Woman's Hour - Kemi Badenoch's leadership, Manon Garcia on Gisele Pelicot, Joy Gregory

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

As Kemi Badenoch prepares to address Conservative Party conference for the second time this week, Nuala McGovern reflects on her first year as leader of the party and Leader of the Opposition, with BBC political correspondent Georgia Roberts and Conservative peer Baroness Kate Fall.The People's Tribunal for Women in Afghanistan is convening in Madrid this week to investigate Taliban crimes against women. Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, Afghan women and girls have endured a significant rollback of their fundamental human rights. What will this tribunal - which has no legal authority - achieve for them? We hear from Shaharzad Akbar, former head of Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission, and Director of Rawadari, one of the organisations behind the Tribunal. Nuala talks to the French philosopher Manon Garcia.  Manon watched the court proceedings of the Pelicot case in France, in which Dominique Pelicot and 46 other men were found guilty of the rape of Dominique’s wife Gisèle. In her book Living with Men, she examines French and other societies in light of the case and questions what more needs to be done.The visual artist Joy Gregory's retrospective exhibition Catching Flies with Honey opens at the Whitechapel Gallery today. As an artist Joy explores identity, history, race, gender and societal ideals of beauty all while pushing the possibilities of photography and other media. She discusses her life and work.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Kirsty Starkey

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It's your Woman's Hour Guide to Life. Join us only on BBC Sounds, but now back to today's Woman's Hour. Hello and welcome. The People's Tribunal for Women in Afghanistan begins today in Madrid. Hearing testimony of what women under the Taliban are going through. We'll hear why it's so important for their stories to be told.

Also, there is a compelling new book by the French philosopher Manin-Garcia on the Pelico trial. She asks whether women can live with men. And if so, at what cost? We'll also discuss her understanding of the appeal taking place this week by one of the convicted rapists. We have the photographer and artist,

Joy Gregory, with us in studio. There is a retrospective of her brilliant work in London. And when visiting yesterday, I was struck by her project, Objects of Beauty. It details those items we use to beautify ourselves, but that we also at times resent. Think a hairnet, high-heel shoes,

fake eyelashes, a restrictive bra. They were some of the photographs. But some others we were thinking of this morning, tweezers, shapeware, hair extensions. What comes to mind when I ask you for your object of beauty that you have a love, hate relationship with? And tell me why. The way to get in touch, you can text the program 84844 on social media

we're at BBC Woman's Hour, or you can email us through our website. For a WhatsApp message or a voice note, the number is 0-3-700-100. 444. But let us begin with Kemmy Badenock. It's just a few short weeks until she can claim one year at the helm of the Conservative Party. She's currently wrapping up her first Conservative Party conference as leader and she'll shortly be taken to the stage for the second time this week, hoping to impress the party faithful that have gathered in Manchester. The Conservatives have failed to improve on poor poll ratings. They suffered a series of defeats at local elections in May. They're trailing far behind. reform and labour in the polls and a new UGov poll of Tory members suggest that 50% believe Badernock

should not lead the Tories into the next general election. Here is a little of Kemi Badnock speaking to my colleagues on the Today programme yesterday. I know that I need to be very tough to get through this job as in any job in politics.

If you want to be in government you need to show that you can do opposition. You need to show you a huge as well. Yes, yes, but they do see that. People are getting to know me. But my first task was to make sure that our party did not split. My first task was to make sure that we didn't run out of money. I've been doing very well on both those fronts.

We've been raising more money than all the other parties combined in certain quarters. People will get to know me, but I want them to get to know my principles, my values, not, you know, whether or not I'm going on, I'm a celebrity, that sort of thing. That's not the kind of politician that I am. I'm not a reality TV person. I am somebody who starts with what the job is about. and the job is about making people's lives better. So with questions already been asked about her leadership, how likely is it that Baitnock will be running in 2029?

The BBC's political correspondent, Georgia Roberts, is at the Conservative Party Conference and joins me now. Good to have you with us, Georgia. What are members and MPs telling you about her leadership? Well, there's plenty of noisy conversation that's been going on throughout these past few days here in Manchester. I think it's striking that, Kemi Bader Nock did choose to do an opening speech on Sunday.

