Woman's Hour - Griff, Typo-Squatting, Ece Temelkuran, Windrush Compensation Scheme, Public loos

Episode Date: May 17, 2021

Replacing traditional male only or female only toilets with gender neutral facilities has increased in recent years. Theatres were some of the first venues to hit the headlines. Many businesses and companies followed suit, partly as a way of making toilets easier to use for people identifying a gender different to the one assigned at birth, but also in an attempt to reduce the long queues outside women’s loos. But now Communities Secretary, Robert Jenrick is to rewrite planning regulations forcing public buildings to have separate male and female toilets. Is this change a step forward or back? Emma discusses the issues with Sarah Ditum, critic and columnist and the author Caroline Criado Perez.Described as “A fierce and distinctive talent” 20 year old Griff was recently announced as the recipient of the prestigious BRITs Rising Star Award, following past winners such as Celeste, Sam Smith and Adele. Griff has also been nominated for an Ivor Novello award and ended 2020 by singing the sound-track for Disney's Christmas advert. She performs a special version of her song Black Hole for Woman’s Hour. She tells Emma about her 'bedroom pop', new mixtape One Foot in Front of the Other, and how she literally learned to walk a tight rope.The Windrush scandal first came to light in April 2018. Despite living and working in the UK for decades, many were told they were there illegally because of a lack of official paperwork. A year later the Windrush Compensation Scheme was launched. Last week it announced that it has now paid out more than £14 million in compensation and has offered a further £12 million. Jacqueline McKenzie is a lawyer representing 200 victims. She says the big scandal is that so few people who are eligible for compensation are actually coming forward.Ece Temelkuran is an award-winning Turkish novelist and political commentator. Her last book, How to Lose a Country: the 7 steps from Democracy to Dictatorship, describes the rise of populism and authoritarianism in Turkey and other countries with a refrain to western countries not to be complacent about their own democracies. Now she has a new book out, Together: 10 Choices for a Better Now. Ece joins Emma to talk about why she thinks our current systems are in crisis but why she still has faith that humans are capable of reinventing themselves & the world around them.“Typo-squatting” is when a website address is deliberately misspelled, in order to mimic another URL. It’s often used in cyber-fraud and for counterfeit goods. Kim McCabe, who runs a not for profit website offering safety advice to young girls, got in touch. She’s found multiple websites with almost identical domain names to hers, all containing pornography. The government’s upcoming Online Safety Bill is set to introduce new legislation to tackle harmful content online, but there is currently nothing to stop harmful typo-squatting. Why is it easier to stop a website selling fake designer bags, than deliberately leading children to pornographic material? Emma talks to Kim and hears more on the issues from Dr Victoria Baines, a cybercrime and online safety researcher.Presented by Emma Barnett Producer: Louise Corley

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 Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning. On a day of greater freedom for most of us in terms of COVID restrictions being eased and hugging with caution being urged by the government, today is the first day Woman's Hour has the freedom to be just that. A full hour, the power hour. And as I said, when sharing this news a few weeks ago, that means we can take more time over stories and hear from you more, your views and experiences. So let's get straight to it, shall we? On something I know will arouse most people's feelings in some way, shape or form, toilets.

Yesterday, it was revealed that all public buildings will be forced to have separate male and female toilets. Yesterday it was revealed that all public buildings will be forced to have separate male and female toilets. The community secretary is understood by the Telegraph to be rewriting planning regulations to enshrine separate stalls in new buildings and demand partitions be installed in current unisex facilities. It'll apply to offices, shops, hospitals, entertainment venues, other buildings providing public services. This was after a review looking at the ratio of men and women's toilets and an increase in the number of gender-neutral loos. And the news obviously is coming as we start heading back out to public places altogether. Is this change a step back, a step forward?

What do you gain or lose by ensuring there are always male and female toilets? Have you felt frustrated by the provision? Perhaps it has changed where you have worked or places that you go to. Text us your take and your views on this on 84844. Text will be charged at your standard message rate. On social media, we're at BBC Woman's Hour or email us through our website. It would be lovely to talk to you on air. And if you're happy for us to contact you, please do, if you're not texting in,

leave a telephone number so we can get back to you quickly and perhaps speak to you within the hour. Also on today's programme, we'll be hearing from Jacqueline McKenzie, the lawyer fighting for 200 victims of the Windrush scandal. There'll be powerful music from Griff,

the 20-year-old musician who just won the prestigious Brits Rising Star Award following past winners such as Celeste and Adele. Looking forward to that. And an important story from you, one of our listeners who got in touch about typo squatting. We'll explain all shortly. But why is it easier to stop a website selling fake designer bags than deliberately leading children to inappropriate material online? More to come.

But replacing traditional male only or female only toilets-neutral facilities has increased in recent years. Theatres were some of the first venues to hit the headlines. For instance, in April 2017, the Barbican Performing Arts Complex in London made its toilets gender-neutral. The aim, they said at the time in a statement, was to provide a supportive, inclusive and flexible space for all of our audiences and staff.

The Old Vic was also criticised for making all loos for everyone. Businesses, companies, they followed suit partly as a way of making toilets easier to use for people identifying of a different gender to the one assigned at birth, but also in an attempt to reduce the long queues outside the women's loos, which many of you will relate to. But now the Community Secretary, Robert Jenrick, is to rewrite planning regulations, we understand, forcing public buildings to have separate male and female toilets. Separate stalls must be installed in new buildings and petitions added to current unisex facilities. How do you see this? Do get in touch. I'm looking forward to hearing what you say on this and what you think.

