Woman's Hour - I May Destroy You

Episode Date: June 25, 2020

Michaela Coel’s new drama “I May Destroy You” on BBC 1 is receiving rave reviews on Twitter and in the papers. The story centres around a writer called Arabella who is drugged and sexually assaulted but has no recollection of the assault except in flashbacks and has to piece together what happened to her. How effective is the way the story is told and what questions does it raise about consent, relationships and the portrayal of women’s everyday lived experience on screen? To discuss the series, Jenni is joined by Weruche Opia who plays Bella’s best friend, Terry, Zing Tsjeng, executive editor of Vice UK and the poet Vanessa Kisuule. The children’s charity Barnardo’s has seen a 44% increase in the number of children who need foster care during the coronavirus pandemic. This, coupled with a fall in potential foster carers coming forward, is creating what they call a ‘state of emergency’. Vulnerable children who may have experienced neglect or abuse are now having to wait to be placed in foster families. What can be done? Jenni speaks to Brenda Farrell, Head of Fostering at Barnardo’s. Ukrainian chef, food writer and food stylist, Olia Hercules tells the story of a part of Ukraine’s culinary history that is disappearing. Summer kitchens are little buildings in the vegetable garden where produce is prepared and eaten during the warmer months, and surplus food is pickled and preserved for the long winters. Olia joins Jenni to talk about the food of her childhood and discuss how to Cook the Perfect… Beetroot leaf rolls with buckwheat and mushrooms.Covid 19 has introduced a number of new terms to public debate - the key worker is perhaps the most important one. It turns out that the most essential workers are predominantly women, and many of them employed in low paid work in health and social care as well as cleaning and supermarkets. In her new book, Feminism and the Politics of Resilience, the sociologist Angela McRobbie argues that these and other disadvantaged women have become increasingly trapped in low-paid and casualised work which offers no possibility for progression or promotion. And the kind of feminism we’ve seen promoted in the last decade, which has emphasised individual resilience, hasn’t helped. Middle class and often white women have been exulted to lean in and achieve more at work and in motherhood, while low-paid women to be shamed for lacking resilience. So, have we become distracted from recognising the social and economic forces that shape women’s lives? Jenni discusses with Angela McRobbie and Zoe Williams, Guardian columnist.Producer: Louise Corley Editor: Karen Dalziel

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Thursday the 25th of June. Good morning. In today's programme, Feminism and the Politics of Resilience is the new book by the sociologist Angela McRobbie. How much harm has been done to women by the advice to lean in to work and motherhood whilst others are trapped in low-paid casual contracts? The Cuisine of the Ukraine. Olya Hercules cooks the perfect beetroot leaf rolls with buckwheat and mushrooms.

And Michaela Cole's much-admired TV series, I May Destroy You. What do we learn about the sexual landscape young women inhabit and what's known or not about the meaning of consent? Now this week, the children's charity Barnardo's has revealed a startling rise of 44% in the number of children who've needed to be taken into foster care since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. They say that coupled with a fall in potential foster carers coming forward, a state of emergency has been created and vulnerable children are having to wait to be placed in foster homes.

What can be done? Well, Brenda Farrell is Head of Fostering at Barnardo's. Brenda, why has there been such a big increase in the need for foster care? Good morning, Jenny. Barnardo's, as you know, has been working in the fostering sector for over 100 years. And during that time, we continue to monitor the needs of children across the uk and during the pandemic that was no different and our figures as you say have shown to us a 44 increase in those numbers of children young people near dean foster care during the pandemic but why well the reason why is broad if we understand that the pandemic um hit in england has seen families go

into lockdown many of these vulnerable families were um experiencing pressures before lockdown during so they've experienced maybe job losses deepening poverty a worsening of their mental health all of which can lead to greater fractures within the family environment. So what sort of situations have you been witnessing that have been causing children such problems? Well, I'm pleased to say that during lockdown, our teams across the UK have been continuing to support our foster carers who've continued to open their homes to these vulnerable children. And we've continued to see children, a range of children from young mums and their babies, from young sibling groups,

