Woman's Hour - Late Night Woman's Hour: Public Space

Episode Date: September 29, 2016

Where does private space for women end and public space begin? Where does a woman's right to wear, or walk, or say, what and where she wants become different to men's - on the beach? On the bus? Online? Joining Lauren Laverne to discuss:Shelina Janmohamed, author of Generation MHelen Lewis, Deputy Editor of the New StatesmanBecca Bunce of the disabled women's collective Sisters of Frida and co-director of the I C CHANGE campaignBridget Minamore journalistThis programme is available in two versions. The long version is podcast only and is available by clicking the MP3 button on the Late Night Woman's Hour programme page or subscribing to the Woman's Hour daily podcast. The shorter broadcast version will be available on Iplayer shortly after transmission on Friday 30th September.Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Eleanor Garland.

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. On Late Night Woman's Hour tonight, space. Is it the final feminist frontier? Tonight we'll be talking about being a woman in public. Where does private space for women end and public space begin? Where does a woman's right to wear or walk or say what and where she wants become different to men's? On the beach? On the bus? Online?

Joining me to discuss are Shalina Janmohamed, author of Generation M. Welcome to you. Evening. Helen Lewis, deputy editor of the New Statesman. Hello, Helen. Hello. Becca Bunce of the disabled women's collective Sisters of Frida and co-director of the I See Change campaign.

Hi there. Hi there. And journalist Bridget Minnamore. Welcome, Bridget. Hello. All right then. The image of French police making a Muslim woman remove her clothing and journalist Bridget Minimore. Welcome, Bridget. Hello. All right, then. The image of French police making a Muslim woman remove her clothing on a beach in Nice has become one of the most iconic images of 2016, I think.

So let's start with what we wear. Shalina, how did you feel when you saw that photograph? My jaw literally fell to the floor. I can't imagine what it's like to sit minding your own business and then have four policemen turn up and tell you to take your clothes off. That to me was a shocking moment. I think there was an opportunity for all women to look at that and just recollect how far the women's rights movements have come in the last 100 or 150 years. But actually, I felt somewhat

disappointed that the argument still focused around banning what Muslim women wear, banning things by what they appear to mean, rather than just literally it was what she wanted to wear. And actually, it was just a pair of leggings and a top with a swimming cap. And yet somehow, because it was a woman, a Muslim woman wearing that, we could talk about banning it. And that, for me, is really terrifying. Helen, what was your response to the photograph? I think banning is such a sort of needlessly strong thing to take. I'm sure we all have different opinions about clothing,

particularly about gender clothing, but the idea that you'd enforce a dress code like that on people, it just was obviously a statement of hostility to Islam. There's no way really to kind of differentiate between who's wearing a hijab and who's just put a scarf over their hair. So it was obviously targeted. And I think a really big consensus around that in Britain, even among feminists who have problems with different types of veiling and what they, you know, and see them as a sexist system. I think the idea of being ordered to disrobe by men is something that makes any

feminist uncomfortable or should do. And I think for now we've really got to talk about what things are arbitrary and and distinctions between gender clothing i mean i for example personally i don't wear high heels right i just can't get on with them i don't understand why you would wear a form of clothing that is actively disabling you know when there are so many things that are available to make walking easier but equally well I do know that other people have a very different experience my best friend for example is very petite and very short and actually says you know when I'm in a meeting with men who are six foot tall and they're having a conversation a foot above my head it's that's really difficult for me you have to kind of have broad principles but be willing to acknowledge

that individual circumstances very much affect how people feel about them. Bridget, you want to come in? Yeah, I just think I think it is important to say that, aside from all of, you know, the chats happening, I've also felt really disappointed by the response, I think, to those pictures, because it has to be said that it isn't just because she was a woman, it's also because she was a Muslim woman, and she was a brown woman, and it's racist. And that needs to be said a lot more, because if a white Muslim woman and she was a brown woman and it's it's racist and that needs to be said a lot more because if a white woman on the beach was wearing the exact same thing no one would have gone near her. Shalini you're nodding. It's it's really interesting you say that because as a Muslim woman who chooses to cover and who has friends who are Muslim women we ran almost

jokingly thought experiments so we'd say what if a white woman was wearing a wetsuit and happened to put a swimming cap on would she be told to take her clothes off or not and the answer of course is most likely not because it would be assumed she's not Muslim or actually she probably decided that she could occupy her space whereas a Muslim woman somehow cannot make a decision about how she wishes to occupy her public space. This is a really interesting aspect. And Shalina, I know that you've written about wearing a headscarf and described the headscarf as a way of extending your private space in public, which is fascinating. Tell me about that.

