Woman's Hour - Caitlin Moran, Ellie Simmonds, Esperanza Spalding, Brandi Morin

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

Anita is joined by the five time Paralympic gold medallist Ellie Simmonds to discuss her new documentary where she sets out to find her birth parents. Ellie was adopted within months of being born and whilst she has always known she was adopted, she hasn't previously tried to find her birth parents, until now.Five times Grammy award winner, the bassist, lyricist and composer, Esperanza Spalding has become a prominent voice in the jazz world. At 38 she has released eight albums and has collaborated with many distinguished artists, including Terri Lyne Carrington and Toni Visconti. She talks to Anita from the Netherlands, where she will perform at the North Sea Jazz Festival. Canada has a history of disproportionate violence faced by indigenous women, which was called a genocide by a national public inquiry in 2019. The Native Women’s Association of Canada has counted the names of more than 4,000 Indigenous women they believe have been murdered over the last three decades. Brandi Morin is an award-winning journalist who is Cree, Iroquois, French Canadian and puts the abuses suffered by indigenous Canadians front and centre in her work. She joins Anita to explain why.Caitlin Moran’s multi-award-winning bestseller How to Be a Woman has been published in 28 countries. Now she has turned her attention to men, what's wrong with them, what they should do about it and why they need feminism to help. Caitlin joins Anita to discuss her new book What About Men?Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Rebecca Myatt Studio manager: Gayl Gordon

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 the programme. This is Woman's Hour, but today we are asking, what about men? It's the title of Catlin Moran's brilliant new book and she's going to be in the studio to tell me all about it. In 2011, her book, An Absolute Game Changer, How to Be a Woman, came out. Twelve years and seven books about women later,

Catlin has turned her attention to the other side, men. But this morning, we're switching it up a bit, and I'm offering all of you the opportunity to put your questions to Catlin. What would you like to ask her about being a woman? Or what we do about men? Are you a man? Are you raising sons? Are you raising daughters and are worried about boys?

Or the other way around, raising sons and worried about girls? How is life for you out there in a time where women are finally shouting about everything that's wrong with the world? How do you feel about your place in it? Come on, lads. And, of course, lasses, let's hear from you. You can text the programme. Get in touch with me in the usual way.

The number is 84844. You can also email me by going to our website or you can send me a WhatsApp message or even better, a voice note. If you want to put your question to Catlin using your own voice, you can do that. Just keep it nice and short, succinct. The number is 03700 100 444 and always check your terms and conditions. that can be found on our website.

Also on the programme, music from multi-Grammy award-winning bassist, lyricist and composer Esperanza Spalding. On to my first guest, the five-time Paralympic gold medallist Ellie Simmons. You might know her even better from her time on the Strictly Dancefloor last year, where she swapped her swimming goggles for sequins, and she was brilliant. Ellie retired from professional swimming after the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, and with her newfound time, she wanted to learn more about her birth mother. Ellie was adopted within months of being born, and while she's always known that she was adopted,

she hasn't previously tried to find her birth parents. Her search forms the basis of an incredibly moving documentary, which airs on ITV tonight. And I'm delighted to say Ellie joins me now. Hello, Ellie. Welcome back to Woman's Hour. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, morning, Anita. Thank you for having me. Always, always a pleasure to have you on the programme. So as I mentioned they're all all my siblings have adopted too and

my parents fostered and then adopted us and I think throughout my life in a way and especially throughout my athlete career life I was very much focused you know I think when you are an athlete you're very yeah driven and in some senses a bit selfish um because yeah you just want to no distractions in a way and I was always like yeah just being a swimmer and then after retiring after making the decision after Tokyo 2021 to to hang up those goggles and retire from swimming I thought who am I you know there's that massive question where you've got this big identity I'm always known as Ellie Simmons the swimmer but who actually am I and I think throughout my life I've always met people who who are adopted and some have gone through the journey that I've just

gone through and some have actually left it too late they've not been able to to have those questions answered because again personally um their birth parents have passed away or yeah they've just not had those answers and I thought you know I've got this time now to find out and at the time I didn't I didn't think things like strictly would happen you know I didn't think my time would be busy but I thought let's find out more and I think when you're young as well you always have visions you always think what are these people like what are my birth parents like like you know it's a bit like um the story of Tracy Beaker that show um she was she's in a foster home and she has visions of what her mom's going to be like. And when you're young, you think, what are they like?

And I never thought that I would have got the chance to meet them and find out more about my family, my birth family. But yeah, I had these visions of my mom and stuff. And to finally go through this journey and to see her in person, it wasn't easy. It was tough it's that very much brought out some lots of emotions and but it I got my answers and I've been very very lucky so this documentary is definitely not saying like go out and look for your birth parents or find out like you've definitely got to think about it because at the start I was very naive and I thought oh it's going to be easy you know I'm these aren't emotions aren't going to come about it's going to be fine you know it's just gonna why do you think you thought was he's going to be easy um you know because I don't think I really thought about it in depth like I knew what