What do you stand to gain or lose by ensuring there are always male and female toilets? I'm joined now by Sarah Dittum, the critic and columnist and the author, Caroline Criado-Perez. Caroline, I thought I could start with you because in your book, Invisible Women, you looked at the provision of toilets and how building design has affected women. I did, yeah. So historically, women have just never had enough toilets. You know, there's always this joke about how long do women need to spend in the toilet? You know, what are you all doing there? Well, we're not there for fun. We're there because there aren't enough toilets for us and there are too many for men.

And basically it's because of this inaccurate vision of what gender equality means. Right. And so if you have equal floor space for men and women, you end up with a situation where the men's toilets have more facilities simply because there is more space for urinals than there is for cubicles. Cubicles take up more space. So men end up having more places to relieve themselves than women. So that's part of it. But there's also far more demand on the female toilet. So if you're pregnant, you're going to be visiting the toilet much more frequently. Women are eight times more likely to have urinary tract infections, which involves going to the toilet very frequently. Women are more likely to be accompanied by children and elderly people.

That increases the demand on the toilet. And then there is the fact that sometimes women will actually be taking longer. So for example, about a quarter of women of childbearing age will at any one time be on their period and therefore maybe needing to change their pad or their tampon or whatever. And then also there's just the fact that a cubicle takes longer to use. You've got to open the door, you know, take down your trousers, sit down, probably wipe the seat, which is probably disgusting, you know, find somewhere to hang your bag and your coat. All of that adds to the time. So what we have is a situation where historically

there has been far less provision for women but far more demand on the female toilet and so that is where where the sort of cue for the female toilet comes from and one of the major issues with the way in which gender neutral toilets have been done um recently is that they haven't actually done anything to the toilets they They've just changed the signs. And so what you have there is a situation where there is so-called gender neutral with urinals and gender neutral with cubicles. Well, that's not realistic, is it? Because the majority of women can't actually use a urinal. And actually, a lot of women don't want to be in a room where there are men using urinals.

So what you have is sex-separ separated male toilets and gender neutral female toilets, which were already oversubscribed. I want to get to that as well about, you know, what people are actually wanting to do as well and why we feel the way that we feel. Let me just bring in Sarah to this. Do you think the government has done the right thing here with this decision around planning regulations? I think it's really important for the government to take a lead and actually re-establish the importance of following the planning regulations, which have been laid down very, very long term. It's not a new discovery that there needs to be more provision for women than for men,

so there's actually equal access for toilets. It's not a new discovery that people strongly strongly prefer to have single sex facilities and that women will actively avoid using mixed facilities because they don't feel safe it doesn't feel dignified it's you know it is humiliating often to be getting your trousers down in the same space as a man and women avoid it which means that women don't have the same access to public space. So on that point, because I've got messages, so many messages coming in on this, as you may expect, it's a very emotive thing to both of you. But a message here saying, toilets are not necessarily separated by gender on the continent. I think it's making an unnecessary fuss. Let's just have

more public toilets, says a message here. Another one from Serena says, insisting on separate male or female toilets is a regressive and a clearly anti-trans move. It also makes life harder for families. It's so much easier to manage days out in mixed gender groups when toilets are flexible. Plus, and this I have to say is a theme across the messages, it reduces queues for women and gives us more space. We allow ourselves to get into the toilet quicker.

Sarah, to come back to you, just because you were making that point first around what we need and what we want. Some of those messages sound like what people wanted were gender neutral, Luz. I mean, some people do want it and some people are very happy to use gender neutral toilets. But the problem is that that then excludes by default people who are not happy about it so if you have sex segregated facilities everybody can use the toilet that is appropriate for them if you only have mixed facilities then people who are not happy using mixed sex facilities are completely shut out from them and that is a serious serious problem um and i really um i am i am sad to hear that people are

taking this as an anti-trans move because it's really not. Trans people need access to facilities exactly the same as everybody else. And, you know, it simply isn't and shouldn't be taken that way. Well, we have a statement from Stonewall. We've got a message here from the Associate Director of Policy and Research from Eloise Stonborough, who says everyone should be able to access free safe and clean accessible and appropriate public toilets no matter where or who they are but the availability of public toilets has been declining for years and this has only been made worse by the pandemic. We know from our research that nearly half of trans people do not feel comfortable using public

toilets so increasing the overall provision of available and accessible public toilets is essential to ensure that all people are free to engage fully in public life. Having facilities that everyone feels safe to use is sensible. Any provision of public toilets should include both gendered and gender neutral facilities, as well as disabled and changing places toilets, changing places to allow all people to choose the appropriate facilities for their needs. Just to pick up what Sarah was saying there, Caroline, this, if you were going down the gender neutral route, which many buildings were and only providing that, you were excluding those women. And we've got a couple of messages here about women who've been attacked by men in toilets or would feel very uncomfortable about that. You would be excluding them.

Yeah, I mean, I think that statement you just read out is eminently sensible. You know, absolutely. That's what you need you need to have the single sex toilets and just to bang on my particular drum making sure you have far more provision for women because of the demand on the female toilet but of course you need gender neutral toilets as well for all sorts of reasons including as one of your um one of the listeners pointed out when there are you know dads needing to change the baby for example you need to be able to have gender neutral toilets for all sorts of reasons. Well, you could just put a changing table. Hang on, sorry.

There's no one saying, as far as I'm aware. Caroline, you can just put a changing table in the men's toilets. You can. However, a lot of dads have written to me saying they don't like taking their children into the men's toilet. Why is that?

Because the men's toilets are kind of gross. I don't know. I've not really been into many men's toilets. No, neither have I. That's the word on the ground. So I have had dads saying they don't like and not just their babies, like their smaller kids. Right. If you want to take a kid into the into the toilet, you don't necessarily want to take it into the men's toilets. So have gender neutral toilets. Absolutely. And my understanding of the government advice isn't that there should be no gender neutral toilets. It's that if there are gender neutral toilets, they need to be designed in a very specific way and not in the way that, for example, the Barbican and the old Vic designed them, which was just changing the signage on the doors. That isn't gender neutral. We've got a message here. Sorry, Sarah.

