Woman's Hour - Arooj Aftab, PIP implants, Race, trauma & culture, Reclaiming sexist language

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

Arooj Aftab is a Pakistani composer, based in Brooklyn. She joins Anita to talk about her music and influences from jazz and Qawwali to Jeff Buckley and Abidi Parveen. She explains how grief has shifted the tone of her music to ‘heavy metal harp’, and discusses her latest album, Vulture Prince, which honours and reimagines centuries-old ghazals, a form of South Asian poetry and music that she grew up listening to with her family.Now the dust has settled on the recent court ruling on compensation for women with PIP Implants, it's become clear a group of women will miss out. The French court ruled that those who had implants pre 2006 will not get any money, as it decided the safety regulator who approved the implants for market couldn't have been aware of any problems before that date. Lawyers representing the women will go back to the French supreme court to fight this. Melanie Abbott has been looking into this.Therapist and researcher, Guilaine Kinouni’s book Living While Black looks at the racial inequalities within the mental health system and their consequences for Black people. She is joined by author, academic, and broadcaster Emma Dabiri whose new book What White People Can Do Next looks at racial justice and how we demonstrations of support can be transformed into real and meaningful change.Language – and the way we use it – is forever changing. We explore how the word ‘bitch’ and other similar words with a sexist history are being reclaimed and reinvented by women to mean something positive. Chante Joseph is a social media creative and writer. Jacqueline Springer is a Black music and culture journalist. Helen Taylor is an Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Exeter.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Frankie Tobi

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. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning, welcome to Friday's Woman's Hour. Today's show comes with a warning. We are reclaiming sexist language later. If you want a clue to the word, what word comes before please and after basic, boss and of course Britney. Quick quiz to get you thinking. If you have got children at home, I will give you plenty of warning before that item. And a year on from when the world witnessed

the horrific murder of George Floyd, I'm going to be joined by Ghislaine Kinoani and Emma to talk about overcoming black trauma, how the experience of being born black in the West can affect every aspect of your life and your psychology and what can be done about it. It will be a really interesting and important conversation. Then, as it's Friday, I have a musical treat for your ears. Absolutely divine. The sounds of singer, songwriter, musician, Arooj Afdaab. She's my latest musical obsession

and I can't wait to speak to her live from her home in Brooklyn. And of course, we want to hear your thoughts throughout the programme about anything you hear. You can text us. It's Woman's Hour. It's 84844. The text will be charged at your standard message rate. So do check with your network provider for exact costs.

And you can contact us via social media. It's at BBC Women's Hour. Or you can email us through your website. Now, the dust has settled on the recent court ruling on compensation for women with PIP implants. It's become clear a group of women will miss out. The court in France ruled that those who had implants before September 2006 won't get any money as it decided the safety regulator who approved the implants for market couldn't have been aware of any problems before that date. Lawyers representing the women will go back to the French Supreme Court

to fight this. Well, Melanie Abbott has been looking into this for us and joins us now. Melanie, it was widely reported on our programme and others that the compensation claim was successful. What's happened? Absolutely, yeah. And for some, it certainly was successful. But as always, the cliche goes, the devil is in the small print.

Now, you will remember that PIP implants were filled with industrial grade silicon instead of medical silicon. And this made them six times more likely to rupture. The case was a huge scandal. The head of PIP, Jean-Claude Maas, was sentenced to prison for four years for fraud. He did die there. The company went bankrupt. For years now, lawyers have been pursuing the company who approved the implants for market, providing the safety certificates for them. And that's a German company called 2 Rhineland.

Two weeks ago, it was announced that compensation had been granted to the women affected. But once the full 288-page judgment was read in detail, it became clear that it wasn't that straightforward. I've been talking to Nicola Mason, one of the women affected. She had her implants in 2004. She has received €3,000 in an interim compensation payment, but she has spent £ 500 pounds having her implants

replaced it's just really shocking isn't it because you're putting a a price on someone's life and not on someone else's i mean i fall into the second category and yet i had such a bad rupture my implants had to be left out for a whole year to heal and i'm still left with a golf ball size lump of silicon under my right arm so quite a hell someone just because theirs was done some 18 months later would get paid but I wouldn't and yet who knows what my long-term health consequences of that will be it's a shocker but then the whole thing's a shocker isn't it but to be honest with you I don't have faith that anyone will ever get paid out anyway it's been going on such a long time I

just think they'll keep on appealing it's probably going to go on another however many years isn't it obviously the guy who was totally responsible died in prison um so they've gone after someone else who will fight it and fight it because they obviously don't think it's their problem it must be very alarming when the silicon is swelling up under your arm yeah and it happens i mean it's at least on a monthly basis so really yeah i guess if my glands come up for any for any reason as you know you know feel a bit under the weather or there's anything going around and it will come up and it will just for a day or so but it makes you very aware every single day that it's still there and i think that's the biggest thing really it's not the pain from it because it's not agony it's uncomfortable it's the awareness that actually that's still left in my body.

