Woman's Hour - Mary Black, Monster trucks, Defining intersex

Episode Date: May 3, 2019

We discuss the impact of Margaret Thatcher for women in politics. We’ll be dipping into the Woman’s Hour archive and asking why she is still relevant for women politicians today. With Kemi Badenoch, MP for Saffron Walden and Vice Chair of the Conservative Party, and Ayesha Hazarika, former special adviser to Harriet Harman.In the wake of Caster Semenya’s legal battle we look at differences in sexual development (DSD). How are they identified, treated, and what impact do they have? Jane is joined by Cambridge University Emeritus Professor of Paediatrics, Ieuan Hughes, expert in paediatric endocrinology and DSD, and by Holly Greenberry, Founder and Lead Consultant at advocacy group Intersex UK.Mary Black is one of Ireland’s most famous singers. She was born in the 50s in Dublin and has seen the country change dramatically over the years. One of her most famous albums, A Woman’s Heart, was a collaboration with other Irish women musicians and is now twenty five years old. Last year the first song of the album called ‘Only a Woman’s Heart’ became an anthem for those wanting to change the law on abortion, appealing to a new generation of young women. Mary talks to our reporter, Siobhann Tighe.We speak to monster truck driver Brianna Mahon who drives 5 tonne vehicles, performing wheelies, donuts and big air stunts. She joins Jane to talk about life on tour, and surprising her hair salon clients with her second career.Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Helen Fitzhenry Interviewed guest: Kemi Badenoch Interviewed guest: Ayesha Hazarika Interviewed guest: Ieuan Hughes Interviewed guest: Holly Greenberry Interviewed guest: Brianna Mahon

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi there, this is Jane Garvey. Welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast, the 3rd of May 2019. Today you can hear from Mary Black, one of the best-loved singer-songwriters in Ireland, from Ireland, I should say, she's loved everywhere. We'll also discuss what it means to be intersex and the appeal of monster trucks.

But it was 40 years ago to the day at the general election that brought Margaret Thatcher to power. Everybody has got a view on Margaret Thatcher and her legacy. I will talk in a moment to a current Conservative MP. We'll also have a word with Aisha Hazarika, a former special adviser to Harriet Harman of the Labour Party. First of all, have a listen to two speakers, Rachel Reeves, Labour MP for Leeds West. Now, Rachel says that Margaret Thatcher effectively made her want to get into politics. You know, when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, I got involved in politics because I disagreed so profoundly with what she was doing to the country. And, you know, I still believe that the policies

that she pursued resulted in greater inequality and the decimation of some of our northern towns and cities. And we're still feeling the effect of that today. But, you know, I grew up knowing that I disagreed with what she was doing. But also, I didn't doubt that a woman could be prime minister and lead a country, because she was there doing that. And so, in a way, she politicised me, but she also perhaps empowered a generation of young women, including me, to think that these sorts of jobs were jobs that women could do and succeed at. She meant everything to me. She was the dominating figure under which I grew up. She was always a total model of strength and of achievability for a woman, for anybody.

I think she didn't just break down barriers for women in the Conservative Party. Of course, she came from a modest background and the grandees that she was fighting in the Tory party, who'd previously been the leaders of the party, were very much from an aristocratic background. And incidentally, I'd love to challenge the received wisdom that Margaret Thatcher was anti-feminist and hated bringing women on. That's simply not true. I know that myself and so many others that went into Parliament in the 2010 general election owe our campaigns and our seats to the fundraising power

of Margaret Thatcher specifically for women. Well that was Louise Mensch who was a Tory MP until 2012 before that at the view of Rachel Reeves. Interesting that Louise Mensch there takes issue with the notion that Margaret Thatcher didn't bring women on which is certainly a criticism that is still made of her of course and some would say an entirely legitimate criticism wasn't what Louise thought. Let's have a quick word with Ayesha Hazarika, former special advisor to Harriet Harman. She's now a studio in Glasgow. So how do Labour women talk about Margaret Thatcher and her legacy, Ayesha? Well, I very much agree with what Rachel Reeve said. I think Margaret Thatcher radicalised and vitalised a huge movement of women on the left, lots of fledgling Labour MPs, but also women across the trade union movement because of her legacy. You can sort of split Margaret Thatcher into two stories.

