Woman's Hour - Extremism in schools, Julie Bindel, The Great Gatsby

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Hundreds of children were caught up in riots with well over 100 arrested and a number charged last summer after the murder of three children in Southport. Since then far right extremism and racism in schools has intensified - an everyday experience in primary and secondary schools, according to the teachers union, the NASUWT. The top priority at their annual conference next week is a motion on behaviour and school safety with the agenda citing problems caused by the Southport riots. Patrick Roach, General Secretary of the NASUWT joins Nuala McGovern.Frances Mayli McCann stars as Daisy Buchanan in a new musical of The Great Gatsby. The show comes to London following a hit run on Broadway. We speak to Frances and the show’s writer Kait Kerrigan about placing women at the centre of this classic story, celebrating its centenary year.Julie Bindel’s new book, Lesbians: Where are we now? is described as part-memoir, part frontline reportage and part cultural commentary. In it she examines what defines lesbian culture, love, friendship and happiness today and asks why - in her view - lesbians so often seem to face particular hostility? The journalist, feminist campaigner and author is in the Woman’s Hour studio.Today marks 11 years since over 270 girls were abducted from their school in the town of Chibok, Nigeria by Boko Haram. The tragedy sparked international outrage - you might remember the campaign hashtag #bringbackourgirls - and today, global leaders and advocates including UN representatives are gathering in London to mark the anniversary with a photo exhibition and panel discussions. We hear from Dr Aisha Muhammed-Oyebode - lawyer and activist from the Murtala Muhammed Foundation.The Herring Girls were the predominantly Scottish, working-class women who laboured in the UK’s once thriving fishing industry. An itinerant workforce, they went from port to port, following the fishing fleet and working gruelling hours, gutting and packing fish for export in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Artist and farm labourer Joanne Coates has spent six months researching the life and work of this community on the east coast of Scotland. Using art, photography and performance she wants to reclaim their history and reconnect local people with their Herring Girl heritage.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Kirsty Starkey

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, this is Newland McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. Well, the author and feminist campaigner Julie Bindle will be with us this hour. Her new book is Lesbians. Where are we now? We're going to take a look at how Julie sees the landscape. And I'd also like your thoughts on this. Julie advocates for the word lesbian. She believes the word is important for lesbians to embrace and uses a way to

define their identity and also reclaim it from any potential negative connotations. She says some lesbians are pressured to use the word queer or LGBTQ plus. Well, if you have or have not used the word, let me hear from you this morning on what you choose and also why. You can text the programme, the number is 84844 on social media, we're at BBC Woman's Hour or you can email us through our website. For a WhatsApp message or a voice note, the number to use is 03700 100 444.

Also today, the spectacular Great Gatsby has arrived in London's West End, putting female characters front and centre for this musical. We have Frances Mailey McCann, who plays Daisy, also Kate Kerrigan, the writer transforming F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel for the stage. It's a hundred years since it was published. Also, we're going to hear about the Herring Girls. These are the Scottish women who traveled in groups of three to gut and pack fish. Red Herring is a new exhibition in the Scottish Highlands even. We're

going to hear all about it. But let us begin with what you were hearing in the news bulletin there. Police forces were in several cases unprepared for the level of violence that broke out in riots after the murder of three children in Southport last summer. This is according to a report by the Home Office Affairs Select Committee. Hundreds of children were caught up in the riots with well over a hundred arrested and a number of them charged. Since the riots, far-right extremism and racism in schools has intensified an everyday experience in primary and secondary schools according to the Teachers Union

the NASUWT. The top priority at their annual conference which will take place next week is a motion on behavior and school safety with the agenda citing problems caused by the Southport riots. Well let me speak to Patrick Roach General Secretary of the NASUWT. Good to have you with us this morning, Patrick. I mean, explain how you see it, how big a problem this is in schools. Patrick, I think I'm having a problem just hearing you at the moment. Let's see, can we get that rectified? I can see you're speaking, but I know that I can't hear you. Let us try that one more time. Okay, I'll try again. Thank you, Nula.

We have you. Brilliant. The technology sometimes gets in the way. I'll tell you a bit about technology in a moment in the context of what I want to say about the intensification of extremist and populist ideologies that are permeating now our school corridors and classrooms. You're absolutely right in your introduction, you know, what we saw last summer was some of the worst violence, racist violence, in our towns and cities across the country and in many respects it was unprecedented but

could it have been anticipated? Well, yes, it could, because we have been seeing a spread of toxic narratives, of hostile narratives, which have been legitimized in many parts of our politics and our civil society. And that's a serious concern. Many children, of course course have been caught up in that. Not only caught up on the violence on our streets on you know hot summer nights last summer but actually replaying many of those narratives, many of those hostile attitudes in classrooms and that's what our members, teachers, members of the NASUWT

are reporting to us. That's why this motion at our conference has been balloted as the number one priority for our conference. Can you give me specific examples? Well, you know, our members report to us. We've done to take an annual survey of behaviour with regard to our members and our members report to us as part of our casework. Pupils, you know, drawing swastikas in their classrooms, denying the Holocaust, anti-immigrant sentiments being mouthed and voiced, anti-Muslim prejudice. Frankly, Nula,

some of the racist taunts that were commonplace in the 1970s and now being replayed, you know, the P word, the N word being used in classrooms. So I'm trying to think what do your members do in instances like that? Do they have the guidance or the training to be able to combat it. Yeah, what our members are saying is they want to see greater guidance and greater support for them in the classroom in dealing with those issues. Teachers need to be confident and school leaders need to be confident when these issues arise that they can intervene and that actually they will have the support of parents and the wider community when they're dealing with these issues.

