Woman's Hour - IVF clinic license suspended, Porn series, 'Queens' wildlife programme

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

A new law will be introduced in the House of Commons at lunchtime today to clear the names of the hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly convicted for theft and false accounting. To discuss what this means Emma Barnett is joined by Jo Hamilton, a former post sub-master who was wrongly charged with stealing £36,000 from the Hampshire village post office she ran and BBC Economics Correspondent Andy Verity. A fertility clinic in London has recently had its license suspended over what are being called “significant concerns” about the unit. Homerton Fertility Centre says there had been three separate incidents that highlighted errors in some freezing processes - meaning some people’s embryos were lost. Emma Barnett talks to the Telegraph’s Health Editor Laura Donnelly and Dr Ippokratis Sarris from King’s Fertility.We continue our series looking at how porn in shaping our sex and relationships today by speaking to Dr Fiona Vera-Gray. She says that when we think about porn we still mostly think about men, men as the producers and the consumers and women as the product. Her new book, Women On Porn, details the experiences of one hundred women and their views on porn and she joins Emma in the studio. A new ground-breaking wildlife series is launching this week. National Geographic’s ‘Queens’ focuses on female-led animal societies, and shows their lives away from the usual male fights and hunts. The seven-part series was produced by a women-led team and narrated by the actress Angela Bassett. Emma talks to the series co-executive producer and writer Chloe Sarosh. Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Emma Pearce Studio Manager: Emma Harth

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 and welcome to the programme. Today I can promise you a new look at the post office scandal and why today may not be the step forward the Prime Minister hopes as a new law is introduced to clear the names of the hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly convicted. We'll have the latest in the IVF scandal linked to heartbreaking errors in the freezing processes of some eggs and embryos and a focus on matriarchies within the animal kingdom. It's a varied bunch on the agenda today. But today also sees the latest

in our porn series, looking at how it affects and shapes our lives with an author and researcher who has expressly looked at what women feel about porn and how they use it or don't in their lives. One of her findings is that many women only seek out lesbian porn even if they're heterosexual, as they have a desire to see female pleasure prioritised,

which is more guaranteed in such a setting, they feel. More findings to come with that particular author and researcher a bit later in the programme. But now is your opportunity to tell me how you use porn, something that we don't hear a great deal about, certainly from the female perspective. Your messages, as always, can be anonymous. I have a feeling perhaps there will be even more so today. But what is your relationship with it? I'm not saying that because you should be ashamed. On the contrary, you just may not wish to put your name on that message.

But if you do, I'd also like to be able to say good morning to you by name. What is your relationship with porn? Do you use it? How do you feel afterwards? Do you feel it can be arousing to women and has been to you? Or do you have afterwards? Do you feel it can be arousing to women and has been to you? Or do you have a complicated relationship perhaps with it where you have used it and you don't feel great about it afterwards? That was another one of the findings we're going to hear about. But it would be interesting to get your take, not least because, as is going to be argued, it's weaved its way throughout our lives despite the silence that surrounds it. And how it affects women specifically is our focus today. So do get in touch.

84844 is the number you need to text the programme. On social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour. You can email me through the Women's Hour website. Or 03700 100 444 is the number you need to WhatsApp or send a voice note. And you can use those same contact details for anything else you hear throughout the programme. But first, the latest in the ongoing post office scandal, a new law will be introduced in the House of Commons at lunchtime today to clear the names of the hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly convicted for theft and false accounting. Those who were wrongly convicted will get an option to settle for £600,000 without the need to bring a formal claim.

There will also be what's been called enhanced financial redress for sub-postmasters who, while not convicted, did pay large sums of money for the apparent losses caused by the Horizon system out of their own pocket. The Prime Minister has said it is, and today is, an important step forward and hopes the new law will be passed by the summer. In a moment, we will hear from one of the women central to that ITV drama, which helped to get this whole thing much higher up on the political agenda. To remind you, between 1999 and 2015, more than 900 submasters were wrongly prosecuted due to a faulty account software system called Horizon, which showed errors that did not exist. I'm joined now by Andy Verity, the BBC's economics correspondent, and Jo Hamilton, who I'll come to first, who was charged with stealing £36,000 from the Hampshire Village post office that she ran.

And has been, well, Jo, how would you say? Do you feel like you've been cleared of that? Do you feel that you're in a better place today? Well, I am actually, morning, by the way, I am actually in a better place than I was. But sadly, although here we go again with the same thing, I mean, Rishi Sunak said this back in January, then it was said by the minister in February, and here we are in March, the same thing's mean rishi sunak said this back in january then it was said by the minister in february and here we are in march the same thing's coming out it's the same old same old for the

original group of us that that are depicted in the drama that have been fighting since 2009 are still not getting paid you know um none of them are mentioned in in this and i just think it's it's areen, you know. These are people that haven't even come forward yet, but they can't handle what they've got, let alone anymore. You know, what on earth is going on? So just if you can, to remind us what happened to you, for those who didn't see the drama,

do you mind doing that first of all, just so we can imagine your you know imagine your situation and your link to this yeah uh yeah i well i kept putting money into the post office because every time i phoned them to say the money is missing well money's short they said well your contract says you've got to make it good so it ended up um in me paying tens of thousands of pounds to the post office until I stopped putting it in. And then ultimately, I ended up ringing them up saying something's gone very wrong. I need an audit. And the rest. Well, I then got charged with theft, the theft of thirty six thousand pounds. They dragged me through the criminal courts for a couple of years and eventually because my village