Back up what Caroline was just saying. Another issue is lots of men using urinals would very reasonably not want to unzip if there was a small child in the vicinity. Men quite reasonably are not comfortable, you know, exposing themselves when there's a child around. So it is a courtesy to everybody to not put a changing table alongside a urinal. Maybe not alongside a urinal, but there are also toilets with cubicles. And I'm just speaking as someone who's married to a man and would like to go and change his baby in a toilet where he's able to go. And some places haven't even got gender neutral toilets yet. Never mind now rowing back on where we've gone to

with some of new buildings. So just trying to represent, I suppose, that reality. But I think that's a very fair point. A message here just saying, since our university changed the women's toilets, none of the men's, excuse me, to gender neutral. So women's loos have been changed to gender neutral. Women do not use it as it's men who go in and then we on the seats.

Sarah, do you think that we have obviously many culture wars now and there's lots of this flashpoint. Do you think something that Caroline was talking about there, that we've never had enough toilets for women. This has sort of got mixed in or in a way become a bit of a war when it shouldn't have done around this. I mean, I think absolutely it shouldn't be a culture war. It should just be a matter of fair provision for everybody who needs access to toilets. And it's really regrettable that it's been caught up in this way.

I think one of the problems is that people take for granted the access that we have to public toilets and treat it as if it's normal and how things have always been. And it simply hasn't. You know, women have not had enough access to public toilets and it has impeded women's access to public space for decades and decades and decades. And do you think, sorry Sarah, just because of time, and I know we've got a full hour now,

but I can't tell you how many messages we've got on this. Do you think there's something about us being used to being in our own genders per se, if I can put it like that, being women in a women-only space that is something we have to have, like it's sort of a thing for us? Or do you think it's just because that's what we've grown up with? I think it's a really common, cross-cultural, fairly universal thing that people are much happier using single-sex toilets. I don't

know if you remember when the BBC did an experiment programme where they gender neutralised a school and the children loved every single part of their gender neutral education except for the toilets, which both boys and girls absolutely hated having mixed facilities. Sarah Dittum, thank you very much for your time. Caroline Corrado Perez, thank you to you and your messages coming in thick and fast on this. I will return to them. Again, this sort of idea of what's going on with men's loos. I mean, Mike, who's got in touch, good morning to you, Mike from York, he says, as a man, I can assure you no woman should be forced to share a lavatory space with me. Enough said. Now, keep those messages coming in on 84844 and your views and how you feel, I suppose, in yourself about this. The Windrush scandal first came to light in April

2018. Three Home Secretaries and a Prime Minister have since apologised for deportation threats made to Commonwealth citizens' children. Despite living and working in the UK for decades, many were told that they were here illegally because of a lack of official paperwork, unable then to access health care and work opportunities, living under a cloud of worry and doubt. A year later, the Windrush compensation scheme was launched and last week it announced that it's now paid out more than £14 million in compensation and has offered a further £12 million. This substantial increase has been driven by significant changes which were made to the scheme, meaning that individuals now receive a minimum of £10,000 compensation, 40 times greater than the previous minimum award available. A woman at the heart of this fight, Jacqueline McKenzie,

a lawyer representing 200 victims, now says the growing scandal is that so few people who are eligible for compensation are actually coming forward. Good morning, Jacqueline. Good morning. Talk to us about that. How many are eligible and how many have actually come forward, do you think? Well, it's difficult to quantify, but at the outset, the Home Office was expecting 50,000 people to apply for status documents. So, you know, that's 50,000 people possibly from

Commonwealth countries who would be eligible under the Windrush scheme. And so far, about 13,000 of them have been granted status documents. So I don't know what's happened to the rest and why haven't, you know, people come forward in greater numbers to apply for status documentation. But then that leads on to the compensation. Because if you're successful in proving that you've got the right to be settled in the UK or entitled to citizenship, then I would have thought there should be some issue around possibly impact on life that would lead you

to apply for compensation. And we're not seeing that happening. And I don't know why that is. I mean, as I understand it, I think the latest figures is that just over 600 people have accepted an offer. I know the figures have gone up. I know the tariffs for impact on life have gone up. The preliminary payments are a good thing. You know, there are some positives in this. There's also some positives on the status documentation line that the office is looking at things such as, you know, there's been a big issue about people not being, because they've been out of the country for a period of time, they're looking at that,

they're looking at people in British overseas territories, they're looking at discretionary routes. Good thing happening, but I don't understand why so few people forward and applying for compensation. And I think, and when I meet people who haven't applied, I think that's partly to do with the, how they see the hostile environment still continuing, you know, issues linking it with issues around deportation, particularly the Jamaica charter flights, the way they see the EU settled status scheme being rolled out and the problems there. And also, more lately, issues around people seeking asylum and the language, the negative language coming out of the Home Office about those people.