I wanted and I knew I wanted these questions and I knew that I wanted to find out more. But I thought it was just, yeah, the emotions and the things from the back of my mind weren't going to come out. Where actually it played out a lot harder and it brought out things that I never thought, yeah, that I thought about in myself or in loved ones and siblings and birth parents and stuff it's it's a adoption and fostering is is is is amazing but it's it's definitely yeah hard too yeah um and we're going to talk a lot about uh the the journey that you go through on the program and eventually meeting your mum but I want to go back a little bit because you did mention talking about adoption being amazing I want to talk about your amazing childhood yeah and and your adopted parents so what was your childhood like oh my childhood was incredible the most amazing and even now like my

parents are so supportive throughout this journey but we've definitely had like a childhood that's you know we were given all these amazing opportunities and you know even like we had a caravan in Wales and my parents took me and drove me to all these like to the pool all the time. I'm jealous. Caravan in Wales. I know I loved it. I loved it. Yeah and Wales is beautiful. It is. To have a caravan too and my parents gave me these all these amazing opportunities and my parents were so delighted when I could pass my driving test before London because they didn't have to drive me anywhere you know they had a bit of a break but no we had we're very very close we're a very

close family and my older siblings are all adopted too and my parents fostered as well before what was that what was that like for all of you um again we were all very open to it and all very like my sister next to me next older to me has has dwarfism and one of my other sisters she has learning difficulties too so we're very much an open like family of talking about different disabilities and they've raised us up to yeah like we can do anything no matter what yeah we might have to do it in a different way adaptions and all that type but we could still can do it and I think like thanks to them for everything you know and still now like I'm 28 and I still need my dad you know I call him and ring him you know even the simple questions that you're always going to need your parents and I'm thankful

for for them being there throughout what are are they called? Val and Steve. Yeah, because, you know, hearing about them, reading about them, watching, you know, they're remarkable. Yeah, and there's not just them, but there's so many amazing families out there who adopt, who foster, who give love to children that need it. You know, all children need love and care and stuff and these families go out their way and to to give love to children that need it and I think also this

this documentary is not just about my journey it's that was just a thread but you know I've met so many amazing families who who have adopted children with different disabilities. And again, talking about disability and having a platform to talk about it because on this journey of this documentary, I found out about dwarfism, the language that was used way back 28 years ago to describe what it was like to have dwarfism. And now I've followed some social workers in Essex

and it's crazy to think like still now children with a disability are seen as harder to place into families and that's 2022-2023 like things need to change and yes like language acceptance in society um adaptations you know just there's a whole lot of factors that need to change to help people with a disability just have a easier life but also just the acceptance into society there's a really moving scene um when you learn about why your parents wanted to have you adopted so what did you learn about what must have been a very very difficult time for them yeah um so finding out more now like being able to speak to my my birth mom and get those questions answered but at the time like she was again i've not had a child so i don't know

this situation but when you've had a baby you're very vulnerable you know you're an emotional there's all those emotions plus then you're on your own as well she was on her own too there's a lot of things going about and then you find out your child has a disability but then you're given this leaflet and information that what dwarfism means and on this this leaflet it says like dwarfism seen as evil job wise we'll probably go into the circus what year was this again 1994 so not that long ago um and you get this and again you've not had any people in the family who have a disability and again we're very lucky now in in this time that you see different disabilities on tv so you can put a picture to

what people are going to be like in the future you know but when you're given this information from a doctor or someone that you trust and yeah and you read it it's definitely hard to take in you know and again i think that's why not just now but um not just then sorry but now language still needs to change like people with a disability parents who find out their child's got a disability, they're still given, like say, oh, you can adopt, you can abort your child and stuff. And it's things like that. Straight away, you're given a negative factor to a child who has a disability. We need to celebrate differences even more.

And you do speak to other adults who have disabilities about being adopted. And what did you learn from them? Just, again, different lives, you know. I met Jono Lancaster, who's such an amazing human. He's so lovely. But he went through this whole journey. He was adopted as a youngster and sadly his his parents I think his birth mum didn't want to to connect you know and didn't get the answers

that he was hoping for and I think hearing from him like because at the start of it before meeting him I was like I said I was very naive I was like I'll get all the answers you know but actually not thinking of the the emotional impact that it'll have on me whereas he was saying like he didn't get those answered and actually the rejection again that happens because again at the start you're you're rejected anyway not saying you're rejected but in that sense you are and again you're rejected again from not finding those answers it's it's a double whammy and it's it's hard emotionally to to take in and hearing from him and there's also um people that I've met along the way too who I went and interviewed and chatted to

and again this documentary is only 45 50 minutes so you can't fit everyone in which is so hard because you want to because I've met some amazing people who've got some incredible stories, but sadly, yeah, it's got cut into a short time. But an individual who's adopted six children with all different disabilities and seeing him and meeting the children and how positive they are

and how amazing the family is and stuff they are and like how amazing the family is and stuff it's just just gives you a breath of fresh air that's that's some amazing people out there who are giving people a home and love and it's just just fabulous to see if anyone can relate to what ellie is speaking about then we'd love to hear from you text number is 84844 if you want to drop us a note um so what's the first step in trying to track someone down um well so i worked with um um glesney who is like what i said in the documentary and i think it is she's like a private investigator for like people who are looking for their um parents or vice versa and meeting her and again there's some amazing

people out there so i'm sure google will be the answer but also your local council as well are good to go to it too because they have all your documents um and they do the research and finding out because every person who's being adopted has some date like work and paperwork and things that go with you with your whole social workers and fostering and adoption so find out your paperwork and just yeah take things slowly I think that's one of the big things that I would do is take things as slow as possible and just do it in your own time and and you did because eventually your birth mother is tracked down and you write letters to each other yeah Yeah. What was that like reading her words?

