. It's sort of very hectoring, very patronising. It dictates to women how they should feel and how they should act, but never asks women what they want. And after I, wrote the book, this really brilliant survey came out from the Fawcett Society, which is kind of champion of feminism, and they did this survey that showed that only 7% of women in the UK identify as feminists. And it was just such a brilliant moment because the headline they ran with the press release was women in the UK don't know that they're feminists.

It's like, who came up with that fantastic piece of spin to turn a terrible stack? into an affirmation of your necessity as a feminist organization. What they really were saying is that women don't get it, feminism is about equality, and everyone around likes equality, because they also ran another survey which was about, do you believe in equal rights for men and women?

And surprise, surprise, pretty much everyone said yes. But so they said, see, people just aren't matching this up. They don't get what feminism about, so they're wrong. We need to teach women about feminism, and then they'll like it. And that is exactly what's wrong with,

feminism today, I think. It treats women like they don't get it and they need to be reeducated. You get a lot of discussion about internalized misogyny, about being sort of brainwashed to the patriarchy, when actually most women are saying, I know what this is about. It's been about since the 70s and 80s. I'm not into it, actually, move on.

And I think that's why I'm saying an end to feminism and a beginning of something a bit better and a bit of a better discussion about what it is women actually need in the 21st century. And do you think a lot of women are worried about coming out and saying that they don't identify as feminist or they don't believe that they're a feminist? For instance, my girlfriend who is, she's currently doing a doctorate or someone who's very, very intelligent. She would, she ascribes her views, but she would never feel comfortable saying that. Do you think that's...

You just outed her on the internet. Yeah, I know. I know. I have just outed her on the internet. Don't worry. She denies she's my girlfriend, so it's fine. But do you think a lot of women feel worried? about expressing those views or do you think that's something that's becoming more and more widespread?

I think that it's split. So I think women who have a public profile do because you see it all the time. This celebrity has refused to say that they are a feminist and then you get all the kind of pieces in all the different newspapers saying, how dare they, they're a traitor and they really have a responsibility to do all that. So it's a bit of a social marker. It gives you kind of cultural capital. It says you're in the right group.

used to be trusted, you're the right person. But I think most other women who don't have to worry about where their next media gig's going to come from and have more interesting jobs than, you know, selling themselves to the newspapers, don't worry about it. Because it's kind of, like I said, a common sense position. You know, we could go outside now to the high street

and stop a woman on the street, and I would bet my life savings, little as they are, they would not say feminist, if you ask them what they're identified with, politically. They might say conservative labor, left, right, but they just wouldn't say feminist because it's not a coherent movement. People don't have meetings in town halls about feminism. There's no party, there's the Women's Equality Party, but it's failed to get anyone elected, not because it doesn't have a coherent, clever campaign, but because no one's interested.

This isn't something that women want to organize around. It doesn't mean that there aren't still things that hold women back today, but for the need for any kind of gender-specific movement, I think, has passed or even I think there wasn't ever a desire for it in the first place. 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. Avocado 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, 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 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 green mattress.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. Do you think we need a new word? Because the way I think about it is like if we talk about the definition of feminism

that is always thrown out in order to convince people that they are feminist is, like you said, do you believe in equality between men and women, that women should have equal opportunities with men? I'm a feminist by that definition. Everybody is, I imagine. 99% of people are. But increasingly, that is not what feminism seems to be about. So is it a matter of definitions that we need to kind of distinguish between that

and whatever this fourth wave or third way feminism has become? Well, as a journalist, it's bad to say this, but I think we are getting hung up on words, or certainly people do get hung up on words in relation to a discussion about feminism. You hear lots of people saying, we just need a new kind of rebrand. And that's partly what the force is set.

that's partly what the Fawcett society was saying. We just need to change it up. We need to reconvince people. It's not just the kind of term. It's not just that people don't get that it's about equality. It's exactly, as you said, it's become something that is not about equality. In fact, it never really was.

So the thing that annoys me as well as you get discussion about feminism this year is the 100th anniversary of some women, some rich property-owning women, getting the vote during the suffragette movement. And people talk about feminism and the suffragettes. Feminism wasn't a word that was used then. The suffragettes were not feminists. That's a total ignorant reading of history

as factually incorrect. Feminism as a kind of movement only came about really in the late 70s and the 80s. And it was very much then a movement that was based around critical theory. It was largely middle class, although it had some campaigns that were related to equality in the law around contraception, but it was never a really sort of ground-up movement.

There was never a kind of coherent, massive women's movement. There were reactions to things, and there were protests which came in the context of the sexual revolution in changes in relation to the civil rights movement, but there's never been, you know, people talk about feminism like it's this thing in history that's existed and has a long kind of standing and a movement that you can kind of point to. Actually, no, it's completely scattered,

it's completely fragmented. So I don't think it was good from the start, really. And that doesn't mean I don't think, by the way, that paying men and women equally as bad or the things that did come out of women's movements in that time were bad. I think that what we need now is a very clear-headed look at what it is that women still need. So we still need better access to child care, we still need abortion rights, we still need

better access to society's resources in some cases. What do you mean by that? So we still have a situation in which, rightly or wrongly, women are still seen as, as I call it, the chief nose wipers, the ones who are going to remember the doctor's appointing. and the ones who are going to, you know, in my house, know that you've got to unroll the socks before you put them in the washing machine, all that kind of stuff, which you can laugh about,

and I'm not saying that that's, you know, I'm not like, oh, we're oppressed. Mental load or whatever. Yeah, no, but it's women's position, society still is the caregivers, and that's reinforced by, in some ways, the way in which work is operated, you know, childcare means that because women are seen as the main caregivers, they're the ones that have to take the time off,

work, which means then when they go back into work, you have the motherhood gap in contrast to the gender pay gap, which we might talk about a bit later. You know, very small things like, this is one of my favourite examples. There's a law which says that you, it's an EU law actually, Brexit, which says that you can't advertise formula milk as the same or equal to breastfeeding. that might sound like a very small point but actually what that is saying is that women should be breastfeeding all the time when they are

when the baby is first born and there are sort of health campaigns suggest that breast is best and all that kind of thing well that's really saying is you can't have a life because anyone who's breastfed knows that it's 24 hour on the hour job that's reinforcing women as the primary caregivers and that has knock on effects

so that's what I mean And, you know, how do you fix that? Can you pass a law saying men have to look after the kids? No, that would be stupid who would want to do that. Do you have awareness-raising campaigns? No. It's about thinking more clearly about what are the practical things that could help that situation.

Removing that EU law might be one. Getting better access to childcare might be another. But you never have that. You have people opining on the television about how, you know, it's so sexist, that they have to wear this dress code or whatever to work or how it's so sexist that they're told off for breastfeeding in public,

or all this kind of crap, really, which is just attention seeking in my point of view, not a kind of real serious look at what it is that women need. I read a very interesting article that you wrote in The Sun where you were talking about International Women's Day and actually how annoying you found it. And I did actually find it very, very funny. Could you just explain to us why you find that entire

movement, because I think the words you use were patronising. Why is it that you find these kind of initiatives patronising and also not particularly helpful? It's because it positions women as weak and oppressed. So in reality, we can say that on the whole, in the UK and in the West, women are not oppressed. We have equality under the law. It's illegal to treat us differently.