It's not just about race, of course, Nuala. It's also about the emergence of sexist and misogynist attitudes within our classrooms as well. And when we see the intersection between race and gender in relation to the adverse and violent and abusive pupil behaviors, then it becomes a really toxic mix. And so one of the things that we have seen reported to us is an increased incidence of racist misogynist behavior directed towards pupils and directed towards black women members? Well with that, I mean there is the guidance which your teachers and members are looking for but I'm also wondering about the safety aspects, be it for the teachers or the pupils

who may feel targeted by what they're seeing in the classroom, if it is as you report. Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the important things we've had in developments we've seen in the last few months is our legal measures that require employers to take seriously the issues of sexual harassment and to take preventative steps to tackle that sexual harassment, to treat it like a health and safety risk at work. And that's what's required here, that actually schools and colleges adopt a risk assessment approach, a risk management approach to dealing with the issues of racism within our schools, to dealing with the issues of sexism within our schools. Taking a preventative

approach to that really is important here. And one of the things that we're saying to government is, we want to see government taking a lead in supporting the effort of schools by establishing a national working party on school safety and security to develop the kind of guidance but also the resources that will help school leaders to begin to manage these issues. But can I say this as well, Nula, that tackling the problem within the perimeter of the school is one thing, but this is part of a wider social problem and requires a wider societal response to dealing with it. Well there's a couple of things there,

so you are calling for that national working really group to come together for the government and work with members on that. Also I do want to apologize to anybody offended by the language that you were describing that your members are hearing in the classroom in relation to this story. But you said earlier that you really need the support of parents in tackling some of these issues that you're seeing in the classroom, but also that the classroom is a reflection of society at large. I mean, how do you go about that? Also, this is a double question in a way. Is this specifically correlated to what happened at the Southport riots? I mean, do you see a correlation between the two? I wouldn't want to, you talked about

correlation, I wouldn't want to argue cause and effect here. What I would say is that we've seen for quite some time, in fact at our conference in 2022 we were reporting concerns about misogynist and incel cultures influencing the attitudes and behaviour of pupils within schools. So that long predates the extremely tragic incidents in Southport. But you're absolutely right. This is about schools and parents working together, it's about communities working together to ensure that schools are genuinely a safe space for pupils and indeed for the staff who work within them. We know that as many as one in three female pupils in our secondary schools are

saying that they are worried about their safety and security when it comes to issues of sexual harassment. We know that more than half of women teachers within our schools, according to our recent surveys, have said that they've experienced sexist and misogynist attitudes from pupils. So the reality is we have to get a grip of this. Schools, of course, have a responsibility to play. Parents have a responsibility to play here, but so too does the government. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. And that is Patrick Roach, General Secretary of the NASUWT. They will have their conference next week.

I do want to read a statement from the Department of Education that was given to the media. It said, We are concerned about the spread of extremist views in our schools and the harmful impact on young people's wellbeing and learning. Schools should be safe spaces where all students feel welcome and protected. We know navigating these issues can be challenging, which is why we provide a range of resources to support teachers in protecting children

from radicalisation and building their resilience to extremism. More widely, our independent expert-led curriculum review will look at the knowledge and skills children need to thrive in a fast-changing online world, and we're also bringing in much wider protection for children with the Online Safety Act to ensure children have an age-appropriate experience online. You did hear Patrick there calling instead for a working

group on these particular issues. 84844 if you would like to get in touch on any of the issues that you're hearing this morning, I was asking for your thoughts on the word lesbian. Do you use it? Do you identify as that? Do you use a different word? Why is that? Get in touch with Julie Bindel coming up a little bit later in the program. But before that, let us turn to one of the most iconic novels of the 20th century, A Glittering Tale of Excess, Parties, Great Parties and The Elusive American Dream. Now, The Great Gatsby is celebrating its centenary this year. It has been reimagined as a brand new stage musical, bringing F. Scott Fitzgerald's

world of champagne, jazz and a heartbreak to life with sweeping music and a fresh perspective. But it isn't just a retelling of the story that you know. The new production, it was in Broadway, now West End, puts women at the centre of Gatsby's world. They're sometimes on the fringes, but now front and centre. We have Kate Kerrigan with us, the show's book writer, on how she gave Daisy Buchanan and other women greater agency and voice. And we're also joined by Frances Mailey McCann,

who plays Daisy, stepping into the shoes of one of literature's most enigmatic and perhaps misunderstood characters. Welcome to both of you. Thank you so much for having us. So lovely to see you in person. I went to see it on Friday. Oh, did you?