straight through to young teenagers, all of which where our local authority colleagues have intervened and have been unable to sustain and maintain that family cohort and structure. And as I say, with lockdown, we've seen the increase, you'll have seen the statistics in recent months about the increase in domestic violence we've seen 49% rising calls to the helpline so those pressures within the family have caused those families to have that stress and children needing alternative care and for various reasons for example one of our

teenagers that's been placed with one of our families just couldn't, wasn't able to communicate within the family environment and felt the need to leave, was unable to remain with extended family members and therefore was trying to stay with friends in the community and that wasn't feasible because of lockdown and therefore putting themselves at risk to gangs, to drugs and to sexual exploitation in the community. So at the intervention of support services and local authorities, Barnardo's were able to place them with our foster carers to make sure that they're safe until their position at home may be rectified and they're able to return. But what's happening to the children who need foster care, but you can't find a foster home for them? That is putting a stress on the situation

um before we came into lockdown um we already had just over 80 000 children in care across the uk 65 000 of those were placed with foster carers 55 000 foster carers across the uk and we had several thousand shortfall before lockdown so for those who haven't been able to receive a foster placement, many have been placed in emergency accommodation with maybe with their families or family members. Some have had to remain at home a little bit longer with support services coming in and others have been placed with foster carers with other children which may not have been the right scenario for them. I'm sure you'll appreciate that when we're looking to place children with foster care, it takes time. It takes time to make sure that we've got the right match with the right

skill set of the carers. So especially for those children who are looking for permanency and need to stay in foster care for many years, that planning and linking process is so important to have the right set of carers to meet that children's needs. How are foster carers that you have coping with this new situation? Amazingly, amazingly. If you'd asked myself and my teams across the UK at the beginning of lockdown, we were anxious. We were concerned about the impact on our families, the stresses and strains that they may experience but they have made us proud and what we've actually found

for many of our carers is that having that time with the children, the children have blossomed. Their stability, the security, the attention, the love and in some cases not going to school have actually really helped those children galvanize those relationships growing confidence everything from learning how to ride a bike to play board games improve their reading and social interaction within extended family members but the foster carers must have been under tremendous pressure because the children are home all the time, because they're not going to school and they may have other children that they've already fostered or indeed children of their own. That's a lot of pressure.

It is a lot of pressure. Fully recognise that. And that's why our teams have worked with our foster carers. We've maintained contact with them. We've moved everything virtually. And so we're in contact with them if daily, not weekly, if not hourly. We've been able to provide with the support of other colleagues across Barnardo's, greater therapeutic intervention, therapeutic packs, toys, games. We've been able to provide therapeutic intervention to support our carers, give them advice.

Our play therapists have moved online. So we've moved the breadth of our support services online to ensure that we are there, both to listen, support, guide and advise our carers through this process. But clearly you need more foster carers. What would you say to people who may be prepared to foster, but might be a bit nervous about somebody new coming into their household just now? Our plea is for listeners who have ever thought or maybe never thought about fostering before to come to the Barnardo's website. Find out what the role of becoming foster carers. We will walk you through every step of the process. We will complete the assessment process, we will do the

checks, we will provide the pre-approval training, we will guide you on the needs of the children that we need to find homes for. It's important that we work as a team. We know that during that process we'll help members of the public understand if this is the right time for them to foster. Well Brenda Farrell, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning. And indeed, if you would be prepared to offer a child a foster home, you heard just now where to go. Or of course, you can send us a tweet or an email and we can make sure you get the right information.