turned up to support me um when i went i i always pleaded not guilty to stealing but they did a last minute plea bargain and said well if you plead guilty to false accounting we'll drop the theft which i did because i i then pleaded guilty to um false accounting they dropped the theft um because I was less likely to go to prison for false accounting than theft um and so it ended up the judge was so um confused I think by all the people turning up to support me that he actually didn't send me to prison because I really didn't believe I was going to go and I had to repay all of the money on sentencing which so today you know over the years I'd probably given the post office about £60,000 of my money that's sort of 20 odd years ago. It's extraordinary and from your perspective then today with this new law being

introduced to clear the names of hundreds of sub postmasters wrongly convicted for as you just described theft and false accounting why is that not a day that you sort of can celebrate well we will welcome it as a step forward but they haven't addressed the people that have fought literally since 2009 when we formed we fought from then till now and they're still not getting paid you know they should be they should be the priority you know they can they can pass laws if they want to alongside but they should be dealing with the postmasters that that are literally hanging by a thread and because if if I mean this is that the madness of it so yeah i welcome it but say they get their convictions quashed um later on in the year then they automatically have a right

to 600 000 pounds if they if that's enough for them but they will then be getting the money ahead of the people that have been fighting since 2009 to well they've enabled them to get there if you know what i mean so there's a gap between those who are now perhaps going to come forward or step into this and those who have already been and have been and continue to fight yeah i mean we've all been through the mill we went through the two high court trials we won in 2019 and it's now 2024 and only well less than five percent of those have been paid and there's there's some 400 plus people that are hanging by a thread desperately waiting for money having to either they keep producing deadlines saying well we'll turn it around in 40 days when your claim goes in. And they never meet any deadlines.

And then when the claims ultimately came back, like Alan's did, he waited 111 days for his claim to come back, and they reduced it to 16% of what he was asking for. So now he's got to go back into almost a court battle to fight to get it up to anywhere near normal. And we're talking a fraction of the money they say that they've paid people. When you say Alan, sorry, you're talking about Alan Bates, whose name will be synonymous with, you know, again, the ITV documentary, which you're also shown in Alan Bates versus the post office.

And I know that there is a community of you that have come together and there are a lot of women caught up in this. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I have I have a lot of women that come to me for help and advice and, you know, and strength, really, because I've come out the other side of it. So I now I can't give up the fight until everyone comes through the gate with me because to be financially secure while I haven't got lots by any means I I have cleared all my debt when debt is lifted off your head it's it's an unbelievable feeling and everyone should be feeling that because you you were able to get compensation is that right yeah yeah i i finally got the last bit of my money about five weeks ago um and it's been a two and a half year fight which it now looks like all of my colleagues in the glo group in the group that are left fighting um alan bates's group it looks like

they're going to have a couple of year battle to get their money. Well, it's just wrong. You know, we've been fighting so many decades now. You know, why can't they just do the right thing and sort these postmasters out? There's a statement from the Department of Business and Trade. The Postal Affairs Minister, Kevin Hollenreich, said, Postmasters have been fighting for justice for years. I hope the introduction of today's legislation is the light at the end of the tunnel they've been waiting for. It is only right that Postmasters have access to swift and fair compensation,

which is why those with overturred convictions have the option of immediately taking a fixed and final offer of £600,000 and why we are changing the rules for those in the Horizon Shortfall Scheme so they are entitled to a £75,000 fixed sum award bypassing the assessment process. For those who do not choose this option,

their claims can be assessed as part of the usual scheme process in which there is no limit to compensation. Let me bring in our economics correspondent at this point, Andy Verity. What is your response to what you've just heard from Joe in light of the news today and this potential gap?

Well, yeah, I mean, it's interesting that things just take so long to get sorted out. And it's worth thinking about why that is. Part of what I think the postmasters are up against is a sort of institutional resistance, both in the post office and also in Whitehall. And this is something that's been relatively lightly touched on, which is the government's role here. The government would like to keep this scandal with the post office, but actually civil servants have oversight of the post office and the official owner of the post office is the permanent secretary of the business department, currently Sarah Mumby, previously Alex Chisholm. Now, these civil servants, while post office ministers like Kevin Holleray come and go, have been there throughout, including throughout the years when the post office was resisting with all its might.

And sometimes people might say straying over the line in its attempt to prevent the group litigation order getting justice. So, for example, we've exposed here on the BBC that the government was told all about a review which revealed that it was possible for Fujitsu to tamper remotely with branch sub-postmasters accounts. And that review was conducted while at the same time the post office was saying in public and in court that that was not possible and was arguing that in its pleaded case. That's really serious. So the government knew that there was information which suggested that the post office case was actually false. And we know that there was information which suggested that the post office case was actually false. And we know that it was false now because the judge eventually concluded that it was false.

So there are serious questions to be asked about whether people who've been so much on the wrong side of the fence can then hop across it and have a sort of Damascene conversion and be supporting people like Jo in her efforts to get compensation. And I suppose the issue, and I think that's a really important piece of context and information, but I suppose the issue is also how you're going to make sure that you look after those who've already been affected as well as those who will come forward. And I wonder if it's expected

that a lot more people will come forward. Do we have any idea? Well, there certainly are many who haven't come forward. So we do know that I think it's 93 have had their convictions overturned. But there are some more than 200 who went to jail. I think 236 is the number. And the overall number who were prosecuted, I've seen a figure of 983. Certainly it's way more than 700. So lots of those people have clearly not had full compensation and there's a bit of a mystery over why they haven't come forward some of it may be just