You can bring someone to court if they do. while there might be sort of nuances in the way in which men and women are treated differently in certain social situations, on the whole we have it pretty good. And that is because of the fights of women in the past. So I have a good life because women of my mother's generation, my grandmother's generation stood up to injustice. So we got it good. But just as we get to a position where we are, you know,

enjoying relative freedom and it's all going pretty rosy, we've now got this narrative that things are terrible. So you're telling young women that even though in their day-to-day lives they're seeing, that they're not being stopped by their gender, there's nothing because their women is telling them to hold themselves back or anything. And you've got the political narrative saying, no, no, you are oppressed, you are a victim, and you need International Women's Day because that will be the day where we will, you know, raise your plight to the world.

And I don't think there's anything more patronising than telling someone who thinks everything's find that they actually don't get it, that no, they really are oppressed and pushing that victim narrative on them. It's essentially like saying that we can't get along on our own. I also think international men's day is a load of bollocks as well. I disagree. I think it's brilliant. I don't even know when it is. Every day. Oh, right. Okay. But that's what I mean. That's the kind of the terrible low, the tone of that kind of identity politics, the idea that you need an international day for each gender. It's like, what?

I mean, who even buys into that? And you look at who does buy into that, it's, you know, the UN's women's department who put out a campaign with Wonder Woman the other year. I mean, I'll talk about insulting. Or the Forcet Society, or, you know, every journalist, including me under the sun, who wants to get a column out of it, and that's about it. I mean, isn't it also you could argue that it's, you know, although women in this country are perceived to be equal,

whatever the case may be, but in lots of other countries, I mean, there's still a lot of inequality and women's rights are not where they should be, surely? Yes, definitely, and doesn't mean that you don't show solidarity with those campaigns, but I don't think that Western feminism is something for women who are struggling for freedom in different parts of the world,

world to look up to. Because if you take, for example, not too far away where I'm from in Ireland, just across the pond, there's been a longstanding women's movement for abortion rights, which actually, interestingly, hasn't been that coloured by feminism. So there are feminist groups who have been campaigning for abortion rights, but on the whole, it's been a discussion about bodily autonomy, it's been a discussion about what Ireland wants the constitution to mean. It's been really the conversation has been of such a good quality, it's been so political, it's been so serious. And that's been hugely successful,

and that was fighting against some serious injustice. I mean, women were dying because they weren't being allowed the basic medical care if they couldn't fly to England to get treatment. So none of the kind of victim narrative that I'm talking about in relation to the kind of feminism we see in the UK, although it does happen in Ireland a bit more, we tend to be a bit more screwed on.

in Ireland, it didn't really touch it. And that's what I mean by saying, you can say that women being forced to cover their heads in Iran is wrong. Women being, you know, in some countries used as sex slaves and all that kind of stuff is wrong. But that doesn't mean that you need to buy into this very unproductive, very sort of self-absorbed feminism that we've got in the West.

I mean, it's a particular brand in the US and the UK of feminism that just kind of asks women to stare up their own back sides and make something political out of that. It's all about how you feel. It's all about how you value yourself as a woman. It's all about how you should be represented. It's so, so, so boring. And you've actually argued that this excessive introspection

leads to mental health problems, particularly with the young girls. I read an article that you wrote a spiked where you were talking about this. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Yeah, so I saw some shocking stats. You shouldn't always trust the stats that you read because often they've got

a kind of political motive behind them, but it is the case that we've got quite a large optic in numbers of young girls self-harming. Now, I'm sure that what's classified is self-harming isn't all people very seriously hurting themselves and putting their lives in danger. And I don't think that all means that all these women have serious mental health problems.

Teenage girls tend to flirt with that kind of thing a little bit, rightly or wrongly. Doesn't necessarily mean they have a long-lasting problem. However, that's a bit weird. Young women, not young men, but young women, are deciding to hurt themselves. And the reasons that they're giving is that they don't feel good enough, they don't feel valued enough, they feel, you know, under pressure from the image that women are seen in society.

When I was young, we still had models, we still had, you know, we didn't quite have the internet, we were just on the cusp of it, but we had magazines, I knew of beauty, standards, there was a desire to be thin when you're at school. All of that stuff still existed, but we weren't troubling ourselves with it too much. And yes, there was the odd person that would let it get to them. But today you have, in contrast, this huge push to tell young girls that they might have a problem. So you've got initiatives of, I used to work in a school, you've got initiatives of he for she, which is the UN kind of campaign, going in and talking to girls about their

body image and about how they should be respectful of themselves and how they should value themselves. And it's really just giving teenagers problems. I mean, one way to make a teenager have a complex is to tell them that they could possibly have a complex. It's like feeding them the problem. So if you're saying to young girls, society is stacked against you. Society is telling you you've got to be thin, you've got to be beautiful, you've got to have 70 plus likes on your Instagram post or you might self-harm, which is everything that I see in the news all the time is these stories and they get kind of, they get these poor girls in front of a camera, it's going to talk about how they don't, haven't felt very good about their body image.

It's so exploitative. And you're just giving them a problem. Whereas I've gone into so much trouble in the path for saying the best way to deal with a self-absorbed teenager who doesn't have a serious problem is to say, get over yourself. And this is not an interesting thing to be worried about. And yet we're just sort of indulging this rubbish and this kind of teenage fantasy, and it's having some dark consequences. Lo and behold, talk about teenagers have a problem,

and you suddenly have lots of teenagers having a problem. No, I mean, it's a very interesting point. I mean, there was the whole Me Too movement, which happened, obviously, last year, and I read some really fascinating articles on your opinion of Me Too. Where do you stand on it? Do you think it was, by and large, a positive thing, or do you think it was negative or like everything, there were positives and negatives to it?

I think from the start it wasn't a good thing, not of the opinion that it was a good intention thing that went bad. I think from the off, it had problems and it was pretty much completely based on the problematic idea that you would use social media and you would use these public platforms to kind of essentially do show trial. So yes, Harvey Weinstein, I think we can all agree, it's not a pleasant man, and that's putting it lightly.