Now, COVID-19 has introduced a number of new terms to public debate and key worker is perhaps the most familiar and significant one. It turns out that most workers who are considered essential are women, and lots of them are employed in low-paid work, in health and social care, cleaning, or supermarkets. In her new book, Feminism and the Politics of Resilience, the sociologist Angela McRobbie argues that such disadvantaged women become trapped in casualised work with no chance of progression. The kind of feminism which has encouraged resilience and leaning into work and motherhood hasn't helped either the middle-class professionals or the disadvantaged. Well, how have we been distracted from facing the social

and economic forces that shape women's lives? Well, I'm joined by The Guardian columnist Zoe Williams and Angela McRobbie, who's Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths University of London. Angela, what exactly do you mean by the politics of resilience? Well, I think that there are two debates that I'm trying to conduct at the same time in this book. And the first debate is indeed about resilience and the way in which resilience has become a kind of buzzword, a sort of common sense term, right across everyday life. And it refers to a kind of capacity to recover from difficulties, an ability to recover quickly or to bounce back. And that's used very widely to refer to the difficulties being very much aspects of women's everyday life. And I argue that it has got a tone of accommodating.

It's about accommodating to the status quo and recognising that life is difficult and that women's subjugation is not something that's going to disappear overnight. And so it's really about accommodating. And more than that, it's also about finding some kind of inner resources. How can you individually deal with this? And of course, the factors that are the problem are the structural external factors. And often the idea of resilience then becomes part of the problem. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because the more you look inside, the more difficult it is to change individually. And I also link the term resilience with the kinds of vocabularies

that we find in women's magazines where, first of all, there is an aspirational ethos to be the perfect woman, to do batch cooking at five o'clock in the morning, to be up in the gym and training. And then there's a recognition that, well, actually, we all suffer from forms of failure and we're all self-berate. And then the answer is to become resilient, to learn resilience through self-berate and then the answer is to become resilient to learn resilience through self-help techniques let me put this to to Zoe Angela Zoe how much of a problem do you find this pressure to be resilient is um I mean to start off with Angela I really enjoyed your book a lot and it sparked a huge number of thoughts in me because I kind of I suppose I feel quite defensive on behalf of 90s feminism which I think

is where a lot of this started um you know that kind of as you described the kind of checklist of self-perfection being your best self being your perfect weight but having your perfect night's sleep having your great career having your perfect family all sleep, having your great career, having your perfect family. All of that, I think, was really seeded in the 90s. And in a way, it was kind of lampooned in the 90s at the same time. If you look at Bridget Jones as kind of the ultimate self-improving woman, it was very much part of that rather feckless, depoliticized feminism that then leads to these really individual answers. You know, if you haven't got a political conception of what

feminism is if it isn't rooted in a kind of wider equality agenda then what is the point of it except everybody just has to try harder to be as good as they possibly can be but the way in which I disagree is that I don't think it was I don't think it was feminists who kind of went blindly into this trap where we all became so furiously self-improving. I think feminism was really co-opted by a kind of consumer narrative, the way all politics is ultimately either co-opted by consumerism or ignored by consumerism. And, you know, I expect the same thing to happen to Black Lives Matter. I expect to see that co-opted by adidas in a year's time or you know these kind of slogans and i i suppose the kind of the power of them being divorced from the message

so you know so angela angela it was not feminists that took us into this politics of resilience well you see i would say to zo Zoe that a depoliticised feminism is not a feminism at all. And actually, I think that 90s, what you refer to as 90s feminism, was a kind of delusion of feminism. It was when feminism was actually being replaced by female individualisation. And, of course, there was a rhetoric about aspiration and being your best self, but that was entirely predicated on unique individual aspiration

capacity which actually could only work for a tiny, tiny minority of already privileged middle class and white young women with a few exceptions. And everything was predicated in this idea of being an exception and making it up. It was the myth of the meritocracy. And I think, however, where that then does become connected with feminism is through the idea of what I call in the book neoliberal leadership feminism and the idea of having it all and what I argue is that of course this becomes popular discourse in market magazines and and so on but what I argue is that the concept of having it all is actually an insult to disadvantaged working-class women working on shifts working

so-called flexible hours and uh and doing work that is has until very recently become been totally invisibilized that is to say hang on angela let me let me put this point to Zoe. Zoe, how responsible would you say the rather careerist person, Sheryl Sandberg, her lean-in ideas, how responsible is she for that kind of feminism that focuses on the individual middle-class woman and not on the low-paid woman? Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with everything you just said. I mean, it is a rabid, possessive individualism,