So we have some really interesting ideas in the West about what constitutes public and private. And when you approach it from an Islamic perspective, your private space is almost like a physical, it's like a sort of superhero's force field around you. You have a couple of feet where actually there is a little privacy that extends around you. So for example, Muslim women and Muslim men may choose not to shake hands with somebody of the opposite gender because that's their private space. and actually for somebody to extend into that is considered an infringement of that and that's why I think when Muslim women cover their hair or those Muslim women who choose to cover their face are told are demanded of them to remove that covering because there's almost an assumption

that the public right extends into that private space and has the right to see your hair, your face, your beauty, your shape, your ankles, your smile, your heels, that there is a public right over you. And I think in a way, sometimes when Muslim women cover, that's really the last bastion pushing back on that assumed right. And Muslim women are saying, actually, you have no right over my private space. I mean, there might be people listening to this tonight who say, well, okay, I hear that. But this isn't a choice that Muslim men are making. This is, you know, they don't feel the need to extend their private space in public. How would you answer that? Actually, I think Muslim men often do, but it's a lot more difficult because if I cover, then there is already a statement about it

and people read different meanings into it. It may not be the same meaning I read into it. But I think often Muslim men do try and extend that private space around themselves, but actually also to other women too, as a respect in the same way that women expect it of men. I think men do try and extend it to other women. It's a bit gobbledyg respect in the same way that women expect it of men. I think men do try and extend it to other women. It's a bit gobbledygook in the middle. Nobody's quite sure whether you should lean over and kiss or you shouldn't. We should shake hands or you know what's the right kind of

interaction you should have in public and I think it would be nice for men to feel that they don't have to intrude into a women's space and if they don't then is that rude or not. I think we should extend men that same courtesy. Becca what's your perspective listening to this? I mean disability and public space have a very complex relationship don't they? Getting into public let's be honest that's half the battle. Accessibility whether we're talking about the space being accessible or support to get into the space being available it's part of it but there's the other side which is when you get into the space do you feel safe and do you feel comfortable so if you're ordering coffee I always think that's quite a good way to work out where you stand in society because what's the question that the

person asks you so I often watch male colleagues order a coffee they give their name the coffee's made and that's done whereas I get a narrative and it's have you always been disabled or what happened so when you're ordering this is when you're ordering a coffee to be clear yeah so and people in the street will just walk up to you and say hey what happened I feel like I've almost been lucky in the sense that I've experienced what it's like to go out as someone who's not visibly disabled so without the walking stick without all the extra paraphernalia that I can sometimes be using and then times when I do use the walking stick and there's a change if I don't have the walking stick I'll get cackled in a pretty standard way if I do have the walking

stick it goes scrounger are you faking it I've seen you before without your walking stick how dare you you know like you're you're obviously making this up the other side of it is it's really interesting people often come up to you and try and take a handbag off me they're like oh let me help you I personally find that quite scary and it's a and a literal sense of being safe it throws me off balance yeah wow what about men in all this I mean how differently are men judged on what they wear how they present themselves in public is there a big disparity Bridget what do you think it depends what which men we're talking about we could take any any man or woman or anyone of any gender and the way they are treated in public space is going to be different there's lots of stuff out there about the idea of space belonging always needing to belong to someone and by default all space in

even if we just stick to this country it is white and it is male and so if you talk to a young black boy in on the street where I grew up like the way he's seen in that space is going to be very different to me as a woman even if I am black and we both can be an affront to the people who own that space and that's why young black kids on street corners of any gender are told to clear off, because they are just automatically an affront to the space. How much thought do you put into how you present yourself in public and how you move through public space?

It's something that I've become a lot more aware of over the last year. It's been angling me more and more. And so, you know, street harassment is something that I've been used to. You know, it goes on and it's something I've I've just I I almost dismiss but the way I'm treated in space usually by men usually by older men usually by older white men I'm treated like a child and I'm told off I'm told off a lot and it's it grates on me all the time okay so Beck is nodding as well you recognize that so what kind of thing give me some examples so and is is it is it men is it mostly men just men or women too it's mostly

men over the summer i was doing lots of festivals i did like eight so i was getting trains everywhere and public transport seems to be a place where space is so hotly contested i'm not sure if it's because we're all packed in or something but for some reason public transport is the places I'm told off the most and I travel you know I put my hoodie on because I am cold I get cold on trains I have like my coffee I have my laptop I have stuff I've been asked by men is that the seat you've booked I when I people offer to buy me train tickets for my gigs when I'm going around the country and they offer first class I say no because I am I refuse to get a first class seat and I wish it was out of some big moralistic reasoning it's because I don't want to spend three hours getting asked if I should really be here that happens all the time I get warned not to spill my drink when I'm drinking it been told to

move my bag from the seat next to me on an empty carriage and are these things that have that have happened you know repeatedly things that have happened over and over again the more over the summer I just got to a peak because I was getting maybe four long train journeys a week and it just was happening on three out of four of them and it it grates on me and it and I'm like is it because I'm black is it because I'm a woman is it because I'm young is it a mixture of all of those things is it how I'm dressed I think it's because I'm young? Is it a mixture of all of those things? Is it how I'm dressed? I think it depends. So talking to some friends,

a friend of mine who's a young white woman, she looks after a baby and she's a nanny and she gets told off a lot by older women of all races who criticise her for the way she might be holding the baby or playing with the baby or feeding the baby. And that's a very specific thing when she has that child with her. One of the baby and that's a very specific thing when she has that child with her uh one of my friends he's got long dreds and he's always told to move and he's you know he's quite tall told to get out of the way and that i feel is part of that same bubble