Oh my goodness, what a spectacle. What I wasn't expecting as I rolled. Now I thought I'd got pretty dressed up. I'll be honest. On a Friday night, a beautiful Friday evening in London to go to the theater and everybody milling around just near Trafalgar Square. I was so dressed down compared to the people that people were dressed in full

flapper outfits, there was like gentlemen with, you know, in white tuxedos. Was that expected, Daisy? I don't think we expected it. Daisy Francis. I just answered anyway. We do encourage it, though. But why not? It's a big party. It's in London's biggest theatre and it's a spectacle. So we want people to come and be part of the party. So dress accordingly.

And that was the first preview. How did it feel? It was crazy. The auditorium was full, you know, two and a half thousand people for this big new show. But we loved it. We loved every minute. And usually I get very nervous for a first preview, but I'm happy to say I had so much fun. It didn't show. The nerves did not show. Let's talk about your character, Daisy. Yes, Daisy Buchanan. She is a beautifully tragic, misunderstood woman of the 20s. And although, you know, and this era and Gatsby especially, we think about the roaring 20s, the parties, the opulence, but you kind of forget about the limitations that women faced back then. So Daisy being

of this status of wealth, the debutante, that's kind of all that she had. What else was there to do? I often think during the play, she must have been so bored. She doesn't even look after her child directly. You've got staff for that. There's kind of a languor, kind of, you know, kind of a slow moving feel often around scenes of days, even when you read the book. And I'm just thinking, Kate, and welcome, that maybe some people haven't read The Great Gatsby. I think I had it on my school curriculum. Could you give us a brief synopsis?

Yeah, Great Gatsby is a story about the American dream and whether or not it whether or not it can be achieved. There's a character of great of Gadsby who we meet this character named Nick Caraway who is sort of the lens in the book into this world of change that's happening in the 1920s and he's watching the rise of that like rags to riches story that is possible in the 1920s because of the way the financial systems are changing. And he meets Jay Gadsby, who is in love with his cousin. And his cousin is Daisy Buchanan, and she is married. And Gadsby pursues her and has been pursuing her since they met before he went to war. And so some of the things that I was really interested in in that story were the fact that it was 1923, 1922,

and that women had just gotten the vote in the United States. And so there was this new power that women found themselves having. And yet, women were were still ruled by their husbands. Their money was still their husbands money. There was still a lot of constraints on what it meant to be a woman in the 1920s. And something else that we thought was really interesting was that it took place right after a pandemic. The Spanish flu had just happened. And I don't know that we would have dug into

that except that while we were writing it, we were still feeling the shock effect of that in our own lives. And so it felt very relevant and very connected to what we could say in 2023, 2024 while we were writing it. Yeah, I think a lot of people expected after the COVID pandemic that there was going to this explosion of socializing and parties like there's displayed in The Great Gatsby. I'm not sure that exactly happened, perhaps the opposite. Yeah. But let me turn back to you, Frances, because the role of Daisy has been played

by Mia Farrow, it's been played by Kerry Mulligan, for example. And I'm wondering how you approached her. Well, like I do with all of the characters that I play, I look at the research, I look at the material that I have on hand. So I watched the Baz Luhrmann film. I read the book because that wasn't part of my curriculum. So I didn't really know it as well.

And I like to just take as much inspiration as I can from what already exists and then take what's useful for me to create the character. But I found that in the novel, there wasn't a whole lot to work from for me personally. And I found that Kate's writing of the character much more useful in developing the character of Daisy. She, you know, Kate's given the characters, the female characters, so much more agency throughout the play.

So it was easier to create this arc, this journey for Daisy. Because Daisy is often judged quite harshly by readers, I think, and maybe one dimensional in some ways, dismissed even. Yeah. Do you think that's fair or do you think they have a brand new Daisy now to look at on stage? Well, I hope they do. Yeah, I think she can be viewed as very materialistic. And in this play, you know, there's so much more to her that you at on stage. Well, I hope they do. Yeah. I think she can be viewed as very materialistic. And, um, and this play, you know, there's so much more to her that you, she's not allowed

to voice, but I think especially at the end of the play, she has this song called Beautiful Little Fool, which is like her confession. She says everything that she bottles up. And once she said it, that's it. The, you know, she buttons it back up and it'll never be said again, but at least she's, she's voiced it and she moves on. Can we talk about that song? Yes. Just one moment. This is amazing, Kate, you're going to have to because

Frances mightn't give herself enough credit for this particular song. There was a note in that song. How long do you hold it for? I don't know. I don't count. I just hold it and wait for the band to cut out. And then when I'm ready, I finish singing. It goes on for seconds and seconds. That one note, which I thought, well, you did, you know, bring the house down with it, which must have been incredible.. Um, what, what is your background when it comes to your voice and training and singing? I liked to sing for fun. You know, I love

pop music and I wanted, actually wanted when I was younger to be a pop star, but how does one become a pop star? So I found theater. Um, yeah, my sister saw an advert for, um, a stage school in Scotland and I went training there for many years and found myself doing musical theatre. It is really quite something for anybody who does go to the show to hear that. Let me play another little clip from the show. This is a duet you have between Gatsby and Daisy. This tell us a little bit first what it's like to do a duet. of course your beautiful little fool was by yourself, but that other, that back and forth, that dynamism.