masquerading as feminism, for sure, and all kind of depletisized. I completely agree that depletisized feminism is not feminism. And I always thought that, you know, a feminism which isn't rooted in a principle of equality is just capitalism with tits, you know, it's completely, it's completely unmoored. But, and, you know, to your point, Jenny, about Sheryl Sandberg, yeah, completely, you know, and actually, if you read Lean In, it was chillingly myopic on the subject of what the normal woman's challenges were, you know, and how, and what I found most kind of difficult about it, among a huge array of difficult things was this kind of

obsessive non-confrontationalism she had, you know, all men were reasonable if you asked them nicely, and all kind of patriarchal structures could be worked around if you were prepared to kind of bend yourself to them in an intelligent way. And I found it, you know, it wasn't just kind of not radical enough. It was a document of anti-radicalism masquerading as a kind of self-help. So, yeah, I do think Sheryl Sandberg has a lot to answer for. But in another way, she is just a kind of product of what that had become. It wasn't, you know, she didn't invent that very neutered way of looking at things. She merely aggregated it. Angela, you write about the way the media is cruel and offensive to women.

Why do you think journalists are so interested in the failings of individual women? Well, that's a really good question. of female popular culture, there have been a kind of genres that address female feelings. You know, on the one hand, there is the glossy image of perfection in Vogue magazine, and that's always been accompanied by levels of, if you like, self-beratement or addressing the idea that we're not good enough or that we'll never be good enough. And I found the essay by Adam Phillips in the London Review of Books called Against Self-Beratement incredibly useful because as a psychoanalyst, what he says is that self-beratement is one of the few unforbidden pleasures. And he actually turns it around and says, you know, we enjoy this self-beratement. You know, we enjoy being our own worst enemy. found that really interesting because it shows the way in which young women can so easily be locked into self-disparaging self-denigrating and feeling that they're never good enough

to what extent is the media complicit in that or is it reflecting social attitudes there's a number of different things isn't there I mean, you know, when we talk about self-beratement and self-improvement, certainly there's a kind of really classic, you know, since the 50s, a really classic consumerist agenda. If you can make women feel bad about themselves, then they'll buy more stuff. And this kind of hits apex for me in the 2010s pre-crash, when if you actually went through a copy of Elle magazine and did

all the grooming practices that they mandated every week, it would cost you an entire salary. I mean, it was insane, the amount of self-improvement and the amount of self-doubt they had to sow in order to make people want to improve themselves. So I kind of think of that as just a very, very straightforward maths equation in a way. You know, if you can get people to buy more face masks, then all to the good. But something I really found interesting in your book, Angela, was that kind of cruelty of the media and the way in which, which is a much more recent phenomenon, I think, the kind of benefit street, the kind of the portrayal of women in the working class women as kind of inherently problematic and and there being a kind of very hostile and aggressive undertone which which i think kind

of came to a head just after the financial crash um and that's new to me and i don't really know it is is not yet plain to me how you how you kind of stamp that out. Zoe, just briefly'm quite optimistic because you know to go back to kirsten's leadership acceptance speech that those who were last shall now be first it's a kind of i think we have accepted a frame for quite a long time that low paid meant low skilled meant low value and now we've suddenly realized that jobs the jobs we need the most and that actually keep our civilisation afloat are the ones that are paid the least. And I think that will tell. And I think that will change the way we look at low pay and systemic low pay. Well, Zoe Williamson, Angela McLovin, I always have to end in really interesting conversations. And I've really enjoyed talking to you both.

And thank you very much for joining us. And sorry, we have to end it now. That's Zoe Williams and Angela McRobbie. Thank you both. Now, still to come in today's programme, the television series I May Destroy You. What's to be learned from Michaela Cole's much admired story about the sexual atmosphere young women are facing and what's known or not about what's meant by consent.