of people feeling they have ownership over you and feel that they can direct you in the space that you're in when you know we shouldn't we shouldn't be in that position becca you're nodding so much i feel like I just have to... I have to let you talk now, otherwise your head's going to come off. What are you thinking? One of the things I get quite a lot is, you should look after yourself better, or should you really be out? I mean, to be asked, you're in a public space

and someone's questioning whether you should be in that space. I know that for some friends, they have children directed away from them so that for disabled friends or you get comments from people saying you know it's kind of be careful of the lady and in some ways it's meant kindly it's meant you know watch out you you know you could cause a hazard here but in other ways you end up with people talking about you and you're treated as an infant. The other thing has been rendered genderless and asexual there's a really weird thing where a guy came up to me and said looking good love do I get a discount for the walking stick and for me I was really struck by the fact that the walking stick was about value does that make sense that it took away from the value but also he felt very comfortable walking

up very close to me and saying it in a way so normally catcalling you imagine being at a distance for me I find now that men tend to come closer to me to say it so they feel free to do that yeah and I think part of that's about do they believe that I am going to be able to retaliate because obviously physically I'm not looking as strong as another person. And I think there's some real problems around this and part of it is that it's invisible. When I say to people this has happened, the response is, oh really, or if someone shouts give us a spin round your pole love,

people think it's a funnier comment because it's sexualising disability. And the other thing I think it's really hard to grasp because we're so used to this is the kind of sea that we swim in is what a huge effect this kind of stuff just has on your sense of self right we're now in a very individualistic age where we tend to think of identity as being something that you kind of control and own but it's co-created and and it comes across hugely in what the world beams back to you I think what Bridget was saying is really interesting because you know if you look kind of respectable which I kind of do now so I I'm white, I'm pretty well spoken. I used to be like a goth. I used to

have loads of piercings and pink hair. And that gave me some little tiny bit of insight into the, when people think that you're, you know, not quite respectable and they want to, you know, they're sort of checking that you take in and take their handbag or they feel empowered to kind of comment on your, on your piercings and stuff. And the closer you look towards the kind of society's definition of respectable, I think that diminishes. And the closer you look towards the kind of society's definition of respectable, I think that diminishes. And it's very difficult because we know there's great research on something called stereotype threat,

which is when you tell people about a commonly held stereotype about them, they end up kind of living up to that stereotype. So if you take, you know, like a maths test or something and you say, well, of course, you might not do as well in this because women are notoriously bad at maths. And then women, lo and behold behold do actually do worse in it and I think when you're talking about navigating public space that's really important because people are getting messages beamed back to them about whether they are welcome or not welcome in that space.

Chalina what do you think about that? I find the discussion about how women get guided or kind of patronised into what they should or shouldn't feel really interesting because a lot of my experience is almost the opposite which is that you become invisible that somehow your presence or particularly your voice just doesn't carry any weight at all and you know I think back to the early years of my corporate life and, you know, I worked in technology and in product marketing, so quite male dominated. And, you know, I don't have a problem being in a room full of men and expressing my opinion. But it took me years to realise that the frustration I used to feel, which was, but I said what he said and why they were listening to him and not what I said 10 minutes ago and it took me a long time to realize that the problem was what I had said had been heard but not listened to

and that is a really difficult place to occupy in public space where you can feel like you're making really important contributions and nobody is listening you were just completely impossible and I and I know in my earlier years you know people would say things like so do you speak English and you know I think I think a lot of us growing up particularly women are told to very downplay our achievements and I would kind of look embarrassed and sort of shift in my seat and then I realized that the only way to deal with that was to say yes and I went to this school and I went to Oxford and now I work for this company which is and then you get the the accusation of well look at you miss la-di-da but I'd rather go with that than be kind of erased from the conversation and have somebody walk away from me thinking that I didn't even understand what they said. I think age is another factor as

well in this isn't it I mean do you think there's a kind of difference between generational attitudes to this? Is it changing? Is it improving, Bridget? I think so. I mean, it's really funny. Age is pretty much the only factor of identity that actually doesn't have a straight-up, or sort of a binary. It's not like young or old. Don't you think you go from being too young and callous

so you're not taken seriously to too old and wizened so you're not taken seriously? There's and wizened so you're not taken seriously? There's never the day, never the day in the middle. There's never, yeah. Never the sweet spot, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It will be honest. July the 3rd.

This is fun. You're one authoritative day. Too young and then I'm ancient. I see women in public space, how they're treated. I was talking to my mum about coming on here tonight and I was talking about catcalling and she was like, you know, I'm not really catcalled anymore but she is also like dismissed she's um she walks with a stick and uh she is older and small and the way she's treated is this weird patronising

thing and sometimes she's infuriated but like a lot of the time she has to sometimes play up to that so like if I get on a bus with her I have to do this ridiculous thing where I have to do this whole, like, Mum, are you all right? Oh, do you need to sit down? Like, shouting. So that someone might give up a seat. Yeah, just to see her. And I'm like, she is clearly, you know, she's an old woman walking with a stick.