And then that panics me a little bit. It's the reminder. It's a reminder. And my worry has always been, and it's the worry about going back in to take it out because the surgeon that reconstructed mine did say a later date, he may be able to go back in and take it out. My worry is how many times should you allow yourself to be opened up in that same place? All these years on then you still face further surgery because of the because of that. Absolutely and that's why I say I massively regret it but what can you do hindsight. What does it do to your emotions when you hear the different bits of news trickling out about it? I guess 11 days ago when it first came out I thought absolutely finally not at not even really for the money it's been such a long time now and obviously I paid for mine to be repaired eight years ago it's paid it's done so it's it's not even really about the money

it's about one human deciding it's okay to to basically poison another human most of the time I try not to think about the implants, even I've got it under my arm and it swells my glands up because I have a nine-year-old son and a decision I made when I was 29, it worries me for my future. Is it a decision that you regret now? Massively, absolutely massively.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-surgery at all. Maybe if I'd been advised properly by the company I went to because he should have told me to wait until I'd had children and had I have waited I still would have had an operation but I wouldn't have had implants put in I would have had an uplift and a reduction I had the tissue there to do it but by the time they'd ruptured and they had to take so much of away along with all the silicon that was wrapped around it I was then no longer left with enough to do that and had to have the implants put back in the guy who repaired them Mr Makaran Tare he was an amazing man a lovely

surgeon and literally has done his absolute best and he said to me he never used those PIP implants even when he had the chance because they were so cheap I went to a large reputable London company they made that decision as well to use a very cheap product whilst charging a premium price it's around about six and a half thousand I literally when I heard the news when it first happened I thought I won't have those I've been to a top company I pay top prices when you say you don't think you'll see any of the compensation yeah why do you think that is because I just think they'll fight it to the very end and I think in the end you'll just end I I just cannot imagine that they can that the amount of people also that are affected by it I think it probably even send them bankrupt I don't I just can't see it ever happening and if they do have to pay out I it

will probably be such a minuscule amount. You sound almost resigned to that rather than angry or devastated. Yeah, absolutely. It's not that I need the money. It's the principle, isn't it? And yes, we made the decision to have the surgery. And, you know, you have a little battle in your head sometimes and think, well, it's partly my fault because I did that for cosmetic reasons. You know, I didn't have cancer. I didn't have to have it done so you have this little private battle when you think I shouldn't have had it and I wouldn't have had it if I was a mum I would have made such different decisions so there is that private battle and it isn't but it but they have allowed poison these people it does make me wonder who signed that off who actually thought oh well it doesn't matter but it does matter because it's people's lives

it must take quite a lot of energy to keep following it do you sometimes just think I wish it would all go away absolutely just it comes around it's almost like sometimes you forget and an email comes to anything oh yeah I'm still fighting that and I think for me that's how I deal with it because it's best to put it almost out of mind rather than literally worry about it every single day if there are girls out there wanting to have the operation done just really do your homework find out what you're having um find out if you have to have them replaced again and really look into your surgeon and the company really think about it and i i would say that i would always wait until you've had children to have it done because you change as a person and your decisions will be different. That's Melanie speaking to Nicola Mason.

Shocking and heartbreaking listening to that. Melanie, what do the lawyers have to say about it all? Yeah, I've spoken to the lawyers in France who have been leading on this action and I have to say they told me that they are pretty mystified about this ruling, about this 2006 date. They say they've got no idea where it really comes from. Olivier Ometra is one of those leading the legal action. Actually, everybody was very surprised by this decision. And no one understood what's happened for the very good reason, which is the following one. No one asked such a limitation. In a word, the Court of Appeal of Paris ruled on a point which was not in the discussion,

which was not in the case. We are going to feel then an appeal against this decision before the Supreme Court. And I have no doubt for the reason I explained that the Supreme Court is going to overturn the decision. OK, so he thinks they're going to overturn the decision, but it does mean they have to appeal. How long is that going to take? Yeah, it's all going to take a long time. I mean, you heard the frustration from Nicola Mason there. This could take another two years. Olivier O'Meacher told me that he thinks the court chose 2006 as the date because they didn't

believe, the court didn't believe, that Tove Rhineland, that's the company being sued for negligence, could be expected to have any concerns before then about what was happening at the factory making PIP implants. If they did have concerns, then they should have been making unannounced checks, which they never did. PIP employees were actually removing any evidence of the industrial silicone gel before Tove Rhineland went to make their annual inspections. Olivier said previous hearings, though, have ruled that there were problems since 2001. And he says he believes it was obvious that PIP didn't have enough medical grade gel to fill all of the implants it was producing. Goodness me. And there have been other hurdles along the way, haven't there?