Oh, it was emotional because I think my birth mother wanted to take things slow, which I was very, very happy she did. Because it's, yeah, it's emotional, hard emotions to take in. But the first time I wrote the letter, you have all these questions in your head and what you want to say but it's so hard to put it in paper and to say what you want to on a piece of paper but even I just was like I'm just I think I can't remember what I wrote fully but I think it was like yeah I'm not angry I'm not like not angry with what you've made the decision for and even the things that I wanted to know if she got curly hair does she like horses because again I've got curly hair and um I've always loved horses and I wanted to know where did I get that from and things and and then when I got that letter back I actually got that received the letter before I started Strictly and I didn't want to open it

during Strictly I knew in the back of my mind like I had this letter from her on my desk through the whole Strictly experience so it was like mentally I couldn't open it during that time because again Strictly was the most amazing experience but it's full-on you know and it's tough and you're training all these hours and I couldn't have that extra emotion on my shoulders so I had this letter like on my desk and I thought months yeah for months for months because I just wasn't ready to open it goodness me I just you actually said it but it it was actually my next question which is whether you did feel any anger towards her um no I didn't I think I've always known like one of the reasonings

was because of my dwarfism and my disability and there's never been anger because I think I wouldn't be the person I am today without like things happen for a reason don't they and I've been so lucky that yes I've got these amazing family now you know I've got my mum and dad and family who've given me all these amazing opportunities and I wouldn't have maybe been a swimmer or gone to the Paralympics if things didn't happen and I wasn't with this family with my family so yeah there was no anger and she did it for she made that decision during that time because of the situation she was in and like so yeah no anger at all just wanted to find out more and just, yeah, I think maybe empathy is the word. That's how I felt throughout the whole journey and meeting people and stuff.

Your birth mother's identity remained private. Yeah. Otherwise, you've been incredibly open in this documentary. Why did you want to make it so publicly um because I think because I think since opening up I I've always had like this weight on my shoulders about adoption and since opening up the amount of more people who have come to me who've reached out to me and said oh wow I'm adopted too or like I've got someone I know who's adopted and I think if I can go through this whole personal journey and finding out and being more open about who I actually am then

hopefully it might help some other people and again talking so like my massive passion is talking about disability and representation and the whole factor is not just way back in 28 years ago but now there's still disability. People with children with a disability are still seen as harder to place and wait so much more longer for families than an average height, non-disabled child, that things need to be done and we need to talk about it.

We do. And adoption is, yeah, we need to talk about it more and more because it's life-changing. And very quickly, Ellie, we need to talk about it more and more because it's life changing. And very quickly, Ellie, you're not even 30 yet. Such a remarkable woman. You know, where does your strength come from? Gosh, I think innate in a way, like I'm very much determined. That's one of my personality traits. But I think how I've been brought up as well

and the people that I've surrounded myself around like my parents my loved ones having an identity being part of the Dwarf Sports Association RGA and having friends of all different disabilities I think it helps like see that diverse world and traveling and stuff and also there's some amazing adoption charities out there too that if you need that support and want to reach out to them there's yeah adoption futures and all that so I think having that identity massively helps and also just surrounding yourself with people who love you for who you are well there's lots of people who I'm sure are feeling very uh supported by your words this morning in fact Katie's been in touch to say ellie i needed to hear you this morning a much needed positive life story of adoption learning disability

and love thank you for sharing thank you for speaking to me on woman's hour come back anytime and um yeah the documentary airs tonight on itv ellie thank you so much thank you so much so much for having me pleasure um now on to my next guest. 84844 is the number to text, by the way, if you do want to get in touch. Five-times Grammy Award winner, bassist, lyricist and composer, Esperanza Spalding has become a prominent voice in the jazz world. At 38, she's released eight albums

and has collaborated with many distinguished artists, including Terry Lynn Carrington, Tony Visconti and performed with the likes of, wait for this, Herbie Hancock, Prince and Stevie Wonder. She's now in the Netherlands to perform at the North Sea Jazz Festival where she is this year's artist in residence and she joins us now from Rotterdam. Welcome to Women's Hour Esperanza. Read your CV and I wonder what I've been doing with my life. Oh, no, come on. So let's start at the beginning. Where did your musical journey start? Can you explain how your childhood growing up in Portland, Oregon shaped your music? Wow. Yes, I can. I'm still just in the field of the beauty and the impact of this,

of this story of Ellie just now, and really just, wow, being so moved and inspired by her words and her story and her courage and her giving. I was just very grateful, very grateful to learn more about her. So thank you. Thank you for holding the space for me to hear about her oh wonderful yes it's what we do here yeah it's really really a blessing um well I suppose the biggest thing about growing up in Portland Oregon is that at that time there was a very vibrant um community of jazz educators so elder elder musicians, I mean, now people who are actually probably my age, they were probably my age then, but they seemed so old

when I was a kid. But professional musicians who took it upon themselves to educate the youth and create all of these environments for learning. There was something called the Cultural Recreation Band, which was sort of a concert band theory training performance program for inner city kids. It was the idea of a lot of the elder jazz musicians was to have something better than being on the streets, you know, being out running in the streets for kids in the neighborhood to do. And I was in a chamber music organization. And just as I grew able to plug into these different resources, and most importantly, you know, as a teenager, as I was coming into, you know, this identity as being a quote unquote jazz musician, there was really this just vibrant, free, inviting culture of musicians playing with youth, you know, offering you classes.