And this is a bus and you're sitting there and I hope that one of you could just get up for her. Becca, Bridget's talking about the hotly contested priority seat. Oh, my favourite. Tell me about the priority seat. My favourite. Is it a feminist issue? I mean, is it...

Part of the reason that I was laughing is my best mate the other day came down to London and there was a guy that had put both of his bags in the priority seat and I tried to sit sit I ended up kind of perched on the edge and I don't have the energy often to fight that if I need to sit down I need to sit down but there was something really beautiful about having someone with me who turned around and told this person how selfish they were being because I don't normally get to do that I don't normally in that space get to say actually what you're doing is really getting it's not just getting in the way my day it makes me calculate whether i'm going to go out again tomorrow but that's why i think people get and i think it's really hard to explain to some

men why women get so angry about manspreading because they're like well come on you know i just sometimes one needs to air one's gentleman's area i i'd live in the 1800s can you explain manspreading helen for the benefit of that idea that when when men typically sit in public transport you know they really spread their knees apart and i think you know it's fine if somebody wants to sit you know you don't have to kind of it's not so it's the old kind of it's not like a school photo no and people don't have to keep their knees tightly together but you see people who are just doing this incredible thing and then there's a woman sitting hunched in the next seat and it's such a kind of display of dominance, right? It's just like, I am here, I'm the king, everybody else is going to...

Is it a thing that we do? I mean, not all men manspread. Is manspreading officially a thing? Yes. It is in this room. I think it is. And your point about buses is really interesting because I know this is my total hobby horse when it comes to public space. I remember we were talking about old people as well.

The same thing happens with loos, right? You often get the same loo as, like, the carer's loo, the disabled loo, and the restricted mobility one, and the baby changing, right? And it's just this kind of, we're going to pile everybody in. And I get really het up about the idea about the lack of female loo provision. I think it is absolutely a feminist issue, because what it says is it says public space has been designed for men and we've had to sort of inadequately cobble a thing. Shalina, you want to come in?

I think this idea of space being developed by the male norm and then are still primary caregivers so they have children with them means that they use and they need space to behave in completely different ways so one of the great things for example in Britain if you have little children or you're in a wheelchair is that you have the drop curb it's unbelievably liberating and I've been to countries where you can't do that and you you just you can't go anywhere if you have a kid in a pram so that's a really great thing but on the other side for example if you go to a mosque and you have children the women's space is always much more limited than the men the men's space and then on top of that you've got the children too and so it feels like a very restrictive experience because you can't be

part of that whole you have less space you've children, it's kind of sweaty and quite noisy and they're crying. And then people say to you, well, if your children are noisy, why don't you stay at home? And you're like, I want my children to be part of the community. I want them to grow up to experience what it's like to be with other people. And if we are a community, children should be welcomed into that. And as the mother, that's my job. So, you know know often I don't take the children to the mosque because it's too late in the evening or there's not enough space

and it's just too hard to build that community. Becca that idea of design I mean if the if the design of a town which you know Helen's talking about and Shalina mentioned at the beginning of what she was saying there as well if that's not working for women then it presumably it's not working for men either. the interesting thing is that men design themselves out of public spaces because in years to come they're going to also be elderly and so we've got men when you're talking about the specific set of men who are you know your architects and town planners and so and also decision makers and the people that are setting our laws because what we've seen and there's been inquiry after inquiry about this

in parliament and from the government but people seem to forget that a public space it's about that building of community as you said and if we want to design a public space we need to design that with the people that are going to use the space there aren't that many people who are disabled and architects and disabled and in parliament for instance so those people making the decisions are often that not that informed and when they bring you in is at the final stage so what you end up with is a door that's accessible but it's segregated because it's around the back of the building rather than at the front there was an event that i went to and they decided as it was a diversity and inclusion one to bring everyone through the service door

that the disabled people are going to have to come through. And the number of people that complained and said, this is disgusting, how dare we be treated like this and be brought through this door? And I thought, this is my everyday reality. One of the best things, though, has been that colleagues have started to say, no, I'm going to sit with you and wait with you. Where they are seeing my experience, they're going, no, this needs to change.

And I think there's something in that about if we want to change these spaces, lle maen nhw'n gweld fy mhrofiad, maen nhw'n mynd, na, mae'n rhaid i hyn newid, ac rwy'n credu bod rhywbeth yna ynglŷn â'r ffordd y byddwn ni eisiau newid y maesau hyn, mae angen i ni gael pobl yn gweld y problemau ac nid wyf yn meddwl ar hyn o bryd bod gennyf ddigon o bobl sy'n dylunio'r maesau hyn sy'n gweld y problemau. Gadewch i ni siarad ychydig am safbwynt. Rwy'n credu bod teimlo'n anodd pan fyddwn ni'n mynd allan a'i chyfarwyddo yw profiad yr ydym yn ei fathu bod y rhan fwyaf o wneud yn ymwneud â'r rhain ar ryw leol, ond yn statis statistically, young men are twice as likely to be victims of violent crime. So there's a mismatch between perception and reality. What's going on there, do you think, Helen? Yeah, because you know that people will blame you. You