It's really nice because I have quite a few solos in the show and then this is I think one of two duets and it's the chance to really connect with Gatsby and explore their whole relationship and show the audience what this love is and this passion that they've been longing for the whole time. And on Friday night, as you will have heard, the crowd just felt they were there with us. There was that sense of relief and the cheating and it was like, oh good, they're on our side and they're rooting for us. Oh my God, were they ever. It is rousing. You know, I'm always amazed by going to theatre in London. This is people at the top of their game, Kate.

What was it like to bring it from Broadway to here? It's been such a joy. This is my this was my Broadway debut. And this is the first time that I'm working on a piece where I am not questioning whether or not it should exist. It's really exciting to be able to actually just dig into the work and know that it can work. So it's been really beautiful to have these unbelievable actors and this incredible company and watch their version of the show, which has similarities to the one that we have on Broadway,

but then also feels completely brand new. I feel like, um, uh, Frankie's Daisy has this very particular kind of porcelain patina that is so beautiful and, um, and delicate and also strong. And then to watch that open up in the second act is really, it's really stunning and very specific and all her own. I understand that you wrote the book but your husband wrote the lyrics? Yes Nathan Tyson he's the lyricist and our composer is Jason Howland and the three of us

we worked very closely together and it was it was incredible. And I'm sure, Jason, however, you're not married to. I'm not married to Jason. That I know of. What is it like to work with your husband in such an intense project? It was incredible. It was really, we both worked on many musicals prior to this, and we watched each other collaborate with other people.

And so we knew what the other person was like as a collaborator with other writers. And we also knew what the other person was like as a collaborator with our two children. So it was really amazing to be able to bring that together and to sort of bring the kind of clarity that we have in our relationship and our communication into a writing project. And Jason Howland actually is the reason that we did write together. He was

the one who said, you have to do this. He was the linchpin. Do you take it home? I mean, we were in a pandemic, so we were at home all the time. But I think because we have kids, you kind of do have to separate out the family time and the work time. But definitely we we did some late night. We would put the kids to bed and do some late night work as well. Frances, I'm going to ask the same thing of you, Kate, here's a heads up. If you were to describe the show in three words, what would you say? were to describe the show in three words, what would you say? One big party. Oh, you like that Kate? Well done. What about you? Opulent, decadent and tragic. Oh, thank you both so much for coming in. The Great Gatsby is on in the London Coliseum until the 7th of September. You might want to get dressed up if you go. That was Kate Kerrigan and Frances Mayley-McCann.

Thank you both for coming in. Thank you. Now, let us move on to the journalist, feminist campaigner and author, Julie Bindel, who has published a new book entitled Lesbians, Where Are We Now? Described as part memoir, part reportage, part cultural commentary. In it, she examines what defines lesbian culture, love, friendship and happiness and asks why, in her view, lesbians so often seem to face particular hostility.

She's with me in the Women's Art Studio now. Good morning. Good morning. You know, I threw it out to my listeners about the word lesbian. I'm just going to read one of the comments and we'll do more as we discuss. As a 56 year old gay woman, I've only just started to embrace the term lesbian. I'm just going to read one of the comments and we'll do more as we discuss. As a 56 year old gay woman, I've only just started to embrace the term lesbian. However, my wife of 16 years has no problem using the term. I do think a lot of lesbians of a certain generation will still have hangups with the term. It goes back to how it was used so venomously when we were younger. That's PJ from Shropshire. Thanks for your message. Keep them coming

84844 if you'd like to get in touch. Julie, why is the word lesbian so important to you? When I came out in 1977, it wasn't exactly my choice at the time. I was 15. I was at a very bad school. I was being bullied and in those days, of course, you were either a leather or a slag and I knew which one I was and or a slag, and I knew which one I was. And it was the most awful word, it was a worse word than all of the other derogatory misogynistic slurs that get thrown at girls and women, because we were seen as perverted, as unnatural and dangerous. I was told that I couldn't babysit my next-door neighbor's children when it was discovered that I was a lesbian. And so I would use terms such as

gay, which was more neutral, and I would insist I was bisexual because that of course meant that you weren't fully rejecting men because I instinctively, along with other lesbians and other women in general and other girls, knew that this would invoke a lot of anger from some men and a lot of disgust from some women. So it took me until I met feminists quite soon after that, that I realized what a proud word it was and how my forewomen, mothers, my foresisters had fought to have that word not just normalized but celebrated. And I know you think the fight that you have had and others of your generation perhaps has not been recognised by some younger demographics but we can get into that as well. In your

book you talk about lesbians being pressurised to use the word queer or LGBTQ plus at times. Explore that a little bit with me. I remember meeting a gay man, a columnist in a green room some years back and he said to me, I wonder why they've got us debating with each other, we're both LGBTQ. And I said, well, not me. I don't have the time for that. You know, I'm a lesbian. I don't know how you can explain anyone's identity or orientation by using all of those jumbled up letters. Because, obviously, you cannot be lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, plus at the same time.

