Woman's Hour - Alison Lapper, HRT Shortage & Women in Space

Episode Date: December 14, 2019

The artist Alison Lapper talks about her latest exhibition featuring a painting of her son Parys who died this summer aged just 19.Why is there a shortage of HRT in the UK? The investigative journalist Emma Hartley who writes for the online magazine Tortoise told us what she has discovered.The first British astronaut Helen Sharman, Dr Varsha Jain, a gynaecological researcher interested in the impact of spaceflight and zero gravity on the human body, and Liz Seward, a senior space strategist at Airbus, discuss the future of women in space.We hear about the case involving Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been defending her country against allegations of genocide at the UN International Court of Justice in the Hague. Our correspondent in The Hague Anna Holligan tells us the latest.How should parents talk to teenagers about losing their virginity? Flo Perry the author of How to have Feminist Sex and Rachel Fitzsimmons, the sex educator and lecturer in sexual health at the University of Lancashire discuss.Three students Bukunmi, Osose and Hannah discuss the impact of ‘racist’ hair regulations at their school Townley Grammer in London. Their English Teacher Lauren Binks talks about how she worked with students to get rid of the hair regulations and Emma Dabiri the author of ‘Don’t Touch My Hair’ talks the history and politics around black hair.Presented by: Jane Garvey Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Beverley Purcell

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, good afternoon. Welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. This week, the future of women in space, how to talk to teenagers about losing virginity, and the artist Alison Lapper reflecting on life with her son Paris, who died this year. I remember Paris used to say to me, Mummy, why are people staring?

And I'd be like, because you're beautiful. And then I'd go, no, I've got to actually tell you the truth here. It's because, you know, Mummy's different and, you know, you're on my lap and things like that. So our dynamic was very different maybe to other people's because I couldn't put my arms around him. He had to come to me if he fell over. The artist Alison Lapper and black girls from a school in London

on the effects of hair regulation policies. Sometimes we'll be given detentions for having the colours in our hair if they weren't natural or we would be told to take them out even though it took hours and a lot of time to put it in our hair and to make it look beautiful. More on that in this edition of Weekend Woman's Hour. But we start this week with HRT and there were headlines in the summer about shortages of it in Britain. Nobody really seemed to know why it was happening and why it particularly seemed to affect the UK. Emma Hartley, a journalist, was equally baffled, which is why she started an investigation for the

online news platform Tortoise. I have to say that it took me about five weeks before I got to the point where I could answer that question because I started with all of the things that people were already talking about. So shortages of precursors coming from China, issues with individual products. And there turned out to be a grain of truth in most of the theories that had been put forward. But what kept foxing me was that if this stuff was the answer, then why the HRT shortage is so much worse in the UK than they are everywhere else, according to the British Menopause Society. That's the mystery, isn't? Yes and also you know all the anecdotal evidence points towards when women go abroad they can pick up absolutely everything they want in quite large quantities so it does seem to be

specific to the UK and I was sent a document after I'd been looking into this for about five weeks which was a bit of a revelation basically because it was an NHS document to do with the drugs tariff. And it showed that 15 HRT drugs had been added to the drugs tariff. Can you just define drugs tariff? It's the price that the NHS will pay to pharmacies for individual products. And obviously the NHS is a big, big purchaser of drugs and therefore presumably can get things at pretty decent low prices, some would say. Well, on a good day, that's one of the benefits of it

because it does have enormous purchasing power so it has the capacity to drive prices down slightly and to get a good deal for the NHS. But on this particular occasion, things seem to have gone wrong because it looks as if when they purchased or when they pegged the price of these drugs on their drugs tariff they simply pegged it too low so there were 15 drugs that went onto the list starting on the 1st of June last year so 2018 which was about four months before the shortages started 15 drugs all on the same day and it looks as if they just pegged the price too low so that

the invisible hand of the market did the rest. So they did it without thinking through the possible impact of it? Well, they did it according to the Department for Health and Social Care because the price on the international market was volatile. So all of these drugs were actually... They went on a list called Category C, which is for branded drugs that are no longer under patent

so they're not generic which is when they're really cheap you know when you can buy aspirin for two pence and boots and that kind of thing but these are all drugs which are still being bought as branded drugs for the UK market

so potentially the manufacturer has the whip hand when it comes to the prices but they went on and they were pegged at a certain level and four months later the shortages started. Now I think that what has happened is that that four-month period represents the length of time that it took for the wholesalers' shelves to empty.

Right, of stock they already had. We should say the Department of Health and Social Care were not able to give us a response at the moment. They said they will do shortly. Obviously there's been a period called purdah while the election takes place. Yes, you're rolling your eyes, but it's a real thing. And it does mean that decisions aren't made, statements aren't given during this time. But they had two months before that started as well. And then the Conservatives have had, sorry, two weeks before that started. And the Conservatives have had two weeks since it started to answer this. So your theory is, I mean, are you suggesting

there's a conspiracy against middle-aged women? You don't quite go that far, do you? What do you think is, is it just inefficient or thoughtless or is there something more worrying at work here? I think what it shows is that there's a kind of institutional lack of interest in women's issues, basically. It doesn't necessarily show that they did it on purpose, although I'm sure it was somebody's job to keep an eye on these prices and to keep them updated. But that doesn't seem to have happened because I've been told that the price hasn't been changed on the drugs list, on the tariff since last year. So despite having had 14 months of shortages since then, nobody at the Department of Health seems to have looked and thought, oh, maybe we were responsible for that, and who have actually acted on it. So they haven't done that, which suggests just a lack of interest,

basically. I would hesitate to go any further, but it's difficult to be sure. Well, don't the brands or the drug companies themselves have a role to play here? They could alter their prices, couldn't they? they well they do but um ultimately every commercial company is interested in selling their drugs where they can get the highest price for it and as i say what it looks as if what's happened here is if the nhs has simply said the only price we're prepared to pay is one that is lower than the rest of europe and i suppose some people listening, perhaps cynically, will be thinking if this were a drug that wasn't something that only women took, different sets of decisions may have been taken. Well, yes. I mean, the other serious points we made here is that the second drug on the list of the shortages is contraception. So it does look like there's a pattern there.