know that, you know, if anybody goes home with a guy and that guy ends up subsequently sexually assaulting them, there will be a significant percentage of people whose first instinctive response would be, shouldn't have gone home with a guy bridget um you wrote did you write about this i think you wrote about walking home with your keys out which was a thing that that i think i mentioned it in passing to some male colleagues and they didn't know what i was talking about and you wrote about it and obviously everybody read it knew exactly what you meant yeah um that i actually discovered that a lot of the people the women I knew keep their keys in their hands when they walk home about a couple of years ago and I was shocked then so I wasn't shocked this time and I just did you know a little

twitter poll thinking it wouldn't you know thinking it'd show it how it was and it was actually 80 which was low in my opinion so this is kind of walking with your keys out keys in between your knuckles um someone with them yeah you feel like you need to I think and you know I've got that a lot. Most of the reaction I got from women was either me too, or I don't do this, but I do do something else, which was actually really depressing. I got hundreds of other tips,

which I didn't, you know, there are key rings you can get that essentially turn into switchblades. I don't know how legal they are in this country, but they exist. Marketed specifically to women, to young women out on college at college campuses in the us these weird like knuckle duster things that you get on your keys and they're all and it's this whole market this whole industry so it must be quite disturbing to receive that response really upsetting actually i i just didn't think it was i knew it was a problem but i didn't think it was an industry a lot you know men did say you know i'm twice as likely to get attacked and i understand that but i do think

the fundamental difference is that as far as i can tell men when they are walking home and the men that i know when they are scared on the streets it's because of other men whereas women i think the fit extends to the space around them the space is unsafe what do you mean by that is it what the darkness the yeah things like someone got sent me a really cross email um and i sort of understood it saying you know you don't want to perpetuate the myths and i know for a fact i know that uh you are more likely to be attacked at home you're so you know maybe i should keep my keys and my knuckles there you're more likely to be attacked by someone you know i know that but you know when my male friends are scared to walk home at night it's because you know i used, I used to live off Kingsland Road in East London.

There's loads of bars along that road. And my friends would, you know, they'd be going home from my house and they'd be like, oh God, you know, I'm gonna get drunk. I might get punched. I might get, someone might stumble into me. I might get caught into a fight. Whereas I feel really, or I felt really safe walking down Kingsland Road because there were loads of people around.

There were loads of people around. It was when I had to turn the small two-minute thing off Kingsland Road to go to my house. That's when I was terrified because I couldn't see anyone. Very interesting. Shalina, what do you think about this? I don't think it's just the violent crime that makes women fearful when they're walking around,

whether it's day or night. There's a lot of non-violent intrusion into women's lives. And I think that really does have an attrition factor on you and how you feel about walking around. You know, that's why the space becomes scary, because where is this voice going to come from that either cackles you or whistles at you or says something offensive to you? And for example, I have a lot of Muslim women who in the last few months have had an increasing amount of hatred spewed at them. Some of it physical, but a lot of it just verbal abuse about being Muslim women. And really interesting, they don't report it.

They just say, I just wanted to get on with my life. I didn't want to have to go to the police. And it takes a lot of encouragement to get people to report it. So we actually know. So sometimes I wonder if the statistics actually tell us what women are experiencing. And I think that doesn't come across to the wider public of how detrimental that can be to your life. Becky, you mentioned hate crime earlier. Presumably, this is, again, has an added element of complexity for disabled women when we talk about you were vulnerable but it was a vulnerable person that's why it happened what excuse have we made for the perpetrator of that violence so i got mugged um a couple of years ago i got hit in the face

um and not they really needed to do that with you considering that i'm not the strongest human beings and the response that i got was okay you, I found that the police were pretty good, but they did say, you need to be more careful than most people. And afterwards, I wrote to a few friends who are disabled and said, what's your experience been? And everyone said, yeah, it's pretty much. You need to be more careful.

It's kind of on you that you're vulnerable. And there's nothing you can inherently do to change who you are. So what do we do? How do we change it? How do we make this better? Do we need to reclaim the night? I mean, people are, aren't they? I've heard them talking about it. Helen? Yeah, I mean, I think I've talked to male friends about what Everyday Sexism did as a project, and I think actually just that bit of consciousness raising,

you know, it's too easy to get stuck just purely on consciousness raising, but I think just because if it's not your daily experience, then obviously, you know, the world beams back at you something very different i go out sometimes with my husband and once this guy lunged in my face and popped a crisp back at my face i was just like what like what even was that and it was just a kind of like tiny act of kind of casual dominance and my you know my husband was two paces behind me he's like what was that about and i said oh well that's you know that's the kind of thing that just you know people like like men do just do randomly weird things where they can not all men no but the other thing but he gets the opposite experience that i've never had which

is that you know people will try and drunk men will try and pick fights with him just because he's walking past the pub at the wrong time and actually as a woman you don't get that right you get a different experience so you don't get beamed back at you that you're you know a threat or there's any contest of masculinity you get beamed back at you that you're you know a threat or there's any contest of masculinity you get beamed back at you that you're weak and vulnerable and kind of like you say like a non-person sometimes so yeah I think for both men and women you know seeing the other side of the coin is probably quite helpful we talked about public space a lot so we're going to talk about the public sphere and about um the kind of online environment how different is the public sphere from public space, Helen?