It's not something that she had to do. It's not really traditional. But conservative party figures here saying that, you know, this is her first conference as leader. She wanted to set the tone in her own voice amid all these other voices slurring round, swirling round about, you know, doubting her leadership and the future of it. And, you know, you speak to conservative MPs here. And there is a lot of concern about the fact that. but if anything, since the historic defeat at the polls last year,

the party's trajectory has only seemed to have gone backwards. But there are also very senior people here who have come to Manchester. I've been told yesterday with the clear intention to put the message out that, look, you know, the public will not forgive us if we keep changing leader like this in opposition as well as in government. And we need to give Kemi Bader not more of a change. chance to bed in. And certainly her speech on Sunday did go down well with activists. There was a real pessimistic mood arriving on the opening day at this conference amongst activists, amongst MPs that

I spoke to. That seems to have perked up in recent days. But those questions still very much swirling about whether she really is the person to take the party forward and, of course, take the fight to Reform UK, who are riding high in the polls. How much is the popularity of reform dictating the mood there? Oh, massively. And you will find people within the party, including, I have to say, some people within the shadow cabinet saying that, look, perhaps it is the case that sooner rather than later, we should be reaching out as a party to Nigel Farachan Reform UK to talk about doing those pacts, those deals that you hear talked about so much in an effort to try and boosts the party's fortunes. But the message, the public message very much, you know, we heard

Kemi Beidnock saying this very definitively yesterday, ruling that out. But there is a sense amongst many activists here that certainly when it comes to some policy announcements, for example, the Conservatives making a big thing of the fact that at the weekend they came to the position after a lot of internal debate and division to leave the European Convention on Human Rights after a review by the party's leading lawyer, Lord Wilson, they arrived at that position and announced that policy at the weekend. Well, that's the position that Reform UK have taken months before, an activist saying, look, we look like we're playing catch-up here,

we should be on the front foot. And Kemi Beidnock actually previously has said that she actually wanted to hold back a bit when it came to announcing policies. I think this conference has marked a turning point in that. We've seen a policy blitz in areas mainly to do with immigration and the economy. The theme of this conference has been stronger economy, stronger borders. So there is very much now a feeling within the party that in order to

really take the fight to reform UK policy and having something to sell is very much a necessity. But there is, of course, yesterday the defection of 20 Tory councillors to reform. Shadow Chancellor Robert Jenrick's leaked comments about Hansworth in Birmingham not containing a white face that was dominating all the lines. Is she having a bad conference? I would say speaking to many conservative MPs in the past few days, but particularly last night as we round to a close.

There is a feeling that the conference for her has been good in the sense that she has able to project her voice. She has able to largely avoid being overtaken by others that are constantly talked about as jostling for position. There was a lot of talk, of course, about Robert Jenrick yesterday. He was having his keynote speech announcing policy, but a lot of the talk about those comments that surfaced in The Guardian. But there's a feeling amongst Conservative MPs that she was able to deal with that well when she was talking to the media yesterday. But there's also a feeling that, look, that was supposed to be her moment yesterday,

projecting her leadership, giving the public a chance to get to know her. She did a number of media interviews yesterday. And she instead largely was being asked a lot about the, issues raised by Robert Jenrick and this ongoing debate about integration and immigration in the UK. But I think certainly in terms of her managing to cut through in the sense that she wants to talk about her introduction to the public, her message on fiscal credibility, which will hear a lot more of today in her keynote speech, without largely any kind of gaffes or anything like that that some people have said

certainly last year when the leadership contest is still going on there are a number of moments where people said that she's gaff prone but she has largely avoided that this year and so I think largely amongst the party who have come here she seemed to have had a good conference but that by no means

puts to bed those questions about her leadership certainly in a run up to those local elections in May as well I believe some have said that her performance of Prime Minister's questions this was last month when she challenged to Keir Starmer over what he knew about the friendship between his US ambassador

that's Peter Mendelsohn who stepped down and the convicted paedophile Geoffrey Epstein that bolstered her position. Would you agree with that? I certainly think there's a view that it brought her time and actually that's the same view that seems to be taking hold

amongst this conference. Her performance is buying her time in terms of any questions about what happens going forward but I think it is the case that there have been concerns about her performance in her first year's leader at Prime Minister's questions, perhaps not, for example, thinking on her feet enough to reacting to, you know,

news coming in, what the Prime Minister is saying and being on the front foot in really taking punchy arguments and reacting in the way she should be. But I think certainly that moment that you just referenced was seen as a turning point. We all know the events that followed for the government, a very painful few weeks and Kemi Beidnock was seen. That was an issue she was seen to be on the front foot of herself and she got a lot of a lot of applause within the party for doing that. Georgia, stay with us

because I do want to bring in Conservative fear baroness, Kate Fall. Good to have you with us. This morning we're talking about time and how much time Kimmy Badenock may have. According to the times the shadow cabinet is panicking that some Tory MPs are plotting to oust her and Robert Jenrick who we mentioned there

is just biding his time as a challenger. How safe would you say Ms. Badenock's position is? Well, look, I think that she has bought herself a bit of time. I think this week, although it's challenging with the polls looking bad and you've got, you know, councillors defecting to reform, it still looks like she shored herself up a bit. She had something to say. It took her a while to get round to looking at policy. I mean, in my own view, I think she should have gone forward earlier with making her mark and setting out her stall, if you like.