Right. So are you suggesting there might at some point be a shortage of contraception? Well, there already are shortages of contraception. If you ask the individual pharmacies which drugs they're having trouble getting hold of, contraception is second on the list. Right. You mean tablets? I believe so, yes. So we're talking purely about what we call the pill? Yes. Right. And when you, you've obviously spent,

I know it's taken you a long, long time to get answers to any of your questions. You sense a real defensiveness, do you, here? Well, I couldn't get a response from anybody, you know, in the government. And there's another, well, you see, this decision was made by the Department of Health. And specifically, it says on the document

that the minister, the Secretary of State State is responsible for the drugs tariff. So it was Jeremy Hunt, when the changes were made, and then Matt Hancock, when the shortages came in. But there's also another organisation called the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee. And they, in tandem with the Health Department, make this decision. I tried very hard to get a statement out of both of these organisations and neither of them would speak to me. That is Emma Hartley. And emails from you and from Roger.

I'm a community pharmacist and I'm battling with HRT and other drug shortages on a daily basis. The problem with HRT is particularly acute and the impact on the daily lives of women who've often had to battle to get it is really difficult. Manufacturers tell me the situation isn't likely to improve until March at the earliest. So still a certain amount of mystery surrounding that. We did hear from listeners on Friday who were having trouble getting hold of contraception as well. So if

that has been you, let us know. Keep the emails coming via our website, bbc.co.uk forward slash Women's Hour. In October, there was a much celebrated first all-female spacewalk. It did actually come about after a certain amount of publicity about the lack of female spacesuits, but nevertheless, it did happen. So we asked this week what the future holds for women in space. Are there still barriers? When will the first woman set foot on the moon? Helen Sharman was one of our guests, Britain's first astronaut, of course, who went to Mir, the Russian space station in 1991. I also talked to Dr Varsha Jain, who's a gynaecological researcher interested in the physiological impact of spaceflight on the human body, and to Liz Seward, who's a senior space strategist at Airbus. Here she is outlining NASA's plans for the not to the moon, it's called the Artemis Programme, and it includes the Deep Space Gateway, a space station in orbit around the moon. And so they're building an enormous rocket to get people into orbit,

and then the Orion capsule, which will take astronauts to the moon. And then they plan to land people by 2024. So the big American rhetoric is it'll be the first American woman and the next American man. But we hope that there'll be some other nationalities along as well. Well, you might hope. Will there be? Well, it will be an international effort. So the Orion capsule, the service module, is being built by the European Space Agency, actually by Airbus in Germany, with some British engineers' help.

So we're involved. And the project manager of that is actually a lady called Valerie Cadet. So we have European involvement, but we hope that we can get European astronauts as well through ESA, through the European Space Agency. Now, Donald Trump has many critics. There are many listeners to this programme who don't like the cut of his jib, to put it mildly.

But the man is keen on space and keen on American adventure and achievement in space, isn't he? What has he actually said? We had a programme that was aiming to get people to the moon and then to Mars, but Donald Trump has really accelerated it. So it had ambitions to get people there by the end of the 2020s. But he said, no, by 2024, I want boots on the moon is the phrase that they use a lot. And so it's really energised the space industry, the space sector to deliver this. So it's moving

very fast. The danger is, can we do it sustainably? If we're going to do it in such a hurry, can we do it so that we can learn to live and work so far from Earth? But if we can do that, then it's great for space exploration. Helen, do you feel that there has been a re-energising by Donald Trump of the whole space business? I think, yes, as Liz said, he's certainly rejuvenated and accelerated

what's been going on, but I think there's a lot of, the pragmatists, in fact, a lot of my astronaut colleagues would say really, in actual fact, knowing the detail of what actually has to happen. Sadly, 2024 is a little bit too quick. But what we really do need to do, as I said, it's that sustainable thing. We've got to go back to the moon and do it in a way.

It's not just to put boots on the moon while Trump is still the president, if he's going to win another election. We need to do that in a way that will actually enable us to go to Mars. Otherwise, it's essentially wasted money. And he does mean American boots, doesn't he, actually? Yes. It would be great to have some European, and wouldn't it be great if we had British boots? Tim, it would be fabulous if Tim Peake could go back.

Tim Peake could go back. I think we were chatting earlier on. I think it's possible. It would be great if he could. Britain still doesn't fund human spaceflight hugely with ANISA. And there'll be a lot of people with with ANISA who would argue strongly against it being a British astronaut that goes to the moon. But it's it's certainly possible. And he's got another flight coming up towards the end of the next schedule. Now, I believe you're very keen on why wouldn't be, on talking positively about women in terms of space exploration. Do you particularly notice things like the first all-female spacewalk?

Is it significant or is it something we should just say, OK, well, we've done that now, let's move on? I think before NASA advertised that they were going to have an all-woman spacewalk, I hadn't noticed that there had not been one. And I think that was the case for most of us in the world. Fair enough. Because it wasn't really a big deal. We've had women doing spacewalks all over the place. The longest spacewalk was done jointly by a woman and a man. That just has been the case for years. And I think because NASA heralded it, then we all got a bit excited about it.