that they are shy to admit that this happened to them we know a lot of them have kept quiet about it don't we joke and there's a certain sort of resistance on their part but it is a bit of a mystery when so much money is on offer that more people haven't jumped at the chance. Joe I feel like you have something to add perhaps after that yeah well none of the group i'll keep banging on about the group i mean it's the group that fought none of this would be happening without the group and yet they're not even mentioned in that in in this announcement that's coming out today you know it's like just do the right thing and sort them out yeah as a matter if they can give someone 600 000 with no paperwork no proof no nothing why can't they apply some kind of rationale to to the group that's left

fighting i mean they literally are hanging i mean mean, Emma Simpson interviewed a lady who was 91. And she's in this process now, which looks like it's going to take two years to get any kind of compensation. And not only is it going to take two years, it actually costs more than you're ever going to get to try and not pay you. I mean, they pay for both sides of the argument. They pay your legal fees, and they pay their legal fees mean, they pay for both sides of the argument. They pay your legal fees and they pay their legal fees. They pay for all these independent forensic reports. You know, I mean, for goodness sake, the money is not that huge. They're spending more trying not to pay us than pay us, which I think is wicked. Jo, just a slightly separate question, if I may. You know,

how are you able to move on from this? Are you able to? Because, you know, you're obviously still very involved with this fight. It's definitely not finished from your perspective, even though personally you've come to a different place and received compensation. I wonder what that's like for you, trying to, in some way, you know, resume normal life.

I can't resume normal life until all my colleagues are through the finish line you know the group that there was 555 we needed that amount to go to court to secure the funding to go to court and without the group I wouldn't be where I am now so I feel kind of a bit guilty that I'm through the finish line I know what it feels like to have no debt and I cannot stop fighting until my colleagues have the same feeling because it's just wicked I listen to the minister over and over again with the same thing coming out and they do these massive press announcements it's like it's smoke and mirrors they're not being fair to the postmasters that brought this whole

that enabled all of this to be happening thank you i mean it's worth saying that kevin hollinrake was campaigning on your behalf wasn't he until he he entered government so it's interesting i think he's a well-intentioned man myself but he may be meeting the the sort of um the friction of the law legal community in the post office and also the Whitehall community that's been on the wrong side of the argument. Neither of that helps when you want to get things done, which I think is why Alan Bates has suggested they just need

to take it out of the post office and arrange things separately, hasn't he? Joe, I'm going to have to leave it there for now, but we'll see how today pans out and I think it's important to have heard your voice and also to have got some of that additional context and information from Andy Verity, who's, of course, following this story and continuing to do so as the BBC's economics correspondent. And Jo Hamilton, wrongly charged with stealing £36,000 from the Hampshire village post office that she ran and still very much involved in the fight,

as she said, with that group to make sure nobody is left behind. And I shared with you the government statement, but some developments on that front a bit later today in Parliament. And then we will see what happens. But we, as I mentioned, and actually very interesting messages coming in on this, we are continuing in our porn series now with someone who has studied specifically how women feel about pornography. My next guest, Dr Fiona Vera-Gray, says that when we think about porn, we still mostly think of men, men as producers, consumers, and women as the product. In her new book, Women on Porn, Fiona details the experiences of 100 women and their views on it, what they like, what they don't, how they consume it, how it affects their sex lives. It's been said that porn sites account for more than 20% of what we search for

on our phones. So how is it shaping your lives and shaping the lives of women? We have lots of male listeners, I should say as well. But you've been getting in touch about your experiences. I'll come to some of those in just a moment. But Dr. Fiona Vera Gray joins me now in the studio. Good morning. Morning, Emma. Thanks for being with us. You wanted to look at women. I did. Why? I think that women have been excluded from the conversation about pornography in a really particular way. So there's two dominant positions, dominant narratives that are associated with

women's views on pornography. You've got on one side, sex positive, feminist, cool girl, loves pornography, uses it, thinks it's great, doesn't have a problem with it. And then on the other side, you've got, in quotes, frigid, sex negative, women who do not like pornography, don't think it's useful at all and have never used it. And actually, what I found and what I thought going into it, because it's my position, was somewhere in between the two is where probably a lot of women's experiences and maybe some men's experiences lie, that there's women out there who are using pornography more so now than ever before because of how easy it is to access and might not be entirely happy with everything that they're coming across, but are still using it. So don't reject it so much because of the content. And what I wanted to do was see if we could introduce some nuance, some complexity, and actually hear the range of women's voices on this issue. I think women, a lot of the time, we're reduced to stereotypes.

And I wanted to actually really capture what do women think about pornography? How has it affected their life and what does it mean to them? Let's get to some specifics of what you found then, because, you know, the idea of putting women at the heart of it is, of course, what we try to do all day, every day here. Well, for the hour live, but in the prep for it, for this programme. But you, for instance, found that women, a lot of women who are heterosexual, like watching lesbian porn. Yeah, exactly. So this again speaks to the content. So what I found that was is that I think there's a lot of conversation about women watching ethical pornography or feminist pornography. But what I found for the women that I spoke to is the vast majority are watching mainstream

pornography on the mainstream platforms. It makes sense because it's free, it's easy to get. And a lot of women were talking about they don't have a massive commitment to pornography that means they're going to pay for it. And what we know about the content on these mainstream sites is that it's fairly misogynistic, it's fairly racist, it doesn't necessarily represent sex as something that's always for women. It's more that women are there for men. So women would talk about having to navigate around that content to find something that centred women's pleasure. And's more that women are there for men. So women would talk about having to navigate around that content to find something that centered women's pleasure. And the way that they did that a lot of the time was heterosexual women would look for lesbian pornography or also pornography of women alone masturbating. So in some way, I mean, it's a sad indictment of pornography that

in order to find material that wasn't misogynistic, women talked about having to remove the men from what they were watching. But also lesbian women that I spoke to and some straight women as well watched gay male pornography. So pornography with no women in it at all. And they would talk about this also being a way to remove the misogyny from pornography. That sometimes when there was just two men, there was no way that they could see misogynistic content. And that in itself, even though it didn't represent their sexual lives, enabled them to feel aroused without the sense of conflict about what they were watching. Well, also perhaps because it doesn't represent their sexual lives,

it's more arousing as well because it's different. Can you imagine, just as a side point, the energy that would be back in women's systems if they didn't have to navigate around and find work rounds? Yeah, exactly. Just generally. I was thinking even within pleasure, there's a bit of extra work perhaps that goes on to try and find your place. Yeah, another form of invisible labour that women are kind of habitually having to do.