But look, she had something to say. I think the big question is, is anyone listening? You know, there hasn't been a huge amount of coverage of the conference, as you normally would expect. There is a sense that the polls are sort of stuck. But I do think she was right in identifying sort of small state or seeking out fiscal prudence as a sort of wedge issue. It seems that the Tories are the only party at the moment who are pursuing that agenda. And I think they will right to double down on that. So I think she'll feel like she's had a good conference.

Of course, we're waiting for the keynote speech we heard at the beginning of the week. as well. Why, what do you think she needs to do there? So first of all, I think she needs, she speaks well and I think that the conference will respond to the fact that she is a, she is an engaging and commendable speaker. I think it's good she has a policy, a strong policy announcement to make today, which again frames that point, which is we are seeking fiscal credibility again after the disaster's end of the Liz Trust era. And I think she needs to remind the party that infighting and their sort of tendency to do in their leaders,

giving them less and less time to sort of establish themselves, also makes the party look less credible. And they spend a lot of oxygen on themselves rather than what they should be doing, which is thinking, how do we solve the problems of our nation? You know, she mentioned in that clip that we played from the Today program yesterday, she said, you know, one of her priorities was not to split the party and she felt she had been successful in that.

I also mentioned the 20 defections of Tory councillors and they're not the only ones, of course. Do you really think she can claim success in that? I don't know that I would say that she can actually. I mean, look, I think the problem she's had is she's lacked momentum. She talks herself about the fact she's put money into the party and those are all commendable things. But at the end of the day, she hasn't really been present out

and building momentum for the party. And my experience of working with the Tory party over the years is on the whole success is what keeps the party together. If you have political success and momentum, people gather around you. If you don't, that's when you start to hear the leadership challenges. Robert Jenrick, we mentioned there his comments. She had to spend part of yesterday really perhaps an unwelcome distraction commenting on that. How do you see his role? Do you think he's a person who is biding his time?

Well, yes, I think he is interested in her job. I mean, he's made a name for himself, especially being present, you know, out there, the video of people sort of jumping over the barriers in the tube. I think the comments that he made that were covered this week were completely wrong. I think focusing on cohesion is important, but I think that the language he used wasn't right. But yes, he took a lot of oxygen up. And therefore I think that sort of Robert Jenrick versus Kemi is alive. And I think we will hear it rumbling on as we come through to the elections next year.

We also heard there, you know, personality focused or wanting to know the human, etc. Do you think female leaders are held to a different standard than men? Because Theresa May did have similar comments. I do. I do think they are. But I think it is perhaps true that people think that people think that. political personalities in a different way. But at the end of the day, you know, Kemi Badnock is a, you know, formidable leader,

formidable woman, but she also needs to take on the leadership of the party and speak to values and speak to policies and gain momentum. And that is the job of all political leaders, whether they're women or men. Thank you very much for speaking to us. And Baroness Kateful, also we had Georgia Roberts, the BBC's political correspondent. and if you weren't following the back and forth with Robert Jenrick and Kimmy Badenock,

she did defend him and saying that integration is an issue. There is more, of course, on the BBC website, as we will continue to follow what is happening at the Conservative Party conference on the BBC. Thanks for your messages coming in. Let's talking about objects of beauty. We're getting in touch the kind of love-hate relationship that we can have with them. The beauty product that I love hate are my eyelash curses. I love them for what they do

to bend my 65 year old lashes especially now that I'm using a very effective serum that are strengthening them but I really hated when they nip my eyelid ouch, says Yvonne in Northumberland

Carmel I have a love-hate relationship with the hairdresser how much have I given them no more I cut my own hair now and people ask me who's your hairdresser

I like your hair ladies I picked up the bacon scissors and I cut it on one side and then the other it was very easy some beauty tips this morning as well. 844 if you would like to get in touch.

I want to go to Madrid next. The People's Tribunal for Women in Afghanistan is convening to investigate Taliban crimes against women. Since the Taliban's return to power in 2021, Afghan women and girls have endured significant rollbacks of their fundamental human rights. You may know they're banned from secondary and university education from Britain from working nearly all professions

and excluded from public life. So what will this tribunal, which has no legal authority, achieve? I'm joined by Shaharzad Akbar, former head of Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission. She's also the director of Arrawadari, which is one of the organizations that's behind this tribunal, and she has offered to step out of proceedings to speak to us. Thank you so much. You're very welcome to Women's Hour. Perhaps you could explain to us what the people's tribunal really is for.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me today. The People's Tribunal or People's Courts, it's really about giving survivors a day in the court. It's really about the survivors and victims to have their voices heard at a global platform and by a panel of judges. It's also about mobilizing public opinion.