And then, of course, when we realised why it didn't happen originally, because there hadn't been the right number of the right size spacesuits that were configured correctly at the right time. And then we all started to wonder about the hardware. And of course, then we've got a bit of the history to think about why have there been fewer women than there might have been in space. So Varsha, you have looked at women's physiology, gynecology in particular. Why would it be a problem for women to go into space? So generally, men and women adapt to the space environment in

pretty much the same way when they do go up but there are subtle differences between that adaptation process. Overall so women get more entry motion sickness than male astronauts, men have more hearing problems and vision problems when they're in space but overall there haven't been that many human beings in space and so we just don't have the data in order to understand the exact physiological differences. Yes, it's actually less than 1000 people, isn't it? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, probably about 65 women in space in total. So not that many at all. Well, what were the concerns about female physiology then?

So initially, there was about a 20-year gap between Valentina Tereshkova going up into space and then the first American astronaut going up into space. And the problem was, as the thought processes, what would happen to the reproductive organs, what would happen to periods in space? And they very soon found out that essentially periods occur in exactly the same way in space as they do on Earth.

So there weren't any problems there. And ever since then, women have adapted and been able to work and live in that space environment just as well as men have. Presumably, though, a woman, a female astronaut, could just have taken the contraceptive pill and stopped periods for the duration of a space trip. Exactly. And that's the work that I was doing at King's College London and looking at how women astronauts are stopping their periods and they do that in a very safe way because that's all targeted towards their health and that can bring forward sort of lessons to what

we have for women on earth also working in extreme environments who may want to be stopping their menstrual cycles for work purposes or personal reasons as well. There was a great story I I think, wasn't there, about the number of tampons supplied to a female astronaut. How many again was it? It was 200 for Sally Ride for her first flight, just in case she had a period. That is quite a period, isn't it? Imagine needing 200 tampons. Helen, I wonder whether when you were first told that you were going into space, what was your immediate concern?

Did you have worries about health, future health? Any worries on that score? I wasn't concerned. I knew my mission was very, very short term. There'd been plenty of other people flying for short term missions and some for very long term missions. And for me, it was, if you like, the risk was worth it because of the amazing things I was going to be able to do and experience while I was there. And when you got back, was your first appointment with a doctor to check you over? Yes. As soon as we were dragged out of the spacecraft, we go into a big tent that's erected actually at the London site in Kazakhstan. And then, yes, we get sort of a quick medical debriefing, as it were. In fact, even before then, they're doing blood pressure tests on us.

So, yeah, the doctors have a quick look over and then we when we get back to star city or wherever nowadays it's wherever space agency you you happen to be then the doctors will do very very in-depth study on people's bodies and you were able to stand up you were walking yeah i mean my mission was it was a short one so i wasn't completely space adapted which meant when I came back I could stand very easily whereas the people who I came back with had been in space for six months so they would have felt much more faint much more dizzy than me they would have been physically weaker their bone and muscle mass would have dropped much more than mine yeah so you're right so the differences are not between women and men they are between individuals aren't they that's what

we want to focus on the thing is that there are the differences between individuals are huge so for instance bone mass difference for six months are in weightless conditions and the difference in your bone mass can be like you can lose two percent of it or over 20 percent of it individuals that's huge whereas if you look at the differences between let's say the um an average woman an average man or where the median and one another leg exists um there's huge overlap So I think what's really important is to look at those basic physiological, psychological characteristics, perhaps the skills and abilities that we have as individuals. It's that personal stuff, the criteria we need rather than categorising people somehow. Let's say then we're going to go to the moon again quite soon,

Liz and Varsha. Varsha, what about Mars, which is the next stop on our intergalactic highway in terms of humanity's journey? Will it happen in our lifetime and will women be involved? I do believe so. I think that the private space sector is really pushing that drive. So I do feel that we will be seeing human beings on moon and Mars, whether it's males or females. I think it's got to be the right people to do that job for when they actually get there. Liz has got a view on that, Liz. And in fact, it has to be a mixture of both

because when you're looking at teamwork and problem solving, you need diversity. If you end up with a very homogenous team, they'll become a team really fast and they'll hit a sort of plateau of ability and then they'll get stuck in, they call it group think. They all think the same way. You need to have the diversity of gender, of sex, of race, of age so that you can problem solve better.

I know that you've said there are women involved at the top in terms of the space gateway. It is space gateway. Deep space gateway. Deep space gateway. It sounds even better. But the big money belongs to billionaires like Elon Musk, and there are others, and they are Jeff Bezos, I think has also got an interest, hasn't he, in space? Yes. So Jeff Bezos, the head of Amazon, has his company called Blue Origin,

and then Elon has SpaceX, and they're both looking at getting people into space in a commercial way. In fact, Blue Origin has a launch this afternoon of their New Shepard mission. And where's that going? That's just a test flight. And that will just be a low Earth orbiting test flight to take tourists. And then they've got a second capsule that will look to take people to the moon. I mean, I know there aren't that many female billionaires, but women do seem to be missing from this particular world.

They really are. I don't know if we just have too few billionaires that are women or they're not that keen on space. But underneath that level, actually, there are quite a lot of women. So the SpaceX company itself, the president is Gwynne Shotwell, who's also their chief operating officer. And she's been at the helm for over a decade and she's really been driving it forward. OK, that's interesting. And then we've got Virgin Galactic, who are very close to having the first commercial space flight. And they're hoping to do that early next year.