Yeah, there have. I mean, this case is so complicated, as well as those women like Nicola. Another 6,000 women, and many of them, in fact, I'm told most of them are from the UK, they had their cases ruled inadmissible back in February. And this was because the courts then ruled that there wasn't the evidence that they actually had been fitted with PIP implants. And it seems to boil down to a card which comes in the box with the implant. And that wasn't provided to the courts to prove what kind of implant they had. Women have been declared admissible because, according to the court, they didn't bring dividend. They had PIP implants. But the court made a mistake you know

and it's very easy to bring this evidence because in many countries the PIP implants were sold through distributors and I know these distributors because they are also my clients. It is wrongly that the court reject a claim from women due to the fact that all PIP implants were fulfilled with industrial silicone gel. Gosh, it's a minefield. But Melanie, you're talking us through it very clearly. There seems to be a lot of hearings taking place. Yeah, it really is, as you say, a minefield. In fact, there are four separate court actions going on, though two of those have been joined together. Olivier Maitre, he tells me that this is because in France, there's no such thing as a class action where everyone can bring a case as one group, so that when more women come forward, they can't be tagged on to existing legal action,

they have to start new cases. And in fact, they're about to start a fifth case. And what does the company TV to Rhineland say about this? Yeah, referring to the cutoff date of September 2006, Two said that the evidence clearly shows that Two Rhineland acted diligently in compliance with acceptable regulations and that it wasn't its role to track down the fraud. It added that at no time was there anything to suggest breast implants manufactured by PIP weren't compliant. And it also pointed out that the European Court of Justice ruled back in 2017 that companies like Toove aren't under any general obligation to pay unannounced visits or indeed to examine products

or the manufacturer's business records. And they also pointed out that in the criminal proceedings, Toove was found to be a victim of the fraud too. As soon as that fraud was discovered, which was back in March 2010 now, two suspended the safety certificates which it had granted to PIP. Gosh, Melanie, thank you very much for all of that. Well, we can talk now to Jan Spivey, who runs the PIP campaign based in the UK that has sought accountability for the hundreds of thousands of women globally who've been affected by these implants. 20 years ago she was given PIP implants after she had a mastectomy due to breast cancer. She developed sore and aching joints, chest and back pain, fatigue, severe headaches and anxiety. Once removed it was clear her implants had been leaking silicon into her body. Well, Jan was on this programme just two weeks ago

when she first heard they would be entitled to compensation. And this is the reaction she gave Emma. Absolutely elated. It's just tremendous news. We're a little bit in shock, to be completely frank with you. It's been such an exhausting battle to get this far. And we had to battle it out in France. And Jan is back on the programme now.

Jan, what a difference two weeks can make. How are you feeling today? Jan? Nope. We will try and come back. Oh, yes, you are. There we go. Was it classic oh yes you are there we go was it classic zoom mute moment there we go yeah so we just heard you there elated drinking champagne just two weeks ago two weeks very early in the morning that day um we were prepared preparing for the decision on the morning of the 20th and we had been told by our lawyers that the decision

would be a long document and that they would skip initially to the end to find out what the main decision would be. And what we wanted most from the day was a decision from the French courts that TUV Rhineland had been found guilty of failures in the regulation of PIP. And that was the great news. After 10 years of battling, the French courts had confirmed that TUV Rhineland had been guilty of failures in regulating PIP implants. How do you feel about the news that we're hearing today? Have you read the 288-page report? Well, I haven't, but by 10.30pm that same day, I knew that the lawyers would be going through the whole of the document

to check the details, and that's when we learned that there would be some women that had been ruled inadmissible by the courts. Yeah, if you had your surgery before 2006. It turns out that's just one of the possible reasons that the court has given to rule women inadmissible. Or if you don't have the card that states that the implants you had were PIP, but who keeps a card from, you know, over 20 years ago? Well, it's not always a card.

And that's important because what the appeal court in Aix-en-Provence stated was that women needed to have a set of abbreviations linked to their serial numbers on their PIP. But those words were in French. And we don't, you know, in the UK, we're not dealing with implants that are given French names. You know, a breast implant in the UK is referred to as a breast implant, not as an implant mammaire, which is what is referred to in France. What's your situation now? Well, it's really important to say that the decision in the Paris Appeal Court on Thursday,

20th of May, is really meaningful for all of us affected. It's a really huge global achievement. And TUV Rhineland is a private company and it has duties for public safety. And they have claimed from the beginning that they were also PIP victims and that PIP was a complex fraud. But our case was based on the knowledge that TUV Rhineland failed to do its job properly and take its duties for safety seriously. And that's what we've managed to achieve in the courts this month. to do its job properly and take its duties for safety seriously. And that's what we've managed to achieve in the courts this month. Well, we just heard from Nicola there who says she has no faith in seeing any compensation now. Yes, and unfortunately for lots of women like Nicola, they also feel the same way.