And people's tribunals are usually utilized when formal mechanisms are insufficient, which in case of Afghanistan, because of the severity of the situation in Afghanistan, we feel the international response has been really insufficient. So we are hoping that the tribunal will lays global attention and that it will also, as it is right now,

the survivors are speaking right now, give survivors a day in court. And it will allow us to also, the panel of judges will also, of course, hear and address international crimes, including the topic of this tribunal, the crime against humanity of gender persecution. What are you hearing,

and I understand that of raising awareness, but what are survivors telling you? Well, we have survivors here who have been held and beaten and tortured by the Taliban. We have women who have been denied access to healthcare. Women here are speaking about being denied access to education for themselves and their family members and the impact on their mental health. Women are talking about losing jobs and livelihoods.

And it's just incredible to see that every aspect of women's lives and rights are being curtailed and attacked up. on and their dignity. So much of it is about dignity, you know, having to ask big a male member of your family to take you to doctor when you're suffering and you're in pain because otherwise you will be refused treatment. If you go on your own as a woman to seek treatment, you'll be refused treatments. Being pregnant and being on the verge of delivery and needing to find a man to take you to the hospital, being a nurse or a surgeon trained for many, many years and being told by an uneducated man with a gun, how to behave, how to speak, where to be.

And it's about rights, but it's also very much about dignity, about livelihoods. And these testimonies are just incredibly courageous as well, because these women have extended family members in Afghanistan. They are taking huge risks. And that was part of my question as well. You do have some Afghan women that are there in person, is my understanding, who have obviously left Afghanistan. But you're also hearing testimony from within.

which I think, obviously, it could be a very dangerous act for those women to partake in. Yes, absolutely. It has been a process where we have taken very serious security measures. We have audio testimonies from inside Afghanistan. Voices have been changed. Other names have been, you know, assigned. The judges, of course, know the real names. But the testimonies, when they're being played publicly, the general public doesn't know.

Despite this, we have also asked, some survivors have asked, to sort of, from their testimonies to withhold details, like the date that they were arrested or which Taliban agency arrested them, because that would make it very obvious who this person is who is speaking. And I want to take one minute, less than one minute, to talk about really the carriage of the women who have stepped forward, particularly from inside Afghanistan. As you know, we had an internet shutdown in Afghanistan in the past two weeks. And it was actually when we were gathering and verifying testimonies from inside Afghanistan last verification. And one survivor, she drove herself with a female,

she came with a male family member to the border of a neighboring country. She bought a SIM card of the neighboring country to make sure that she could connect with us with the prosecutors and share her testimony. This is how much it matters to them for their voices to be heard, even under different names, even without identifying details. They really want their stories to be heard. And as we know, there is nothing legally binding or any ramifications that come from the people's tribunal. I understand completely how powerful it is for somebody to tell their story and to be able for others to bear witness to what they have gone through.

I mean, do you feel that this in any way will bolster either international action or legal repercussions? via a different route? Yes, absolutely. I mean, people's tribunals have been utilised, their findings, their evidence has been utilized by formal legal mechanisms in the past. We have an ongoing international criminal court's investigation into Afghanistan.

They are watching the proceedings. They know that this is happening. We have other avenues to accountability. Just this week, an independent investigative mechanism was established through the UN for Afghanistan. They can utilize some of these findings. and the verdict can be a very powerful advocacy toll. The verdict is coming out on 10th December,

Human Rights Day, Universal Human Rights Day, and we will take this verdict. We'll take this verdict to women's groups. We'll take this verdict to universities. We'll take this verdict to different parts of the world, particularly the Muslim ports, and particularly Global South, to share this with them to broaden the alliance for women of Afghanistan.

Just before I let you go, Shaharza, do you know if the Taliban is aware of it? Yes, so it's part of the procedure of the permanent people's tribunal to officially notify the accused party and they have been officially notified but have not responded. Shah Hazid, Akbar, former head of Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission and Director of Rawadari, one of the organizations behind the tribunal. Thank you very much. A new season of Love Me is here. Real stories of real, complicated relationships. It's not even like a gender.

I mean, it's wrapped up in gender, but it's just a really deep self-hate. I think I cried almost every day. I just stole myself on the floor. It's coming on really straight. It's like he's trying to date you all of the sudden. Yeah, and I do look like my mother. Love me. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

8444-4 if you'd like to get in touch. I want to let you know that the second episode of the Woman's Hour Guide to Life is out only now, only now, now only, should I say, on BBC Sounds. That's where you'll find it. It's all about ambition without burnout, very important, and how to chase your goals while protecting your physical and mental well-being. One of the guests that joined me was Dr. Claire Ashley, the author of The Burnout Doctor. And here's just one of the practical tips in the episode. So there's an argument that actually just the presence of a smartphone stops you. you from relaxing from work because you check it so habitually, you might open up your emails, you know, outside of work hours, just without even thinking about it because it's second nature.