You said it far better than me. That's why you're a writer. I mean, I do write occasionally, but not all the time. I think it's another example. Are there other examples from what you found specifically that you want to bring to people's attention, to women's attention? Yeah, I think one of the things that's important is that all women have a relationship to pornography today because of how prevalent it is in society. So that means even women that aren't using it, that have never used it, you know, we are surrounded by colleagues, by teachers, by everybody in our society. And because of the access to pornography, that means we have a relationship to it. So women, you know, I spoke to women who used it, that's a very clear relationship, but also women who didn't use it, who found that it was being brought into their sexual lives by male partners predominantly. So women in their 20s,

talking about it taking quite a while for them to feel able to say what they did and didn't like in sex because of how much pornography had infiltrated their understanding of sometimes and I know that you've had women talk about this on the show as well discovering that a male partner had a pornography habit that they weren't aware of discovering that they were watching kinds of pornography that the women felt particularly confused by so women talking about suddenly feeling, who is this person that I've been married to for 10 years, 20 years, I didn't know this about him. And feeling torn again, you know, another sense of conflict, feeling like I should feel okay with this. I want my partner to have a private sexual life. But there's something in the content that they're consuming that's making me feel very uncomfortable.

Did women feel that they need porn to masturbate, to have pleasure alone? So for the women that were using pornography, it's a really interesting question, actually. They did talk about, in the research, we talk a lot about escalation and the impact of pornography on our sexual imagination. But no one has ever looked at that from the perspective of women. And I did have women say to me that after using pornography habitually for a while, it became more difficult to imagine, fantasize themselves freely. What they found that they were doing was when they went to fantasize by themselves without pornography, they were imagining scenes from pornography. So that in some ways, it kind of seized their sexual life. I had a couple of women who talked about the fact that they started to feel they didn't like, no one really spoke about addiction, but there are a couple of women that said they didn't like how much they were using pornography to four to six months, that sexual imagination, that ability to freely fantasize came back to them, but that it was a struggle. And again, when you think about women's lives, we're so busy and sometimes all we want to do is just get off quickly. And the fact that pornography, this mainstream stuff is there, It's so easy to access. I think women are going to it to get that easy kind of pleasure to get it out. But it's also introducing a lot of Yes, there's adverts there. So it's slightly different in that respect. But that busyness and that hijacking and that need to numb and get something and feel nice for a few minutes, feel good. And then the fact that that could then be waylaid with a load of other feelings.

It's difficult, isn't it? You know, you go towards a fast food or whatever because you haven't got the time. You're hungry. You're craving it. And then afterwards you can also feel pretty rough. yeah it's not always but sometimes you feel great afterwards but it's exactly that so women would talk about things like being very aroused by what they were watching even if it wasn't what they necessarily went to search for so on these mainstream sites for anyone that hasn't seen it you're the the platform themselves is projecting

a lot of stuff to you so they would be aroused by the different material that they were seeing. They would then masturbate to it, come and after orgasming, feeling a rejection. So women would talk about doing things like deleting all their history, closing their laptop, throwing, one woman talked about throwing her phone over the other side of the room, being a bit aghast at what they were watching on the screen when they were no longer aroused. And so I think there is definitely something there about the way the sites are set up to encourage this kind of overwhelming sense of arousal. There's so much sexual information coming into your mind that it's overwhelming, maybe your internal sense of what kind of representations of sex you want to see or what kind of

representations of women you want to see. I had one woman, you know, in this way that when you interview women, as you do, sometimes they just say things that are perfect. And she said, it's a conflict between my pleasure and my principles. And so and I think that that articulates something that I haven't previously heard articulated in terms of women's experiences of pornography. And I wonder if it resonates for men as well. Can I read you a few of these messages? Let me share them with everyone. I'm a heterosexual female who enjoys watching female porn.

We had our internet provider changed and now the channel I watched it on is blocked. But I daren't ask my partner to unblock it in case he's offended. You're smiling. Yeah, I definitely had women talking about not. So I think, again, the conversation about partners hiding their pornography used from another partner, we always think about that in terms of women,

sorry, men hiding from women. But I had a number of women saying that their partner had no idea what kind of pornography that they watched or even that they watched pornography at all. It was a very private practice. And I know we talked about the choice to watch lesbian porn for some women, but there are other categories, aren't there, when you talk about this overwhelming experience on the websites. And they can also make women feel differently. And specifically,

I know you've spoken to black women as well. Yeah, so what was really interesting in terms of what came out was talking to black women about representations of blackness, both black women and black men on pornography sites, because what definitely, because in one way, it's actually nice to see a black woman's body being eroticised in that way, in the way that we don't see in a lot of the mainstream media. So they would talk about a conflict, particularly if they were watching black women with a white man, where they actually liked seeing a white man kind of fawning all over himself over a black woman's body. But the vast majority said they stayed away from representations that were two black people together. And they really stayed away from representations of black men because of how racist they were. And so for a lot of the black women that I spoke to, they would watch white

women in pornography, because again, it was a way to consume content where you didn't have to necessarily also consume at the same time the levels of oppression and discrimination that you face in your day-to-day life. Another one here which says, I've come to watching porn after two babies via c-section. Returning to penetrative sex with my husband has been difficult for us. I'm now one year postnatal and it's all a bit much still. Watching female-based porn has brought my sexuality back, but I'm still private about it, even with my husband. Yeah, yeah, and it is.