And I think it's putting people off. Do you? Because are you saying that people are just thinking, even though they've lived with this uncertainty for years, that it's just better not to go anywhere near the authorities? There are a lot of people doing that. And my approach to the work is to go into the community. I'm part of the community. I go in and I go into what I call centres of influence. That might be churches. It could be a betting shop or a food place. And I have found people in there who have said to me,

oh, we don't know if we're going to bother. You know, we've gone 30, 40 years without this. We don't know if we trust the system. In this community, everybody knows somebody who's had some issue with the Home Office. And it might be a minor issue, you know, trying to renew their status or, you know, but also the language of deportation is a major barrier to trust. And the fact that we've got these, you know, this highly visual issue of people seeking asylum and what's happening to them, you know, whether it's accommodation, whether it's, you know, the right posting pictures of people coming out of boats. You know, these are desperate people. And I think overall, it's starting to affect the people of the Windrush generation. They're not feeling secure enough yet. Do you think there could then be a lot of people who will just never apply

and therefore they will live a very different life because of that? I think that's the case. I am now approaching it by going into the community a bit more. And I know there's a lot of grassroots organisations out there doing this work. There's lots of legal surgeries. And what we're saying to everybody is we've got to get out there on the street and encourage people to come forward. The Home Office does engagement activities. Unfortunately, the same people turn up to them. And I don't think they're accessible to the sorts of people who really do need to avail themselves of the services. So we've literally got to go out there and make it happen. But there will always be a group of people who won't want to bother.

And I was reading actually in some of your, in the local cafes near you, you're nicknamed Miss Windrush because people know that you're going to come and try and talk to them to see if you can, you know, it's a very important piece of work that you're doing, a huge amount of work to see if you can get them to try and apply and get papers and try and change their lives. Well, I know how important it is. And when you remember that the effects of the scandal showed that there were people who had been deported, removed, you know, services, you know, people lost their homes. And there are some people who have died, you know, I mean, I don't know whether we've got full evidence as what the deaths are attributable to, but certainly stress was a

factor. And so this is a very, very serious thing to have happened. It's underpinned by debates about culture, race and identity. So that's also extremely important when you think about the society we live in or other ancillary issues such as Black Lives Matter. So it's really important that we get this right. And I think that the Home Office has a job to do in building trust with all communities, I think, and also reducing this language of negativity and hostility, which is still very much apparent. And then I think we'll start to see people coming forward. But at the moment, yes, I'm out there on the streets when we can. And now we can start again, pulling people out of cafes and so on and trying to get them at least to start the process by registering for status documents,

because we're still there with a large number of people we haven't even got on to compensation properly yet and how do you think the government can learn the lessons of Windrush how can it demonstrate to people who are not in any way in their minds able to put themselves out to the authorities to try and have a conversation with them well I think some of the issues that we learnt when Wendy Williams did her work was the whole idea of inflexibility, you know, how inflexible the Home Office is, how mistrusting it is of people, you know, not believing their evidence, not believing their narratives. And I think if we start, and I have started to see some change there, to be honest. You know, I've had some relationships with some people in the Home Office, particularly around lockdown, where you're dealing with people by email and telephone, where there's been a common sense approach to things. And we need much, much more of that. But that's the Home Office.

But at the political ideological level, we really need to see more humanity and more compassion. Because remember, whatever happens in the Home Office is fuelled by the ideology. And I cannot understand why it is so harsh towards some of the most vulnerable people in our society. A Home Office spokesperson said we're determined to right the wrongs of the Windrush generation and make sure they get the compensation that they deserve. Last year, the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, overhauled the Windrush compensation scheme. It has paid out more than £14 million, further £12 million offered. The scheme was designed with the oversight of mass-enforced QC. We offer free and independent assistance for claimants to help them fill in the forms, but we acknowledge individuals may not feel comfortable approaching the Home Office, which is why they continue, we continue, as they say, to

run outreach and engagement events open to the public with no need to register or provide identifying details. And nearly 160 events have taken place to date, reaching over 3,000 people. Jackie, I just wanted to bring to life some of the people that you are looking after, the ones who are going through this process. And remind our listeners, everyone, what their life had been like living under this cloud. They are obviously involved in a fight now for justice. Yes, they're involved in a fight for justice. And remember the whole issue about compensation, because there has been some criticism about people seeking compensation. Some people have said, well, you've got your status back now, go away. But remember, this isn't a gift. know it's not largesse it's

simply putting people back into the position they would have been in and that's why the issues and you see a lot of it in various forms of media but people continuing to to complain about how loss of employment is dealt with future loss of employment future loss of opportunity and pensions and those sorts of issues and which the home office say are very difficult um to deal with which we say can't be that difficult there must be actuaries and experts who can sit down and work that out these are ongoing issues because people's lives have been affected I mean we've seen stories of people having to pull out teeth because they couldn't avail themselves of an NHS doctor because of lack of documentation I know of a case of a woman who provided the Home Office with evidence to show that she'd been here in the cities. Her primary school still existed, so they could have verified the evidence.

She was made to leave the country and ended up being assaulted, facing a very sexual assault. So, you know, people's lives have been seriously affected by the fact that the Home Office, and not necessarily people who are there now, but historically didn't keep accurate records and didn't believe people, as in the case of the woman I spoke to, that is a contemporary issue, didn't believe people or didn't go far enough to help people to ascertain their status. There should have been a common sense approach. If somebody said to you, I went to this primary school in 1968, why haven't you rang up that primary school and checked that? But the stories we see, I mean, I've had cases of two women, one who was using her friend's out of date high blood pressure medication and another one who was using her friend's antidepressants because both of them couldn't avail themselves of a GP or were too scared to do so.