I'm not a lawyer, I don't know the cases, but if we were having a bet in a pub, I'd say that he did do those things to those women. I don't think it's hard to believe that that was the case. However, it began with this accusation of Harvey Weinstein, which only came out because the New York Times did an expose, let's remember, not because a group of women suddenly decided they wanted to, you know, do something about this. And then immediately became something that wasn't just about Harvey Weinstein, wasn't just about one case, it became me too. And what that was when that hashtag hit the internet was saying, tell us about your experiences of abuses,

or not even tell us about the details of your experiences of abuse, just say me too. And then immediately after that, you have, had, you know, serious surveys and think pieces and, you know, political analysis using this, you know, very unsubstantial way of measuring, you know, people tweeting the words, Me Too, to say that there was this onslaught of abuse, that there was this kind of tidal wave of sexual harassment. We had this serious problem. And, you know, for anyone who's very serious about, you know, thinking sexual harassment is something terrible and wrong, that was a, it's a very bad,

thing to happen because you have the blurring of lines you have people talking about oh me too my boss once asked me out on a date that's not sexual harassment that's you know inappropriate behavior perhaps if you don't fancy him but it's but it's not sexual harassment you have people to isn't that sorry to the conversation here often it becomes difficult because isn't there a power issue there for to take your example right let's say your boss asks you out and you say no potentially there is there are consequences to that depending on how that relationship works where your refusal to go on a date with him is then connected to your opportunities for promotion, your salary pay rises, whatever, right? So isn't it about power this whole conversation? And that's why it can be

an issue when your boss asks you out on a date. No, I think that that is a power issue and that doesn't happen very often. It isn't the case that bosses are asking out their pretty young secretary's left, right and center. And then that's a power issue. And then that is a power issue. And that doesn't happen very often. It isn't the case that bosses are asking out there pretty young secretary's left right and center and then you know giving them the boot when they don't go out with them we have pretty strict laws in place that regulate the workplace i think most workplaces actually have clauses that say you can't have relationships within the you know within the office so i think it's kind of a bit dystopian as you spend most of your working life in an office with people it's kind of terrible to tell them that you can't you know get off with the christmas

party with them and and let it all out that's one of the things that's really annoyed me about the Me Too movement is that it's just a given now that, oh yes, there are abuses of power in workplaces and oh yes, bosses are doing this and it's terrible for women and it's a very dangerous situation. It's not happening. It might have happened, and it did happen actually,

in the kind of 60s and 70s, and you've had these older feminists. Anne Robinson, Dame Anne Leslie, come out and say, when I was a young reporter, when I was a young worker, people were grabbing my backside, people were putting their hands up my skirt,

people were, you know, pinning me in corners. That doesn't happen now. It did happen then. And then we had, you know, equality objectives come in to workplaces. We had legal, you know, parameters put in relation to how people can relate in the workplace. We have all these things in place. The idea that we now need more, that we now need, you know, to have affirmative consent in the workplace or that you need to have investigations into the power relations is just completely unfounded.

It isn't happening. The Me Too movement is not a movement. It was a moment, and it's got no substantial evidence to it. If, you know, I think I'm, I feel it's not a scientific analysis, but I feel pretty confident in saying we do not have an epidemic of sexual harassment in the workplace in the West. Because I think if we did, women would be doing something about it, like we did something about it 30, 40, 50 years ago.

You think this is the thing that really gets to me. Do we think women are just sort of staying quiet and being mouses and not doing anything when bad things happened to them in the workplace? And all it took was a hashtag from this celebrity to suddenly break us free. I mean, I can't be the only one who thinks, that's pretty insulting.

I do know a lot of people whose argument to that would be, well, that's exactly what's happened. Women were keeping quiet about these things because they felt like they had no power to express themselves, to share. And this hashtag and the movement that came with it was the opportunity that allowed them to go, actually, yeah, me too.

I've had that experience. I didn't talk about it because I was scared. I was worried. I didn't know what to do. I felt that I might get fired, whatever. And I know people who would say, well, this was an opportunity, this social media for women to see that actually,

for the first time, they had a chance to speak out and be heard. I don't buy it. I just don't buy it because I think if you look at the history of women's movements, And, you know, one of the great examples I was used is the four Dagenham strikers. That wasn't about sexual harassment, but it was about an abuse of power in the workplace. That internet wasn't invented then.

They didn't have celebrities backing their cause. In fact, they were demonised for wanting to be paid and valued for their work in the right way. Those were working-class women. They didn't have a great education. They didn't have a great wealth. They didn't have any of the stuff that these celebrities and columnists have at their disposal who are, you know, pushing the Me Too argument. And yet they still stood up and fought for their rights

and won their rights to, you know, not immediately, but eventually they did. And why do we think that women today don't have that kind of power? Because it's not true, they do. Why do we think that women, you know, will stand for bad behavior or will stand for injustice that we haven't ever, in the last kind of 60 years, It's been, history has shown us movement upon movement, moment upon moment of women standing up and fighting for themselves.

That's why I am totally comfortable today sitting here saying that and talking about it, because it's not controversial. So it just really rubs me the wrong way. And I think it's actually a disservice to women to say that we were waiting for the permission of a very wealthy woman in Hollywood to allow us to speak. I think, you know, as someone who really believes in women's liberation that rubs me the wrong way, as someone also actually who's a left winger that rubs me the wrong way in all ways, I think, wow, that I don't think you realise what a big statement you're making when you say that's the case, that women's silence was broken by Alyssa Milano.

One of the arguments that we put forward to me by a lot of women as to why me too is necessary is conviction rates of sexual assault and crime-sight rape and what women have to go through in order to report them and then it gets taken to trial and that a lot of women are simply either intimidated by the process or just cannot bear to go through and then be cross-examined about what is a horrendous experience. This is a difficult one

and we need to have more discussion about our rape laws and how situations of rape and sexual violence are dealt with. But I think the conversation about it has gone too far the other way now and that sounds terribly unsympathetic. But what I mean is that we've got movements like Believe the Victim, which was centered around a case in Ireland of two rugby players who were eventually acquitted of charges of rape. And people came out and said that they believe the victim,

that they thought that this ruling was wrong. There's been calls linked to the Me Too movement, but actually it came beforehand of liberalising the way in which we treat rape victims. now it's pretty much universal that people are called rape victims instead of complainants before our cases finally decided. Yeah, so we have a complete destruction

of the presumption of innocence and that is no good for women. I mean, that's no good for either party but that is no good for women because that's not treating your case seriously. If you are coming to the police and you have been raped or sexually abused, you've got a very serious charge against someone

and if you want justice you have to take that very seriously and that means going through quite a difficult process and that's not fair and that's not nice and I have never been raped but I can't imagine that it's in any way pleasant to have to relive that experience in front of strangers but if you are trying to put someone in jail for something wrong that they have done you have to be able to be strong enough to do that

because it's a very serious thing to do the other problem is that this is not rape but sexual abuse, sexual harassment, sexual violence are terms which have become so woolly. So you have, for example, the new law in Nottinghamshire, which came out, I think, about two years ago, which turned misogyny into a hate crime.