And I think that this is why women are very good at talking to other women. And I think that this is one thing, pornography is one thing that we haven't spoken, speaking generally, the vast majority of us haven't spoken to our girlfriends about it in the way that we talk about literally everything. You know, we talk about the sex that we have and everything, but we haven't really spoken about that. I think that part of it is because of this dominant narrative where we either are watching it and loving it or not watching it and hating it. And I think we need to open up the space so that we can talk to female friends, maybe before or maybe instead of talking to our partners, to be able to just make sense ourselves of what we've

seen, how we feel about it and what it means for us both personally in our sexual lives, but also on a societal level. Did you also hear just because it relates to one of those messages that people are scared to go on it because of, you know, their internet history, then, you know, being fished and scammed and all of that? Partly, but not so much. I think that there's a couple of the big porn platforms that have done quite well in terms of people not being so scared of that anymore. Definitely when it was about downloading material

or going on kind of these slightly dodgier sites, women would talk about that. But when they were using the mainstream big porn platforms, most of us know it wasn't. A message from Jane, he says, since the menopause I find my libido has reduced, porn helps me to become aroused. I tend to view it in anticipation of sleeping with my husband.

We never view it together. My husband's unaware that I view it. So many people saying partners are aware. I use porn infrequently. I usually look at the lesbian encounters. I'm heterosexual, but I prefer female encounters as they're more focused on female pleasure and not as misogynistic as male on female porn. So it's synonymous with your research there and conversations. But another one here saying, I felt moved to message on how

porn has impacted me. My partner was addicted to porn when we started our relationship. I didn't know this, of course. I'm thinking this is a male partner from the way this is written. I didn't know this. It was the hardest time of my life. Now I view porn as hugely damaging all round for the viewer, their family, to the people featuring. I see it as abuse. It wasn't something that I'd really thought about before this time. I find heterosexual porn particularly awful in terms of the role of the women. This cannot be good for our intimate relationships. In very rare circumstances, if I do want to see something visual, I prefer to see men pleasuring each other. But this

isn't without some of the issues that the heterosexual porn industry also has. It's really interesting just listening to those two. I think both of them are more nuanced than that conversation that's been had so far. And what it really shows is that we do need to open up the space for women to talk without feeling judged because i think there are a significant number of women out there who exactly feel like that caller caller who feel like pornography is a form of abuse who who don't think it has much of a place in society but find it difficult to articulate that without being seen as being frigid sex negative you know particularly younger women and particularly with the push amongst younger women

to be sex positive, that it means that for some of the younger women I spoke to, they felt like they couldn't say anything critical about pornography or they couldn't say that maybe they were a bit confused by some of what they'd seen. And so I think what we need is to open up that space so there's no judgment for both of these women

with different kind of stories, just to be able to talk about the whole range. And that's really what I was trying to do in the book. And it's what you've been trying to do in the series as well. Well, it's called Women on Porn, the book. It is what it says on the tin. Dr Vera Gray, thank you for coming to talk. There's a message here, which says I've never used visual porn, but keeping with books, I found erotic passages in novels to be more arousing. Mental stimulation, I think, is the route to arousal. The mind is more powerful than the eyes. So different tastes and different practices, as you have found.

I should say, if anything in that conversation has affected you, there are links and support links on our website. And join my colleague Claire MacDonald on Friday's edition of Women's Out, where we're going to hear from some of our male listeners on this topic in the ongoing part of our series. Thank you very much indeed. Good to talk to you today. Now, I did say an update on some of the issues around IVF, because a fertility clinic in London has recently had its license suspended over what's been called significant concerns about the unit. Homerton Fertility Centre says there's been three separate incidents that highlighted errors in some freezing processes,

meaning some people's embryos were lost. The fertility regulator has ordered the clinic to stop any new procedures while an investigation is being carried out. It's the latest in a recent series of issues with other assisted conception clinics. After more than 100 patients, you may have seen this, you may have been affected by it, at a clinic at Guy's Hospital in London were told in February that their frozen eggs or embryos could have been damaged after faulty freezing

solution was used. Joining me now, someone who's been leading the charge on this, writing about it, Laura Donnelly, the health editor at The Telegraph. And I'll be talking shortly to Dr Hippocrates Sarris, the director of King's Fertility. Good morning to you both. Laura, the latest on Homerton Fertility Centre having had its licence suspended, what do we know? Well, really the details emerged last week. I'd been speaking to whistleblowers who shared evidence which suggested that embryos were disappearing or being destroyed at Homerton fertility unit and I contacted the regulator to try and establish what was going on. On Friday the regulator as you say suspended the service and in fact the trust said it called in the police. Since then we know around 200 women have contacted the Homerton to try and establish

whether they're kind of caught up in the scandal but there's an awful lot we don't know. We know that 153 embryos appear to be missing, at least according to documents. I don't think most of the, there's an awful lot of women who may be affected who really don't know where they stand. And the police side of it isn't ongoing, we believe, at the moment. It seems so. There were some concerns about security. And it seems that there seemed to be some reassurance on the security side. I have to say, I was very surprised when the police were called in on Friday, because what I'd been hearing about was much more concerns about the techniques used to freeze embryos.