But it's really important to understand that the way that the compensation is decided is by an independent court expert who will assess the injuries and the implications for each women involved. And we expect that to be a fair and reasonable amount. And we expect it to be substantial. What the remaining women, the women that have been excluded from the case, we will have to struggle through, yes, another appeal, but struggle through another appeal, we will. The point that the courts have arrived at is that TUV have failed in assessing the real safety implications for PIP from 2006 onwards, but we know that those failures started much earlier. So you haven't lost your

spirit to keep fighting, Gem? Oh, absolutely not. And that's really my message today, that women that feel disheartened by the decisions from both appeal courts should really be encouraged not to give up because this is not the end. It is unfortunate that TUV Rhineland are still denying the responsibilities for their failures. But, you know, the evidence is clear. They have been found guilty of failures and it will be another long process, but we will get there in the end. So what's keeping you going? Because the emotional and physical impacts of the fighting for you, Jan, all these years and the ups and downs must be huge. They really are. But, you know, when it comes to an issue of justice, you know, if a company is isn't fair and all those responsible including the manufacturer but also the company that issues the licenses that regulates implants have to be

held accountable. Jan thank you very much for speaking to us I'm sure we'll be talking to you again before all of this is over and we've just had an email in by the way if you do want to contact us about anything you hear in the program you can text 84844 or email by going to our website. I'm now 64, had implants in my 20s many years after following many health problems. One breast hardening of the implants. Many consultations with plastic surgeons who would not agree with problems with the implants. It was proven there was a problem with the implants and all the women to be compensated after a couple of years with solicitors.

We got a payout of £30 each. I had all the health problems you've mentioned this morning. I had implants removed. All my health problems disappeared. Goodness me. Like I say, you can email us by going to our website or you can contact us via our social media. It's at BBC Woman's Hour. Now, last week was the first anniversary of George Floyd's murder, an event so

shocking and traumatic it changed the world. Since then there's been huge amounts of anger and protests and conversations happening amongst friends and so many hashtags on social media and thoughtful and powerful books have also been written, including by my next two guests. Academic and broadcaster Emma Dabiri decided to write What White People Can Do Next, a manifesto for change which looks at the invention of racism and calls for a move towards coalition in order to dismantle racism. Therapist and researcher Ghislaine Kinwani's book, Living While Black, looks at black trauma. It focuses on the damage caused by racial trauma and how it contributes to psychological distress and how black people respond to it. So how does trauma affect black people and where are we

currently with the conversation around anti-racism? Well, I'm delighted Emma and Ghislaine join me to discuss this further now. Welcome to Woman's Hour, both of you. I'm going to start by asking you both why you wanted to write your books. Let's come to you first, Ghislaine. Hi, Anita. Well, various reasons that have led me to live in well black, I would say number one, a sense of dissatisfaction when it comes to mainstream mental health services, ability to deal with white supremacy and race-related distress. And it was, of course, also my own lived experience and the experience that I have acquired clinically

through people coming to see me in distress, in pain, quite troubled by experiences of race discrimination. And finally, there was a huge need following the murder of George Floyd and the increase in psychological distress, in anxiety, in racial trauma, and people coming to me over and over again with their race-based distress. So overall, those three reasons led to me writing Living While Black. And how about you, Emma? Quite a provocative title, What White People Can Do Next.

Yes, it is provocative. First of all, lovely to be here and excited to be meeting Ghislaine. Have you not met before? We've not met. I love that Woman's Hour is facilitating this meeting of minds. Fantastic. Yeah, I think there are some similarities there. A lot of my motivation in writing this book, What White People Can Do Next, with the arguably controversial title, which I can return to, was a sense of dissatisfaction as well in many ways with a lot of the liberal mainstream framing of the anti-racist narrative especially a lot of the

discourse that was finding its origins on online and on social media, much of which is reductive. And while it takes kind of it evokes the names of past black intellectuals and activists and organizers, but it often is untethered from the radical and expansive environments in which that work was created. So I was trying to provide more historical context, I think, to what a lot of the discourse that we see on social media, so to just kind of broaden that out so that we could maybe reframe some of the conversation and reconfigure our aims. Like a lot of the movements of the past have a consistent set of demands, which I feel is somewhat missing in the current moment.

Okay, well, we'll come back to that. Let's go back to you, Ghislaine. You're a therapist, you're a psychologist, and you work with people of colour. What's your experience been? My experience has been that the harm of racism psychologically and physically is hugely underestimated. My experience has been that when people experience everyday trauma, which might sometimes look like subtle acts or more micro experiences, they can be easily discounted so that people come to themselves, doubt their experience, gaslight themselves, which increase their distress, but also has the impact of them not seeking help, not seeking support for what they are going through. Now, my position is very clear. The empirical evidence is solid. At this point in time, we can no longer put our hand in the sand and pretend that racism doesn't do

psychological and physical harm. So the question is this, why are black people and indeed people of colour not being supported adequately with those experiences? That is a question. Well we did have a commission on race and ethnic disparities, as I'm sure you're both aware, and the chair of that, Tony Sewell, and he says, quote, put it simply, we no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities. Where do you go with that, Ghislaine, based on what you're saying? Well, what I would say to the Commission is that I'm afraid

it is not within the Commission's gift to ignore the scientific evidence around the harm and the prevalence of structural racism, that this is not something that anyone has the power to do. What we can do as a society is decide to face the issue or pretend that there are no issues. And it appears that the commission have chosen the latter. Okay, Ghislaine, well, let's just explain to everyone listening then, let's talk about racial trauma, because there may be people who genuinely do not understand what it is and how it affects people, black people, people of color. Break it down to us. And every, if you can, I know it's a huge subject, but let's go for it.