And that meant that, technically, under the law, men who wolf-whistled at or made comments at women in the street could be penalised under sexual harassment. Now, if we're talking about how to treat sexual violence, sexual harassment and rape and police resources and how seriously we take women, I think that's pretty damning to say that you expect the police officers to watch women as they walk down the street in case someone says, hey, sexy legs. And to put that on a spectrum and to put that in the same grouping as having to deal with someone who's been brutally raped is fundamentally wrong. I totally take that point. But I think what Francis is getting at is, if you're a woman and you have the perception, whether it's accurate or not, that your rape accusation is not going to be dealt with seriously, it's not going to be treated seriously, you're unlikely to succeed, you're going to go through a tremendous amount of trauma, relive your horrible experience. Then something like me too is an opportunity to do it anonymously, perhaps, or to join your voice with others to get attention for the fact that something happened, that you're not.

not going to get justice for through the criminal justice system. So, and I think that's kind of what Francis is getting at. So that's maybe an issue where something like me, too, or times up or whatever, do come in and play a useful role, because it gives women who feel like otherwise they don't have a chance at justice. Well, I think that's where it plays the most damaging role, because that's where you have people accusing rape and calling people rapists without a fair trial.

And as we know what happens on social media rightly or wrong, wrongly sticks. And you can have people making false accusations. The CPS in this country is currently reviewing a great many rape cases because there have been so many young men wrongly convicted. There was a guy Liam recently who was released and taking off mail because they hadn't looked at his text messages. The CPS is kind of mired in these mistakes. And that's not saying that women lie. Actually, it's a tiny, tiny, tiny minority of women. who lie, it's inconsequential. But the fact is, if you don't have a system

which fairly treats both complainants and the accused, which treats justice seriously, and is sort of beyond politics to a certain extent, not that the criminal justice system is beyond politics, but the kind of political realm of Twitter is not something that can be trusted to deal with something like a rape accusation seriously. I mean, I don't think any of us would believe a tweet as fact,

would we? So the problem is, I think, today is that that does happen. You have had, for example, Aziz Ansari, the young American actor who had this experience, sexual experience with a woman, he sounded like a bit of a bit of a pig, yeah. I mean, he's clearly... An actor being a dick, surely not. Actor and comedian. Either he's been with too many women to care, or he hasn't been with very many women at all because the way he treated her wasn't very nice, wasn't very gentlemanly. But it was consensual. She was very, very up for it because he was a star and she was pushing it. And in the morning she decided, I didn't like what happened. She texted him. He was

actually profusely apologetic, whatever. She then uses this as a me, example of Me Too. And it gets taken into this conversation about sexual harassment. He gets completely lambasted on social media. He's, he, you know, I think he pretty much lost most of his work. He's now tried to come back to work and has been rejected and people have mounted campaigns to stop him from ever working again. He didn't do anything. He was, he was bad in bed and he needs a lesson and how to, you know, treat women politely. If being bad in bed is, we're all screwed. No, but so that is, that's what happens when you leave it up to.

I miss them myself. I'm a accidental panella. Sorry. But, you know, we can laugh about that and we should, but I don't think Aziz Ansari's laughing. And, you know, it does a disservice to what we see as justice. You know, if you have been raped as a woman, this is the other point that I think matters most to me more than anything else. And that's something that someone did to you that was completely out of your control. Actually, it doesn't have very much to do with sex at all.

it's about power and it's about violence and it's the removal of your agency. I think what the Me Too movement in its almost, and I'm picking my words really carefully here, glorification of being a victim in its celebration of victimhood in the kind of like Me Too, which you can see is a good thing

in terms of women should be able to speak out about this, for sure. I'm not up for silencing anyone. But the kind of badge wearing of it. That doesn't sit right with me because if you're telling women that we should interpret this act that someone did to us that was against our will and we didn't want to be part of our identity, that you've got to kind of slap that on like a scarlet letter on your back and wear that for the rest of your life. I don't think that's how we should be dealing with rape, actually. I think that we should as much as we can encourage victims of rape men or women

to go beyond and get over that experience and live their lives as if it never happened because screw the guy or whoever did that to you and don't let him beat control you outside of that 10 minutes, hour, whatever it was, that time frame. That's the thing that I think gets me most about the Me Too movement is the celebration of victimhood, which I don't see as healthy.

Do you think it's also quite hypocritical as well in that when we see the Asia Argento case and then when she was accused of this, by, it was a minor. I know he was 17, but in terms of the United States and the law, he was seen as a minor. And I think it was Rose McGowan tweeted something about, we don't know the full facts.

Be gentle, I think, were her words. And I'm, and I was like, I agreed with certain with parts of the meeting. But when I read that, was like, well, no, you can't really say that. You can't, that's hypocritical. You can't go after one person with teeth-bed and all of a sudden,

just because somebody's your friend or connected with you, always a certain gender, gender, we have to, in inverted commas, be gentle. Yeah, I think that was, she's deleted that tweet, which, you know, because she's been so hounded by it,

by people rightly, I think. The Asia Argento story was a real moment in which you could have been like, ha ha, hypocrites, you know, told you so, this whole thing is a load of crap and revel in it. Actually, I think that the Asia Argento story is sad and it reinforces my point of how wrong the meeting movement is because we don't know

that she did that to this guy. It's what he alleges. It's a kind of closed agreement for a financial, strange kind of payoffs they have in America. So you're, other than opening a criminal case, you're never going to get to the bottom of whether or not her and Anthony Bourdain, her boyfriend at the time, paid this guy out the kind of sort of the heart or whether they were shutting her up because she had sex with him. Unfortunately for her, there have now been some leaked text messages that shows that she was boasting about having sex with him.

So, you know, she probably did have sex with him. But the point is you don't have the full facts and suddenly she is now the accused, and she is the enemy and she's evil and she's terrible, she's an abuser. You know, who knows? I would sort of looking at that objectively think, why wouldn't he want to have sex with a good-looking celebrity?

You know, this doesn't necessarily have to be abuse. There's a whole range of different outcomes for this. And yet we've boiled it down to the accused and the accuser and the wrong and the right. And that's why Me Too is so unjust. Not just because Rose McGowan is hypocritical in her treatment of those who are accused. I mean, she's not alone in that. Lena Dunham was rightly trounced for, you know, on the one hand saying, me too, was this fantastic thing,

and we should kind of blankly and blindly believe the victim. And then on the other hand, when the writer of girls was accused of rape, she was like, oh, but I know this guy and he's kind of nice. But, you know, wouldn't you, if your brother or your best friend, you'd say, well, I think, you know, I'm sticking by this person until I see the facts. Oh, if Francis ever gets accused of anything, I'm walking right out of it. But that's what we've lost, the presumption of innocence. And even though Asia Argento is, you know, I don't know the woman,

but I think that she's politically suspect, what she's done in relation to the media movement and all this kind of a pining about, it's pretty disgusting. Now that you've seen that she is sort of a kind of hypocrite in relation to this case. None of that really matters. What matters is the destruction of the presumption of innocence in this. I think Asia Argento's case is fueling that, and I see it still as kind of problematic.

so I'm not reveling in her downfall. Actually, I think it's part of the problem. This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures. What if a Pacific octopus held the key to a mystery that could heal your heart? Well, that's Tova's reality. An elderly widow working at an aquarium. Tova forms an unlikely friendship with the cramudgeonly, Marcellus, whose remarkable intelligence leads her to a life-changing discovery.