So there were concerns that embryos were being found basically upside down, that they're going missing. The police involvement was quite a sort of strange twist, but it seems now that the focus is more on what are the techniques at play and is this just poor practice? Is that an experiment that's gone wrong? And yeah, there seem to be a host of questions about what on earth's been going on for so long.

When do those affected expect some clarity? I don't think we know. I mean, I was contacted as recently as last night by a woman who concerned that she's affected by it, who hasn't heard anything from the trust. So, you know, we know that the trust is making contact with affected patients. I think what's quite difficult is what the definition of affected is. So we understand that around 20 embryos are known to be destroyed. We don't know how many others may not survive.

And obviously with IVF, you know, when you're talking about freezing embryos, it's a question of at what point you come to retrieval. And so you've got a lot of women living, you know, I think IVF is already a fairly brutal process that, you know, the hallmark of it is uncertainty and sort of being in limbo, taking, you know, what feels like a lot of those women now are, and in fact, we've got an account in today's Telegraph of a woman speaking about having put her trust, putting her sort of trust in the doctors and being told that her case, you know, we hear this phrase a lot, you know, that this was an isolated incident. And I think, you know, as you say, there have been other incidents. There was the incident at Guy's only recently. And I think it's really knocking faith among a lot of women who are going through this process let me bring in uh dr cyrus at this point good morning good morning how can this go this wrong you know we don't know all the details but how can these sorts of things happen well of course you're absolutely right we don't know the details so obviously i can't uh uh yes i think what's important to say here is that every fertility unit uh should have and has a quality management system part of that is to be able to regularly audit and look at its outcomes and its key

performance indicators now we know uh specifically talking about embryos that not all embryos will unfreeze that that's something that we know for a very long time. There are international standards as to what is expected. Actually, we expect up to 90% of members to unfreeze, but then 10% not to. Of course, we aim for everything and for over 95%, but we know there's certain standards. If, however, within a clinical setting, you see from your monitoring that these standards are not met, then you need to intervene and need to look at them. And of course, we need to monitor periodically your equipment, your materials, your process, and your staff competencies. So there are these processes in place. Specifically, what happened here is still obviously emerging. Of course, they refer themselves to the regulator. The regulator has come in, has taken away the license. Of course,

this is something which is quite unusual, but it's something that they can do if there are concerns. But I don't understand, hypothetically, how it can go wrong. Because if you have all of these systems, and you have all these processes, and it's a highly technical environment, and, you know, it's known how to freeze an embryo or how to freeze an egg. Is it just a situation of, and this is, you know, my ignorance, and I'm trying to cure myself of it, is it a situation that the wrong liquid is used? Or as Laura was saying, the embryos put in the wrong way around. What is the type of thing that can go wrong for those people who are going out of their minds right now trying to imagine what's happened? I think there are two separate things here. One is what is a natural biological process. So we know that

eggs, sperms, embryos are very sensitive material and they do not survive the actual process themselves. Nothing to do with actually. Yeah, I'm definitely not talking about that. I'm talking about errors by a clinic and by those looking after your biological goods. Yeah, absolutely. So with that, then it's a matter of processes. So if there is a mistake in the actual process, either because it was done from the beginning incorrectly, so it was not in place, or because the staff did not follow it, of course that has to be looked into. But the whole point is to be able to pick them up as early as possible

and straight away then being open and transparent about it and trying to rectify it. So without further ado, I can't comment about the case, but that's where errors can occur, actually. So within the process, it could be something as, not simple, but simple as putting the wrong amounts of solution in something. Well, that shouldn't be the case if the actual standard operating procedure is followed correctly, because these are international standards. So it's not something that it should go wrong. And manufacturer of its freezing kits for example gives instructions and then there's the training elements of course you have people that should be trained that should

be supervised before they're signed off as competent and then of course you know put in the content i definitely know what should have happened i suppose i'm trying to find out what may have happened like when you hear phrases such as faulty freezing solution, it doesn't matter where this has happened. Things go wrong and it's just useful to have an expert to say how they can go wrong. We know the processes that are meant to be in place. You could argue, as I know you do, that this is a good thing.

In some ways, it's not a good thing it's happened that a licence has been revoked. But what I'm trying to understand is what the problem is in the process what it could be were there two separate things actually the incidents that you're talking about in the past there was actually an issue with the manufacturing of the solution itself actually the manufacturer uh error and fault it's a bit like having something in a package which is mislabeled so of course that is something from the actual manufacturing. That's nothing the clinic can do about until it's told that there was a problem. So, of course, that is something which is at an international

level. These companies are international companies, and of course, they need to address that and why that failed. So, that's a separate thing. What happened in this particular case, it seems to be more of a following a particular process within the clinic. Now, why potentially were not followed, we don't know. Was it because the training was. Now, why potentially were not followed? We don't know. Was it because the training was not correct? Because something was not followed? We don't really know. That is quite unusual and uncommon.

Maybe I can understand a one-off. Of course, if they're worried that this might be more, then they need to get to the bottom of it. And of course, without further information, it's very difficult for me to say what could have happened. Now, just for your patients and your listeners to be reassured, we're talking about over 100,000 treatment cycles happening every year in the UK, and the vast majority occur without incident. So maybe isolated incidents is not something that is that uncommon and worrying. But at the same time, if it's repeating in one

place, it needs to be looked into, of course. Which Laura was talking about, and people coming forward from the same clinic, which is I understand the only NHS clinic in that particular area so when you are entitled for NHS treatment again a whole other subject about what people describe as a postcode lottery. Dr Saris from your perspective if there has been a fault not to do with the manufacturer but to do with the process and the clinicians what does justice look like for those women affected? Is it a refund if they have paid for it? Is it free rounds of treatment? What do you think could be significant enough of a redress?