How does it affect people in health, I guess, education, justice, professional environments? It's so ingrained and deep rooted. But, you know, give us some examples of what the experiences of people are that are coming to speak to you. Okay, so when we're talking about racial trauma, fundamentally, what we are talking about is the trauma consequences, or perhaps we could say more broadly, the psychological impact of being exposed to racism.

That is what we are talking about, the distress that is occasioned by racism. How does that look like on our psychologies, on how we navigate the world? Well, we're talking about groups of people having difficulties with their self-esteem, their confidence, because the message constantly that they are hearing and that therefore they are internalizing is that you are not good enough, you're not as good, you are less than, you are inferior. Eventually, these messages make this way through our psychology. So that is one area. Another area might be in relation to, for example, safety, safeness, anxiety in the world when you enter a particular space and you are fearful that you might be treated unfairly or you are fearful that you are going to experience discrimination. So that can raise level of stress, level of anxiety generally. by her own experience of racism if she is facing, let's say, racial harassment, racial bullying, racial discrimination in the workplace. That is obviously going to have an impact on how we mother

and the attention and the availability that we have for our own children. So therefore, a capacity to be good enough parents might be compromised. That is another area. Then what do we do as communities as a whole, right? When we are trying as a group to survive racism, some of the stories, some of the strategies that we implement, such as let's try to work really, really hard hard as hard as possible three times four times five times seven times harder to try to overcompensate and overcome those structural brokers that has an impact on our health that also have an impact on our relationship and i could go on and on and on but essentially the message that i want to leave the listener is that racism harms and it

harms everyone and that harm has a cost socially and it has a cost for the nhs as well um emma um gillane brought up strategies there there have been so many strategies put into workplaces to try and deal with this haven't there um yes there there have been. There's a whole diversity and inclusion emphasis at the moment. Have they worked? Are they working? Well, I think that remains to be seen. A lot of the reinvestment in diversity and inclusion has come off the back of the murder of George Floyd last year and subsequent developments. You know, I think to date, no diversity and inclusion has not worked, but there is a kind of renewed interest in it. one of the or renewed investment in it let me say um and i do see i i do go and speak to a lot of um a lot of companies a lot of institutions that do feel that

do appear to be you know truly committed to these things however i think thus far i think with diversity and inclusion what we have to what we have to bear in mind, what we have to keep in mind is that alone is not a panacea for racism. You know, these systems, these ideas, these racialized categories are deeply entrenched, have had centuries to really embed. People are deeply invested in kind of whiteness and racialized identity. So it will take more than corporate diversity and inclusion programs to overcome everything that needs to be done. One of the things that my latest book has focused on is actually thinking about whiteness as well you know because whiteness and not so much whiteness just as a in terms of people who are racialized as white but whiteness actually as a knowledge system going back into the origins of whiteness in the 17th century and the way in which the idea of a

white race was invented for a very specific purpose and with very specific objectives. It's at the kind of origins, it goes, in the book I make the argument that race and capitalism are siblings. The invention of the idea of a white race occurs at the same time as the system of capitalism is being designed, that we live under today. Central to the construction of the idea of the white race, you know, from the 17th century, is an idea of the inherent superiority of people who are racialized as white, and subsequently the idea of the inherent superiority of people who are racialized as white, and subsequently the idea of an inherent superiority, sorry, inferiority of people who become racialized as black. That was central to the construction of those racial categories that emerged during the transatlantic slave trade

in order to justify the enslavement and exploitation of people who come to be racialized as black. When we are armed with that information, we can kind of stop that. I think there's a very disingenuous conversation that often happens about racism. And we get these situations whereby, you know, something racist happens and it's being discussed. And then the debate is framed as though one side is saying this is racist, you know, and the other side is saying, no, it's not. And they're horrified and shocked and appalled that even the merest suggestion of racism could be occurring. And this faux horror. And we don't often get past that confrontational and combative framework. If we go back to the origins of the invention of race and we see that whiteness was created, the idea of a white race was created in order to enshrine and originally was codified into law.

This idea of a superiority of white people, we see that from its earliest origins, there's been this hierarchy in the racialized order. And in fact, the racialized order was created to create racism. Then we know that we have to tackle the idea of race, which is something that is far greater and deeper than just corporate diversity and inclusion programs. So that work can be done, but something broader and deeper needs to happen as well. And that's what White People Can Do Next sets out a framework where that other work can happen. Well, you have both written important and in-depth books looking at this from two very different angles. And this is a conversation that I know we will come back to. Sadly, we haven't got the time to give it the amount of time it needs properly this morning. But Ghislaine Kinawani and Emma Dabiri, thank you so much for speaking to me.