Watch remarkably bright creatures with your remarkable moms this Mother's Day weekend. Only on Netflix May 8th. Well, I do think the hypocrisy is important. I mean, you see it right now with the conversation on the Labour Party about anti-Semitism. And I see it all the time. People who are on what I call the loony left, right? There are straight white people very often explaining to Jews

what anti-Semitism is about and stuff like that. Whereas if it happened to any other minority, they would be instantly shutting those people down going, oh, you're white-splaining, you're mansplaining, you're this-splaining or that's-plaining. But for some reason, when it comes to certain people, it's okay for other people to, explain to them what it is to be discriminated against or whatever.

And I do think hypocrisy is a big part of all these issues is this idea that you treat different groups differently because they're different groups instead of having the same standard of equality for everybody. And I kind of do feel that that hypocrisy reveals a lot of the flaws in this way of thinking where it's all about oppression and power intersectionality instead of just going, how about we treat everybody equally?

Yeah. One of the things that I wrote in the book, which is such a great example of hypocrisy, is, and you might have to bleak this out because I want to start talking about boobs. We have no censorship. All right, I'm going to start talking about boobs. Talk about boobs, that's not going to be.

We're very much approved of them on Trigonometer. Can we just make that quite clear? So it's just such a beautiful counterposing this is. On the one hand, you've got the free-the-nipple campaign, and you've got largely, middle-class feminists talking about the fact that women are oppressed because they can't feed their child in public because society is so prudish about women's naked breasts. And you've got in support of that on Instagram, which is a largely kind of affluent middle-class social media platform,

lots of rich kids on there. And you've got these sort of lovely, skinny little young things putting up topless pictures saying, free the nipple. It's all very artsy. It's all very taste. fall, it's all very trendy, great, those kind of boobs fine. Then you've got page three, and you've got grid girls that they don't get their knockers out there, just wear nice dresses. You've got the sun, you've got glamour models, and that's bad. You know, that's oppression. That's terrible.

That kind of nakedness in women is wrong, and that's influenced by men. No, no, the kind of, you know, the picture that you put up on Instagram, which is really sexy and topless is fine because it's free the nipple. But the one that you, the Essex girl with the, you know, 34D chest puts up in, and gets 300 quid for it is wrong. And that's such a kind of hypocritical argument because what are you talking about? Are you talking about women's freedom to be naked? Are you talking about censorship? Are you talking about prudish society? Or are you talking about good boobs, bad boobs? And though that sounds like a very specific or most silly example it really gets to the heart of I think the problem with feminism because if it's working

class essex girls in the sun it's bad and if it's working class grid girls or if it's the darts girls or if it's any these kind of women who are using their bodies to work rightly or wrongly whatever your opinion on that then that's bad but if it's these more middle class women who are sort of making an artistic statement or trying to you know make a political statement about breastfeeding or whatever, even though that, I think, is bullshit, is good. And that's a class distinction. You know, it's a kind of anti-working class position

because, as Harriet Harmon said, I remember reading this fantastic article where she said, I think the Kardashians are so empowering, and they're so wonderful, you know, the Kardashians who are the kind of queens of selling their naked bodies for fame. They're brilliant. And then I think it was Pierce Morgan said to her,

But, you know, what about page three girls who are doing the exact same but for far less money? She said, no, no, no, that's terrible because they're controlled by men. And you think, what? So that's like, you know, the hypocrisy there is tantalisingly, you know, just amazing. It's such a clear way of saying this is not a movement,

feminism that cares about women's freedom. Can I just say I feel this is a very serious issue that requires further exploration and study? Yeah, when you were talking about, the free, the nipple movement. I just thought, yeah, after 10 years in a relationship, my girlfriend is not in favour of that anymore, sadly. But someone did a very, very comedian,

I can't remember who it was, did a very funny tweet about it, about the whole darts girls issue, and they said that finally, left-wing, third-way feminist will be able to enjoy darts in peace. That is funny. This video wasn't me that posted that tweet. Anyway, we touched on the gender, pay gap, what would you like to tell us about the gender page gap?

So I call it a myth and that upsets people, but it is a myth. We have the law, which says that you cannot pay men and women the different amounts of money for the same work. That's been a law for a fairly long time, is one that's on the whole respected. But then the gender pay gap is the claim that, you know, for every pound that men earn, women earn, you know, two P or something terrible. It's always, the stats are completely unreliable. And, you know, in the book I give about four different, or four or five different stats in the space of like a year that were given by different organisations, but women won't earn the same amount until 2050 or 2110 or, you know, just think, get your act together and can you all just agree on one myth and then peddle that

rather than doing all the different ones. When you look, break down any of those stats, however, you see that what gets conflated is different work skills and different hours and different job levels. So it's never the case ever that Joe and Jane, who clock in at nine and clock out at five on the same desk get paid differently because, as I said, that's illegal. It will be the case that, you know, Joe, who is working 72 hours full-time

gets paid different to Jane, who is working part-time freelance for a similar role. So there are so many things to consider. And I think it's just really disingenuous to talk about something like that without being serious about the numbers. So you had all these kind of very, very high paid, like telephone book number kind of salary, paid women in the BBC talking about the gender pay gap and how terrible it was and how, you know, oppressed they were and I bet if you said to one of them oh okay so you did what did we did we did a three hour

radio show and you got paid you know whatever hundreds or thousands for that and while you were doing that in the studio there was this Nigerian guy who was cleaning your desk and your office for three hours and he got 25 quid or 50 quid or whatever it was what about that pay gap

you know what are you actually talking about you're actually talking about people being paid fairly are you actually talking about raising wages, or you're actually talking about giving people what they need to live? No, this is a kind of very, very shallow, very self-serving attempt for some women to get pay rises and it tends to be richer women. I think it's been really used and abused. The one thing where there is pay inequality is what I call the motherhood pay gap. That's not bosses being sexist against mothers. That's not you know, even the fact that capitalism as a structure means that's one part of the family,

if there are two parts, has to stay at home and regenerate the, you know, I don't want to get into all of this with you, but you know that kind of argument. This is about the fact that because of poor access to childcare, women who have children tend to, on the whole, because it's too expensive to hire out babysitters and all that kind of thing, take time of work to raise their kids, that means they're out of the working world. And when they come back, because they have had to take time out, that doesn't mean, by the way, people don't, we don't force people to get pregnant. That is also a free choice. But when they come back, they have less opportunity. They've, they, you know, they, they don't get paid as much on the whole. And I guess you would argue that

if a man were to do that same thing, he probably would get exactly the same fatherhood gap if he was to take time apart. Yeah, because it's about access to childcare. And, and, you know, as I say, that's a very simple thing that you could fix very quickly. I argue for, and I think Spike to argues, for free access to 24-hour good quality childcare on demand. Very simple. There's something like the NHS that the state could provide. Why not?