Jacqueline McKenzie, I'm sure we'll talk again. Thank you for taking the time out of a very busy caseload. I imagine you've got papers and papers around you if you've had to work from home. Yes, very much so. Reams and reams. Thank you. Jacqueline McKenzie there, on the latest with the fight for Windrush claimants and those who would be or should be,

and we'll keep with that story. Now described as a fierce and distinctive talent, last week, 20-year-old Griff won the prestigious Brits Rising Star Award following past winners such as Celeste, Sam Smith and Ade talent. Last week, 20-year-old Griff won the prestigious Brits Rising Star Award following past winners such as Celeste, Sam Smith and Adele. She signed her record contract in the middle of her A-levels, like you do, and has also been nominated for an Ivor Novello Award and ended 2020

by singing the soundtrack for Disney's Christmas advert, which garnered 70 million views. As well as producing much of her own music, she also makes her own clothes, including her own performance outfit for The Brits, which I'm sure many of you will have seen if you didn't check it out. Griff is a woman in control. Here she is singing her song Black Hole in a recording she's made specially for all of us, for Woman's Hour. Now and then Your name comes up in conversation with my friends

I hate how much I feel it right there in my chest I hate how much I feel it, yeah Like how are you? It seems like things are going really well for you I wish that I could say the same about you Congratulations on winning the award. No pressure. Thank you. Sam Smith, Adele, Celeste before you.

I know. It's a lot, isn't it? They're big names. They are, but it's amazing. How did it actually feel to win? Just surreal. Because I think actually, unlike all the other categories, I found out I won a month earlier.

But at that point, it was still very much so lockdown. So there wasn't really any celebrations. I just kind of was like, OK, now I've won a Brit. What happens now? But I was still in my bedroom, you know. Which is where you've made so much of your music from. Yeah, yeah. It's where I spent a lot of time this year. And from today, you can give a cautious hug. I know. I heard that on the radio

this morning when I was driving. I'm thinking, I don't know what cautious means. Is it like, is it slower? Is it just with one arm? You know, I don't know. Well, exercise caution, we've been told.

Those celebrations, a few more hugs perhaps this week than you were able to do last week. Thank you for recording that beautiful song, Black Hole. No, of course. What's it about? I know it's about heartbreak,

but what are you writing about there specifically? I don't know. The lyrics are actually quite like cutting and deep, but I think they're kind of disguised because they're put over quite an upbeat, fun pop production. But I guess it's kind of just like when someone leaves your life, there is an emptiness left there that I think is just impossible to fill again.

And I think we all in some way have a kind of bit of a hole and can always feel empty sometimes. And I think we try and fill it up by doing things and being busy. But I think it kind of can be a, yeah, I don't know. It's an emotional state that I think we can all relate to. So that's kind of what it's about. I know that in your piano ballad, Good Stuff, you sing about missing the foster children who passed through your family's home. How did that impact you growing up, having that experience around you? Well, my parents started fostering when I was around eight years old.

So I think I remember being eight years old and it was a reality check because I think I thought it would be like Tracy Beaker. And then it happened and then it wasn't. And you're thinking these are real kids who have been through a lot of trauma and are suddenly like taking my mum's attention now and calling my mum mum and stuff like that. So I think as an eight-year-old, it was like a reality check. But then from then on, I think it's all that I know. And it's been the best thing. And I think it's probably just taught me to be one a little less selfless

and to just get on with it. Because there's just always something new happening in the house. Even during lockdown, I think I've just become used to like screaming kids and crying babies and stuff but it's like it's been a nice atmosphere I think to grow up in yes well and as you say during lockdown that that work still got to continue and people still got to to provide those homes just keeping with your your family and that as an influence I know your parents are Jamaican and Chinese your grandparents were part of the Windrush generation. Does that heritage feed into your musical influences?

Definitely. I think my dad is the Jamaican one and he's quite musical and I think we were brought up in a lot of black music. So it was like Stevie Wonder, Mojo Blige, Michael Jackson, Bill Weathers. So a lot of soul, I think. There's a level of emotion that that era of black music has, which I think is probably comes from, you can probably analyse that and

see that it comes from trauma and whatever, and you express it through music. So I think I definitely connected to that early on. I'm also very struck by how much you do yourself. You produce most of it, all of it? Yeah, yeah, most yeah most well I kind of that I work by myself in my bedroom and produce 100 songs but then I'll also collaborate with people so in the mixtape coming up I think majority of it is just me by myself and then there's one or two songs that I've collaborated with but yeah but that's quite rare isn't it and I know you're keen for women especially to to hear about that yeah it's like it's quite shocking actually how in music and I don't know how much the everyday person is aware of it but definitely in music

as a girl you go into studio sessions and the producer is always a guy the guy who's making the beat you know even as like a young 15 year old going into label meetings and meeting execs it's always a man so I think in music it still really isn't equal and it's like really it's hard to figure out why everyone was always so surprised I was a girl and I produced my songs because I never realized it was such a rarity and then everyone would be like oh she produces all our music you know it's so rare and I couldn't ever understand why there's such a disparity still so yeah what do you think do you think it's what just women or girls when they're coming up, not getting the message

that you can do it all? You can learn everything about this? Or how did you kind of figure it out for yourself that has led to you doing this, which is different? Yeah, I'm still trying to work it out. I think it's about having it there for me. It was just accessible. My dad bought my brother Logic,

which is a music programming software. And so as a kid I just jumped on it and like wanted to sing songs and lay down harmonies on it and then before you know I was teaching myself how to produce so I think girls just aren't exposed to it in the way guys are you know when you think of computer and audio engineering and stuff I think guys typically are just pushed more in that direction then I also think when the industry meets a young talented female because it's men executives I think automatically, oh, this can be sold as a product. So you're going to be an artist, you know, so then you don't ever see girls that are just writers or just producers because they're always then seen as the person who's going to be singing the song because girls still sell.