So one of my favourite exercises is something called completing the stress cycle, which I don't know if you've heard of. No. It was first described in the book, Burnout, by Amelia and Emily Nogoski. Completing the stress cycle is this ritualized act that you do every time your workday is done. So it signifies to your body that your work day is over. You're going to close the laptop. You're not going to look at your work emails anymore. You are done.

take the form of anything. So I like to go for a walk. Some people like to have a hot drink or to have a shower, get changed. Some people that's putting loud music on and just headbanging in the car as they pull up onto the driveway. There are lots of different ways that you can do it. But if you do it every single time that you finish work, eventually your body realizes, okay, works done and I can relax now. It's like a physical boundary. I love it. I do think about it now as well. There's some other cracking tips in there as well. The no cabulary, how to be able to say no in different ways. I can't versus I Don't. Game changer.

It's on our social media at BBC Woman's Hour as well, some of those little clips. But to hear the full thing which you need, it's on BBC Sounds, search for Women's Hour. And in the feed, then you'll see the Guide to Life episodes. You might need to scroll down a little bit. If there's something you think we should be tackling, do get in touch in all the usual ways. Now, I want to turn to France and to the woman who was a mass rape victim, Giselle Pelico. She's been back, you might have seen in question. court this week to face one of her attackers. The only man who is appealing against last year's

trial verdict in which a total of 47 men were convicted of raping her as she lay drugged by her husband in their family home. Two were found guilty of attempted rape and two guilty of sexual assault. Of course, this is a very difficult thing to listen to and I do want to direct you towards the BBC's action line if you have been affected by any of the issues that we're going to raise next. Oppos of me is Professor Manning Garcia. a French philosopher who watched the court proceedings and immediately wrote Living with Men, Reflections on the Pelico trial. Lovely to have you in studio.

Thank you for inviting me. Your book is very affecting. And early on, you ask, can we live with men? And if so, at what cost? What is the cost, as you see it? I think this question, of course, it's a bit a rhetorical question because there is no question that we have to live with men. there are sons or friends or fathers, so I'm not pleading for let's live apart from then in society.

But I think it's very important to see that the kind of sexual violence that Giselle Pellicoe experienced may sound extraordinary out of anything that we know, et cetera. But actually, there is a continuum between the sexist structures of society and what happened to Gisle Pellico. And what was fascinating with this trial is that usually the cases that we hear about in the media are the cases that are not the normal forms of sexual violence. This is a woman walking in the street getting abducted, raped, and killed. And these cases are horrible, but they're not what happens the most and what sexual violence looks like. But here there was, on the one hand, this extraordinary component that is the number of, of men, but also this very ordinary component, which is she was raped and abused at the instigation of her husband.

And so suddenly we entered their bedroom, this sort of everyday form of sexual violence that is terrifying. And this is what it is for so many women to live with men. You explore Hannah Arend's concept of the banality of evil, which describes horrific acts like the Holocaust that they can be carried out, not by sadistic fanatics, but by ordinary people. And you talk about like the banality of maleness. Yes, because in France, in French, it was obvious a parallel between banality du mal, which is banality of evil, and banality of maleness, which is banality du mal. So it's homophonic. But what was striking in

this case is that outside of Dominique Pedico himself, who's very probably, suffering from very serious problems and he's really a pervert and the other 50 men are perfectly normal men, good husbands, good dads, good brothers, good sons. And they have nothing to say about what happened, except for one or two. They just said, yeah, well, I went and she was there and I did that to her. And they have, in a way, like Eichmann and Joseph, them, they have nothing to say about what happened. Because the trial did show that dozens of these men, they're unrepentant for their crime. How do you understand their lack of remorse? I feel it perhaps intersect with what

you're saying. I think a lot of them see it as what sex is. And this is where it is really terrifying, is that a lot of them, the defense of a lot of them is to say, well, I couldn't have sex was my wife at that time for X and Y reason. Therefore, I went to see Madame Pellico as, like, to replace the sex that I was not having at home. And so what it shows is, A, that they think they have a right to sex, that they're entitled to sex, even if women don't want it. But B, that they think raping an old, unconscious woman they don't know is a good substitute

for what they do when they have a sexual relation with their wives. And this is something really terrifying. This is something that should make us think, okay, what do we think male sexuality is? Like, how is it that these men at least and many men think there's a fungibility between rape and making love with the person you're married to? And you say some men. not all men? No, so I don't think all men, but I do think. So the reason why I called my book Living with Men is, of course, a bit polemic, but it's because I was flabbergasted and appalled by the fact that all the women I know, all the women everywhere followed this trial, thought something

very important about their lives and about what it is to be a woman was happening through and almost all the men treated it as an extraordinary case as something some of those like crime cases that something cares you know but something that's not based in day to day life for the man that yes but and it's always you know what what feminists say when they say how is it that almost all the women we know have been victims of sexual violence and all the men we know say they've never committed any sexual violence. There's an arithmetic problem there going on. And so I wanted to tell men, okay, look, you need to ask yourself

why this case is so important for us and what do you have in common with these guys. I'm not saying that you could have raped Giselle Pléico. I'm saying there is something about masculinity that is at play in what it is for you to be a man and in what it is for these men to go rape Giselle Precio. You call male sexuality in your book a field of runes. Yeah, I think it is.