But instead, you've got this kind of bullshit about women being oppressed in the gender pay gap. And it's just another case in which you're just having the completely wrong conversation. You're having this sort of fantasy conversation about sexism and work, when you could be doing this really concrete thing, which is addressing one of the key things that stops women from going back to work or having a good sort of quality of time at work.

But no, let's carry on paddling the myth about the gender pay gap. And, you know, some great facts out there are that women in their 20s and 30s are out-earning men. You could say that's a good thing. You could say that's a bad thing. It's happening. So it means that women in their 20s and 30s aren't being hindered, by their sex or by their gender.

We've got more women going into all different types of workplaces. There's been this big push for women in STEM. Women are flooding into STEM. I don't think necessarily off the back of government-funded pushes, but just because they're interested in it, it's, you know, the world is open. As a woman, there's no area in which you will kind of be stopped because you are a woman.

The one highest in the stats of gender pay gap, the one highest industry, which I think is a terrible shame, was construction. You know, what are we going to say? There's no women in construction, when women get badly paid in construction. I wonder why that is. I used to work with my dad, who was a building. It's backbreaking work. Most women can't do it or don't want to do it, you know,

because you need to be a big burly guy like my dad was. So it's just ridiculous. I mean, it's utterly ridiculous. That is an interesting part of this whole fight for equality, that it always seems to be a fight for equality in all the best bits, isn't it? So there's very little fighting for equality in the bin men or the bin person industry. You know, women are not really clamouring to be emancipated on that, right? So it's all about TV jobs, radio jobs, you know, banking, whatever.

And it destroys, I mean, this kind of discussion and this gendering of this debate destroys workplace solidarity. So for most workers who, like you said, aren't in the media, aren't in these kind of high-flying, highly paid jobs, your working experience, you want to have solidarity, or if you, like me, believe in workers' power, you want to have solidarity between men and women. So you don't want to have a meeting about the fact that everyone's getting a pay cut

and, you know, you're going to mobilize skill and strike. And then some of the women say, oh well actually we want to have our own thing because this is going to affect us differently when it isn't when you should be banding together that's i think something damaging for anyone who actually cares in about workers rights and you've got this in other areas i mean quotas and um and sort of to to give women leg ups to separate women out from men and workplaces to say they are different they need to have a different say in the boardroom or they need to have a different position utterly destroys the idea of workplace solidarity.

I mean, it is a fact that if you are a, you know, let's take two Tesco workers in Tottenham, one's a man and one to women, they're pretty much going to have the same in common in relation to their working life, their experience at work, probably even their political desires at work, the idea that that woman would have any kind of solidarity with Carrie Grace at the BBC

or, you know, is trash. Of course it's not. And why are you saying that that should be the case? I'm curious, what is it like being you, having these opinions publicly? When I'm on Twitter or any kind of place like that, it's sometimes rough because people are very intolerant to it. I think the tone of the debate, certainly around feminism or any of these kind of sacred cows today, is so vicious.

So if you voice opinion that's critical of it, people say I've been called a rape apologist, I've been called a misogynist, all of that kind of stuff, which, you know, hurts because of something I care very deeply about women's liberation, and that's, you know, I would never want to be associated with anything like that. But outside of that, you know,

where I'm among my friends, when I go out, when I'm, you know, I'm just living. And outside of the online world, it's fine because, like I said, most people, I think, are a bit sick of the tone of the debate. And, you know, whether I'm talking to the women that I do exercise classes with at the Serbel Centre and Holloway, or whether it's my mum's mates or anyone,

we can have sensible discussions about this and we can have sensible disagreements about it. It's when I get put on a panel with, you know, whoever... Kate's Markway. Yeah, we do not get on. Not a week. She's blocked him on Facebook a long time. Yeah, well, any kind of, any sort of what I call the professional feminists who have a stake in their career in being this kind of belligerent, then it gets a bit heated.

But I'm fine with that because I really, really believe in this and I really want to see a world in which women are completely free. And this is the main reason why I've spent so bloody long arguing about this. And some days I do get really sick of it. But it's because I think there's so much at stake. We've still got so much to gain, especially in relation to you know, abortion rights, these kind of big issues, we should stop wasting time on this crap of like, you know, whether or not the air conditioning in a building and its levels set to colder for men and, you know, is sexist, or which is one thing I once debated when I was younger.

Well, I'm glad to report to anyone watching this. Our studio is always incredibly fucking hot. So we are anti-sexist that trigger nootry in terms of our own temperature. Just cut the crap and talk about what it is you actually want. how about listen to some women who have something to say and stop kind of taking your cue of the situation of women from these very middle class, very politically suspect feminists, I think. One thing that I really admire you for is the way you speak out because there is a culture of fear now.

And there just simply is. And where people who don't believe in the status quo or certain movements, they do feel that they will be publicly shamed. I've seen women online. make reasonable points against me too. And then they just get shut down and they get these epithets thrown against them. I mean, what do you think ultimately is a solution to this?

Do you think it's more people coming out? Is it... I mean, what can we do? Because at the moment it feels like there's a sort of mob mentality, especially online. I think it's just more debate and that sounds like a very wishy-washy way to deal with some very real things that are happening,

like people being hounded off social. media or people being, having insults held at them or whatever it is, being shut out of discussions. But it's just to keep reiterating the fact that, you know, even if you're a whatever extreme of the end of discussion you're on to have free speech, that's why I'm a kind of free speech absolutist as what we call it at Spight, is saying that there is no opinion that shouldn't be heard. And so even if you, you know, sometimes for my sins, I decided to delve into for some debates with some men's rights activists, you know, just for the hell of it on Twitter.

But just because I think I want to know what you guys are up to. I want to know what's coming from this strange corner of the internet. So that, you know, if anyone ever ask about it, I know what's going on. In the same way that I want to know what, you know, whatever feminist is written in The Guardian, also whatever kind of reactionary has written in, you know, the male or the conservative woman or anything like that,

It's, you know, you have to have, if you want to have any kind of healthy political debate, you have to allow everyone to have their say on it. But then you also have to pass judgment, I think. So the one thing that I would say that comes after free speech is being open about your views and passing judgment. So you don't just kind of say, we can all have a discussion, every view is equal.

No, not every view is equal. My view is much better than your view. And here's why. Yeah, and here's why. And here's why. And more importantly, let me convince you. This is how these kind of things,

why these things are useful, this is how society develops, right? It's not just that some people decided, right, this is the way we're going to go and that's it, without question. It develops through argument, through struggles, sometimes it goes backwards, sometimes it leaps forwards.