And the serial, the fourth episode of the Death Watch Journal. Now, the Ukrainian chef and food writer Olya Hercules has published a book which tells the story of the culinary history of her mother country that appears to be disappearing. It's called Summer Kitchens and has recipes such as the one she's cooked for today's Cook the Perfect. It's beetroot leaf rolls with buckwheat and mushrooms. Olly, let's begin with the tradition of the summer kitchen. What is that tradition? Good morning, Jenny. kitchen what is that tradition good morning jenny in in ukraine especially in rural areas apart from your regular house you've also got a almost like a smaller miniature version of your

main house which is just a couple of steps away from your from your main one and it's just a one room uh structure and it's a kitchen and This is where people cook in the summer. It kind of flourished in the 1950s after the Second World War when people started living a little bit better and kind of settled back into life a bit. The young couple would get married during the hot summer months, and Ukraine gets incredibly hot in the summer, it's almost Mediterranean, especially in the south, they would build this little structure first, put a makeshift bed there and a stove, and then build their life around them.

They'll build a bigger house, put their, you know, vegetables in, orchard trees, etc. And then when they move into the bigger house in the summer, they'd use this kitchen because, well, it is incredibly hot. And in the past, people weren't able to get an air conditioning, for example. So you just do all of the cooking there. Now, the summer kitchen has a stone oven, which seems to have a lot of rules attached to it. What are they?

Yes, in Ukraine, there is an oven called peach. And traditionally, historically, there are really interesting things connected to it. So, for example, when a young woman would get married and she was to leave her family home she would scratch her nails on the uh white kind of washed uh stove to and you know keeping it under her nails it kind of like signified keeping her family together with her it's no longer done but it's just something that i found in my research that i found really interesting so it was a really important um

kind of oven that you had in your house. And you weren't allowed to swear in front of it, were you? No, absolutely not. You were not allowed to swear. It was almost treated as a mother figure. Now, Ukraine is bordered by Poland and Russia, with Belarus to the north, Romania and Moldova to the southwest. But how particular is Ukrainian cuisine? There are some common themes running through, but it's also very regional. Ukraine is very large.

It's the second biggest country in Europe after Russia. And as you travel around the borders, you can just see all of these influences coming in from the bordering countries. So if you go to Transcarpathia, you will get elements of Hungary in there, so loads of paprika. And then if you go to the south, next to the Moldovan and Romanian border, you'd get echoes of those cuisines and even almost turkic influences loads of herb pastes that you put into your broths etc and of course a pickling and fermenting is done is done throughout the country and this is another thing that summer kitchens are used for so it's not just about summer cooking it's about preserving the glut all of the vegetables that you've grown, fermenting them, pickling them for winter so you can have fresher kind of produce during the winter time.

And of course, pickling and fermenting have become very popular in this country now because apparently very good for feeding your microbiome. Now, you've chosen beetroot leaf rolls with buckwheat and mushrooms for our Cook the Perfect. How do you make it? So beetroot leaves or if you don't have you can use chard leaves as well. If they're already a little bit wilted that's how they traditionally did it. They just left them in the sun to wilt a bit. You just use them as they are. Otherwise, you can steam them a little bit to make them a little bit more pliable. Then you fry a little bit of diced onion and grated carrots to draw out all of those sugars out of them. And then you also fry some mushrooms. I just grate them on the rough side of the grater because it's much easier.

And then you just toast the buckwheat groats a little bit and then blanch it for about five minutes. Mix everything together alongside the beetroot or charred stalks as well. Of course, we don't waste anything. You cook them down in a little bit of butter and garlic. Mix everything together and that's your filling. And then you roll this filling into your beetroot leaves and you put it into a sauce and you make the sauce by sweating sliced onions a little bit. Then you add your tomatoes in and then a little bit of sour cream. You season everything really well. And then because the filling for the rolls is already cooked, You just kind of cook it in the sauce for about 15 minutes.

And it's such a beautiful and light and summery dish. And it's one of my favorites. And it's vegetarian, not vegan because of the cream, but vegetarian, yeah? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, you can have meat versions as well, but I do love in the summer this vegetarian version. What do you reckon is the future for the summer kitchens? Will they go on existing?