You could go over and stay as long as you wanted at somebody's house and listen to records and play tunes. And it was really it was really unique. I now realize, you know, growing up and becoming a busy professional and all of that. So I think I mean there's a million factors you could speak to of course coming from a place and a time and a family but I think that that factor is probably the biggest contributor to what you know created the foundation for what I get to do now in the world surely you I because I did and you correct me if I'm wrong but did I read somewhere that you were self-taught violin?

And by the time you were five, you were able to do this? Oh, well. So there must be some sort of natural gift in there somewhere. No, I wasn't. I wasn't self-taught. I was self-inspired to go play something. Yeah. To play something. You know, it wasn't like a parent or another force was saying like oh go take music lessons um and i did have very sparse lessons in the early part

of my violin life and then later did get you know some pretty serious heavy duty uh teaching on the instrument so i definitely wasn't self-taught i don't know that you can pick up no you heard yo-yo ma didn't you yeah but i but i do think of people like clark terry who didn't have access to an instrument or any music education and fashioned himself a quote unquote trumpet out of a piece of tubing he found in a nearby empty lot and would just practice on that and develop what then grew into his original his founding technique so I guess anything possible but that's not what happened in my case. Blood is breathing is a line from lyrics it's a song exploring and celebrating the body and the blood tell us more. Yeah 12 little

spells it actually became 16 song spells but it started at 12 what we call what i call song spells um so these were songs that intended to stimulate a certain experience in the body so each one is speaking to a different part of the body um and after we had after i had written the 12 and recorded them, my label wanted four more. And so I spoke with everybody in the band and said, what would you want a spell for? What part of your body would you want to think about or be in relationship with through a song? And so this was one of the four additional areas, which was the blood. And so the intention of the song or the invitation of the song is that when you listen to it and listen to the sounds and the rhythm and the lyrics, it's this invitation to feel this particular aspect of what our blood is.

And your latest album, Songwrites Apothecary Lab, was created during the pandemic. And that was shaped in conversations with music therapists and neuroscientists. So we're going to get a bit deeper now. So I'm quite intrigued to hear about your thoughts around the healing power of music. Well, they're not my thoughts. I mean, this is like a very very old old old old knowing you know that um in our time there's now some very compelling and very empirical evidence based knowledge and insight and guidance around different ways that sound music specifically can be

incorporated into a you know regimen of healing or a or a recipe for for various types of healing and this this was this project the songwriter's path carry lab is sort of an obvious you know outgrowth from 12 little spells which was this first foray into, oh, yeah, you know, what is it to create music that's inviting a person to engage with a particular sensation? So the Songwriters Apothecary Lab, I wanted to have more accountability and I wanted to have more collaboration with people who are doing this full time, have dedicated their lives to studying this and being practitioners in this, et cetera, et cetera. So initially I put together this council, I invited together this

council of various practitioners and scientists and people working in early childhood development and music therapy and et cetera. And then over time that the shape of that council has shifted, you know, people come in, people go people go out uh but but but essentially the musicians who are working on the music and the people that we're in conversation with asking what do you need a song for um we're we're working in collaboration and tutelage and guidance and hopefully oversight um with these practitioners with this, because it's really, it's actually very powerful stuff. You know, we, music seems so ubiquitous. It's like in commercials, in the grocery store, it's, it's on your, your, your device, you know, and it's easy to maybe

forget just how impactful the medium itself really is on our body, on our psyche, on our emotional state. And I, I think the simplest kind of um you know way that most of us intersect this idea of music as a healing force is we put on the song that we know is gonna make us feel better you know so just I think in intuitively there's this understanding that music is available to show up for us in different ways when we need it and I want to um ask you a bit about teaching because you began teaching very early on in your career just pretty much soon after you graduated you were only 20 were you the youngest teacher to be brought on at Harvard? Oh my god no it was at

Berkeley where you were yourself. Harvard came a lot later. Yeah and yeah you've been a professor of the practice at Harvard University. So tell us more about teaching music. Gosh, I don't know that you can teach music, but I do think that good teachers, the teachers that have been most valuable to me and the way that I try to show up as a teacher is creating encounters with the tools, you know, and creating, offering, helping a student come to the skills that allow them to engage with what's going to help them grow. You know, that doesn't come from me per se, you know. I can, of course, share things that have helped me, but essentially each musician is so unique and so distinct and they're going to need different things and they want different things so what i hope for is to help whoever my students are

learn how to seek out the information and the resources that they need and then how to metabolize that information into practice and into practice and application. And then at Harvard, I did, quote unquote, the courses that I led were related to music. They were more around how we're applying, how we're integrating music into our other passions or devotions. So most of my students were not music majors. They were in other liberal arts or other sciences even. And many of them were looking for ways that they could, like,

solidly create a foundation of music in whatever they wanted to do, whether that was computer science or medicine or et cetera. So I felt like a lot of our work was using this social justice lens of like how might we respond to something that we're passionate about from a foundation of music. Gosh, I wish that had been offered at Leeds University. I'd have snapped that up. So I'm going to share something really personal with you.