But without, this is a thing that we've forgotten, without free speech and without free debate, you just stand still, or you just sort of agree that any of the, and that's why we've got to the position where feminism is, a kind of, it's like blaspheming if you speak out against feminism. This thing that wasn't invented, that wasn't an idea,

you know, 40 years ago, is now the unquestioned kind of God-given sacrament that you cannot even criticise to the kind of most tiny extent. That is bizarre, you know, and that's when it becomes dogma. Feminism has become dogmatic. It's like, you know, you cannot question it. and the people who are setting the tone of what feminism means are so unrepresentative, so unrepresentative of the population of women in this society.

I think that's just terribly wrong. One thing that I always find interesting is when people use the word oppressed, I'm oppressed, this culture of oppression. As somebody who has family in Venezuela, I'm like, really, are you oppressed? You know, are Debenam's really oppressing you by saying that you're, you know, you're a size 14?

Or, you know, is a jumper really oppressive? because I have to fit into a large now. Do you know, all these different things? And I just sometimes think that we take these words and we twist them until the original meaning of the word is actually lost. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's very hard to look at anything like that seriously.

Oppression, abuse. We've got now, especially in relation to the whole discussion about sexual harassment, this new phrase came up, sexual misconduct. What does that mean? I mean, what does sexual misconduct mean? It could mean anything. It literally could mean anything.

In the same way that now oppression can mean anything. And you get the example of Venezuela. I mean, you've got people being lined up and shot as an oppression. That's the kind of worst kind of oppression when your life is being threatened if you don't tow the line. And then you've got people talking about, you know, the cultural appropriation discussion in the West where Kim Kardashian wearing a certain set of braids

is oppressive to whatever people who supposedly own braids. So how can you have a serious discussion about this? And you want to have serious discussions about oppression. It's a real thing that happens in the world still. It's a real thing that sometimes happens in this country still, too. Well, that's why I was going to bring up while we focus on these side issues, as you said before, actually, this was one issue we talked about before we started the show. There are serious issues happening in this country and this culture of fear around speaking out, political correctness, not offending people does mean, you know, I told you, we wanted to have Sarah Champion on the show,

who's an MP who spoke out about the grooming gangs and Rotheraima and other areas. And, you know, she said, look, I wouldn't feel comfortable after, probably after what happened to her when she spoke out. And we have a very international issue. So first of all, you wrote about this. So can you tell our audience

who might not know anything about it? And actually, I became quite aware that when Americans hear, like, about grooming gangs, it's such a weird way of talking about. No one even knows what it means. So can you just lay that out and kind of your thoughts about how that's happened. Okay, so what happened, it's an incredibly complicated case.

So just to really sort of boil it down, essentially in certain parts of the North in the UK, there was sections of, it was in Rochdale, in Rotherham, and in some other parts of, I think it was Yorkshire, there were groups of grooming gangs who are essentially groups of men who groom predominantly young women, and get them through the abuse of drugs or through threats to be essentially sex slaves for them. And they were prostituting out some of these women,

but they were certainly raping them on a mass scale. So we're talking about thousands and thousands of young girls. Yes, yes. It was, it's kind of, I actually don't think a number has been put on it specifically because the cases are still ongoing and they are unearthing new cases now. But this was allowed to happen, allowed to happen. it seems because the police were very nervous about prosecuting or opening up a case about some of these men

because some of them, not all of them, but quite a large proportion of them, were British Pakistani men. And Sarah Champion was an MP in one of the areas. And what she came out and said was she'd had some complaints from some of her constituents. There were some women who went to social services. Some of these girls were very, very young. some of them I think were even as young as 14 and they had made complaints to the police they had made complaints to social services

Sarah Champion was pushing to get an investigation into what was going on and I think what she said and certainly what came out of it was that she was told that because of a fear of a backlash of racism against the Pakistani communities in these areas that they weren't going to investigate this and they were just essentially going to ignore it

and as a consequence lots of predominantly white working class young girls were systematically raped and abused. There have been some recognition of this in relation to there was a kind of BBC drama about it, there's been some discussion about it in the news. However, it was sort of this all broke at the same time as Me Too happened.

And I'm telling you the contrast between the airtime that Me Too got and the air time that the Rotherman-Rochstale Scandals got was astonishing how different it was. This really wasn't something that people wanted to talk about. And I mean, you've got a national discussion about rape and sexual harassment, and then you have a huge example of the systematic rape of very young girls, and you can't put two and two together. And I don't really know how to feel about it, because I don't think it's that people don't see this as wrong.

I don't think that it's that people don't understand that it doesn't matter what race or ethnicity, what kind of person you are, that raping someone is wrong. But I think it's interesting in a kind of very dark way that essentially a fear of political correctness or a fear of giving offence in relation to racism in the Pakistani communities meant that there was a weighing up of justice and that, like you said, thousands of girls did not get the justice. Do you think a large part of it

is the fear of having your personal reputation tarnished and being seen to be racist or being tolerant or be Islamophobic but essentially perpetuated these young girls unfortunately being sexually abused and raped? I think that definitely plays a part of it. I mean, as a public official, whether you're a social worker or a police officer

or someone in a position of authority who's meant to have a responsibility to a community. You have to not be... You have to not be afraid to put your neck on the line and you have to not be afraid to kind of go to the dark places that maybe some cases might take you. So there was no reason why you couldn't, at the same time as say,

the reality is large groups of Pakistani men are raping large groups of white working class girls and say, by the way, that doesn't mean that every Pakistani men in the UK is a rapist. Because he's not. Yeah. Why would you make that? Why would that link be made? And if that link was made by certain racist people in the UK,

you would argue against that. But that takes guts, because that means, you know, that means saying that you're going to make a very principled stand on something. And they didn't. They chickened out of doing that. and as a consequence, you had terrible tragedies happen. So the kind of, yes, the fear of PC can have very, very dark consequences. And it means that people can't, you can't get to the truth.

So sometimes the truth is what you don't want to hear. And in the fact in this case, it was something, you know, clearly quite racially loaded. You can ask questions about why it was, that it was predominantly this group of people that did this, without at the same time saying that you then mount a nationwide racist campaign against the Pakistani community. I don't see why they think that was not possible. And do you think also as well that the authorities refusing to deal with this issue head-on as them fuel the rise of the far right and people like Tommy Robinson

and who say, well, you know, you're not going to get justice through traditional means. The only way you're going to get it is through supporting me. and I will help you. It's a gift to them to do this because what you're saying is, yeah, you're right. The British police are biased against their protection of these groups. They aren't going to go to the truth,

so you have to join us, and we're going to get together and get in the back of vans and go and sort out these communities. I mean, why would you want to emboldened that point of view? What you want to say is, as a society, we have generally liberal and good and decent attitudes to justice and to the truth.

and we don't need people like you going around and capitalizing off this. Anytime you censor any kind of difficult discussion like this, and any time you say, this is too hot to handle, it's too hot to talk about, especially in relation to free speech with someone like Tommy Robinson, or you can't criticize Islam, or you can't talk about the burqa, or you can't talk about anything like this, then what they say is, ha ha, we told you, you know, this is what they're trying to do is they're trying to hide it from you.