So we traveled around Ukraine. We did about a 10,000 kilometer trip by car and we've seen a lot of them. They still exist and all the generations are keeping it alive but um but some of them are being turned into storage spaces or even you know got rid of um so there's hope that people will will keep them because they are so incredibly useful it's like having a kitchen workshop in your garden basically and hopefully people will realize their value and will keep them going the younger generations. Anya Hercules thank you very much for being with us this morning and I'll just mention again the title of the book is Summer Kitchens. Thank you very much for being with us.

Now you may have been watching Michaela Cohen's drama series on BBC One, I May Destroy You. In the first six episodes, which have been broadcast so far, we see her in Italy with her best friend Terry, enjoying an active life with sex and drugs. As they return to London, we begin to find out some of the problems their assumptions about their free choices have created. Michaela's character, Arabella, has flashbacks of a night on the town where her drink was clearly spiked and she was raped. Terry begins to wonder if her threesome in Italy had really been what she wanted. A gay friend, Kwame, has an incident with someone he's met on Grindr. At first it's consensual and then it's not.

And Bella has an incident where a partner removes a condom without her permission. What questions is this much-admired series raising about consent and how accurately does it portray the lives of young women in 2020? Here, Bella tries to explain her flashbacks to Terry. I've got this, like, thing in my head of, like, this guy Here, Bella tries to explain her flashbacks to Terry. He's panting and sweating. He's got really big nostrils and it's like he's blocking the door and the door is like... I don't know, there's just like thumping sounds.

Yeah, it's like he's, I don't know, like blocking the door. Michaela Cole. Well, I'm joined by Zing Zing, the Executive Director of Vice UK the poet Vanessa Kisule and Waruchi Opia who plays Terry Waruchi she's Bella's best friend what did you think when you first read the script um I was blown away at how frank and raw and how real Michaela was able to put all this down on a script. It was quite beautiful to read and quite authentic. So it was very enjoyable to read, but also hard hitting at the same time.

Shocking as well, because I've never seen anything like it. There does seem to be a real chemistry between you both. Was that there from the start? Yes and no. I met Michaela briefly once before but after the casting process and we spent more time together on set we seemed to click and get on really well. Vanessa the story is told in a non-linear narrative and there are flashbacks throughout each episode as Bella slowly realises what's happened to her. How effective is that method of telling a story? What I love about it is it honours the fragmentary way that our brain processes information, particularly when it comes to trauma. You know, oftentimes we block things out. And then

when they really reoccur in our minds, we're getting pieces. You know, the way of looking at life as a linear progression is a false one that we put on it in order to feel a sense of control or cause and effect. But what the show does so beautifully is really depicting how strange and disordered our thoughts and our memories can be and i feel like that's what makes it so uh so different to any other depiction of um sexual assault um or or drug taking or you know any of the things that are happening in the show um it's kind of unprecedented as far as tv is concerned for me zing michaela has been very open about the fact that she was a victim of sexual assault after her drink was spiked and she's drawn on that in writing the series and i think it's a similar

experience to something that's happened to you so what do you make of the way she's telling that story i mean i had a similar experience in that when i was 18 my drink was spiked at a pub and luckily i left the pub before uh whoever did it to me could approach me i got on a bus and i just completely blacked out and end up at home safe and sound so I it was a very different experience to me but having seen Drink Spiking portrayed on TV in other shows like Riverdale and Netflix and Veronica Mars this is the first show I think I've ever seen that really grapples with the reality of what it is where you feel as if you can't trust yourself and you can't trust your judgment of what happened on that day or on that night and i still go back to my own experience and i think well what was i doing that made me out to be a target even

though that is a completely false line of thinking you know often these things uh are not targeted at all you are just a target of someone who's a crook who wants to perform some criminal action but i think that what i may destroy You captures so well is that sense where Arabella doesn't quite know or remember and is trying to piece together the fragments of the night and she does this really cleverly in you know these flashbacks where it's always the same scene as you had just heard in the extract from the show she sees this man standing above her but in various flashbacks you see the man replaced with the faces of different people one point, you even see him replaced with Arabella's own face. And I think that's really, really clever.