I would have, I mean, I guess it's a class thing where you just get the opportunity to be able to play an instrument. It doesn't come to everybody. And I have always wanted to be able to play the piano. So I bought myself one, Esperanza, but it's just been sitting there gathering dust. Is it ever too late?

Should I just get in front of it and just get going? Definitely. It's never too late. Sit in front of it and just get going? Definitely. It's never too late. Sit in front of it and get going. And that's one of the tragedies of music education, as it has for many, many, many years been propagated, is there's this sense that, you know, if you don't go about it the right way from the beginning, you're doomed.

Yeah. And that it's only worth something if it sounds good to somebody else. And we forget that. I mean, that's why it's so wonderful to have young, you know, siblings or cousins or nieces and nephews. I get to see some of my baby cousins just entertaining and delighting themselves from playing whatever at the piano, you know, or whatever on the guitar or whatever. And I feel that that's a perfectly solid place to begin. And you don't even need to go further than that unless you want to. But when whatever you're studying is starting from a place of like,

oh, I get to come enjoy this. I feel that the progress is so much smoother. There you go. It's so much more fun to study when you're having a good time already. You've given me permission to just bang away. Apologies to anyone who's going to be in the vicinity. You'll find things made of music, and that is one of the easiest interfaces for a person.

You'll find melodies. You'll find chords that you like. You'll find rhythms that you like. It's waiting for you. It's in you. Love it. Esperanza, how inspiring. best of luck at the north sea jazz festival uh where you're artist in residence and thank you so much for speaking to me this morning very inspiring stuff thank you thank you um 84844 loads of you getting in touch um about uh ellie's interview what a truly inspiring generous spirited young woman i spotted her in

london on a rare trip there on May the 10th and had to call out hello to her, which she took in good spirit, even though she was no doubt having a busy day. Such a pro. Dear Woman's Hour, my motto is never regret, but hearing Ellie just now, I genuinely regret not fostering children with special needs

through such an inspiration. And that's from Sue in Worcester. And the messages to new parents is still too heavily weighted on the worst case scenario if you're labelled as disabled rather than how able but different all people are. I'm in my 50s with spina bifida, have worked full time, got an adopted now grown up family, have a business and live life to the full. Thank you for your messages. Keep them coming in. Now Canada has a history of disproportionate violence faced by Indigenous women, which was called a genocide by a national public inquiry in 2019.

The Native Women's Association of Canada have counted the names of more than 4,000 Indigenous women they believe have been murdered over the last three decades. Brandy Morin is an award-winning journalist. She's Cree, Iroquois, French-Canadian and puts the abuses suffered by Indigenous Canadians front and centre in her work. Welcome to the programme, Brandy. Hansé, hello. Thank you for having me. Absolute pleasure. You've spent your journalistic career so far focusing on Indigenous communities. Why is that so key for you? Yeah, so I've been a journalist full time now for about 13 years,

and I've been telling exclusively Indigenous stories for 10 years. And I had noticed that, you know, the way that our people were being represented in the media at that time was by a lot of stereotyping, discrimination, and frankly, racism that was contributing to a lot of the adversity and violence that our communities were facing. And so that really motivated me to get out there and into our communities to bring these stories, you know, to the forefront. And from there, I got outside of Canada into bringing these stories to an international audience because there was so much apathy that existed here in Canada, you know, to these different, you know, situations and, frankly, human rights violations that are happening.

What do you believe lies behind this level of violence towards Indigenous women? So, you know, people don't understand that this is a crisis that has existed since European contact. It's existed in North America since 1492. It's only been documented in recent decades. And so it's very rooted in the agenda of colonialism And the patriarchy that was brought over, you know, from Europeans when, you know, our women being in vulnerable situations due to various adverse statistics, you know, that we are still living in. And then I guess that leads to something that you've talked about and I'm very interested in, which is the intergenerational trauma and its impact on Indigenous communities. you explain a bit more about that for our audience what does that actually mean it's mentioned a lot but how does that actually play out yeah so intergenerational

trauma is when there is historical or collective trauma or even individual trauma that is experienced by one generation and it's passed on to the next in several generations where, you know, these traumatic events or experiences haven't been healed, and the impacts of them are still being experienced. So for instance, we have, you know, the residential school system here in Canada, where our children were rounded up and forced to attend Indian boarding schools. We've had what's called the 60s scoop, where children were taken from their native families and placed in non-native homes and had their culture stripped away. But in these boarding schools and in general, you know, in the agenda, again, of colonialism, many of our people