They may even launch from Cornwall in the not-too-distant future. And their chief astronaut trainer, so the first person to be a commercial astronaut on a commercial craft, so Helen was a commercial astronaut but on a government mission, was Beth Moses. So she is really leading the way in commercial space flight. Liz Seward, Dr Varsha Jain and Helen Sharman, who, as I said, I think during the course of the programme,

is the most fantastically understated woman. She just doesn't carry herself like somebody who really was Britain's first astronaut. Aung San Suu Kyi is a woman who was admired throughout the world and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, when she was under house arrest. In 2016, she became the de facto leader of her country, Myanmar. But this week, she's been appearing in the UN International Court of Justice, attempting to defend the military government that kept her imprisoned. She's been accused of complicity

in the clearances of Rohingya people two years ago. The stories at the time were horrific, examples of houses being burned with people still inside, babies being thrown into the flames and women being raped. Hasina is 22 and she describes here what happened to her. They killed my brother, husband, uncle and the other men. They raped me and abandoned me. I hid in the jungle. It was the evening.

I didn't think I would survive. It was totally intolerable, seeing those people killed in front of me. In the early hours of the morning, I walked out of the jungle. 358 people from my village were killed and 58 women and girls were raped by the military and other forces. Yasmeen is another Rohingya woman who is now in The Hague and spoke to the BBC's foreign affairs correspondent Anna Holligan there. Since the court case started I can't tell you how hopeful and empowered I feel as a Rohingya. Do you still feel that sense of helplessness that you described to me when we first met? I do. As long as my families are not guaranteed and my people are not guaranteed the right to live, how could I rest?

The disappointment that I had was a long time ago. And she's already decided who she will stand beside, who she will stand with. So that ship has sailed. She couldn't do or say anything that would disappoint us anymore. When a genocidal claim is attached to your names, it's quite hard to wash it off. She had been denying us the rights to be heard. And so now she is forced to listen. Anna Holligan joins us from The Hague. Anna, how did this case come to The Hague? So it was brought under the Genocide Convention and there are 149 countries signed up to the Genocide Convention.

Any one of them could have brought this case against Myanmar to accuse it of violating that. It was the Gambia though and actually it was a personal mission. The justice minister, Abubakar Tambadu, who was a prosecutor in the Rwandan genocide trial, he visited the sprawling refugee camps across the border in Bangladesh. He heard the same stories of mass gang rape and people targeted because of their ethnicity.

He saw the signs and he told me he could smell the stench of genocide in the air. So he felt compelled to do this. What has Suu Kyi been saying in her testimony? She has been absolutely clinical, methodical delivery. She has clearly studied the legal textbooks for this and she says actually it's too simplistic to characterize this conflict as a genocide she described it as a complex internal conflict genocide she said can't be the only hypothesis she did concede that some individual soldiers may have gone rogue and broken the law.

They may have shot indiscriminately and failed to differentiate between civilians and militants at times. But she said, and this is quite a technical legal argument, she said the fact that we are investigating this with court-martials internally does two things. It means there's no reason for an international court to get involved and it also proves that there couldn't be any state-sponsored intent to kill, no effort to erase the Rohingya as a state policy. So any action, she said, from this court would simply aggravate the situation in Rakhine State. What has her demeanour been like?

Is she confident in the way she's speaking? She swept into court. I'm actually talking to you from the steps of the iconic Peace Palace building. She swept into court in front of me a few feet away. The iconic image of the human rights representative we all recognise with the flowers in her hair. She started off very zen, very serene, but lawyers on the other side have told us that she kind of froze when she was forced to listen to this graphic testimony of what's happened, allegedly, under her watch.

She was very still and she can't walk away, as she has done when journalists and others have tried to address these issues with her in the past. And in terms of her presence in court, she seems to be almost icily detached from the allegations. It was starkly obvious that she wasn't prepared to actually engage with any of these specific allegations from eyewitnesses, that there had been firing squads, that women had been tied up and subjected to mass gang rape, that the babies had been destroyed. All the hallmarks, the Gambia say, of an attempt to destroy the future of an entire ethnic group. You might be able to hear now, actually, her motorcade is just drawing up in front of us now, which means she may be about to leave the building again at any moment. How much support does she have in Myanmar? And what about the Rohingya refugees? What are they doing?

Extremely strong support at home. So there are billboards right across the capital, Yangon, with her smiling face, the words, we stand with Aung San Suu Kyi. I've met lots of young women here clutching white roses for the woman who they call Mother Sue. Internationally, though, human rights groups say this is the final nail in her coffin. She stood up in court and chose to go down in history not as someone who used their voice to speak for an oppressed minority,

but rather as a spokeswoman for an army that's accused of what many see as the crime of crimes, genocide. What's the likely outcome for her of this case? For her, it's very difficult to say because this court deals with state responsibility rather than individual criminal responsibility. She didn't have to be here. This is unprecedented for de facto head of state to come for these early hearings. The outcome in terms of this world court, what they can actually do, the Gambia has asked them to hand down emergency measures because there are 600,000 people,

Rohingyas, still in Rakhine state. And The Gambia says if this court doesn't intervene to protect them, they too are at risk of genocide. And what Aung San Suu Kyi has said in court is actually the best thing these judges can do if they want to help is do absolutely nothing at all. Anna Holligan, who is a BBC foreign affairs correspondent, talking to Jenny.

Are you going to attempt this year to have an eco-friendly Christmas? If so, you can find a film featuring green ideas on our Instagram and Twitter feeds. And you need to follow us, of course, in order to appreciate this particular slice of genius. At BBC Woman's Hour is where you need to go. Now, you will know the artist Alison Lapper. She's very well known.