I think, again, it's difficult to generalise. It has to be individualised. I think if there is, and this is a personal opinion, I think that if there is the opportunity to be able to do repeat cycles, for example, and have more embryos or eggs sperm, that is something that should be looked at. Of course, if we're talking about individuals where that is not possible, then of course, then it has to be a different redress and that becomes very complex. So it's not as simple as having one answer, but I think each individual case has to be looked at and see what can be done to be able to redress it. Have you heard any conversations about that what people want to do now Laura what women are saying to you and because of course so many people just don't really know do they? Yeah I think I mean uncertainty is the main theme the trust is indicating that the hospital is

indicating that it would offer further cycles where that's possible. Obviously, their own services are suspended. So there's quite an operation to find clinics that would do that. But I think many women don't know where they're at at the moment, particularly because they won't know until the point that the embryo is thawed. So that's the uncertainty over them. I think until we know exactly what went on, it's quite hard to work out what the case for redress is. You know, I think some of the documents I've seen suggest that possible factors are contamination or poor handling. If there's found to be a theme, then I think, you know, it bolsters a woman's sort of legal case. But at the moment, it seems like there are several different sorts of possible errors and obviously with all of these procedures they're not fail safe in the first place.

So I think at the moment women affected by it have been told they can have conversations with the hospital about what next. But for some of those women it may be too late. If they were having their embryos, if their embryo was being frozen in order to preserve fertility ahead of cancer treatment and so forth, then it's far too late for them. And it's a really appalling situation that many women are now looking at.

Truly. Laura Donnelly, health editor at The Telegraph. Just a final word from you, Dr. Sarris. I mean, it was really important what you said there about the vast majority of procedures are, you know, being handled correctly and go forward. And then there are the risks that there always are with whether it's defrosting or even just going through this process. But it really is a leap of faith, isn't it? And that trust between clinician and patient, you know, it's quite a unique one in the IVF process, isn't it? And I just wonder if you are worried as someone working in this sector about these stories, and you have done a great job with Laura of highlighting the differences

between the stories and contextualising them, But are you worried about that relationship? Dr. Saris, are you worried about that trust level? Yes, I think you're absolutely right. I think any relationship between a doctor and a patient is one of trust. And that's not just in the fertility world, but it is everywhere. And I think I am worried that these repeating stories in such a short amount of time are tarnishing that trust. So we have to bring it back. And, you know, if patients are worried, they should approach the clinics and their clinicians and, you know, have this discussion. But yes, trust is the fundamental starting point of any medical relationship. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. Dr. Cyrus there, Director of King's Fertility.

We have been talking about Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. That's what it's part of, the Homerton Fertility Centre. A statement here, there have been three separate incidents within the unit which have highlighted issues in a small number of freezing processes. This has resulted in the tragic loss of a small number of embryos, either not surviving or being undetectable altogether. The trust immediately made the regulator fully aware of the investigation being carried out by external experts. We also immediately informed the patients affected and have apologised for any distress we have caused. Whilst the investigators have not been able to find any direct cause we have made changes in the unit to prevent reoccurrence of such incidents.

Current patients may continue to be treated at the unit despite licence suspension by the regulator. The trust has also set up a helpline to answer any queries or concerns that patients may have. And we also mentioned the incident at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in London. The NHS Foundation Trust has issued a statement on behalf saying, we are sorry for our delay in contacting the patients who may have been affected by a manufacturing issue with some bottles of solution, which may have been used to freeze eggs and embryos. And for any distress this delay has caused, we are supporting those who may have been impacted, including through our counselling service and a dedicated phone line for them. Those messages and statements just to share with you as well.

But a new wildlife series is launching this week. National Geographic's Queens focuses on female-led animal societies, focusing on their behaviours away from the usual male fights and hunts, although there are some hunts involved for sure. The seven-part series was also produced by an all-women lead team and narrated by the acclaimed actor Angela Bassett. I'll be speaking to the series co-executive producer and writer Chloe Sirosh in just a moment, but here's a flavour of what to expect

from the plains of Tanzania. A short clip there from Queen's give you a flavour of the Wildstar Films production for National Geographic. Chloe Sirosh, welcome to Woman's Hour. Good morning. Good morning, Emma. How are you? It certainly sounds like it's got a good soundtrack, never mind what else is going on as well. Was that a key part of trying to disrupt how we think of these sorts of works? Oh, yeah, straight out the gate, this is not Attenborough.

Very clearly, we are doing something very different here. So, yes, soundtrack, the voice, the way it's written, the characters that we're using, the way the show was made, it's all truly different, hopefully to anything the audience has seen before. And why matriarchies? And tell us a bit about the ones that you followed. Do you know, the fact that in 2024,

a series has never been made about female leadership in the natural world kind of blew our minds. And we were very lucky to be able to make that series. I think right now we are all looking at what good leadership really looks like and I think to have a chance to celebrate the way different female leaders in the natural world go about their business, go about leading, go about protecting, go about being uh is really important and then and really inspiring hyenas can we just focus in on hyenas um so we definitely yeah because i think let's get a couple of examples before we get to a bit more about your approach what what what what should we know about hyenas hyenas are a true matriarchy so you have a a queen uh if you were of the matri of the

matriarchy she may lead our our clan was 40 40 80 strong at any time so she is political she is cunning she is clever she is all about her allyship she is particularly powerful because of the way that she has sex and i think that's what's really interesting about this series you know hyenas have been covered by natural history for years and years and years everyone knows hyenas but the truly interesting thing about how they're female-led is because of their anatomy I think we we show this it's a it's a Disney show so it's family-led but um what looks like a penis is actually an eight inch long clitoris that a hyena has and she has to retract that in order to mate and so in doing that sex for her is consensual and because a male can't force himself

on her the males haven't grown to be evolved to be bigger and stronger and a female society female led society has evolved um and it's fascinating i mean we spent quite a long time trying to work out how we would describe that uh for family audience. You did it beautifully. Oh, thank you. But fascinating, you know, and these stories have always been there. It just needed a new lens to look at it. It needed us to purposely, as you say, there are still hunts and fights in it, but purposely move the camera lens away from the usual set pieces you see in a natural history documentary and say, what are the females up to?