The first is of her personal ambition and her desire and her ambition to get to the top of politics, which she did at a time when politics was so male dominated. And she was such a kind of countercultural figure in terms of what we expected of women, that women would be yielding and compromising and compassionate. She was really none of those things. The famous spitting image vegetable sketch kind of sums her up but the second was her legacy and what she did with that power and 40 years on I think we all look back and think her legacy was quite sort of toxic certainly where I grew up in Scotland I grew up through an area which had been heavily de-industrialized steelworks like Ravenscraig

were closing down then we had the poll tax so I think what she did for women on the left was she taught us a lesson. Getting into politics as a woman was not just about getting to the top for yourself. It was what you did with that power to help other women. You talk about the women on the left. Some would say that women on the left have been marginalised to a degree by the men on the left. Labour still doesn't have any, well, it has had no Labour leader and certainly no Labour female prime minister. I would absolutely agree with that. It is a real tragedy and I think kind of shameful that the Labour Party, which used to stand for being the party for women and equality, doesn't have a

female leader. But what I would say is when those 100 female Labour MPs came in, in 1997, yes, even though they did not rise to the top themselves, although my boss Harriet Harman was acting leader twice, think about what they did for politics. They didn't just change the face of Parliament, they changed the agenda. They put things like childcare, domestic violence and services for women really on the political agenda in a way that they hadn't been done before. Is there still continued misogyny on the left? Yeah, I think there absolutely is. And I think what is quite tragic is in the last couple of years, we've seen a real rise in that. I think the Labour Party has got a blind spot when it comes to gender equality, because

we have historically, since 1997, had a lot of women in Parliament, more than all the parties added up. And because our track record on women has been quite good, it's almost been like, ha ha, box ticked. We've done that. We've done some radical things. We introduced all women shortlist. But the Labour Party does have to have a good hard look at itself. I really, really hope that we can our next leader will be a woman. You know, there are parts of the Labour Party and the trade union movement which are still very, very masculine, very, very macho, and the Labour Party and the trade union movement and the whole progressive movement has got to sort of practice

what it preaches on equality. There's a fair chance that the Lib Dems will have a female leader sooner rather than later. Then that really does leave Labour looking a bit daft, doesn't it, actually? Oh, absolutely. Look, at Labour Party conference, we had a meeting of women MPs and activists and members to say, look, you know, how do you think we could ever get a female leader? And someone actually shouted out as a bit of a joke, well,

maybe we should have an all women's shortlist at the next time we had a leadership contest. And then someone shouted out, I think Jeremy Corbyn would still win that so I think we we really have got a long long way to go I certainly am very very open about this and I really think it's something that the whole party and by the way not just women in the party men in the party as well but I do pivot back to the sense you know we started off talking about Margaret Thatcher and I think what she proves is it she proves is it's very important to get women at the top of politics, but it is also what they do with that power. OK, good place to end. Thank you very much, Aisha Hazarika, former special adviser to Labour's Harriet Harman. So high time we heard from a Conservative MP, Kemi Bajanok is here, MP for Saffron Walden, and a Vice Chair of the Conservative Party. Kemi, good morning to you. So Margaret Thatcher, you're not old enough

to remember her, are you? I am, I'm nearly 40. So she was Prime Minister before I was born. But I do remember her very, very well. And it's interesting listening to Rachel and Louise talk about their memories of her because of course, I grew up was born here but I grew up in Nigeria and one of the things that is often overlooked is the profound effects she had on women all over the world. I was a young girl in Africa I was a child in Africa and people knew who she was she was the iron lady and you know when you live in a system like that where the men control everything, it's not like here where we're arguing about percentages. The men control everything. And boys would say, women can't do this, women can't run anything.

And you just say two words to them, Margaret Thatcher, and they would shut up. To go back to Aisha's end point there, you can have all the power in the world, but then you have to wield it in the right way. Did she do the right thing by women in terms of promoting them and bringing them in? If you look at the statistics, no, she didn't. Oh, well, she did. I think people look at what she did in cabinet. But you also have to remember that she had to deal with the situation as she found it. And I'm very sympathetic to that, because my role as vice chair is actually for candidates. So it's looking for women. And she had to promote what she had available.