But I think I'm not saying men are guilty for it. I think society is guilty for it. The movies we've watched, the way boys have been raised in, the way boys have been also victims of sexual violence themselves. But this sexual violence, it always comes from men. So there's a sort of catastrophe of male violence that is passed on for me. generation to generation. You know, a lot of people say, but these men, they had mothers, their mothers raised them. But now we know that the best predictor of the gender views of kids is what they saw their

dad do at home. And so men, by not being there, they raised their kids to have bad views about gender. There is another aspect in the book, which shocked me, actually, that there was a history of incest, incest in some of the defendants. And I was struck when you said that you don't believe that those who perpetrate incest are pedophiles, but normal men, usually, with an opportunity for sex and power. Yeah, so it's not what I believe, it's what the research shows about it, that it's not people, most of the men who perpetrate sexual violence against children

are not men that have sex. sexual perversions called pedophilia of having desire for kids. It's what researchers called a rape of opportunity. That is very easy to rape kids compared to raping women. And so because kids are vulnerable, malleable, et cetera. And so in most cases, these men are just exerting their power on vulnerable people. And it's not that they like kids particularly. And I think this is very important

because it allows us to understand that all of this is about domination, not about sexual pleasure. Because you talk about submission a lot. One of the chapters is to subdue an unsubmissive woman. This is how Dominique Pelico described his motive. You've written widely on the problem

of women's submission to men. And you also talk a lot about consent. Some feel that this particular case has introduced the concept of consent into France's penal code, for example, with this definition of rape. How do you see it? I don't think that's the right way

to change the definition of rape or to address rape in society. I think it's very important that crimes are defined by what offenders do and not by what victims do or do not do. And so if you define rape by consent, you're defining rape by the victim's behavior. And I think it's very important to define rape by what men or by what rapists do to the people

they rape and by the form of not objectification, of not thinking about the will of the person of using someone. And so the way the French law is formulated is actually pretty good because it says rape is a penetration obtained by coercion, threat, violence or surprise. And these are all the different ways you can overcome someone's non-consent. And so I think this is actually a good thing. But why are people talking about changing the definition of rape in France? It's because this is the easiest thing to do.

But it's not what we need. What we need is judges that have less sexist views. What we need is better police work, so more means. And it's way easier to change a law than to put billions of dollars or of euros on the table. Because sometimes, as you say in your book, that the law is not then implemented in the spirit that it was created. I mentioned this week, Giselle has been back in court. One of the men is appealing against last year's verdict. He says he never intended, his words, to rape Miss Pelico.

that he learned only after his arrest that she had been drugged. So intent is his defense. I'd be curious for your thoughts on that concept, really, not specifically about this defendant, really, but in the way that society, French society, may view it. Yes, but it's because what he means by intent is mens rea. And these people don't understand that what he means by it is. He's a mens rea in British law.

So the fact that for a crime to be committed, the person who commits the crime needs to know that they're doing something forbidden. But in French legal language, it's called intention, but it's not like you have the intention of your head in your head of doing something terrible. It's just the fact that you're mentally able enough and aware enough of what is going on in the world that you know that this is forbidden. And so this defense cannot work. We've seen the videos and they've shown them again today.

like he knows that if she wakes up he's going to be in big trouble and so that's enough to show that he has intention by kind of presence of mind or command of mind but it is interesting that he is going ahead with it yeah but he has no other option right like it never happens that you have videos and hours and hours of videos of sexual acts being done on someone in a coma i'm going to spare the read or listeners with a lot of details, but one thing that struck me with the videos is the sound. You hear her snore very loudly, very regularly the whole time. That means there is no chance that you can seriously think she's just closing her eyes. Like, it cannot be the case. No one could believe that being there. I want to go back to submission that you've written on widely, as I mentioned, and the motive that Dominique Pelico gave. It comes that motive that he gave to the court within what you call a cultural scaffolding of rape. Yes, so what I find very interesting in the explanation that he gave is that it creates a question about how do we view women's submission?

and that in society we kind of think also with their trad wives and was all of this that maybe women actually like submission. Maybe they're just being submissive because that's their nature or something like that. But what we see in Pellico is that the moment in their lives, in their married life, where Giselle Pellico told Dominique Pellico, look, I'm done, I'm not wearing the lingerie you like anymore. I don't want to engage with any of your sexual fantasies. she was doing very vanilla stuff, like very soft things.