And what's happened is this forced teaming of lesbians with gay men, it began with gay men and then of course anything south of the B in that list, is often straight people who have an interesting haircut or just think that it means that they were once, they once kissed a girl or once kissed a boy. Now that's all fine for them. But the reason why we have labels, otherwise we wouldn't need to bother, the reason why we say that we're lesbian or gay, that we are part of a lesbian liberation movement or in the old days the gay liberation front is because that term is contested and our rights are contested and we live on an unequal playing field so we have to use a term

that's specific about fighting an oppression and getting equality. Let me read some of the comments that came in and many of them have come in actually since I threw it in at the top of the program. I'm 27, married and happily use the word lesbian to describe my sexuality, as does my wife and many of my friends in community. Lesbian isn't a dirty word for young people and I don't know anyone who would see the terms queer, LGBTQIA plus as taking anything away from lesbians.

We're not in competition. In competition. Well, we're not in, absolutely right. And I think the reason why, for example, with Kathleen Stock I set up the lesbian project two years ago is not to be antagonistic or hostile towards gay men But to say we're women there men we have very different needs The only thing we have in common with gay men is that we're same-sex attracted and gay men will say this

So we need an amicable divorce so that we can look specifically at issues for lesbians. Now that doesn't mean that young lesbians or lesbians of any generation can't choose to hang out with those that identify as queer of any stripe, but lesbians have specific needs and issues and the only way that we can get funding to address that or have research that focuses on us rather than the LGBTQ is to say lesbians are a specific category. We are women and sexism is what drives the anti-lesbian forces against us which is very different in many ways for gay men or queer identified people.

One from Kate, lesbian was often used as an insult when I was younger so it's impossible to feel comfortable with it, echoed by a couple of others, but I'll get to more of them. What about a new word? Well I think lesbian is perfectly fine. Perfectly fine though. Well it's, I quite like the word lesbian, in fact I like it very very much because it's come to mean a source of pride. Now look, I don't mean that we should adopt it just to shout it from the rooftops, it's a good descriptor. It originally comes from the Isle of, well, whatever the island was, where the poet Sappho resided. As a friend once said to me, just as well,

that Sappho didn't write poetry in Rhodes because we'd all be Rhodesians but that's a whole other issue. I think that it's a word that many men would like to strip from us and to neutralise it in terms of sex specific and that's what gay and queer is, it doesn't have the woman bit in. If anyone wants to call themselves, look if lesbians, if same-sex attracted women want to call themselves gay, queer, it doesn't matter, it's absolutely fine and I support that but I don't want it foisted on those of us that wish to be sex specific about what happens to us in life. And a lot of what you get into in the book about reclaiming or embracing the word lesbian is trying to define exactly or how I say, maybe manage to swerve the patriarchy in a sense.

I want to get to some of the issues of this because I found this very interesting. When we think about modern day misogyny, we often think about the impact of porn, for example, or incel ideology, talking a little bit about that in a previous item. But you say the attack on lesbians is the sharp end of the attack on women. Tell me more about that. Well the reason why I think that we have to fight anti-lesbian prejudice by being involved in feminist struggles against male violence and sexism in general for example is because that the prejudice towards us and the violence often meted out towards us is based on the fact that we are the only sexual orientation

that rejects men sexually, romantically, to live within families with men. Now we're not lesbians because of that, but we have to recognize that this is the end result, that we are saying we don't want men sexually, we don't want men romantically. That doesn't have to be antagonistic to men, but many men think of it as a direct insult, which is where punishment rapes come from, not just in South Africa where we've seen reports of that, but here in the UK where women are told that we need to only meet the right man and they don't say it as politely as that. And I'm sure that your listeners can imagine what we do have said to us on a regular basis. We're told we're too ugly

to rape, that we're either, as I said earlier, slags or lesbians and that's an insult that means you're not sexually available to me. And that's why, if you look at what happens to lesbians in any society, that's the, we're those in the coal face, we're the canaries in the coal mine. That's the misogyny reflected back for all women in that culture. You ask near the beginning of your book, to what extent is lesbianism a political identity? What would your short answer be to that? I mean it has got its place in the Women's Liberation Movement in that we

are saying we are out and we're proud and we're not going to be cowed into enforced compulsory heterosexuality. We need to have the means and the safety and the pride to come out. Compulsory heterosexuality, that was a new one for me, but you go into great detail in that in the book, which I won't go into here, but it is a very interesting concept. You talked also about the difference. Let me see, what was the, I was thinking conscious uncoupling while you were talking about it, an amicable divorce, I think you said, I was thinking conscious and coupling while you were talking about it, an amicable divorce I think you said between lesbians and gay men. And you talk about social equality looking for

it as lesbians with heterosexuals or gay men and you feel you don't have it with gay men. Why? What's the difference there? Because they're men and even though of course gay men face oppression, it's, we know that throughout history there have been terrible abuses that gay men in the law and socially have had to contend with. But we are women and we have a lower status and that's why you hear more about gay men. That's why gay men have way, way more funding and attention on them when it comes to specificities. Why exactly, sorry?

Because they're men. Because men, unless we were to argue that women and men are on a completely equal playing field and there's nothing such as patriarchy, where men are paid more, men are believed rather than women when there's cases of sexual assault where male violence and domestic abuse is continually bounced back onto the victim being to blame, then we have to accept that even gay men have that privilege over over lesbians. And gay men know this and not many of them, when we talk about this, are antagonistic towards it. When we say, look, are antagonistic towards it. When we say, look, we have nothing in common except for we're same sex attracted.