Their books are out now, Living While Black, The Essential Guide to Overcoming Racial Trauma and What White People Can Do Next. Now, language and the way we use it is forever changing and today we're going to be exploring how some words which have a sexist history are being reinvented. I should warn you that some of the language in this next discussion some listeners may find offensive and if you have young children around it's best to maybe come back to us later. Now the word bitch is something we hear in film, on our TVs and in music from Cardi B to Britney Spears to RuPaul's Drag Race. What makes someone a bitch? And can it ever truly be reclaimed to mean something positive? Well, to discuss this further, I'm joined by Shante Joseph, a social media creative and writer, Jacqueline Springer, a black music and culture journalist,

and Helen Taylor is an Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Exeter. Shantae, how often do you use the word and can it be something positive? I would say that I do use it quite often. And yes, it can be something that is positive. But also, yeah, of course, it can be something that is negative. But I definitely feel like when I use the word, like, do you like do you know me it depends on the moment because it's like you hear

something shocking and you're like bitch or you know someone's rude to you and you're like that bitch do you know I mean like it very much depends on the context in which you are using that word and I think with most words sometimes things can come across as you're trying to insult someone you're trying to offend someone but then sometimes it's just the way you express yourself or the way you color your language that kind of gives it personality and tells the world who you are sort of thing but but for you not offensive you've reclaimed it and you use it yeah I don't know I don't know if I said reclaim the word I think I just use the word differently well do you know what I mean like I don't want to give it that much power that I feel like it's something don't want to give it that much power

that I feel like it's something that I need to claim, but it's just something that kind of I use to express myself. Jacqueline, what impact do you think music has had on the word? Because, of course, you know, hip-hop culture, the word is used a lot, not often very positively, though. I have to say, in a lot of hip-hop, it's used quite negatively. But do you think that's been important in taking the power away from the

word bitch i think the mainstream tend to have a very selective relationship with rap music and they tend they they utilize rap as the whipping boy for one of a different racialized context um when they discuss when they want to um discuss the influence it has on their children when um queen latifah in the 1990s had a song called Unity, and one of the first words that comes out of her mouth, one of the first phrases, she goes, who are you calling a bitch? And she also talks about not only men using it,

but women using it. Women using it to ingratiate themselves within male favour, but also the use of the word within the kind of traditional way we've been socialised, which is to put women down, to compare them to female canines, to also utilise it as a backdoor insult, so it's prefixed by fat, black, ugly, this, you know, so the whole point about this word is that it's malleable, the whole point about language is it's malleable, and the very idea that rap only uses it in one context is simplistic and self-serving.

And you have men and women using it. And when Beyonce uses it, oh, my God, how dare she does this? My kids love her songs. When Britney does it, it's affirmative and it's empowering. So we also have within this within the use of this word within music to think about who the mainstream, i.e. the white majority in this country and around the world, tend to, who they feel has the right to influence their children by the use of a word that is as malleable as any other. Yeah, so whose mouth is it coming out of? Helen, how does the way we use language change? And why do you think it's important to document this? Well, it's interesting that the Oxford English Dictionary has started to look at the ways in which words that define woman are often negative, whereas

words defining man are positive. And bitch is quite an interesting example of this because it's a very old word, it comes from Old English and it did indeed denote a female animal, female dog, and apparently the sort of when a dog is on heat suggested a way of talking about a woman. So a woman could be, so a bitch could be a lewd woman, and of course we know lewdness in women is bad, and Shakespeare used it slightly negatively to suggest a lewd or lascivious woman, and Dr Johnson did too. But I think that what our two other speakers have been saying is that language is, as one of you said, it's malleable, it changes all the time. And bitch has been appropriated, obviously, in rap and in feminist discourse. So women call themselves bitches as a term of power powerfulness it's a way of kind

of throwing back at patriarchy the fact that yes i will call myself a bitch um and that in that suggests that i am empowered and there's a wonderful line in um shirley conran's lace where the porn queen Lily turns to the three women who she's not sure which is her mother and she says which one of you bitches is my mother and so and the word bitch has also been used about homosexual men actually and it's being used very positively too so um people talk about well people talk about life's a bitch which is sort of a it's a kind of ambiguous way of talking about life but people also talk about um uh books are bitches which is a way of saying books are great so I think that the way in which language changes over time is a sign of its of its liveliness. And certainly feminists, if I could just finish a point that feminists have used language so creatively over years.