She was born with a condition that means she has short legs and no arms. A statue of her was on a plinth in Trafalgar Square for some time, and she also took part in the BBC series Child of Our Time when she was pregnant with her son, Paris. Paris died in the summer he was just 19. A new exhibition of Alison's paintings opened this week at the Espacio Gallery in East London and one of the paintings featured is of her son. I was painting wasn't particularly thinking about anything and I thought I'll do a face and then as I stepped back to look at it,

I realised it was Paris and then I said to somebody else who was in the room with me, what does that look like? And they went, Paris. And I'm like, OK, this is not my imagination. So somehow, subconsciously, I'm painting Paris. This is all so, so raw and so recent, Alison. Can I just ask a really simple question?

How are you? Are you OK? I have, you know, good days, bad days, good minutes, bad minutes. It comes over in waves, really. Sometimes it's even like it hasn't really happened and I'm going to see him. So it's all very strange, really. And in terms of getting through life, you're plodding on, are you? You are working. Has that helped? Yeah, absolutely.

Painting, obviously, to be part of this exhibition has really helped. So I'm just throwing myself into anything other than sitting at home thinking about it, really. You say there are good minutes and bad minutes. Yeah. What can spark, I don't know, particular memory or um a snatch of conversation that comes back to you what happens anything anything can spark you know like christmas obviously i'm seeing christmas cards for you know son that obviously i started to cry anything i'm not buying him presents it's his birthday on the 6th of January and I haven't

got to buy him a birthday card all those little things that probably don't mean much to anybody else but you know I find it really hard to just go past them at the moment what is helping apart from work if anything amazing friends and an amazing fiance I, I have to say, who's just been with me and just propping me up, really, which has been amazing. And everyone just letting me be who I need to be and what I need to be on that particular time or moment, which is a real help, because I realise other people that haven't gone through this,

it probably gets a little bit boring after a while. But everyone's been really kind and just allowed me to feel as I do. I talk about him a lot, but in a positive. He was troubled for quite some time, wasn't he? Something that you yourself have acknowledged. Absolutely, yeah. And I don't think I realised at the time how bad it really was. I'd never, you know, had a child with these issues before.

So it was new to everybody. Obviously, he grew up with you and around not just you, but your carers, who I gather were pretty much omnipresent, weren't they? Oh, absolutely. 24 hours a day, so yeah. And if I look back now, I mean, also at the time, you're too busy with a child and getting on with it, but if I think about it now, I do actually feel that we were quite judged and constantly watched, really.

Judged by who? By the carers or by...? Everybody, anybody, everybody anybody everybody you know because we were not ever far from the limelight the tv or or what have you um and i remember paris just said to me mummy why are people staring and i'm being like because you're beautiful and then i've not no i've got to actually tell you the truth here it's you know, mum is different and, you know, you're on my lap and things like that. So our dynamic was very different maybe to to other people's because I couldn't put my arms around him. He had to come to me if he fell over. So the dynamic was was very different between us. And who who could possibly offer you advice?

I watched you in Child of Our Time like millions of others. And I was pregnant too at that time. I suppose that like many people, that's why I engaged with the programme. Who could possibly have told you what motherhood was going to be like? Nobody. Nobody can tell anyone, I suppose. No. I mean, friends tried. But, you know, once this little bundle is literally, I mean, he, you know, had a cesarean.

The camera crew were there. There was a cameraman, photographer. And basically he got put on me and it was like nothing else mattered. Nobody else was in the room. And I'd already fallen in love with him just carrying him. But then when, you know, they put him on me, it was just incredibly overwhelming. And then obviously I wanted to breastfeed him because I wanted him to know that I was mum. And of course he did know I was mum.

I didn't need to have done that. But I'm glad I did because, again, that closeness was so special. It felt, as a viewer to me, that it was you and Paris against the world. Yep, that's exactly what it felt like as well. And I tried to dismiss that and just think, no, you're just being silly, but actually, yeah, it was. And now he isn't around anymore. You've got a fiancé, so you have a future, Alison,

and you have your talent. It doesn't replace Paris, though. No, I mean, of course it can't. Does it help that people allow you, you are in a position to at least talk about him and to remember him in a public way like we're doing now? Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't want to pretend that he wasn't here and, you know, that we didn't have a long time together.

I mean, 19 years, and I feel very cheated. But I wouldn't have missed being his mum for the world. You know, it was an honour to be his mum. You were conspicuous, as you'd be the first to acknowledge. And do you regret in any way the impact of your very public presence on him? Because people would get at Paris, wouldn't they? And he was bullied because of you,

which is utterly despicable, we should say, but nevertheless it happened. But that wasn't because we were on TV. That was because I was disabled and if I went into the school, the next day Paris would then get the mickey taken out of him, you know, your mum's a crip and all this kind of thing. So I stopped going because I didn't want him to feel um bad there but obviously i had no idea what he was really going through at school i know that he hated it basically um and when you're

being told you know if we don't bring your child to school you're going to be fined i almost became like a bully because i was like, you've got to go in Paris because I was panicking that I was going to be fined. It's not the way to do it. It's not good. OK, you had all that going on as well. And Paris got into drugs really, he was very young actually when he started. And did you feel, or did you know about that? Did you feel powerless about it?

I didn't know until he was about 14. And even from 14 up to about 17, it was very much controlled. Although he was having mental health problems and he wasn't going to school, he wasn't as desperate as he got. You know, his behaviour deteriorated. He became a mess, basically, and it was really hard to manage him in that situation. All teenagers are pretty hard to reach. They are, yes.