And also you make your own outfits. You know, you've got a whole creative element to this, which I just wonder, is that a lot more pressure though when you're across everything, that you're handling the production, how you look and what you write? Yeah, it is. Sometimes I'm like, why have I done this to myself? I've completely shot myself in the foot because suddenly like when I'm trying to finish

a like body of work, but then also like make your dresses for your photo shoots and stuff it's like insane but then also I think I find it's it's fun and I find like um freedom and I think I'm just a bit of a control freak in it so I think it's been the best way that I can being in the detail I think has meant that I can really make sure that everything that I put out is authentic and is really coming from me so yeah it must have also been incredibly surreal to be signing record deals doing your a levels and kind of finishing up at school how's that been to manage and handle and also with your friends well I always kept music a secret in school I hated talking about it because I was doing studio

sessions like in like year 10 year 11 and stuff but I knew how slim the chances were of making it and I never wanted to be like I never wanted to talk about it and everyone go oh cute she sings you know like she's just trying to put up a soundcloud link or something like I knew I if I was going to do it I wanted to properly do it and I thought it was cooler that people found out because I was you know on radio 4 on women's hour you know instead of me talking about it like five years ago, trying to make everyone listen to my songs. So I was more just quietly working away while I was doing my A-levels.

And yeah, it was a lot. I was like doing an economics lesson in the morning and then travelling into London, doing a studio session, coming back. But I think it all paid off because then I signed my record deal halfway through sixth form. So yeah.

And then they found out what, when they saw you on The Brits? I't know well the thing is I put out funny old chat now yeah it was halfway through sixth form I signed but then I was I said to the label I think I actually just need to focus on my A-levels for a year so I just got them out the way and didn't release music for a year and then two weeks after my last textile exam I released my first single so I didn't really see anyone from school but it's funny now I'm just getting the odd message or like the odd teachers hitting me up or like my school I think actually sent out an email being like oh a rising star griff I'm thinking I never did music in school you can't claim any of this no I just did I did geography

economics and textiles and a levels and I stayed far away from the music department so it's just funny now seeing the school claim all the fame, you know? That's absolutely brilliant. Just finally, why Griff? My full name's Sarah Griffiths, and it just never felt that glamorous. It just didn't really sound that, like, pop star-y to me. So I was like, let's just shorten it and call it Griff, you know? Griff, it's lovely to talk to you.

Thank you so much, and thank you for making that for us. It's a real treat. No, of course. On a rainy day is what we need to hear. Thank you.iff's new mixtape one foot in front of the other will be released on warner music on june the 11th available to pre-order now and the first uk tour planned for the autumn as we seemingly get back to those things still to come typo squatting i will explain all and we've been getting a lot of messages about toilets uh We also have a statement, we did invite the Community Secretary Robert Jenner and Conwood, we got a statement from the Ministry of Housing,

Communities and Local Government. A spokesperson says we recently carried out a review to ensure better provision of toilets. In particular women often have to face excessive queues and don't have access to appropriate facilities that meet their needs when out. This can mean that women are reluctant to go out or take trips that many take for granted and are less likely to feel comfortable using mixed-sex facilities. There needs to be a public service provision for everyone in our community and this review will help deliver on that objective. We're now considering all the responses

and we'll consider the next steps in due course. And I believe we're going to talk to Cheryl Wilson, who's on the line. Hello, Cheryl. How are you? Good morning. I'm fine thank you very much. Well you had a good experience, is that right, of gender neutral toilets or tell us how you come to this? Yeah, when I've been to the continent into sort of you know the cities there, they quite often have these gender neutral toilets and the thing that always stands out is a it's the quality of the builds they're not just little you know flimsy partitions they are proper cubicles where you get privacy and the second thing is that they always have an attendant there who's looking after

the area and i think if we took those sort of same principles and built good quality public toilets and we had attendance there, that would get rid of a lot of people's worries about, you know, security and privacy to it. It's just that if they keep doing the gender separate toilets, you end up in the situation of going to a public building um your husband goes to the toilet you go to the toilet you go back to your husband after 10 minutes later and he says what have you been doing you know because you've been queuing there aren't enough women's toilets yeah i have to say on on that we've got a message here saying toilet equality thank you for discussing this today i've always said women will know they have an equality when they don't have to queue for the loo i go to festivals and it irritates the hell out of me that I miss performances because I'm going to the loo where my male companions don't but there are there is this message I wonder if

your view on this saying keep loos separate you must take into account older people not just millennials who shout very loudly older women definitely do not want to share loos with men and vice versa well i'm 65 so um i don't have a problem as i say if they i don't understand why people are so uh upset by that because if you've got a proper cubicle you know um and you're coming out washing your hands and leaving these big rooms what's the problem with that you're not being asked to actually watch a man at a urinal, are you, or anything like that? So the cubicle point is key. Well, these things we're going to be thinking about. I mean, at the beginning of lockdown, when a lot of toilets were not available, that was a huge issue for women in particular. So I know as we come out of lockdown, and we

hopefully stay out of it, this will be something that people will be talking about. Cheryl, lovely to have you on. Thank you for coming to talk to us today. Keep your messages coming in and I'll come back to those. It's safe to say a lot of you feel very strongly indeed. And who better to talk to now than someone who is very interested in how we express our strength of views.

Last week on Mumuza I welcomed the Egyptian feminist activist author Mona Al-Tahawi who told us why she wants women to not lose a grip of their rage and how women should start actively denying and defying the patriarchy with force, if necessary, how to fight back. Now, a different take on how to live in the times we find ourselves in, a world lurching from crisis to crisis.

Ece Temelkeren, a Turkish novelist and political commentator, thinks we should choose paying attention over rage and that women have quietly led the way in this type of response over the years. This is one of the key ideas in her new book, Together, 10 Choices for a Better Now. Welcome to the programme. Hi, Emma. Thanks for having your book, especially having just had Mona on the program, where you talk about missing anger. You know, you talk about missing rage. What did you miss about it before we talk about why maybe we shouldn't have it? Well, to start with, this is one of the, you know, subtitles in the book, one of the chapters, angerer, Choosing Attention Over Anger. The book is about the moral choices we might want to make in the 21st century. It's a book about politics of emotions,

because we are going through quite an interesting time. The old system is collapsing and the new is being born, and women are taking a big part in that. So on this cliff, cliff let's say we are trying to make our choices personally and politically and one of the choices that women make in nowadays is expressing expressing too much anger but i do think that in our communication sphere especially on social media anger has been commodified and some companies social media, anger has been commodified. And some companies, social media companies, are making profit out of it. So it is actually, it might not be any more a political tool that we can build our actions upon.