How much overlap is there between the way that women are judged in public spaces and the way that women are judged in public life, do you think? I think it's fascinating because the great promise of the internet was that we were all going to be reduced to disembodied consciousnesses and race and gender and sexuality and all those things weren't going to matter anymore. And I think it's totally been the opposite way around. I think people have become more attached to their identities, feeling that they more want to make foreground those online.

And also the fundamental problem and promise of the internet is it can connect you with more people than you could, you know, more people than you could ever live in a village with. And I think as somebody who writes online and is on social media, that just means that unfortunately the one percent of people or the 0.1 percent of people who are who just hate the idea of women in public space have now a megaphone and not just a megaphone but a diet like your direct phone line right they can just come and tell you how much they hate you being in public space and who is doing that that criticism doesn't

just come from men of course it comes from women too no and i think when you look at online trolling it's really interesting that there have been women convicted of that for example but the forms that they use are very um sexist i'm at peasy myers who's a very um prominent atheist and therefore gets quite a lot of hate mail said you know what i never get and i never get is rape threats and i think that almost any woman who has a big presence on twitter will have had that and that's about reenacting a kind of male femalefemale dynamic, primarily male-female dynamic, online and projecting it onto women. So who's doing the trolling is kind of less important

than the forms of dominance that it plays out again online. Shalina, you've written a lot about digital culture, so I want to come to you on this. What do you think about what Helen's saying there? I think we can start talking about, for example, young Muslim identity in quite a different way. So there is a group of young Muslims who have really found their own expression on the internet, particularly women. Because if you don't have a space, a physical

space, where you can go and talk to other women about what it's like to be a woman, particularly women of faith and of colour, where the spaces are so incredibly restricted. And suddenly you have the internet and you can talk to women outside of your family, outside of your country, and talk about what it means to be a Muslim woman. That has really generated a huge amount of energy on the internet. And in a lot of places, for example, in the Middle East, women are talking about how they're using the Internet for entertainment, for education and for entrepreneurship. And they're talking about how traditional barriers can be circumvented because they can get to influencers and they can get to decision makers without having to enter into the public space, which can be so contested so for a lot of women I think the internet does offer a huge opportunity that allows them to bypass a lot of the problems we've been talking about in the public space yes there is a huge amount of trolling yes it's horrible if you're a Muslim woman you get all

the female trolling and then on top of that you get attacked for being a Muslim I just switch off actually all the negative stuff again I just can't deal with it it's like if you're going to phone my number I'm going to block you no thanks I don't need to talk to you and I have you in my life I think other people deal with it in different ways but I think in many ways the trolling is terrible but actually the the freedom and the space for discussion and the impetus particularly around things like business and political voice has been really powerful for a lot of women. No, I think you're right.

I sometimes get a bit down on the internet, but it has done amazing liberating things. I think New Mums is another group, for example. I once did a feature about online gaming, and I spoke to a mum who used to play online while she breastfed in the night, and she said, you know, night feeds were really lonely for me. I had one baby before Twitter and things, and one after, and I and i know that yeah and you're saying the same shalina and i know the

difference was absolutely huge the loneliness of that kind of 2am feed was was much less when you felt like you could just let's just see who's up in america who's saying anything interesting but you can stay up to date with the news you can kind of see what's happening in the world you just need a couple of minutes and you can go on to twitter and go on to facebook you feel like you're in a community and you're not kind of all lonely but the thing i was thinking about is how the prejudices and the defaults that we see in physical space have been replicated by a tech culture which is overwhelmingly white male and american in the english language internet so i was thinking about this about twitter only introduced the mute function a couple of years ago before that it was a block and i was thinking about the real life replica of that so the mute function

just for anybody who doesn't know silences them so they're still talking they don't know that anything's happened they just like why is this person not responding to me but you don't see any of their tweets whereas the block function you know they will get a message saying you have been blocked i think there is an ingrained fear that women are taught to fear that rejected men can get very angry. And so I think if you'd had more women involved, probably the mute button would have come along earlier, because I feel much more comfortable muting somebody. And they'll never know that I've dissed them. That's much more like if someone, you know, harassed me in a bar, I wouldn't stop and say, you, sir, you know, you are no gentleman, I would I wouldn't. And it's, and it's the same thing about having this row with people on the bus

about the guy who's taken up all the seats. You don't start arguments with men in public. You just walk away normally. I mean, Becca, tell me about your experience of life online because, you know, presumably this is a place where theoretically space is infinite and we're all equal and we're disembodied and everybody has easy access. For me, on a personal level, campaigning with IC Change, we started up from St Thomas' Hospital