But this was a uniquely difficult set of circumstances, you'd say. Well, yes, but also what was teenage behaviour and what was the drugs and the depression and, you know, so much, I couldn't always distinguish one between the other. No. Well, I mean, there'll be any number of parents listening right now who will completely, that will resonate with them, unfortunately. And in terms of getting help, well, we all know because on this programme we've talked before about problems in CAMHS, for example. It's pretty tough out there at the moment, isn't it? It is very tough out there. I really feel sorry for anybody who is trying to negotiate and navigate themselves through this system at the moment because it's just it isn't supported enough.

People aren't getting the help they need. And it's desperate. And I think it's a crisis that we're not really dealing with, which is, you know, there's so many parents out there that have either emailed me or written to me, you know, saying exactly the same things as I'm telling you, and they're tearing their hair out and they don't know where to turn. And your exhibition and your portrait of your son, are you, this is an odd question,

but I want to know whether you're happy with the portrait you've done of him. Is it him? Have you got him, do you think? I think I've got his essence. It's definitely his eyes, because he had the most beautiful eyes. He was a beautiful boy, I should say. Yeah, you know, I'm biased, obviously,

but I think he was a beautiful boy, I should say. Yeah. I'm biased, obviously, but I think he was very beautiful. So, yeah, I think, for me, I captured maybe an essence of Paris rather than, oh, it looks directly like him. But, as I say, to me, it just kind of came out of the canvas. It was really quite a weird thing to be looking at, thinking, oh, I've just painted you and you're not even here. So that was very strange. The artist Alison Lapper, and if you'd like to see that work and others,

go to the Espacio Gallery in East London. Chris emailed to say, listening to Alison, so much resonates with me regarding the loss of our son. He had mental health issues from about 14 to 24. He was troubled and also got into drugs and his life ended when he took a naive overdose. I don't think he wanted to die. So I can really relate to the little things that trigger sadness, even though it's six years since Samuel died. It really does help to know that somebody else feels exactly the same way about what triggers the tears.

Chris, thank you for telling us about that and about your son, Samuel, as well. Emma Dabiri's book, Don't Touch My Hair, came out earlier this year, and it's about the history and the politics around black hair, as you might expect. And it's had quite an impact, not least at one school, a grammar school in South London, where the head has abandoned what he calls racist rules on hair. I talked to three of his pupils at Townley Grammar School in Bexley Heath, Asase, Bakummi and Hannah, and their English teacher, Lauren Binks. She was part of these changes. First of all, here's Assay on what the school's regulations on hair were You weren't allowed any colours that were unnatural

You weren't allowed more than one colour in your hair And you also weren't allowed jewellery in your hair, if you get what I'm saying As people can put bands and gold bands and stuff in our hair, we weren't allowed any of that And it was something that you all, you actually adhered to it you obeyed the rules well maybe not some of us tried our best I mean okay well but Kimmy what about you um yes we did try our best some of us we did stick to it at times but other times just we would try but we would get sanctioned for it or they would tell us to take out the class or take out the colours in our hair. And we didn't feel that this was right.

We were not angry, but we were annoyed that the way to express our hair was being repressed and we weren't allowed to express ourselves in school. OK, you say sanctioned. What does that mean? What happened? As in, sometimes we would be given detentions for having the colours in our hair if they weren't natural or we would be told to take them out even though it took hours and a lot of time to put it in our hair and to make it look beautiful.

Okay, and Hannah, as another pupil at the school, what did you think about all this? From someone looking on and seeing my friends and that being told to take their braids out and things like that, I didn't really understand why, because from my point of view, it wasn't affecting anything. It's just, for me personally, I express myself through my hair a lot. And so to take that away from students, I think it really annoyed me, because it's like these students sit there, they spend their time and money having these these braids put in and then they're just told to take them out because they're deemed as inappropriate. Okay now Lauren Binks you're an English teacher right now. I am yes.

Were the girls coming to you to complain? Yeah well what we had as part of our drive to decolonise the curriculum as part of that we set up a student diversity group and that was a way for students voices to be heard and part of our process of decolonising the curriculum and that's obviously looking at what they learn in the classroom but also looking at what their everyday experiences were in school as well. And hair was such a big thing that the students felt was completely unfair and just listening to the students speak now you can completely see why. I can see. As a teacher, and I should say you are white,

how much of this did you know? It's all a learning process. I think two big things happened for me in terms of that where I went to a Goldsmiths conference and called On Whose Terms. That looked at many issues to do with black students' experience in university and schools. I was reading Rene Adelodge's book at the time as well

and all of this influence. I thought, I'm a teacher, I'm in a position where I can actually make change here and do something. And listening to the students, I thought, how can I not to this opportunity to do it? OK. And so say what happened? They basically let go of the whole hair sanction thing. Everyone was allowed to do whatever you want with your hair. And you could see the difference it made.

Because before there was a lot of like aminosity between the black students and the teachers and the staff and the whole system. Because we felt like it was clear that it was a racist thing to be honest it was clear that this impacted mainly the black students so when this ban was taken away things were a lot easier like people like the staff more like there's less of that racist feeling can you just describe your hair now? Oh my hair right now it's a wig by the way it's bright red yeah it's short bob. Short bright red yeah bob yeah and it's a wig yeah okay um I mean okay and are you sticking with that for now or is that going to change? Yeah I mean you've got the freedom to do what you like. Yeah I can literally I mean, this red is doing well, doing me good. Okay, it's a festive. Yeah, for Christmas.

Okay, but Kimmy, what about you? I've got braids in that go sort of ombre from black to a yellow colour. It's very nice, I like it. And you better tell us about you, Hannah, as well. Well, just now it's like a red-brown colour because I'm actually covering up something. I'm covering up I dye my hair a lot and it had faded to a not a very pleasant green you don't have to apologize to

me about that there's absolutely no issue there and so I'm like waiting the greeny blue mess out until I dye it again and it's also I've got a undercut at the back with a pattern in none of which is affecting your commitment to your schoolwork because we should say this is a grammar school it's very academic. You're there to work hard, get the grades, go on to other things. So Emma DeBerry is here. The impact of your book has been, well, here is a practical example. You must be chuffed.