So people like Gillian Shepard, she promoted as minister. Edwina Currie, they were ministers. Fine, they didn't get into cabinet. No, only one woman made it as far as the cabinet. That was Baroness Young. And that wasn't for long. Given how few women were in the parliamentary party

at the time, something that wasn't her fault. If she just scooped all of them and tossed them into cabinet, she would have been accused of crass tokenism. Yeah. So you're out and about now looking for female candidates for the Conservatives. How many of them mentioned Margaret Thatcher? Almost all of them. It's interesting, Theresa May barely mentions her. I think she did quite a lot in the early days. Now Theresa May is running the country.

Yeah, but I mean, if she hasn't, Theresa May, as far as I'm aware, hasn't said anything about the 40th anniversary this week. I think Mrs May has quite a lot on her plate at the moment. I've heard her mention Margaret Thatcher many times. I have to say, I haven't heard her mention Margaret Thatcher many times. I don't think you will find a single woman in the Conservative parliamentary party who will not say Margaret Thatcher was a role model. And, you know, Ayesha talks about her not doing the right things with her power. This again is a left wing, it's a left wing complaint. For those of us on the right, what she did, the marketisation, the privatisation, for us, those are good things. If you disagree with those policies, you might feel that someone's

doing something wrong. But when it comes to the men, they don't get these sorts of accusations. People don't look at men in the same way that they look at women. I think because she was a woman, she faced a lot more criticism. Ayesha talked about the de-industrialisation. Harold Wilson closed many more mines than Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher took the heat. Ed Heath, for instance, was the one who had the milk policy. Margaret Thatcher took the heat for that. He was the Prime Minister. Yeah, I mean, there is no who had the milk policy. Margaret Thatcher took the heat for that. He was the prime minister. Yeah, I mean, there is no doubt just looking at some of the Twitter reaction we've had to this programme this week about our conversation surrounding Margaret Thatcher. She is treated very, very differently. And there is no doubt about that.

And some people on the left apparently are not aware of the misogyny they display when they talk about her. So I think that's an entirely reasonable point. But on the other hand, some of the young women, I imagine the vast majority of the young women you're looking at, who are thinking of being Conservative MPs will not have lived through the Thatcher era. They won't actually know of her prime ministerial days. I think that is a huge underestimation of how iconic she is. Mrs Thatcher is remembered almost as well as Winston Churchill. People didn't, I didn't, I didn't live through the Churchill days, but I know what he did. Okay, so what do they say? Do they compare her to Margaret Thatcher, to Winston Churchill? Yes, they do. Certainly, they say that she's the greatest peacetime prime minister. And that's

something both the men and the women say. So it isn't just the women, the men say this as well. And what do they point to when they say that? Oh, they point to, well, again, speaking from a centre-right perspective, they talk about the market reforms, the privatisation. But even what Mrs Thatcher said when she was asked what was her greatest achievement, new labour. And to be a politician, the biggest achievement you can have is to change the landscape completely in such a way that those who take over from you, from whatever party, aren't necessarily able to undo your reforms. That is something that is very significant and shouldn't be overlooked. So more women candidates is what you're after because there is no doubt,

well, most people would argue that with more women in Parliament, different laws will be introduced, that we'll see things from a different perspective. All women shortlist was something Aisha referenced. They work. They've worked for Labour. Why don't the Conservatives have them? Well, they work in the same way that filling a theatre with free tickets works. I've had to fight for every single seat that I stood for. And I won and I beat the men and I can hold my head up high. I don't think that that's something that many Labour women can say,

that the ground was cleared for them and made easy for them. We believe that everyone should win on merit and when you do get the job, then you can hold your head high. Well, that means, of course, that progress has been rather slower in your party than in Labour. It does mean that progress is slow, but I can point to someone like Fiona Onosanya, for example, who's just lost the first person ever to be recalled from Parliament. That again is, you know, a rushed

entry through all women's shortlist, just trying to make up a diversity quota. I think that that's something that can be very dangerous. It can backfire. And quite a lot of the people who I see who come through very quickly, then find politics a lot tougher than they thought it would be and then quit. It's a very, very difficult job to do. It certainly is. And you need to be able to go through that fire of getting selected first. I'm conscious we talked about misogyny on the left. Some of the treatment meted out to your prime minister by men in her party would also hint

at a certain level of misogyny within the Conservative Party too. I think there have been some things said by men in our party which are quite frankly regrettable. And the fact is misogyny is still a fact of life. Wherever you are in life, if you are a woman, it's something that you face. It's not something that's just on the left or the right. It's society in general. Would you like to be Prime Minister? No. Thank you, Kemi. Not for all the