experienced oppression and abuse. And that experience continues on and is relived by many families and communities today. Yeah. And you've done a program which is actually going to go out today for Outlook on the World Service, where you did an extended interview. It's a specific story with Cambria Harris. Tell us about Cambria Harris. How did she come to your attention and why was she so important for you to talk to? Yes, Cambria Harris is a remarkable young woman. She is 22 years old. She lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Now, they call this the epicenter of the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls crisis here in Canada. Morgan Harris, who was 39 years old, was a victim of an alleged serial killer in Winnipeg, who is

alleged to have taken out four of our women within a three-month span last year. And so Cambria was told by the police and her family that they would not search for the remains of her mother and the other victims because the remains are believed to be in two different landfills in Winnipeg. And so Cambria traveled to our nation's capital in Ottawa in December with her sister and some family members in leadership and pleaded to the media, decried this decision by the police not to search. And since then, she has attended rallies and regularly visits a camp at the landfill to advocate and campaign for them to search, for them to care about these women that were discarded. Tell us about Cambria's childhood and her relationship with her mother, because it

was quite complicated, wasn't it? But it's also exactly what you're talking about, that trauma and how it plays out. Yeah. Yeah. Cambria's family is, you know, in her experience is an example of intergenerational trauma. So Cambria's mother, Morgan, grew up in and out of the foster care system, struggled with addictions, passed that trauma on, had her children taken from her, which eventually led for her to fall into full-blown addictions and be living on the streets of Winnipeg. And so Cambria went into various group home situations and with relatives to live and navigated these different systems. And managed to not become a statistic. She is 22 years old and graduated high school.

And here she is advocating for the betterment of Indigenous women and girls, even though her mother was murdered in such a horrific way. And she is just a remarkable young woman, very well spoken and spirited. It's unfortunate the situation she's in, but her voice is very powerful. It is incredibly powerful. And she's continuing to campaign to get her mother's remains back. How likely is she to be successful in that? I don't think that she's going to give up anytime soon I you know they've been waiting on authorities to decide whether they will fund, you know, this search, which is in the multi, multi-million dollars. And I don't think she's going to take no for an answer. She has gone and visited and sat on top of, you know, piles of rubbish where her mother has believed and, you

know, and prayed there and just believes that this cause encompasses so much more. It's a really, you know, an example of the tragedies that we're facing and the enormity of it. And so, I mean, she is so young and she is determined. So I think this is, you know, she tells me this is her lifelong mission. And she's got you to amplify her voice as well. Because you have skin in the game. It's personal for you as well. Something that you said right at the beginning of this interview that I just want to pick up at the end of the interview because it really stuck with me and you said that you wanted to uh you became a journalist to shout about the stories of indigenous women because of the and make it make these stories heard globally because of the

apathy in your own country why is there so much apathy towards what happens to indigenous women again we have a lot of deeply rooted racism in all different sectors of our society and communities. There is, you know, discrimination and so much misunderstanding. And there is a separation between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous here. And we are in an era of reconciliation in this country but we have so far to go and i think that in you know we were in such a chaotic situation here in this country as to the the consequences of what has truly gone on here um that people you know have maybe oh and the screen has frozen brandy thank you so much for talking to me just to say the screen is frozen i'm not sure we'll be able to get the line back but um the documentary will be going out on outlook on the world service today so i will move on to my

final guest caitlin moran's multi-award winning bestseller, How to Be a Woman. It was a watershed moment, came out in 2011. It was a watershed moment for a generation. You could say it did alright. Published in 25 different languages. Actually 43. Thank you very much. I should have updated my Wikipedia. Yes, you should have. Sold over a million copies by

2014 and in that very year she was also named on this programme the 10th most powerful woman in the uk uh she's still i'm delighted to say she's back with her eighth book this time she's gone completely rogue and turned her attention to the other sex the book is called what about men she's in the midst of a 13-day tour around the british isles to promote a book and she's found time to come and join me in the studio on publication day i know always i'd always come here for you um congratulations how's the tour going oh it's been amazing like i mean as all writers

know you're just sitting in a room on your own hoping that you've like identified the right thing and hit it in the right tone and the response we've had has been amazing suddenly all these men have appeared from nowhere it's usually quite a lady heavy audience but all these men have turned up a lot crying. A lot of older men, men in their 60s and 70s, just giving these amazing speeches, kind of going, I've waited all my life for something like this. Really, really moving. Incredible. Why did you want to tackle this subject? Well, I mean, as any sort of woman in the public eye or anyone who's a feminist will know,

if you spend most of your life talking about women and girls and their problems and then you know you start to have these conversations often the second or third thing someone will say to you in response is oh yeah women but what about men and for the first five or six years I was like I don't care I'm gonna have to sort themselves out I'm team tits it's all about the ladies and the girls for me um the ultimate irony of feminism would be would it not if women solve the problems of women and then had to solve the problems of men as well that's ultra emotional load um but then about three or four years ago i started realizing it was the younger men were asking this in in quite an aggressive way and it culminated on international women's day two years ago where i was doing an event with half women half men were boys and girls 15 16 years old thought i was there to talk about the problems of women and girls and the boys

hijacked it basically they were very angry and they were saying things like, it's harder to be a man than a woman now. Women are winning and boys are losing. Feminism has gone too far. And using the phrase feminazis. And at that point, I became fascinated as a subject because when people are angry, it's usually that they're scared. I think anger is fear brought to the boil.