But still, she was wearing the lingerie he wanted. She said, look, I'm done. Respect my boundaries now. The next week he got in contact with the male nurse that gave him the recipes to chemically subdue her. And so it shows that when women are not voluntarily submitting, they're submitted. And so, you know, it's the same as what women say about why do they have sex that they don't want to have. And the number one reason that they give in studies is in order to not be raped.

And it sounds very bizarre because it sounds very stark, extreme. But they think, okay, I may be forced anyway. And so I'd rather have accepted and feel like it's my choice in a certain way than risk men's violence, risk men's force, et cetera. And something like that is happening with submission. Women prefer voluntarily submitting than being forced to submit. What I also found quite sad, really, was you watch this. Yeah, it is. I mean, it is compelling.

and it is, I mean, so sharply observed. But you wrote this book, like you literally were leaving the court going into your room and writing the book, even the days just directly after it. And the effected on you of seeing this trial. Yeah, it was really hard. I actually could write this book really fast

because I stopped sleeping, basically. Because what is the story about, she said, Pellico? It says, even in the place, where you feel the safest on earth, meaning in your own bed was your husband, you're in danger. And this is something, it was striking for me. A lot of the journalists, female journalists that were there also stopped sleeping

because there was something about we need to be careful at all times, even in the moments that were unconscious because we're asleep about what could happen to us. The vulnerability. And it was really devastating. And it put me in a, I think I was in a state of extreme lucidity about the reality. Like hypervigilant? Hypervigilance, but also hyper awareness of the reality.

It's not that I was being paranoid or anything. It's rather than in order to live our lives, we need to forget the reality of the threat of sexual violence. You say towards the end of the book that men need to love. women. How does that happen? It's true that one thing that struck me in this trial is that all these men that had rape Giselle Pellicoe, they had wives, they had sisters, they had mothers. And not once their wives, their mothers, their sisters had entered into their thinking about, okay, maybe if I do that, I'm going to go to prison, what is it going to do to her? It's not just about cheating on your

wife. It's about like I saw daughters that were destroyed in the courtroom by the fact that their dad is going to be in prison for 12 years. But they stood by them. They stood by them. Their family stayed by them and, you know, supported them. Yes, because they love these men. But these men didn't have like the one gram of love for them necessary to think, okay, what is going to be? the impact of my acts on the women in my life and and it was really crazy there were all these women were there they had helped these men pack to go to prison and so on and so forth but you could see that they were not part of these men's mental landscape they were helping them but these men didn't care about them enough and and of course

Dominique Pellico, what is terrifying about his discourse is that I do think that he really thinks he loves Giselle. And he really thinks this is a side part where he kind of failed to love her the right way. But he really loved her. But it's part of her love for her that he found her so great that he wanted to destroy her. And I think there is something like that in a lot of ways men love that if they really love, then they want to destroy the object of their love. It's a very old topos in literature and stuff to destroy the beautiful woman, to destroy the women that we love.

Professor Manning Garcia, French philosopher, her book is out now, Living with Men, Reflections on the Pelico trial. Thanks so much for coming into it. Thank you for having me. Now, I want to turn to the visual artist, Joy Gregory. She won the Freelands Award in 2023 that was in partnership with the Whitechapel Gallery in London. And this award was created to enable organisations to present an exhibition by a mid-career female artist who may not yet have received the acclaim or the public recognition that her work deserves.

And so to today, where Catching Flies with Honey, a retrospective of Joy's work opens at the Whitechapel Gallery. As an artist, Joy explores identity, history, race, gender, societal ideals of beauty, all while pushing the possibilities of photography, but it's not only photography. There's film, there's textiles, a wonderful installation. Joy, welcome to Women's Hour. Thank you so much for inviting me to be here. We met very briefly yesterday as Joy had an adoring crowd following her through the gallery for a quick preview for catching flies with honey. did you call it that? My mother

actually, she I think I must have been a very prickly child. She should say to me you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar and I think it was a saying sort of like if you sweeten the pill, maybe someone might listen to you. Yeah, yeah, no, I love

that phrase. Now, let's go back a bit. You were born in 1959, Aylesbury, Jamaican, British girl, where you were a person of colour in an essentially a totally white community. Recollar. collections? Well, I was actually born in Bista, which is in Oxfordshire, which I'd never even realised that's suddenly become this mecca for some people. I had some people staying in my flat and

they were like, oh yeah, we want to go to Bista. I'm like, why? But I think growing up when I did in the 1970s, I never really saw any positive images of people who looked like me or who were from my background, and also I could never get away with anything. So being, you know, a black family or black person within a very white community meant that, you know, if I went scrumping apples or something, they would definitely know who I was. They're like, Joy was there, definitely saw her. Yeah, we'll tell her mum. And of course, your mum, as you said, has influenced you with the name, so no doubt in other ways as well.