tea and china. No, okay. Kemi Badenoch, who is the Tory MP for Saffron Walden. Good to have you on the programme. Thank you. 40 years since that general election in 1979. We're still looking for your opinions. I know we've had them anyway. At BBC Women's Hour on social media

or you can email the programme via our website. Really exciting times here because next week, on Tuesday of next week, we are live in Dublin. Really looking forward to that. There's so much to discuss in terms of Ireland and the way women's lives in Ireland are changing. Some huge changes have been made very recently, of course. There's no doubt the country is becoming more secular. Abortion, of course, has been legalised now up

to 12 weeks. There is a referendum about divorce coming up in Ireland very soon. So loads to talk about. That's Women's Hour Live in Dublin next Tuesday. And this gives us a brilliant opportunity to hear from Mary Black, who's one of Ireland's most famous singers. She was born in the 50s, so she's lived through so many of these dramatic changes in her country. Her album, A Woman's Heart, was made with other Irish women musicians, and incredibly perhaps it's now 25 years old. Last year, a track from it, Only a Woman's Heart, became an anthem for those who wanted to change the law on abortion. Siobhan Tai met Mary in Dublin

and Mary's just become a grandparent. Oh, it's amazing. I know people always say it, you know, but it's kind of, my life, both of our lives, myself and Jo. That's your husband? Yes. Through life you juggle and when you're a working mother any woman will relate to this.

You kind of, once they're minded and they're okay and they're fed and, you know, everything is moving around, you kind of, and life flies on. And suddenly they grow up and they're gone. And there was kind of a longing in me for a long time and a sadness about that because, you know, looking back, I kind of said, should I have spent more time with them? Could I have done this?

Could I, you know, do better or whatever? But once the grandkids came along, that all left me. It's like I have a new life to kind of throw myself into and they're part of my life. And my own mother was fantastic with my grandkids, my children, sorry, her grandkids. And so I want to be the same kind of grandparent, a hands-on grandparent.

So it's been wonderful. Did you rely on your mother a lot to help you with that juggling, especially when you were touring with your music and you had to leave Ireland because your popularity was increasing? Absolutely. My mother was fantastic. You know when you can leave them with someone you know who adores them and would do anything for them. Family help is so precious.

Not everyone has that. Exactly. So I was blessed in that way. So yeah, life is good. You've said in the past that folk music is in my blood. What do you mean by that? Well, growing up in inner city Dublin, not far from here actually, we had music

in the house all the time. My father came from Rathlin Island, so he would play fiddle and banjo and mandolin, would bring home friends to the house at week and a Sunday afternoon, say, and we'd have what we call a hoolie. And my mother loved to sing. She was a fantastic singer. And, you know, when the music is there so deeply kind of rooted, I think, you know, you take it all in by osmosis as well as it being in in your heart and singing for me was always the best place I could ever be as soon as I started to sing I felt

happy really happy but did you know it was going to earn you money never never in a million years I never thought like that at all I suppose we came from very humble beginnings but I suppose as my career grew and as as I began to sing more and more people, I noticed people would really hush as soon as I'd start to sing in a crowded pub or something. And something happened when I sang and I began to realise that there was more people liking what I did than just me and my family, you know. He lives on a farm in a wide open space. Take off your shoes, stay out of the rays. Lay down your head with a soft riverbed. Sonny always remembers the words Mama said. So we're in a Dublin hotel, sitting, having tea and coffee.

You might hear the forks and the knives in the background. As you've said, you grew up not too far away from here. That's right. A very different time, and I'm really interested in what was regarded as a woman's place back in the 1950ss stroke 1960s in Ireland because there was supposed to be a referendum about this clause in the Irish constitution to do with the woman's place in the home and the duties of a woman that's now been dropped but when you were growing up what was considered to be a woman's place in the home?

Well, my mother was the person who held it all together. As far as I'm concerned, she was the strongest of both my parents because she made sure that there was food on the table. And my father worked and always worked. But he would, you know, he'd go to the pub after work and have his few pints. Now, he wouldn't be a drunk or anything, thankfully, like that. But, you know, he had his thing and he would, you know, have his leisure time. My poor mother never had time to do anything like that. And she'd be struggling to make sure that there was food on the table for us.

And we had our school uniforms and everything we needed. And she did all that. And that was her place. Yeah. And even growing up myself, I had two older brothers, Michael and Shay. And I still had to do the women's jobs if she wasn't there. For example, when I was about eight or nine, she had to earn extra money by cleaning offices at night.