And that's a really interesting narrative device to actually portray the confusion and the lack of being able to remember what happened. Where it's at, there are some very explicit scenes in the series, which may have shocked some people who've watched it. You're acting in it. How have you coped with them? I mean, I know that they're not actually real, so it's not been a problem for me. But I think it helps to tell the story. The explicit nature of it makes it more visceral,

I think. So I think it does the job really. But that threesome with two other men that wasn't really you was it? No it wasn't I had a body double. Why did you decide to have a body double because I know you had the woman who's becoming so familiar these days as you know someone who tries to advise how you do sex sins to the satisfaction of the actors why did you want a body double it's a personal preference of mine um i'm a christian and um sex and you know adding out those things isn't quite what i'm up for so um we were able to still tell the story and have the lovely lady who came in to be my body double. And that was great.

The threesome that she has with those two other men, she describes it at one point as the most freeing thing she's ever done. And then you start to think, hmm, maybe she's not that happy about it. What do you make of it? I think in the situation, and as you see, if you've seen the episode already, there's a matter of confusion of if she was in control of the situation or not. There's the conversation about whether her consent was given or whether it was taken, because she realizes that the two men may have known each other. So she's not quite sure if she was in power in that situation or if she you know if she wasn't so i think that's where the confusion comes in for her to know

she's not quite sure if she was taken advantage of or if she made the decision entirely herself to partake in that vanessa that that scene and others like it do continuously imply that there's a very fine line between liberation and exploitation how powerful does that make it to watch for you um i'm going to answer that but i'm just going to shoot my platonic shot now because michaela cole if you're listening i think you're amazing i'm trying to upgrade from fangirl to best friend. So, you know, holler at me if that's of interest. All right, you've done it. To answer your question.

You've done it. She's heard it. But to answer your question, what I love is this show is not afraid of nuance. It's not afraid of moral conundrums, of acknowledging that there's no such thing as the perfect victim or, you know, the holy evil perpetrator. You know, it doesn't pull any punches as far as accountability is concerned. But what I love is, you know, there's, you know, like someone was saying earlier in the segment about

90s feminism, we've been fed a lot of stuff about, you know, girl, do your thing, you know, have lots of sex, be free. And, you know, we haven't really examined the inevitable quandaries that come with that. And, you know our our understanding of our bodies and what we truly want as opposed to what we think we should want or what we're told we should want and I love that it just sits in that that murkiness it doesn't try to give answers it doesn't give any um sort of neat ethical conclusions um it just sits with that confusion and it's so beautiful and honest and radically empathetic to how very confused and sad and resilient we are as humans let's just have another clip which comes from episode four where bella has just had consensual sex with a colleague

called zane um there is a bin in the one across the hallway, sorry. What? A bin for the condom. Oh. There's a... Oh. Oh. Where did you put the condom?

I... I took it off. I thought you... Yeah, it got uncomfortable, you... Oh, yeah. Yeah, it got uncomfortable, so... You're joking. No, no, look here. There.

Um... I thought you knew. Couldn't you feel it? No, I couldn't feel it. Sorry, I'm so sorry. Zing, I honestly didn't think there was very much I didn't know about these kind of things. And not very much that would shock me, but actually, removing a condom without a woman realising during sex is known as stealthing, which is sexual assault. How many women watching this would have been aware of that? I actually think not that many and this is why i really rate michaela cole for producing a show that manages to inform but and educate as

well as entertain because they're going to be a lot of women and i hope men as well who are going to watch that and then watch the follow-up episode where Michaela Cole straight up asks a police officer who's investigating her previous rape what that is and whether it's considered sexual assault and she gets told a very very harsh yes it is and we will encourage people to report it and it's all done with the lightest touch you don't feel like uh it's trying to tell you a moral fable as Vanessa said it sits happily in that gray air and vagueness but there are some things that i think like the stealthing episode that i think are going to be very useful and informative for a lot of women and men to tell them that you know these encounters that you have that don't feel right in the moment uh they're not okay for you to experience and that you know