Yeah, I mean, I'm over the moon to see the book having this impact in the real world. And the head teacher from the school had reached out to me and said that the book had been very influential on him. I couldn't really want for more from the book. I felt very frustrated with a lot of the misunderstandings that exist around black hair.

And to see there be such a kind of transformation and for the book to facilitate such understanding is really wonderful. Like, for instance, I've just had a baby. So in terms of maintenance with my own hair, I wouldn't be able to just have my hair out in an afro now because I don't actually have the time to maintain it. So that wouldn't be practical. Exactly. So I have extensions in my hair. If there was a rule stopping me from having extensions, that would have like a huge knock on effect and

impact. So it's also in terms of maintenance.'s not just necessarily about aesthetics it's also about the way our hair grows from our head is different to the way caucasian hair grows so as a result of that we need to wear protective styles and the hair our hair is like prone to tangling to breaking in this weather so it needs to be braided it needs to be twisted it needs to be maybe under a wig or in extensions these are all things that also help the health of our hair and are needed for basic maintenance. And Lauren, when you talked about attempting to begin to decolonise the curriculum,

if we can just give a couple of examples. You're an English teacher, so the books have changed, haven't they? Yeah, the books have changed. Again, that was down to a really brilliant session that we attended at the Goldsmith Conference where they actually looked at the English curriculum and how shamefully white it is. and we looked at opportunities where we could challenge that. So we introduced the colour purple by Alice Walker at A-level. We looked at how we

can put in things like protest poetry in order to bring in diverse voices. We study pigeon English at GCSE now for our modern text. It is a novel yes and is a novel, yes. And it's really important that we do that because it allows for students to be seen, which is really important and something that our diversity group spoke about a lot in terms of representation, but also for conversations to be had in the classroom, which is central to everything we're doing.

We're learning, we listen to the students. It's really important. Okay, go on Emma, what do you want to say about that? I just want to say when it comes to decolonising a curriculum as well, I think that what you've done in the school sounds so incredible, but it's not just subjects like English. For instance, there's a chapter in my book on maths and indigenous African mathematical systems and how they're expressed through braiding patterns and through fractal technology in hair. So people tend to think when you think about decolonising a curriculum that it's just subjects in history.

Yeah, but it's also technology and science as well and africa has a really strong tradition of technology and science but by binary coding but we don't really ever hear about that because it doesn't really fit the narrative of african primitivism that is a so widely pushed that's emma debiri you also heard from english teacher lauren binks and pupils at townley Grammar School in Bexley Heath, Asese, Bakummi and Hannah. Rachel in an email. When I was a trainee teacher, I felt sad to be wasting my time telling girls to alter their hair or makeup to match the school rules. Why not allow girls and boys creativity with hair and makeup?

It is, after all, a form of personal expression, says Rachel. And from Kim, I remember a friend of mine in secondary school being told by the head of the school that her hair was too curly and the sense of innate wrongness this created with all of us. Kim, thank you. Hopefully those days are long gone. Now, how do you as a parent begin to approach the question of virginity with a daughter or a son? What does virginity mean and at what point is it OK to lose it? Rachel Fitzsimmons is a regular guest on the programme. She lectures in sexual health at the University of Central Lancashire. And Flo Perry is the author of How to Have Feminist Sex. So how

does Flo define virginity? It shouldn't be thought of, I don't think, as one occasion. I think losing your virginity should be just about gaining sexual experience over time. We have many virginities. We're all losing virginities throughout our lives. You know, the first time that you have sex with the person you marry, the first time that you have sex with anyone, the first time you do oral sex, the first time you have sex outside. All these different types of virginities. Neither one needs to be more important than the other, I think. You make a comparison in the book with eating your first chocolate croissant.

How did that idea work? I'm very passionate about pastry and sex. So naturally, these things are always on my mind. I think that what I wanted to make the point with that is that you have a variety of chocolate croissants in your life, and they vary in quality. Sometimes you have some really terrible chocolate croissants. And sometimes you might have some bad sex. They don't need to be the ones you remember. You can have some amazing chocolate croissants and sometimes you might have some bad sex they don't need to be the ones you remember you can have some amazing chocolate sessions and some amazing sex and what your first chocolate croissant is like doesn't matter because you have a whole life of chocolate croissants ahead of you of varying quality rachel how would you define virginity i i love flo's

chocolate croissant analogy that that's perfect. I think she's right. If we put so much pressure on this one event, particularly for young people, that could be just too much pressure. So I like this idea of gaining experience over time. Definitely. It's too complicated to define as well. It's very heteronormative, isn't it? Our traditional view of virginity as being a male and female penetration thing, where actually sexual activity is so much broader than that. And I try and get young people to sort of view it that way as well. What do you make, though, Rachel, of everything that's written about your first time? That it's going to be painful, you will bleed, you won't have an orgasm,

the hymen will be broken, it'll all be horrible. It sounds horrific, doesn't it? So, I mean, I do a lot of sex education in schools as well as the lecturing, and we try to sort of shatter these myths. I mean, yeah, there can be bleeding, there can be pain, but actually, and that's talking very much about females' experience of sex as well, but actually, if you take it back to basics

and strip it down to, do you it down to do you feel safe? Do you feel respected? Are you in a healthy relationship? Does it feel exciting? To be more positive about sex and actually think about who we're actually experiencing it with and that will shape your experience more than often the physicality of it.