There's this fantastic example as Alex Jones. They're kind of horrible... I actually find him funny. He's so mad. There's been... Someone set his rants to a Bon Iva song and it like works perfectly because he's just like talking about

eating babies and smelling of cell phone and like that kind of stuff. Anyway, he's been banned off Twitter and if you look at his website InfoWars or anything like that, all he's talking about is the fact that he's been banned. And this is... why people love him. It's like, what are you doing? If you want to actually beat him, all you have to

do is say, for example, his conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook massacre didn't happen, all you should have to do is say, shall we take a trip to the graves of the kids that died? And we can show you that they are, you know, that why they died and we have the fact, you are wrong. By banning those kind of ideas, by saying that they're too dangerous for people to even see or read, obviously the question then is, why, what are they saying? Is there some truth to it? You know, it's just a total gift to the right. I think that's the thing with, like,

it seems often the idea that conversations around free speech, they're academic to a lot of people. They're just these people sitting in a room talking about it because they've got nothing better to do. But when it comes to something like Rotherham and Rodgerald and all these things, you see the practical consequences of not allowing difficult conversations to happen in public. And they have an impact on, you know, a very significant.

significant, terrible, terrible impact on thousands of young people. Yeah, not just those examples, but it has a real impact on how people associate with each other. So if you push a culture in which people are afraid to speak openly for fear of being told that they're, you know, in breach of hate speech laws or, you know, that they're even on low-level stuff that they kind of get called a racist on Twitter, which, you know, might not necessarily affect them anywhere outside of Twitter, but isn't very pleasant. What you mean is you have a society where people don't speak. open to each other. You know, you can make jokes about the fact that we are now becoming a sort of bystander society,

you know, when I find it fascinating. And when things happen, people always filming on their phones rather than getting involved. But all this stuff is having a knock on effect. There's some changes that you can kind of feel in relation to how people relate to each other. People are much more cautious, you know, less likely to talk to each other, less like to say stop it, less like to say to support each other. And so then you don't want to get to a position where people are so afraid of each other that we don't interact and we become a kind of society of very

individualized, you know, anti-social people. That would be a very, very bad thing to happen. And if you clamp down on free speech, that is what's going to happen. This episode is brought to you by Ultima Replenisher. Health is all about balance, like a salad with fries. So why not have balance in your hydration? With six essential electrolytes and no junk, Ultima provides balanced hydration you can enjoy every day. That means no sugar, calories, or carbs, and it's not loaded with sodium. Just delicious plant-based flavors you'll actually look forward to drinking. Shop Ultima on Amazon or in store at Target and Whole Foods Market.

Well, speaking of things that don't get talked about, our last question always is, what is the one thing that no one's really talking about that we ought to be talking about? When I say we, I don't mean just us, I mean society in general. Well, it has been, the thing that I want to raise is has been talked about and it hasn't. And it's abortion rights. It's something that's very, very close to my heart and is something I care about deeply. And we just had in Ireland a fantastic win for women's liberation in relation to the repealing of the Eighth Amendment, which was a very, very archaic law in the constitution, piece of the constitution,

which said that women weren't allowed to have abortions even if they were about to die essentially. And that's been repealed. Ireland is now in the process, a very lengthy and terrible process, of rewriting some new laws. But in the UK, what people don't know, and lots of women who call themselves feminists

and, you know, opine about women's abortion, don't know, is that in the UK abortion, it's illegal, technically. So under our laws, it is legal for women to have abortions if they convince two doctors of their need and that need has to be in terms of either a threat to the mental health or the physical health of the woman. So you've got to prove it's going to turn you mad or kill you if you have this baby. And the law is only the 1967 Act really only works to protect doctors from criminalisation. So we still have a situation in which there's now abortion pills, which women are taking online, that's illegal, these kind of things. So people don't know that.

They don't know that by law, women's bodies are not their own. And if you go to a doctor and you want to get an abortion, because most doctors in this country are very good and believe in women's health will not necessarily say to you, so prove to me that you're going to be mentally ill. It's relatively easy, but the fact is by law it is still illegal. and we can talk about, you know, women's liberation. We talk about feminism from the point of view that your body should be your own bodily autonomy. And if we really, really believe that women, we can trust women to make decisions, then we should change that fact. So I think that we should be anyone who's at all interested in women's liberation

should be pushing for the decriminalization of abortion. And that means that abortion will be available as early as possible, but as late as necessary. Without condition, you don't ask her whether or not it's because she doesn't like the sex, wherever or not it's because she's already got 25, nobody has 25 children, whether she always has five children,

whatever the reason, it's her decision. People get very, very upset when I talk about that because they feel very strongly that abortion is a wrong. It's not about whether abortion is a right or wrong. it's about whether or not women should have control over their bodies. There's such a difficult issue, though, abortion, isn't it? Because on the one hand, I mean, the evidence is there, actually allowing women to access to abortion,

not just in terms of their individual autonomy and everything else, but from a societal point of view, it massively cuts crime because women generally know when they're not really in a position to have and bring up the child that they could potentially do. On the other hand, I mean, it is a human life, right? at some point, right? And it's such a difficult issue. I have no idea where I stand on it

because it's very difficult. But, you know, when I hear you say as late as necessary, I'm a bit like, you're talking about nine months. You know, it's a difficult, difficult issue, isn't it? Well, that is qualified by the fact that the number of women who get late abortions is tiny

because it involves a very, very painful and traumatic thing, which I'm not going to go into, but you can imagine what that involves. It involves giving birth to, to something which is no longer living. The idea that women are cavalier about doing that is mad. And so that is not, but the point is, that will only happen in cases when it needs to happen.

And when it needs to happen is when that woman needs it to happen. That is the principled line and the sand you have. I mean, I know you said it's a very difficult issue. For me, it's just such a simple issue, is that if you value women as individuals in society as free agents in society, their decisions, their needs, their rights come above the rights of the fetus.

And it's their bodies, it's their decision. When that life exists outside of them, that is a different matter. That's why we don't allow women to, not that they do, but we don't allow women to murder children. That's why that's illegal. When it's inside someone's body,

it's a whole different discussion. Right, and on that note, thank you very much for coming in, Ella. Is there anything that you would like to promote or plug, maybe your Twitter, handle, your book and all the rest of it? So you can find me on Twitter at, I need to change it, at Ella underscore M underscore Wheelan. Well, we'll put it in the video so people will be able to find it. My book is called What Women Want, Fun Freedom and an End to Feminism.

And if you like, pink, it's pink. And if you like hearing some alternative, to what's going on with feminists and today give it a read perfect thank you so much for coming on great interview all right well listen guys if you've enjoyed it this week as I'm sure you have subscribers always to our channel click that bell button next to the subscribe button on YouTube so you get notified when we release a video follow us at TriggerPod on Twitter on Instagram on our Facebook page share the clips that we put out every week and as always give us

suggestions for guests you'd like us to talk to thanks a lot guys and hopefully see you next week.