Whereas I do think that attention, a refined form of anger, if you will, is the new new fundament for our political actions to stand upon. What does what does that mean in reality, paying attention and doing that over rage? The good example is Greta, actually Greta Thunberg. Because we're living in an age, an age where the anger is banal. It is everywhere now. It's very commonplace. Whereas Greta Thunberg did something very interesting. She was never angry. And in this, you know, inflation of anger,

her lack of anger seemed sick or like a disease to many people. So she had to explain her Asperger's disease and so on. But she was actually doing something very interesting. She was paying attention and she was being determined about this. And she wasn't expressing anger necessarily or rage, but she was expressing her thoughts and her determination. I think we have to follow her example, especially in terms of women's movement. And we have to be more attentive or full of attention. And I also think that rage is not sustainable. I am a big fan of Mona. She's a

friend. But I also think that rage cannot be sustainable for many of us. And we are living in an age of survival on several levels, not only as women, but as humankind in general. And this requires us to pay attention. And to the first question you asked, why I miss being angry, I am living in a survival mode myself. I left my country five years ago due to political reasons. I wrote a book, How to Lose a Country. And then now I'm still, you know, trying to survive in English. I'm writing in English for the first time in my life.

So I noticed that when you're in the survival mode, you have to pay attention to surviving. There is no place for anger, actually, because anger is taking too much of your energy. I'm not saying that I do not have anger, but the anger is much more refined now. And it has turned to attention, paying attention and doing what you have to do. Survival is not a place for luxurious emotions, I think. And this goes for many women all around the world. Yes, I mean, you talk in the book about attention

as a central moral stance has been explored by brilliant female thinkers, such as Iris Murdoch. It's an idea that all of us without knowing that anger, despite its empowering deliciousness, has limits. But it's also, I suppose, what you said there about you can run out of it, you can run out of anger, or it can only take you so far. Because there's an example in the book where you talk about um somebody who a group of people who were objecting to something happening in their neighborhood and it had been priced into the plan uh from those that they were opposing that they would be angry for a while and then it would die out exactly i mean like it's not only uh has turned to a commodity that people you know, some social media company owners are making

profit from, but it is also an item on the list of the power. They are not affected by our anger. They're affected by our actions, and those actions cannot come from this passing by anger. It has to come from

a determined attention. This is what I meant in Together, Ten Choices for from uh a determined attention this is what i meant in together 10 choices for a better now but this is only the this is one of the choices and there are many other choices and those choices i think would apply to uh women more than men i think but because i mean at the same time i suppose you've got to look around the world as what some have called the rise of the strong man in politics, the rise of those who are doing very well at the polls. So the model of power that you're seeing doesn't advertise necessarily what you're saying in order to be successful within the system that you have. So I did notice

last week, there were some who definitely did not agree, but there were many women who got in touch feeling very empowered by what Mona had to say because they feel that nothing has changed in their lifetime enough. Absolutely, that is true. But then we are changing the world at this point. We are actually, a war is going on between the radical male, as I call it, and the female. And the female does not only mean women, but also the female in men. The radical male, which presents itself as the strong man, as the authoritarian leaders or the bullies that support them, are coming to, you know, this is the morbid symptom of a dying system, I think, capitalism, if you will. And as all systems, when all systems fail, when a system fails, let's put it that way, when a system fails, the first thing that comes to mind, this is something that has been going since the beginning of humankind, the first thing that comes to mind is burning witches. That is why we are under attack. That's why all around the world, the violence against women are rising, because there's an anxiety in the radical male that makes them react enormously. Trump, Boris

Johnson, or, you know, Moody, or Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, they're all the same when it comes to being the representatives of radical male. And what they do is actually, on different levels, attacking the women rights. And we have to be careful. Sorry, I was gonna say you've mentioned the word careful there. But you know, Boris Johnson, if you look at the local elections, certainly in England, I'll just specify, huge electoral success, continued electoral success, very popular with women, as well as men. And I'm just trying to understand when you do include him in that group, how do you account for that,

for a lot of women supporting those men? But I can talk specifically about where I'm sitting in the UK. Emma, this is not the first time that people do make choices against their interests, especially women. Many women do that. But also they all are trying to you know all these men are trying to bring about us you know they are trying to hold the center which is not holding holding anymore yeah that's why you're talking about you know loose toilets and you and

congratulations by the way to having a full hour on BBC. We are, as women, covering more space now. And this is getting, the space for men is getting less. And that is terrifying for the radical male. And I do think that, yes, all these men have something in common. Well, a lot of people would not think that that perhaps is a fair comparison, which is why I bring it up. And also just to try and reflect, I suppose, what a lot of people have felt with the way that they have voted. And they and others have been incredibly surprised by those results.

But, you know, it's important to, as you say, pay attention to that. Yeah, absolutely. Pay attention and see what's happening, because, you know, this rise against the women, rise is not happening like very bluntly sometimes. It happens in a slight difference, in a slight change in legislation or some slight overconfidence of the men around you. Well, we hope to hear, I'll help people pay attention, of course.