And what, Rachel, would you say it means for boys, the mere concept of virginity? I think we, historically, parents have treated sort of boys' virginity differently to girls, I think. We're very protective of our child's virginity. And for girls, we seem to think it's coveted, lock up your daughters. And for boys, it's more, you know, don't get anyone pregnant, sow your seeds. So actually, I think boys feel a lot of pressure because no one's talking to them about their thoughts and feelings.

Whereas actually, in the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyle, it was very evident, 50% of young women felt they could not make an informed decision the first time. And 40% of young men also felt they could not make an informed decision the first time. So they're experiencing this too. Flo, what about the whole question of pornography, which has proliferated in recent years, and dealing with unrealistic expectations if you've watched it? That is actually a very important conversation that

parents should be having with their teenagers. I think that you can't stop pornography, it's everywhere, it's not going to go away anytime soon. I think that what we need to do is talk about it more and tell our teenagers that it's not realistic. And comparing your sex life to pornography is like comparing your civil service job to being James Bond. Porn is entertainment. It's the movies.

It's made to look good, not feel good. Sex you will be having is not like that. Rachel, when do you reckon is the right time to start these kind of discussions about embarking on a sex life? And you know, a lot of parents will find these discussions about pornography actually quite hard. Yeah, they will find them hard. And I think the mistake we make as parents is we leave it a little bit too late. I think the younger we can sort of open that dialogue. As parents, it's our job to establish

and maintain a meaningful dialogue. And I think if you build those communication skills with your family, your parents, you're actually equipping your child to have really good conversations with their partner and their friends, and that will help. And pornography, yeah, if you just go straight in when they're 14, so, pornography, it's going to be a bit intimidating.

They're going to go, shut up, Mum, go away. But yeah, if you've already talked about consent, our bodies, our rights, our responsibilities, then it's a natural progression to sort of talk about you know it's very personal virginity it's very personal your actual experiences about sex but actually as a parent you can talk about reading your gut instinct is do you feel safe do you feel respected and all those things they're kind of safe things for parents to talk about and your kids will learn from that and adapt it to their situations in life.

Flo, how do you reckon parents can take some of the pressure off the children and themselves in this whole vital but often difficult discussion? I think that it's a great thing to do is to focus on the joy that is sex and to make sure your child, especially your daughter, knows that sex is meant to be fun because we have so many messages that girls get that sex is going to be painful and scary and all of these things. And I think that it's important to remind your children that you are meant to be enjoying sex. And if you're not, then something's wrong. And make sure that they can come and talk to you if something goes wrong and that sex isn't a source of shame for them. Rachel, how can we help them deal with peer pressure and that idea that everybody's doing it, so I ought to be doing it? Yeah, I think the pressure that often young people are putting themselves under

is often from themselves. We've got this sort of perceived norm of everybody doing it when actually the average age of first sexual experience, sort of losing virginity, if you like, is still 16. And that's not really changed too much over time. But when I ask young people, when do you think people are having sex? They'll tell me, oh yeah, 13, 14.

So their perception often puts themselves under pressure. I think young people have this sense of not so much peer pressure, but peer belonging. They want to fit in. They don't want to be the only virgin in their group, but they might not be the only virgin in their group. And I think boys in particular, you know, if you listen to every boy, they're all having sex a lot earlier than they really are. Flo, what if your child is not heterosexual? How do you approach the subject with them? They may be out, they may not be out, what if your child is not heterosexual? How do you approach the subject with them? They may be out, they may not be out, but you may suspect. I think that you just should let them lead.

I think you should answer any questions that they have as honestly as you can. And if you don't know the answer, don't feel like you're lacking in some way. You can help them research together, I don't know, or maybe you can give them some resource, like a book book that they might learn their own way of doing things but i think there's too much pressure on parents to be the sole source of information when like rachel said like conversations with their partner and their peers and their teachers are that all of this information

contributes to their idea of sex and what what about, Rachel, contraception and understanding about pregnancy risk and ST infections? I mean, you still hear kids saying, oh, you can't get pregnant the first time. I know, I know. They're still out there, these myths. I tackle this sort of every week. We need to let them know about contraception,

the choices out there. We can know all about how to use condoms properly. We can know about how the pill works, but if we don't have the communication and confidence like Flo said, the confidence, the self-worth to kind of negotiate that with your partner and have that conversation, I think that's really, really important. But yeah, you do need to get rid of some of those, you know, the withdrawal method, you know, that that will work or that you can, you know that you can't get pregnant the first time. Those myths are still out there. So I think it's about factual, but also it's communication skills again. Rachel Fitzsimmons and Flo Perry talking to Jenny. Caroline says, when my daughter

was in her first relationship at 16 and I could see where it was heading, I talked to her about consent, enjoyment and instilling the idea that she should never do or persuade someone else to do anything they didn't want to do and said whenever she felt ready tell me she'd like the house to herself as I didn't want her first time to be somewhere unsafe. She did this and I think she was pleased and it seemed to give her a greater sense of agency over the whole situation. She is 19 and they're still together. So there you go. Young love.

I hope you can join us live on Monday morning. Amongst other things, we're going to be discussing Finland's new prime minister. She is only 34. And are you perhaps in your 30s, maybe even your 40s, and going to spend Christmas in the family home as a single person, facing the prospect perhaps of sleeping in your own adolescent bedroom, maybe even in that much-loved single bed. Are you looking forward to it? Have you done it before?

How does that make you feel that we've all been there? Woman's Hour, two minutes past ten, Monday morning. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, been there. Woman's Hour, two minutes past 10, Monday morning. The deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.