And it's like, why are boys scared of women and the progress they've had? And I was suddenly like, I need to scrap the project that I'm working on and I need to write this book now. Because there is a whole generation of boys, as we can see from the rise of Andrew Tate, Laura Bates' book, Many Who Hate Women,

just details how big this problem is. And I think how generally unaware their parents' generation are of just how quickly and how rapidly this has spread. You identify one of the main complaints, as you just said, that the boys are saying right at the beginning of the book, it's easier to be a woman than a man now. And on page 14, you say, I believe them. I think it's true in our culture, at least. This might be surprising based on what you've written about in the past to lots of our listeners. What do you mean?

Well, first of all, obviously, statistically, there's a massive, you know, just simply the sexual assault statistics alone. We know that one in four statistic, it hangs over us. So like kind of like structurally, absolutely, women still have massive problems. But I see this as a huge extension of my feminism because the thing that women have is that we have feminism. So there isn't a problem you could have as a woman where if you just don't type it into Google, you'll find a blog or a book or a movie or an uplifting song by Beyonce.

Like we've got this brilliant, informal, crowdsourced thing called feminism that will solve your problems. And as a mother, I think only half the rearing that has happened to my two teenage daughters has been done by me. The other half has been done by the village of feminism. They have these resources. I can't imagine what it would be like to raise teenage boys because there aren't those resources out there. There isn't a conversation about this. And when you chunk through the first bit of big research that I did was sort of like, what is the state of boyhood and manhood now? And there's a list of statistics where you just go, okay, this is a problem. So boys are more likely to be

medicated for disruptive behavior in school. They're more likely to be excluded from school. They're less likely to go on to further education uh they make up the majority of the homeless population the majority of the prison population they're more addicted uh likely to become addicted to drugs or alcohol or pornography and the leading cause of death for men under the age of 50 is suicide now were those facts that were in women's lives feminism would have come up with a huge campaign we'd be talking about this in the round what is happening culturally that means not only is this happening but there doesn't seem to be anything constructively as a movement happening around it and we don't yet seem to have found a language to talk about it that has crossed over into the

mainstream there are academic books about this you know kind of like you know you will have serious things about this but something that's warm and accessible and something you can put into either a teenage boy's hand or you know a middle-aged dad who is struggling's hand and go, here's some stuff that I think you will read. You'll laugh, you'll cry, but this is about you and let's start this conversation. Only yesterday on this very programme we were talking to the chair of the House of Commons Women's and Equality Committee who say sexual harassment and sexual violence continues to be a scourge in our schools. I'm sure you know all this. Many girls and women feeling powerless.

Their solution was more relationship education for boys. Well, this is the other thing, you know, sort of like, you know, it's interesting that I've seen quite a few women, obviously the book is only out today so they haven't seen it, but there's a few sort of feminists who are like, why are you talking about the boys now and sort of like forefronting their problems? And as any woman and particularly a mother will know,

half the problems of women and girls are men. You know, it's troubled men, it's angry men, it's abusive men, it's misogynist men, it's men who don't know how to treat you at work, it's men who don't see that the pay gap exists. So in order to fix the women and girls, you've got to go and fix the boys and men, but like half those problems. So I and to me, when I look at the definition of feminism, it's about equality between the sexes. And what feminism is really good at in the last 150 years is seeing things that are typically seen as male things, like being able to run a business, being in charge of your own finances, being able to run for parliament, being in control of your own fertility. Over the last 150 years, women have taken those typically male traits and our lives have expanded.

We've got this incredible plethora of role models and this feeling of expansion and hope and joy for women. In the last 150 years for men, they haven't really added anything to the experience of being men. And they particularly haven't taken things that we think of as female. So still the massive disparity in parenting, in maternity leave and paternity leave, in emotional communication and having a brotherhood around you and friends that you can communicate with. One in five men over the age of 50 say they have no close friends. Whenever you watch Gone Fishing, whenever there's an episode of that up, you see on Twitter just people, men just going, I wish I had a friend like that. I wish I had someone I could just go and talk to and open up to. So these female, these things that are seen as female, I think are a part of the longing

and in some cases despair and anxiety that boys and men have, that there are aspects of being a woman that they need to come and take for us we give it with open arms we've stolen your trousers and the ability to go to the moon yeah they're really useful so come and take some lady things we give it to you um another bit that really jumped out at me was when you write about the division between the mothers of daughters and the mothers of sons when discussing the issue in particular and you describe a situation in which usually you've literally no idea what to say to women when you know her son and maybe lots of our listeners will relate to this because you talk to teenage girls and they are telling you who the boys are at school that are causing problems yes and you

think well what do i do do i talk to them what do you do? Do I talk to them? What do you do? Exactly. What is the mum code? I think this is the first time ever in eight books that I have pointed out a problem and gone, I actually don't have a solution to this. Usually I like to ask a question and then offer an answer. And in this, I just don't know. I don't know what the etiquette is, the woman code, how we do this. Because as any mother of daughters will know, you know who the boys are at school, that there are rumours about or stories about

and things that they have done. And when they were like five years old and a boy was being naughty and poking a cat with a stick in the playground, you knew you could go over to his mum and go, he's mucking about with that cat, you need to stop. What is the etiquette? If now, at the age of like 14, 15,

you actually need to go to that mother and say, there is a story and I believe it to be true, that there was a girl who was passed out drunk at a party and he assaulted her. What do you do? I don't know. 84844. Tell us. Tell us if you can relate to this or you want to tell us if you've reacted in that situation.