Ece, thank you very much for coming on the book with other ideas, of course, as well. We explored one in detail there. Ten choices for a better now. It's called Together, Ece Tamalka. And thank you there. And, you know, talking about, I suppose, toilets as well. Messages still coming in, actually saying some of you anyway, very happy with the way this is going to change and the way that this is coming back to men and female toilets. But also those who do not see the fuss. My goodness, when I'm desperate, I don't care who used the loo before me

because I need to go ASAP. I'm 72 and the worst bit of lockdown has been the lack of open toilets. Thank you so much for all of your contributions and do keep them coming. Kim McCabe got in touch with us last week, who runs a not-for-profit website offering safety advice to young girls because of something called typo squatting. This is when a web address is deliberately misspelled in order to mimic another web address. We wanted to look into this in more detail. It's often used in cyber fraud and for counterfeit goods, but it has been used deliberately to lead children onto websites containing explicit content, which is where Kim's concerns come in.

She's found multiple websites with almost identical domain names to hers, rights for girls, or containing pornography. The government's upcoming online safety bill is set to introduce new legislation to tackle harmful content online, but there's currently nothing to stop harmful typos squatting from happening. So why is it easier to stop a website from selling fake designer bags than deliberately leading children to pornographic material? Kim, do tell us about what you're trying to do with Rights for Girls briefly, if you can, but what actually you've discovered here,

the mimicking of the address of your website. Thank you for inviting me on. Here at Rights for Girls, we are a non-profit. Our mission is to make growing up for girls safer, kinder and better supported. So we run groups both face to face and online where they practice being true to themselves. They learn about puberty and we're working to prevent the high rates of self-harm and low self-esteem that we see in our preteen and teen girls. Now, we didn't even realise what was happening with our website until actually it was a mother of one of the girls in my online girls net group who contacted me to say, did you know I did a Google search because I wanted to come to your rightsforgirls.com website and it took me to something else entirely. And to my shock, that's exactly what we found is we went on to google

did a google search and some company a porn porn company has bought the domain of every single misspelling of our name and they're clever too they've chosen you know the kind of misspelling that you're likely to easily make um and particularly because people are often accessing the internet on their phones now it's very easy to mistype and so what happened for this mother is she was looking for some guidance from us for her daughter who's in one of our groups and instead she was taken to this well it's so-called adult content but explicit photos and videos and we we've just had lottery funding to run these online girls net groups. And we have stopped. We've now held off making GoLive the page, advertising this to offer this to girls,

because the last thing we want to do is to bring girls to a site that is actually going to take them to explicit material. It's the opposite of what we're about. I know that you've actually had some temporary, if I could call it that, good news in the sense that the server, one of the servers that was servicing these websites has taken down, is that right, some of this content now? Yes. So there is a win. And let's just hope it's a long term win rather than a short term win. My server initially could not find who was hosting this porn site. And I spent a week basically online researching and finally found a French server. And after a great deal of communication with them, they've taken it down. But I suppose the problem is, and let's bring in Dr. Victoria

Baines, a cybercrime and online safety researcher, also a former Europol officer and Facebook executive. The problem, Victoria, is that's not necessarily going to hold and somebody else could take this up. Why are there no protections at the moment, it seems, in the UK for websites like Kim's Rights for Girls? Good morning, Emma. Good morning, Kim. Yes, you're absolutely right. There are no specific protections against typosquatting and cybersquatting. What there is, is an intellectual property regime. So the onus is on the person who owns Rights for Girls, so Kim in this case, to prove that she's the owner of that intellectual property. It's also a problem, I would say, of how the internet is structured. So the people that Kim has managed to reach are

actually the registrar, they're providing cloud hosting, you know, web hosting space. And what you're not getting to, unfortunately, are the people behind this. And so when Kim speaks about, you know, a short term solution and a long term solution, I completely understand her fears that, you know, this may be something of a game of whack-a-mole, because until you're getting to the people that are actually behind this and that are clearly targeting her not-for-profit, then we don't actually have provision to stop this in the longer term. But if you're selling designer bags, which is the example that I gave, tell us why you've got more protection, perhaps. This is about the amount of money and resources that you have available to protect your intellectual

property. So if you are a large retail brand or you're a large tech company, you can have teams of lawyers that field these issues for you. You can be aggressive about getting brands taken down. And there is a global regime through the Internet Corporation for assigned names and numbers, the people who run the infrastructure of the Internet and the World Intellectual Property Organization. But if you are a not-for-profit that wants to spend money on your activities and supporting girls and their families, then obviously, you know, this is something that could easily be beyond your means. Now, you mentioned, Emma, the online safety bill. I think it's really important to manage expectations on that

because the online safety bill actually only targets social media companies, which they call user-to-user services and search engines. And so, you know, there could be some provision in that for Google to de-index, to down rank some of these pages that are clearly very harmful to, or could be potentially quite distressing to young people who are expecting to see something completely different. And that clearly through the intro text of their website is purporting to be that service that Kim is running. We hope by having this conversation to put that on its agenda, the government's agenda, and we'll follow this up. Dr Victoria Baines, Kim McCabe, thank you to you. And thank you to

all of you for your company this morning. We'll be back tomorrow at 10. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. Sneakers? Trainers. Whatever you want to call them, they are amongst the most iconic cultural objects of our time but their evolution is a story rarely told until now from bbc radio 4 this is sneaker nomics across this podcast we're going to be telling the crazy origin stories of the most well-known sports companies and their relentless quest to be the world's number one brand. Sneakernomics tells the story of fierce competition and rivalry,

one that tore families and friendships apart and even divided towns. We'll follow in the footsteps of mavericks, hustlers and dreamers and hear their tales of boom and bust, fame and infamy, hope and heartbreak. Above all, this is the story of the people behind the shoes. From BBC Radio 4, this is Sneakernomics. Subscribe at 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's 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.