people should care about you and treat you with more care and respect than that. There's one other thing I want to ask you about, Zing. The way in which women's bodies are represented on screen is very naturalistic. And there's a scene where Bella removes a tampon during sex, and we see a blood clot on the bed. What was your reaction when you saw that? I screamed when I saw the blood clot i have never seen that on screen did you scream in horror and sure no i screamed in shock because i have genuinely never seen period blood portrayed in that way on screen before and i watch a lot of tv

uh probably you know not an unhealthy amount of. And I think it's actually almost sad that in a decade where I've seen more men and women get murdered on screen, you know, you think of the amount of violence in a show like Game of Thrones, which doesn't shy away from women getting stabbed in their pregnant belly or people getting their throat slit on screen. And they show this all unflinchingly.

It takes a blood clot to make someone like me sit up and take notice and say, I have never seen that before. That is genuinely radical and new and refreshing. And I think full credit to Michaela Cole. She's done an amazing job at bringing all these issues to light. And they're all real life. You know, they're far more real life than fantasy series about dragons and princesses.

It's just a shame that it's taken so long for us to see something this honest and new. And Vanessa, what did you make of that scene? Briefly, I'm afraid I have to ask you. Okay, similarly obsessed, so relieved to see something that not just normalised it, but offered such tenderness. You know, she was there with a man in an intimate setting and he didn't recoil, you know, he had a really lovely curiosity about it. And I thought, hey, like this isn't supposed to be a sensational thing,

though it is to watch. She's actually trying to undercut this shock that we might initially experience and go, maybe we can get to a point where this is just, you know, another scene in a TV show and not some sort of watershed moment. And Werachi, again, briefly from you, what was it like appearing in a drama where the majority of the cast are black? It was refreshing and it was different. I'm not used to it. It was probably one of the most diverse casts I've been in. It was nice to know that our stories are being told on a larger scale. We're being part of it.

I mean, the representation diversity was on and behind the screen. So it was brilliant to be in something that was very collaborative, where everyone was able to work together respectfully. And yeah, it was great. It was refreshing. I was talking to Werechi Opea, Vanessa Kisole and Zing Singh. And we had lots of responses from you, certainly on I May Destroy You. But someone who didn't want to be named said, teaching consent in school is so, so important.

I didn't understand the concept of consent when I needed to. Workplaces should add the topic to their continuous development discussions alongside equality, diversity, bullying and harassment, drugs and alcohol abuse. Education around consent must not victim blame and must avoid the topic of excess alcohol or the way a woman dresses as these do not indicate consent. Education around consent must apply to men and women equally. On resilience, Jacqueline in an email said one way that feminism has let working-class women down is ignoring the plight of carers. I've yet to hear a prominent feminist back publicly and increasing carers allowance, more funding for community mental health services, bringing back the nursing bursary, funding for respite care. There are a thousand and one ways feminism could change the lives of

women struggling with caring for a family member who's disabled. But all I'm hearing are middle class women complaining about body image and having it all. There are women like me who just struggle day to day growing older without support as a carer. And Louise said, I'm loving your piece on feminism. Please, please, please continue this in other ways. I feel so happy, reassured and relieved. Well done. Well, thank you, Louise. Now, do join Jane tomorrow when the Rethink essay is from Brian Eno,

considering the failures of macho leadership styles in this pandemic. We'll ask what the response to COVID has taught us about leadership and what we want and need now from our leaders. The panel will be Dame Heather Rabat, the Chair of Time's Up UK, Inger Biel, the former Chief Executive of Lloyds of London, and Professor Gary Woods,

the Founding Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. That's tomorrow, three minutes past ten. Do join Jane from me for today this week. Bye bye. Hi, I'm Catherine Bellhart. And I'm Sarah Keyworth. We're comedians separately and a couple together.

And we're the host of You'll Do, the podcast that gives you a little insight into perfectly imperfect love yeah forget nights in with this one and hashtag couples goals we want to know the whys and hows of sticking with the people we love and asking a few of the questions that are meant to help us develop intimacy so why not give it a listen and subscribe to you'll do on bbc sounds sounds. I'm Sarah Trelevan, 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 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.

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