And only once in history have we been targeted with the same legislation, that was section 28. But you know, we say to gay men, you have to recognize that you have very different needs and lifestyle choices than do lesbians. And look, they accept that. This isn't antagonism and this isn't hostility. But it is interesting to hear where you come from Section 28, just for those who aren't familiar, younger generations perhaps. It was about promoting or a pushback or a banning

on promoting homosexuality which affected educational systems among many other places as well. And I don't have gay men to respond to exactly your comments there Julie, but I was struck and I will say you don't speak for all lesbians or for all feminists or for all feminist lesbians for that matter, but you say that your brand of feminism wants liberation not equality. So we're talking about gay men and equality there and you feel that it's not there or with heterosexuals. What is liberation? What does that look like? Well equality would be having 50% female parliamentarians and just

accepting that it was a failure because the men shout louder and the men get listened to and the men's votes count for at least two of women's. So equality doesn't work and it also means that we have to accept that this is something that we we don't want to alter any of the status quo we just want to have a seat at the table as opposed to saying that there is a problem in society and liberation is something that will free women from as you mentioned before compulsory heterosexuality, by which I mean not just lesbians who are still today and not just in conservative religious communities but

feel pressure to be straight, to marry men, to have children with men, but it also means those women who are lesbians who don't speak out, who are still in the closet, despite, you know, being financially secure, despite having good careers, and yet their male counterparts are. So we need to liberate from this notion that women are somehow expected to be the ones to be kind to everyone, to put everybody else's needs first. Lesbians have long put the needs of gay men's before ours. And that becomes a problem when it's not reciprocated. So we need to look out for ourselves

while still recognizing that many gay men are great friends and are actually speaking out for lesbians, increasing numbers, thankfully. Lots of the questions and comments about the word lesbian coming in as well. I'm speaking to Julie Bindell. I want to jump ahead in our limited time with one aspect I was reading in your book. You wrote that many upper middle class people in their 40s and 50s in progressive, heavy

places consider having a gay or lesbian child old-fashioned and seem to prefer that their children come out as non-binary or transgender. Why do you say that? Is it evidenced or just your hunch? I have seen it in places such as Brighton and not just Brighton but those areas across the UK and beyond where parents are recognizing that this is an issue, the whole gender identity debate is something that they can very quickly be seen as to be on the right side of if they say something very straightforward, which is, of course, we have non-binary or trans people

in our family. And it means a transient identity often of a child who has been indulged with, well there's no such thing as biological sex but there are 125,000 genders and you can choose one. And it's fleeting for some young upper middle class people in Brighton but unfortunately not so fleeting for those young lesbians that have actually made irreversible changes to their bodies in the quest to escape their female bodies. You know, but some, this is your anecdotal experience, have I got that right, Julie? Well, it's my experience of being involved in this terrible war about sex versus gender identity for the past two decades and more,

and having heard increasingly parents say, well, of course, my son is gender nonconforming, and I think that he is trans identified. What used to happen, thanks to feminism, is recognizing boys playing with dolls and wanting long hair is being perfectly fine, and that they may grow up as gay gay or they may just grow up and remain gender nonconforming. Some, you will understand that some might find that offensive, that you are denying the way that they identify and to live their life as they choose. Of course I recognize that that's offensive. Those of us that have spoken out in favor of becoming lesbian and gay as opposed to being medically trans have suffered greatly by speaking out and yes I do

know the levels of offense that that can cause. One last one on you kind of related to this in fact. I want to know about the personal toll it has taken in speaking out. Obviously you've talked about the past two decades it's been very public, a lot of your book is that as well of very controversial or contentious situations that you have been on particularly with gender identity or biological sex. How do you look at it right now, today? Well misogyny has been along with us, that's why there was a women's liberation movement that I very happily joined at the end of the 1970s and you know was first screamed at when I said that it's not true that men are equally the victims of domestic violence from women,

I was equally screamed at when I said that prostitution is abuse and violation of women's bodies and it's not sex work or labour. And, you know, that pushback was very, very strong and unpleasant. Nothing has been as vicious and vitriolic and misogynistic as the pushback against trying to maintain the rights of women to have our own spaces free from men, including potentially dangerous men. But look, the toll on me has been way less than it has for other women that haven't had a great feminist movement around them or haven't had an incredible set of friends, an amazing partner and so I've got you know huge amounts of support for which I'm very very grateful. Of course some would take issue with the way you characterize whether it's sex work or

some of the other issues of single sex spaces but we'll have to talk about it at another time. Julie Bindell thank you very much for coming into the Women's Era studio. Her book is Lesbians Where Are We Now? Part history, part memoir, part reportage, and definitely has got my listeners getting in touch about the word. I'll read out some more of those comments throughout the rest of the program. Thank you very much. Today marks 11 years since over 270 girls were abducted from their school in the town of Chibok, Nigeria by Boka Haram. The tragedy sparked international outrage.