when I was in hospital, in bed, and it was a Facebook conversation between me and Robin who said to me, do you want to do a Change.org petition? And that, I mean, the fact that that was happening, that I was in a space where typically you wouldn't be thinking about approaching someone to say let's do some kind of political organising but actually someone could reach out to me in that space I think that there that as a space though it still can be quite scary to be honest because I'm quite lucky don't get trolled that often don't have too much profile so that's great yn ddewr iawn, wrth gwrs, oherwydd rwy'n eithaf diodd i beidio â chroli'n ddigon. Dwi ddim yn cael llawer o broffiliau, felly mae hynny'n wych. Mae'n ymwneud â... Rydyn ni'n gwybod ein bod yn siarad am ystafell ffisigol. A ydych chi'n teimlo'n siarad i ddod allan o'ch tŷ? A ydych chi'n teimlo'n siarad i ddod i mewn i'r internet? A ydych chi'n teimlo bod gennych chi'r egni y dydd hwnnw i ddiogelu gyda rhywun

yn troli chi? Ac felly gyda'n gampaign, un o'r pethau rydyn ni wedi cael eu gofyn yw... rydyn ni'n aml yn cael, get what about the men? And the Istanbul Convention covers men. And we have a nice blog which is about it. So as soon as someone sends us a what about the men tweet, we're like, right, we're ready. We know how to answer this. And that's about, to be clear, that's about domestic violence. Yeah. And, well, all forms of violence is covered by the Istanbul Convention.

But it's specifically men are often asking about domestic violence in that setting. The thing that I find interesting is that as a disabled person, I'm quite used to this idea that you have to prepare yourself for the things that will be unsafe. So we knew we needed this blog because we knew that if we were in a public space, this was a way of interacting with someone which makes things more gentle, politer.

And also the blog is written by a man for men. That's very interesting. Yeah. So what happened? I mean, you know, you talked about the kind of girding your loins to kind of put your head above the parapet and go out there. I mean, what happened after Barack Obama gave you a shout out? Because that must have been quite a day.

Actually, the first thing that I realised was that it was a BBC journalist who got hold of me. That was the first thing that I got asked. Oh, this is awkward. I'm going to make you tell the story. You mean you're a top mate, Barack Obama. So I've been doing a programme with the US Embassy called Young Leaders UK.

And whilst I've been there, I've been quite vocal about access and also about violence against women and the fact that we need to be talking about women in spaces. And when Barack Obama came over to do his you know final visit to the UK they wanted to sorry I'm realizing that as a woman I shouldn't be apologizing for saying this next sentence but I'm really feeling desperately uncomfortable he was giving a speech about how young leaders can inspire other people and he gave a shout out to four people and I was one of them I'm really you can tell I'm really really can tell you're going to be really

really proud of that because he is kind of the US president I know I know but just like when someone gives you the phone call when you get a phone call and someone says hi I'm calling from the White House I sung the West Wing theme tune um and put the phone down because I knew I was going to see him speak so you hung up on the white house yeah yeah that was a happy ending because he didn't take offense the thing is that then someone emailed me and said i'm trying to get hold of you from the white house and i looked at it and genuinely still thought it was my mate having a bit of a wind-up so but actually i'm going to now analyze why i'm behaving like this part of the thing that i felt was that i wasn't sure i was ready for that profile and the other

bit is that actually as a campaigner, I don't do things alone. I think there's something very interesting about online spaces and being individualistic. I co-direct with Robin Boozy and Rachel Nye. The way that it works is because we've got three of us supporting one another. And when we talk about public spaces, we're talking about individuals going into them,

but actually it's communities. They are often the people that ask, is this accessible for me for when I've got too exhausted to ask the question okay and when you're asking about how do we make change and the internet I think one of the most powerful things that I've seen happen it's been people saying I will not go there unless you can go if you look around the room you ask the question who's not in the room who's not in this space and then you ask the question why is someone not in this space I know that my existence in a space is not dependent on myself it's dependent on the people around me as well okay bridget what do you

think without online spaces i wouldn't have had a career i can do very little beyond like writing and chatting and the the online world has given me that opportunity to do that especially a platform like twitter that for you know for all of its flaws um I got to it very early at the beginning of 2009 I was followed by people I guess with a higher profile and that gave me a profile and so I know for a fact that loads of the sort of cosigns from other people from journalists or artists or writers that I got from Twitter being like this girl is saying something interesting is the reason that I would write for x y or z publications and so I'm really grateful for that on the other hand I do find it really interesting looking at online spaces I find it particularly interesting to see

how so much of the violence enacted online is brought back to the physical sphere it's always rape threats isn't it and that's brought back to the to the fears we have in physical space okay so you think that there's a correlation yeah i feel like it's not but it can be literal too as well i mean i know people who've been trolled for example and they've had a gang send um dozens of pizzas to the you know what they think is their address right because they find it online and they dox them as it's called you know they find all their documentation and that's a way of kind of saying, like, we know where you live. And I think that's one of the things when people kind of go, oh, online abuse, poof, you know, like, why not switch your computer off?

It's not the real world. It's the, you know, not only does it follow you into the real world, but it follows you into your head and you walk around with that all the time. And I think that's a really important thing to remember, is that we carry spaces around inside us as well, I think. That's the important thing. I really don't want to dismiss anything that happens online because the online is part of the real world.