But as you became an artist then, you did get critical. criticism for your art not being black enough. Yeah, I think because, I mean, this is in the 1980s and it was a very politically fraught time, particularly for people of colour. There were the uprisings, you know, everywhere in the major cities. And I, obviously, I grew up in the countryside. But, you know, people had a very, I mean, especially people of my generation, have a very, had a very fixed idea of what we should do in response as a black artist as a black artist in response and and there shouldn't be any any confusion around the message and so I suppose in a way it became quite polemical but for me it was really important that I could say what I wanted to do in the way I wanted to say it and not

be dictated to again because again you've been dictated to for such a long time And I think freedom is to be who you are and how you want to be that and not to fit into other people's definitions of what that should be. Well, when I went to the exhibit yesterday, I first met you through photography, through autoportrait. And I've seen you call this your response to the invisibility beyond the exotic of black women in British fashion and beauty images. We should describe, how would you do? describe those that series of photographs well it's a series of nine photographs um they're black and white essentially but with a twist um because the way in which i work with photography a photography is for me

the most beautiful and most plastic medium there is um is you can use something called um it's a sort of like a lith printing process and if you use it in a particular way the way that i did you can split it so you get black, white and you get a skin colour. And I really wanted to talk about the idea of skin and colour within that work. It was commissioned by autograph and it was their first series of commissions. So it was called auto-portrait. And it was my chance to actually say, you know, I am part of this fashion and beauty world and like look at me. Like a cover girl. It was very much a cover girl with like beautiful big earrings and sort of like my hair going on my hair, my face looking out and up and round and back. And we see the nape of your neck.

We see these images but done the way you want them to do or perhaps in a way that there was inclusion where there's often exclusion, particularly at that time in magazines. Exclusion and invisibility because I mean like I very rarely ever came across any black models at that time in the 70s and 80s. And the reason was that they don't sell magazines, which is complete nonsense really. And the only person you ever did see was Imman. And Imman was then dressed up in this exotic story. And it was like, you know, we are British, we are here. And this is who we look there. We're a very, very diverse community because of the diversity of experience and history that we all share. Which of course you delve into as well. Perhaps I'll turn to

this one, if we talk about history. You're in South Africa during the period of trust and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. That's the restorative justice process following apartheid. And it led to this striking series of photos of handbags. Tell me about those handbags. Right. So while I was in South Africa, I was working, I was collecting and putting together my work for memory and skin, which is another very huge installation. and it was very much in my head. But at the same time I had this wonderful friend called Marion who used to come and rescue me now and again

and we used to go shopping in all the secondhand shots. And I noticed that there were these really beautiful objects of luxury, so beautiful gloves and handbags that was for sale in these places. And some of them hadn't even come out of their packaging. And they'd all been imported into South Africa during the period of embargo, which made a whole nonsense of the idea of embargo. But it also pointed to the idea of a luxurious life going on at the same time as all that violence around race and apartheid. The apartheid actually about erasing people's identity completely as well.

So those handbags would have belonged to wealthy white women during apartheid? Yeah, who were able to have them imported into the country and probably never even used them. Because it's all about power. It's all about being able to have. and the reason I chose to make those prints A, it was about sort of like getting out of my body so I really needed to do something which was very physical and they're salt prints

so with salt printing you use two different types of emulsion and you apply them to, I've applied them to like a watercolour printmaking paper and they're a beautiful brown colour but the handbag's almost like ghostly I was just about to say they're kind of a translucent shadowy image well they are but they also about the idea of privacy and secrecy and nobody in their right mind would dare put their hands in anybody's handbag

if it didn't belong to them I was asking our listeners you talk about objects about objects of beauty you have a number of them hairnet high heels there was also a hair clip and it struck a core there was a number of people getting in touch this morning as well How did you decide what to include in our last minute? Well, with objects of beauty, it was really about these objects that we used to beautify ourselves. But also, there are also objects we used to objectify ourselves and how to be objectified.

But I wanted to make beautiful prints as well. So the prints are beautiful objects in themselves. So they're like a rarity. And it grew out of a project I was doing before, which was around self-portraiture, which was called Women in Space. and the fact that women actually own very little space, they're encouraged to take up very little space, just in terms of their body size,

but also in terms of their power and voice. And so I wanted to make something that actually pulled all those things together. It did stop me. I loved it. I want to let people know Joy Gregory, catching flies with honey, opens at the White Chapel Gallery today.

Congratulations on the prize and the exhibition. Here's the message from Sarah. I love and hate my breast prosthesis. I'm an artist and love you. using it to get people chatting about taboo topics, but I never wear it. I feel proud of my asymmetrical body. Lovely message. Thanks for getting in touch. Join Anita tomorrow. She is Sally Wainwright and Rosalie Craig. Also, Anita Tickram. And back with you. She'll be back with you. 10 a.m. right here. Radio 4 tomorrow.

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