You might remember the campaign, hashtag bring back our girls. And today global leaders and advocates, including UN representatives are gathering in London to mark the anniversary with a photo exhibition and panel discussions. Dr. Aisha Mohammed Oyabode, lawyer and activist from

the Mortala Mohammed Foundation, is spearheading the event called A Decade On. Earlier I spoke to her about what happened on the 14th of April 2014. Okay so 11 years ago 276 girls were taken from their school in Chibok in northeast Nigeria in Borno State. Within a few hours, some of the girls, well, within a few hours to three days, some of the girls managed to jump off trucks and escape. But 219 girls were actually taken into Sambisa forest, which is Boko Haram's enclave. And it took us a year, maybe three, four months

before the first girl would actually come out. So you can imagine how horrific it was for, I mean, everybody's familiar with Boko Haram. Boko Haram is one of the world's worst extremist groups. They're known for their gender-based violence. And over the years now, 11 years later, the girls have been subjected to sexual violence, all types of unimaginable, you know, physical and emotional violence. Many of them have been forced to marry insurgents. They've come back with children. Yes.

So that's some that were freed or managed to escape but I understand that there are still at least 88 to return and what is it they can't be found people don't know where they are why why haven't they been released? So actually it's one of the things that we're going to be talking about today because obviously there's clearly a failure of responsibility here. I think part of it was the response of the government, Nigerian government, and generally, I would say the whole world actually, our response was quite slow. I mean, even though you became familiar with the Bring Back Our Girls movement, and there was a huge clamour at that time, but over the years also there hasn't been consistency

in insisting that the girls be returned to our count for. So the 88 years we know that at least a third of them may have been killed. They may have died from you know when the insurgents were being bombed. Some of them died from childbirth, some of them died of salvation. Well we have another two-thirds of those that are yet to be accounted for and in truth in the last couple of years, the will to go in and rescue them has been reduced. So most of the ones that are coming in are coming in in trickles of twos and threes. What age would they be now, approximately?

So if you imagine that the youngest ones were about 15 and the oldest ones were as old as 21. We're looking at girls who are almost between 31 and 26. So they are adults now. And actually that's a real shame about it because you know those are their most important formative years and they were away from their families. But it's not always easy to return home either. Tell me a little bit about the challenges of reintegrating and of course some would have had children with Boko Haram militants. So the one thing we know that

Boko Haram does very quickly when the girls are abducted is that they actually force them into marriage or they sexually assault them. So that tends to create some kind of fear within the girls. And it makes it difficult for them, even when there's an opportunity for them to return, for them to want to come home. The stigma is intense. Even for those girls whose families are willing to accept

them, who are happy for them to come back, the stigma within the communities is terrible. The longer the girls have stayed to Boko Haram, they have labels, they're called Boko Haram wives, they're called Anoba, which in the local language means epidemic. They're all sorts of nasty labels. Their children are ostracized. So that makes it very, very difficult even for girls who want to come back to come back. The added layer of it is that because many of them have actually been married off, and some of them are being rescued

with their so-called, their insurgent companions, we now have a challenge where the girls are really not sure what to do. We have not prepared for them. We're still not prepared for the kind of psychological impact of young girls who were taken away from us as children and who have now returned as women. You have the conference taking place today. I imagine you're having this push to try and have more efforts in returning these girls. I mean, what do you say and who do you want

to exert that pressure? I think it's the whole world. I think we need to go back to exert the same pressure that we did 11 years ago. I cannot imagine that we can still, 11 years later, we still have girls in Boko Haram captivity. And for me, I think what we now see in more recent conflicts that have involved women and girls, whether it's in Gaza, whether it's in Israel, is that if we continue to have situations like Chibok that are unresolved, all that will happen

is that the sexual violence, the violence, the physical violence, the psychological violence that we've seen with Chibok will just continue to manifest in these conflicts. So it's actually critical for all the Chibok girls to be accounted for. We cannot continue to have these conflicts unresolved. What are you hoping might come out of today's event? Well, I'm hoping that there will be a resurgence of interest around the Chippot girls. I'm hoping that people will actually acknowledge that we failed 11 years ago and we have to do something to right this failure.

I'm hoping that even the international community which stood by us and will give us enough support within Nigeria to be able to see to it that these girls at least are accounted for and the words that can be rescued and brought back are brought back. Are you hopeful that will happen? Do you want me to be honest? Yeah, I do. I don't know. I don't think so. I worry about it. It's really, really tragic and it's horrific. Yesterday I was speaking to one of their mothers on her way to, she's there preparing today in Chibok. And all she

kept saying to me is, wherever you are, please shout loudly that the world hear us. There are 88 of us. You have not seen our children for 11 years. These girls are coming back with four or five children. It is awful. Dr. Aisha Mohammed Oyabode, who is giving a talk this morning at SOAS. She is the lawyer and activist from the Murtala Mohammed Foundation. Thanks very much to her for sharing her knowledge. Now, have you ever heard of the Herring Girls? Well, the artist and farm laborer Joanne Coates has spent six months dredging up the stories of an underrepresented community from the archives. She's using photography

and performance for her exhibition called Red Herring in Helmsdale in the Scottish Highlands and is reclaiming herring girl history. Let us join Joanne, who is in Japan actually at the moment on a research trip, quite a long way from the Scottish Highlands but great to have you with us. Tell us a little bit more about who the Herring Girls were. Thanks for having me. So the Herring Girls were a migratory workforce, they were mainly Scottish women, they moved around the coast of the UK so all the way from like Stornoway to Shetlands, Harleypool, North Shields, to Helmsdale of course, and right down to kind of like Lower Stoth and Great Yarmouth. It was hard, back-breaking work and it was, they were kind of like packing the fish, gutting the fish. They were known for their strength, their endurance, their skill was kind of vital.