But there's also ruthlessness with the hyenas, you know, and intensive protection, isn't there? Yeah, female leadership isn't kind and gentle all the time. I mean, it certainly can do. There are lots of societies, the Bonobo Society, which is our rainforest step, which is my personal favourite, which is very gentle and kind for very different reasons. But no, female leadership, there are, you know,

there is a, there are hyenas. She, our hyena sister, she's sister to the queen and she wants her crown. And in order to get it, she actually kills her niece who's second in line to the crown. And we captured that for the first time. The infanticide of hyenas is, it's ruthless. It's really hard to watch, but it's very clever.

You know, the political play that's going on is is extraordinary even though the way even the way that you're saying though she kills her niece you know the idea of putting human relationships into that space how helpful is that that imposing our world and our language anthropomorphization that that side of it i'm glad you said that word because it's become a dirty word. It's not a scientific sin, anthropomorphism. It's, you know, we need right now, we need the natural world. We need people to be in love with the natural world. The natural world needs us all to be in love with it.

And one way to do that is to make it relatable, is to make people, to give something people watch that they can relate to, that they can see themselves in, that they can laugh, that they can cry, that they can fall in love with. And one way to do that is to create relatable characters. But also, it's true, these animals are doing these things. As much as I would love to write a drama off the bat, as fun as that would be, we work with scientific advisors.

This behavior has come to us through the scientific community, and they keep us on the straight and narrow. So everything you're seeing, although it isn't served in a kind of classic specialist factual way, even though it's woven into the dramatic narrative, has come from science and come from observation in the field, which makes it all the more powerful, I think. I take that, but we have no...

If I could just keep going, this is one example. We have no way of knowing if a hyena views that cub as a niece. No, OK. Well, in which case she knows that she's the next in line to the throne and the second most powerful hyena there and she's doing it anyway okay but that's what i mean i mean it's but it's interesting that you think perhaps also you know storytelling is one of the most powerful things we have um that that perhaps doing that in that way is the way to get potentially more people engaged and maybe engaged in a different way? I think so. We're purposely going for a very different audience, maybe an audience that has found natural history to this point slightly inaccessible for them.

You know, we are unapologetically going for an audience that likes drama, that perhaps hasn't come to natural history before and wants to be carried through a narrative. And in doing so, if we can get some scientific insight and stealth and natural world love by stealth, then we'll take it. Go for it. I suppose that's your motto here. And the bonobos, why are they and why is that your favourite episode? What did you learn? They are such a wonderful species.

I think people know chimps, but bonobos are also one of our closest living relatives. And they are a female-led society. Their groups are unrelated females. So these are females that have chosen each other, chosen to be together. So chosen family being so important. It's ruled by a kind of group of elder females with their life experience, with a single female at the top who's a matriarch and the story is about a young female finding her way in the society about moving away from her

family to find a place in a new in a new group and I just think as as a woman we've all we've been through school we know what it's like to try and find a place to try and find acceptance uh to try and find our friendships and the importance of those friendships as we go through our lives, as we have kids, as we go through work, you know, the crucialness of those female friendships. But also, the reason that this female society is so peaceful compared to, say, a chimp society is because they use pleasure, female pleasure, as a way to make love not war and that's so interesting this um this idea of a of a society that uses sex and closeness and female pleasure particularly as a way to bond and as a way to prevent fights and fallout it's just so different uh so unique well it seems to have become an unwitting theme on today's programme.

Well, I was quite pleased listening to what you were saying earlier. I was like, how fitting we should get to know those entities. Just briefly, I have very little time left, but I understand you hadn't not long become a mother yourself when taking on this project. Has it changed your approach to mothering, watching these different animals do what they do? Yes, I was deep in the trenches of maternity leave when I was asked about this project.

And you don't say no to a project like this, even though maybe I thought I should at the time because I could barely string a sentence together. But yes, I mean, it's made me think, what kind of leader do I want my daughter to see me as? How am I going to approach the decisions I make? That there is power in softness but to be a woman you don't have to be soft and be a great leader I mean yeah it's definitely opened my eyes to the different ways that we can be a good role model. Well there's some very interesting stories

and you know insights within there it's always nice to and brilliant to be able to hear the stories from behind it a little bit. Chloe Sirosh, thank you very much to you. It's National Geographic's Queens. That's what you were hearing about. It's focusing on female-led animal societies. And it's a new wildlife series launching this week and some of the stories behind it. And particularly interesting as well to hear maybe about to to try to get new audiences to such stories thank you so much for your honesty and your messages today i'll be back with you 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 forgive us listeners for we have sinned and we want to know why i'm becky ripley and i'm sophie ward and we're here to tell you about our new podcast series Seven Deadly Psychologies Now available on Seriously from BBC Radio 4 So, ready? Born ready Where we take a cold hard look at the psychology behind each of the seven deadly sins We shouldn't discard them

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