I find it really weird, the distinction between IRL and online because my world a lot of the time is online. I spend a lot of my time online. IRL being the acronym for in real life on the internet. Alongside the threats that can sometimes become real, a lot of people, you know, we talk a lot about the infighting within various groups there are so many groups but i actually find that really interesting and and i'm not necessarily hopeful because it is depressing but uh i think it's no surprise that

it's happening online more than it's happening in in in the real world in person because here is a space where everyone has the potential to have a voice or in in reality when i go to if i go to a meeting that's discussing feminism and someone says something that's racist i'm not going to stand up i'm not someone who's going to stand up and be like you are saying something racist um but online suddenly you do have that capacity and i and you know if you look at the twitter users in the united states in particular black american women are the highest users of twitter and i don't think that's a surprise because for so long, their voices have not been heard. And here they have this thing that is relatively easy to access and they can start speaking about

violence. I get invited to loads of Facebook groups specifically for women of colour, for black women, for young women, whatever. And they exist. There are people making their own online spaces. And I think we need those spaces. We need that place and those platforms. Shalina, I mean, you've written about Generation M and how beneficial digital culture has been to them. Who are they and what has it allowed them to do? This is a global group of Muslims around the world.

And they believe that being faithful and living a full modern life go hand in hand together and their emergence has really been precipitated by two huge global factors. The first is the shadow of September the 11th and the war on terror so this decision that's been put on them about whether they're going to be proud of their identity and express that fully which is what they've taken up but also also the internet, which has allowed them to connect with other Muslims around the world, particularly women. And for them, the internet has bypassed the traditional gatekeepers. And I think that's why it's been so powerful for women and for minorities like Muslims, because we know in the UK, for example, that black and minority ethnic communities make up something like 8% of journalists and the creative economy and that's really how our culture is developed.

We know that women are hugely underrepresented in those kind of influential sectors so when you have the internet and my own background is very similar I set up a blog when blogs were the thing back in the day when suddenly you could write something and you didn't have to go to 10 different editors and ask them if they would publish it and then they wouldn't publish it because you had no credibility because you were a woman and you were from an ethnic minority and you were trapped in the cycle of not having credibility so you couldn't say anything which meant nobody knew what you want to say and suddenly here came the internet and you could say whatever you wanted and then other people could read it and you can just completely bypass some of the institutional structures that stopped you from expressing that

and what I have found really enjoyed about young Muslim women on the internet are things like the social media campaigns and their humor and the fact that they are making space for themselves so one of my favorite examples was when Donald Trump attacked the mother of the Muslim war veteran who was killed in military service and said that she probably didn't say anything, as all of us would know, because she was a grieving mother, and said she probably wasn't allowed.

And Muslim women responded with the hashtag CanYouHearUsNow, talking about all the incredible things that they were doing. In the UK, there was an alleged comment by the then Prime Minister David Cameron saying that Muslim women were traditionally submissive. And I was part of a social media campaign of women, you know, showing themselves skiing at the top of mountains, teaching women how to speak, you know, several different languages. And I think the internet has done an amazing thing to allow the expression of voice. And for me, that is the key to how we change the discussion about women in the public space, is getting women to ensure that they have a voice and they actually express it. Becca, what do you think? It feels like it comes back to the questions that you think

planners of physical spaces should be asking themselves yes definitely and something around the responsibility of tech companies because what you said about about being heard not listened to I was at the reclaim the internet event and something that I found probably one of the more shocking things I've seen in my life was I was very generously put on the young persons panel I'm. And I was there with people from Girlguiding. And I watched, they had a big screen behind us with the reclaim the internet hashtag. And I watched what I presume men and some women trolling 16, 17-year-old, 18-year-old young women who were talking about how difficult they found it

to be in public spaces, how they found it difficult to be women of colour in public spaces. One was actually reduced to tears and they mocked these young women and they and for me I just thought it was one of these rare moments where the internet and physical space collided and earlier in the day someone from a tech company had said that they didn't want to create lists of banned people or people who were trolls because they wouldn't want to create lists of banned people or people who were trolls because they wouldn't want to ruin their lives they wouldn't want it to haunt them for the rest of their lives that was the exact quote they wouldn't want it to haunt them for the rest of their lives

as if the trolling being sent pornographic images being told that they weren't meant to be on that platform wouldn't haunt those young women for the rest of their lives so I think that there is something but it's about, will those people that are designing the platform start to listen to the people that they need to start writing in? Helen, are the tech companies going to get their act together? I think they're becoming more sensitive to the idea that bad PR is a real problem for them. But until it starts hitting their bottom line, I don't think it is. We're in this phase of massive expansion where a couple of really big tech companies are you know are just worth so much money that really losing a few users

is kind of a pinprick to them and I think that's something that is about is it fundamentally about space is that it's always you're always there as a tenant as a as a woman or as a person of color whatever you know you are that's away from the default is that you know you're kind of there on sufferance and your entry to it could be revoked at any time and really this sort of sense you were to be kind of grateful to be allowed to be there at all and i think until you have radically changes in the ownership about the people who are making the decisions who are in the room making the decisions about the architecture of systems and of public space that won't change okay well unfortunately we're out of time we could go all night but thank you so much to my guests, Jalina Janmohamed, Helen Lewis, Becca Bunce, and Bridget Minimal.

Thank you very much indeed. I'm Sarah Treleaven. And for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this?

What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.