They were really seen as a skilled workforce. And of women, there would be a workforce of three women. And they were powerful. They striked in 1936. They all went on strike. And they ended up actually getting better working conditions as well through that strike. I love the thought of the three women I was reading. What is it? The packer and the two gutters and the packer had to be the taller woman? Had to be the taller one so they could reach all the way down to the bottom of the barrel and there's this incredible archival image that I found that's in the exhibition and there's these

three women reaching all the way down to the bottom to pack the fish in and when you see it that you know like they're bent right towards the bottom of this barrel and you can only see the tops of their uniform and this cross of their apron and it's just an incredible image but it looks really painful. Yeah I also loved the way they would market themselves as a trio. Yeah and they fought for their own rights in that way so like in the 1920s the fishing had kind of slowed down a little bit due to kind of World War One and they were getting less work and so they would have one woman who would write and kind of advocate for the rights of themselves. And there's this letter that's kind of like, in it, they go into it and they say like, PS, you better take us away with you. And I just, I love that kind of like power that they have. Thank you so much for that image that is coming in. But you have a personal connection to the fishing industry. Yeah, I mean, so my granddad was a fisherman but he'd stopped fishing by the time I was little, so kind of my interaction with the fishing industry was one that was always in decline, that always kind of ended and then in my foundation year of studies, which was in photography, my very first project was about the fishing industry and I made a project called North Sea Swells,

which was about small-scale fishermen in the UK in that industry being in decline. So the herring girls, however, coming across them, I believe it was something to do with a herring crown, which sounds like a smelly proposal, but perhaps not. I mean, it's actually incredibly beautiful, but a herring crown does sound quite grim. So when I was in 2012 I went to Wick, happened to kind of go to the museum and have a few hours and ended up learning about this herring crown and it's just this incredible kind of like silver structured crown and it is just a work of art in itself and it would have been made by you know like a local metal worker, welder, someone like

that who would have had those skills and it was to kind of like celebrate women in the community so one woman and girl was chosen kind of about 50 and 16 as a kind of coming of age ceremony and they didn't have to be the fishermen's children but they often were. And why did they disappear? Why did they stop? Well the herring on the shore, like our shore, started to decline and there was kind of cheaper labour elsewhere so the herring industry kind of moved to other waters, the fish moved, so the exhibition actually kind of charts that and the way that it moved like transatlantically what happened when the industry declined in the UK and what happened in other places and you

can see those kind of exploitative conditions for women carry on in other places like in North Carolina, in the USA and other places so it kind of looks at what happened after that finished and but over here as well they kind of it kind of charts a decline of a certain type of fishing industry and you kind of you hear those stories of like the boats where kind of so many boats that people could step inside the side of the harbour and how slowly and slowly that kind of declined and now what kind of so many boats that people could step from side to side of the harbour and how slowly and slowly that kind of declined and now what kind of happens to those kind of post fishing towns and

villages is really interesting. Yeah I mean that conversation continues today doesn't it Joanne. Thank you so much for coming on. Your exhibition will be running at the Time Span Museum and Gallery in Helmsday in the Scottish Islands until September. It is called Red Herring. That is Joanne Coates getting lots of community involvement as well to remember the herring girl, something I didn't know anything about, but lovely to hear all about them. I want to just go back to the word lesbian for a few minutes. We're speaking to Judy Bindle. I never use the term lesbian. To me, it feels so old fashioned and weird. I want to just go back to the word lesbian for a few minutes, we're speaking to Julie Bindle. I never use the term lesbian, to me it feels so old-fashioned and weird. I'm not from the island of Lesbos, we mentioned Lesbos during our

interview. I'm a queer woman and I'm proud of it. I'm also delighted to be part of the LGBTQ community and that one coming in from Genevieve this morning. Another, I've always embraced the word lesbian since the 80s when I came out, it's important that others understand how important it is for lesbians to be seen and not integrated into another word. Many of us lesbians, many call lesbians gay which I find patronising and I see it as a word for gay men and not for women. I understand some people don't realise this, we don't want to be hidden, We need to be recognized as our own selves and our own identity. That's coming

in from Cal from Cumbria. Thanks for all your messages today. I will be back with you again tomorrow. Do join us. We're going to talk about the Women's Rugby World Cup and also a mother and daughter who has a teen, a daughter who's teen was pressurized into sending explicit photos. We're going to talk about that as well all tomorrow at 10 on Radio 4. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. I'm David Dimbleby and from the History podcast and BBC Radio 4, this is Invisible Hands, the story of the free market revolution.

The free market isn't solving the problem of homelessness. Classic liberal values of free speech, free enterprise, free markets. A hidden force that changed Britain forever. Popular capitalism is a crusade. And the invisible hands that shaped it. I thought I was a conservative. I thought I was a conservative. There's a massive schism between those who believe in the continuity of our society and those who wish to destroy it. Listen to Invisible Hands on BBC Science now.