You know, they've coined terms like sexism. They've coined terms like glass cliff, toxic masculinity, me too, coercive control, gaslighting. The trans community uses the word woman with an X instead of an A. And I think that feminists have been actually in all sorts of ways more creative than any other group in finding ways of transforming the language. Alice Walker talked about womanism as a way of saying to white feminists, no, you know, I'm going to use a word that defines black feminism. And so language is always being kind of creatively used. And I do think feminists have been fantastic in shaping new meanings Helen what examples of other words can you give us that have had had a sexist history that have

been reclaimed or reused or now we just use and don't think about as being offensive one word is virago if you think of the way in which virago uh was used virago was always used about a horrible kind of a nasty woman nagging wife, all those sort of things. And when Virago, excuse me, the publishing house Virago decided to call themselves Virago, they were saying, yes, we are angry, We are nasty. You know, we're not necessarily nice and gentle women. We are powerful and we're strong and we reserve the right to be horrible, too. And the word Virago has, I think, because of that publishing house, it's become now a very strong word, very positive word. Well, we've got some messages coming in. An email from Karim who says, bitch is positive and means someone who is willing to challenge in an assertive way unless it's used in a demeaning way.

Helen, how much does it matter who's saying it? I think you're absolutely right that it's who is saying it, the context in which it's said. If I called you a bitch, it would be extremely offensive. If I call my best friend a bitch that's a way in which as Shante said you know that's a way of reclaiming a word for yourself Jacqueline how much does it matter who's saying it it matters all language everything is derived all meaning is derived upon context. But I also think that there needs to be, are we actually reclaiming it or, as Helen said, appropriating it? Because did women invent this word? Were they in positions of, you know, disseminatory power about what words

mean? Who, you know, Samuel Johnson, a man, was given, you know, had the task of creating a dictionary upon which meaning and language is utilised. So are we actually reclaiming this word or is it a case of with those who choose to use it beyond the context of its defined meaning are actually disrupting the very ways in which we think about it. So when we emasculate men, you know, we say, oh, don't be a bitch, stop crying like a bitch, man up. gendered language so so very much and i think it's really telling that we have this segment after the first two of the of today's program because we're talking about the way in which women can be controlled by language via the

perception of their bodies you know you had the women with in relation to the pipscare so defending their own choices about what they did with their body it's their body so if women have been told are told you're a bitch you're silly you're this you're that and that they use that very word beyond the context of the accepted passage against you against the gender it starts to really make people very uncomfortable. You then add that to the discourse of music where, oh, we shouldn't have a musical form, i.e. rap, that embraces profanity. And we certainly shouldn't have women calling themselves a bitch.

But you also have, you had rappers in the 90s like Lil' Kim who adhered to, you know, respectability and politics to, you know, broadcast regulation. So she would call herself Queen Bee. You have music that is actually explicit or not. You can't control people's access to language. You can't control your children after a certain time, their access to language.

What you've really got to think about here is what is offensive, how you can, and how and why you've actually come to define that as offensive, and who you think has the right to entertain your children and to what language they can use it. Because how is it empowering if Britney says, it's Britney, bitch, but if Lil' Kim says, I'm a queen bee?

Why is it 1997, Meredith Brooks was on Top of the Pops singing live and saying, I'm a bitch, I'm a this, but there was absolutely no way. Well, like you say, Jacqueline, it goes back to our previous conversation, doesn't it? Yeah, it's about who has the right, even when there is this disruption of the perception of spoken power, who then has the right to actually utilise it.

Okay, thank you all for joining me, Shantae, Helen and Jacqueline. Keep your thoughts coming in. Charlotte emailed in saying, it's not a nice word. I hate it being used. Not a reclaimed word, a nasty word. Okay. Rosemary says, listening to your conversation on bitch, for me, it's so wartime. As a child, then I can remember my mother's friends talking about other women as bitches. It's not a compliment. But you know know, it has been used in all sorts of different contexts. Your thoughts, please. 84844 is the number to text or you can email by going to our website.

Now, the composer Arooj Afdab was born in Saudi Arabia and her family later moved back to her parents' hometown of Lahore, Pakistan. She described her close relatives and their friends as fiendy music lovers. Love that phrase. And her musical influences range from Qawwali and Pakistani semi-classical music to Ella Fitzgerald,

Jeff Buckley and Budgie. At 18, she recorded a jazzy version of Hallelujah and then moved to the US to study music production and engineering. And her latest album, Vulture Prince,

includes sounds such as the heavy metal harp and honours and reimagines centuries old guzzles, a form of South Asian poetry and music that she grew up listening to with a family. And I've been obsessed with this album recently. So I'm absolutely delighted and very grateful that Arooj is up at 5am from Brooklyn to speak to me. It's not too early, is it Arooj is up at 5am from Brooklyn to speak to me. It's not too early, is it, Arooj? Oh, no, it's just, you know, the usual. So, you know, that was a kind of a quick potted tour of where you grew up. You grew up in Saudi Arabia and then Pakistan. And it sounds like you listened to very eclectic mix of music growing up.

Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I think that the common thread between a lot of the music influences that you listed is probably that they're all quite very melodic oriented, I would say. But yeah, they're definitely all very spread out. So what happened? You're in Lahore listening to, you you know Jeff Buckley and Cavallis and with your parents fiendy music lovers love that um and then you decided that music was for you that you had to study it did you have to come to America well yeah I mean I think that for me

um when I decided that studying music was the way that I wanted to go, I realized that there wasn't really, I didn't really have the resources that I needed to do that in Lahore. And in order to really study music in an organized way and earn a degree and study like audio engineering and jazz theory and stuff like that, I'd have to venture outwards. And so that's when I decided that I will inherit a massive student loan and go to Berkeley. Well decided that I will inherit a massive student loan and go to Berkeley well hopefully it will pay off I think we should listen to some music um this is from

your latest album Vulture Prince and the track is called Bahago Me let's have a listen बागो में पड़े जूँ I mean, Arooj, the hairs on my unwaxed arms are standing on end. Simply stunning. Describe the sound for us and the themes here, because this album was, I've read a bit about it, it's shaped by grief, isn't it? Yes, partially, but most likely it did take over eventually in the end uh in the way that the album kind of feels um these sounds you know and and the poetry chosen and the way in which i decided to produce the sounds it kind of has a sense of um like disdain for the

ways of the world i think that's kind of the overarching theme of like disdain for the ways of the world. I think that's kind of the overarching theme throughout the album. And it carries itself in this very graceful, very light on its feet kind of way, you know, especially with the sort of the, the, the soft bounciness of the harp and like the very sort of laid back vocal style, you know, there's nothing flashy. There's nothing really like, we're not really like showing our chops here.

We're just really performing these, these, these musics in a way that's like, you know, I'm just kind of tired. You know, the world just keeps turning. And so, you know, it's kind of like, yeah, the theme of it overall of the sound is meant to be kind of like, you know, we're coming out of this sort of feeling of grief and perhaps one can never really come out of a feeling of grief but

more so just trying to move forward and accept it so it's more of like an acceptance and hopefulness vibe at the end of the day and does it i mean i we're playing it on woman's hour and everybody who listens to it can i'm sure feel it you it. You don't need to understand it. But does it matter that people can't understand the language? I know not all the songs are in Urdu, but does it matter? I've heard that to a lot of people it doesn't matter because they are feeling the feelings. So for the most part, it seems like musically the message is coming across. I've got to ask you about one of your main musical influences

because she's an absolute god in my eyes, and it's the great Abdabraveen, one of the most revered musicians in South Asian history, a great female Sufi voice, and you met her. Mm-hmm. Tell me about this. Well, yeah, I mean, Abdab perveen is literally i think one of the most incredible musicians of our time right now in the world and um i did meet her she was in new york

uh at the time that i was in new york when i was just i had just moved um and i literally stalked her to her hotel room to to meet with her I mean, the story is much longer than that. But yeah, I mean, that was a really pivotal moment for me in my in my career and in my thought process, especially at such a young point where I really didn't I wasn't sure exactly what it was that I was going to really do with my sound and with my whole vibe. And so she really that that one encounter was really life-changing. I'm sure. And it says something about your bravery and confidence as well

and ability to just knock on someone's door and... You know, we're crazy. When you really have the bug, you really have the bug, right? Absolutely. So tell me, I know Vulture Prince is out and you must discover it. You're going to have the most divine weekend

listening to it. But your next album, you're researching one called Chand Bibi. Tell me about her. Yeah, so Chand Bibi was this woman who existed in the Dakin Empire in South Asia. And she basically was royalty. She was a politician. She was a warrior. She was a feminist. And then when the

Dakin empire fell, she was a courtesan, but she continued to be sort of, you know, a political advisor, just this all around, just like this incredible woman at the time. And not a lot of people know about her or there isn't much written about her um she's also the one of the first women or i believe the first women of that of in in the south asian subcontinent who wrote an anthology of poems and her poetry went viral um you know and so you know some of a lot of that poetry is lost today but we do have some of it And I kind of got really interested in her work because it was referred to me by my very good friend, Annie Ali Khan. And when you do discover her work and create your next stunning album,

come back to Woman's Hour and talk to us about it. Absolutely. And I'll try not to get you up at 5 a.m. in the morning. Arooj, thank you so much. That is Arooj Afdav. The album is out. It's called Vulture Prince. You can tell I like it.

I think we should play out some of Arooj's music. This is Sanslo. I've just had a message in from someone saying, great programme. Thanks, Sarah. She says, really interesting about language. My partner, male, told me to man up whilst having a contraction. Giving birth to our second daughter was not impressed. No, neither is, told me to man up whilst having a contraction, giving birth to our second daughter.

Was not impressed, no. Neither is anyone else listening to Woman's Hour. Have a wonderful weekend. Emma will be back on Monday. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. The System

A new six-part thriller from BBC Radio 4. What do you want to do with your life? Do you want to spend your time glued to a screen, feeding the dopamine addiction you don't even know you've got, looking at pictures of things you'll never have, places you'll never go, and people you'll never meet? Or do you want to exist in the real world? Do you want to be part of something?

Do you want to use your body, the only body you'll ever have, gifted to you by millennia of evolution? Do you want to use it for something other than swiping and clicking and tapping and eating donut holes? If so, we may have something for you. The System, a new six-part thriller from BBC Radio 4. Available now on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know.

It was fake. No pregnancy. And 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.