We'd love to hear from you. We've had a tweet in from someone saying, I'm a single dad with a mid-teen daughter. I cannot wait to read Catlin Moran's new book my daughter will talk to me and ask about anything but she didn't want to confide in me her problems with bullying at her school problems to with boys and jealousy oh god well he sounds like an amazing dad and just the fact that he's aware of that is fantastic but like the disparity between so very often I think dads are not mum like kind of like and just the way that we talk about dads in culture, like kind of like, you know, daddies are still silly, daddies get things wrong.

Or there's, if you go on like, you know, any sort of bookstore, the kind of books that are called things like, no daddy, no, you know, kind of like it's either quite a threatening thing or they're quite silly. And the way that we venerate, and just the culture around motherhood, like Mumsnet is a massive political force. You know, every prime minister has to go onto Mumsnet. there is a dad's net but a i suspect you've never heard of it and b there are so few people on it they offer a crate of beer if you register and that's what i mean about the difference in the culture between sort of motherhood and fatherhood well it's international international men's day there is an international men's day 18th of november as we know yeah like kind of i've never seen and when whenever there's international women's day the comedian richard herring is very good

at answering to all the men who go is there an International Men's Day and he's like yeah it's November the 18th but women are good at organising things like we're good

at celebrating ourselves and that's the other thing it's a very joyful book going we have really celebrated in such a brilliant way our women and our teenage girls It's joyful

and Catelyn doing what she does brilliantly which is make you laugh out loud on a train back from leeds thank you uh where people just think you've lost the part and i'm just sort of cheering and weeping and it's just your turn of phrase and it's like basically we're just sitting next to you having a great old chat with a mate who's just making us howl and cry with laughter and making us think um so some feminists have said come on catelyn why are you talking

about boys and what about reaction from men it's been really interesting because obviously the book isn't out until today so no one's actually read it but like kind of i i read i wrote the book in the best of faith just sort of going you know i'm getting all these men going what about men there are boys going it's harder to be a woman a boy than a woman now so i was like okay let's take that seriously i'll write a book and there's been a bit of pushback online from people just basically going, well, don't write about us. We don't like the female gaze on us. And there's a bit in the book where I'm talking about how in bookshops, there's a huge woman section in every bookshop, massive woman section,

but there is no man section. And I don't think, we don't write about men. We think of them as the neutral kind of like omni-human, like they're so neutral and bland that like they're not worth looking at as a category and that's what I want to do in a very joyful way, like a kind of sexy amusing David Attenborough. I'm just like okay, there's been some noise from the man cage let's go and see what's going on there and I think maybe men are not

used to being written about from a woman's point of view but I mean as far as I know no one's really done this before so I hope I've got the tone right but it's a very loving very generous it is loving generous funny very funny I've got you in the studio and I need to say this um because I call it a game changer how to be a woman came out in 2011 absolutely when I read that uh like a generation of us and I remember sitting there thinking how has she done? I was riddled with shame until probably just two years ago

when I wrote my own memoir. As a direct result of you writing yours, I'm just going to put it out there. I love your memoir so much. But because of what you wrote, because I thought, how did you have the capacity and the confidence to conquer your shame and say it all out loud and say it all so

brilliantly where does that caitlin moran confidence come from and we've got 30 seconds not even oh i was riddled with shame as a teenage girl and i think the gland that produces shame just burned out by the time i was 21 and i love busting a taboo and talking about secrets that's my happy place keep doing it keep doing it calinute pleasure to have you on the program. The book is out today. What About Men? Thank you so much for all of you

who've been in touch. So many of you have been getting in touch. At last, what I was saying 50 years ago about feminism, that it won't be fixed

for women unless you fix it for men as well. That's from Mike in Bristol. So glad someone is talking about this. My son follows Andrew Tate and quotes him.

My son feels that women have it all and young men have a disadvantage. I think he's right. So thank you for discussing it all because it's an issue. So many messages coming in. I'm sorry I couldn't have read all of them. I'll be back tomorrow for more Woman's Hour. That's all for today's Woman's Hour.

Join us again next time. Imagine if you could get hold of your favourite pop star's personal mobile phone. What might you find out? I was like, this is a crime. This is the story of how a group of Korean pop stars and their friends were caught sending each other videos of women they'd secretly filmed during sex, some of whom weren't even awake. So what if she's unconscious? You raped her.

An investigation that blew the lid off digital sex crimes in a country divided along gender lines. The result of all this is a shattering of faith and trust in Korean men. I'm Chloe Hajimotheo and from BBC Radio 4, this is Burning Sun, part of the Intrigue podcast feed. All episodes are 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.