So I would take over the house, and I was in charge of making the tea and giving my father his dinner when he came in. So there was very much that. Did you question that? No, I thought it was great. I felt very important. Obviously, when I got a bit older, I began to think, well, that's not going to happen to me.

You know, I think it was changing. Ireland was changing a little bit in that regard, thank God. Socially? Socially, yeah. And, you know, I think we all realised that, you know, rearing children was something that both parents got involved in. And that's exactly what Joe did. And he would do all the changing of nappies and the things that women did.

And he was at the birth of my, you know, whereas my father, when my mother was having her babies, he'd put her in a taxi, send her down to the hospital and he'd go to the pub. We'd be minded by my granny or whatever. And he would be off celebrating while my mother was in the throes of labour. And everyone thought he was a great man. Oh, congratulations, Kevin, I hear your wife is having another baby. But the Constitution says, the Irish Constitution says, the state recognises that by her life within the home, a woman gives to the state a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.

And it goes on to say women should not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home. It's hard to believe. And it's not that long ago. Well, that was written in the 1930s. Yeah, exactly. So I know most of my mother's generation, once they got married, they had to leave work. They weren't allowed. I mean, if you were a civil servant, for example, you had to leave.

And a lot of places were like that. Once you got married, you're out. You don't work anymore. You stay at home and you look after your husband. Kind of barbaric, really. Let's move on to music, because a year ago I was here reporting on the lead up to the referendum about abortion. And I was speaking to a group of people not far from here actually in a pub called Whelan's they were having a discussion they were talking about the pros and

cons of changing the law around abortion and one young woman said how important one of your songs A Woman's Heart was it had become an anthem to the people who wanted to repeal the 8th. How did you feel about that becoming an anthem? Because in a way it's becoming politicised. My heart is low, my heart is so low As only a woman's heart can be I suppose it's definitely a woman's heart can be I suppose it's definitely a woman's song. And it was a cry.

My heart is low, my heart is so low, as only a woman's heart can be. A woman's heart can know Restless I And I think a woman's Heart, the lyrics of it, spoke to young people particularly and kind of gave solace in a way. And I don't know if it was an anthem for the Repeal the Eight, but it definitely, when we did a big, big concert

in the Olympia Theatre here in Dublin, I was on the bill and I came straight out and started singing A Woman's Heart. And I was on the bill and I came straight out and started singing A Woman's Heart and I was blown away, I never heard anything like the singing the excitement, the love the joy, I dedicated

it to the Indian lady who died giving in pregnancy because of the fact that they wouldn't take the child away, Savita Halapanava. And, you know, she was a doctor herself. She knew what was coming, and it was just so sad.

I dedicated the Woman's Heart song to her, and the whole theatre just went absolutely crazy. And, you know, they sang with love, with passion, with pain, with everything. They sang every word of that song with me. And they're young, young people. They were young people at this concert, you know. It's only a woman. It's only a woman.

What do you think has been so significant about the last 12 months for Irish women? 12 months ago, nearly, we had the referendum about abortion just coming. We've got a referendum about liberalising divorce laws. What's your feel about where women are in Ireland now? I think women have found a voice and have been standing up for themselves for quite a long time. And I think it's, you know, it's an equal world. Well, we hope it is or we hope it will become one. Fantastic to hear from Mary Black.

And we should say, of course, that the song Only a Woman's Heart, fact fans will know, was a collaboration between Mary Black and Eleanor McAvoy. And a lot of what Mary talked about, well, we'll revisit some of those subjects in Woman's Hour's live show from Dublin on Tuesday. We're actually in the very grand setting of the Royal Irish Academy, which sounds far too good for me. But anyway, that's where we'll be on Tuesday morning, live in the Irish capital just after 10 o'clock. We have a live phone-in as well on Bank Holiday Monday. This week, actually, we have talked about childhood obesity and a possible link to poor mental health.

That was on Monday. Then on Tuesday, I talked to the comedian and podcaster Sophie Hagen about her book Happy Fat, which was about her approach to her body shape and her positivity about it and how she's come to that positivity. So on Monday, we thought we'd ask how you develop a healthy attitude to food and, I guess, to your body shape as well. How can we create a healthy attitude to food in the home?

How do you go about that? So that's a live phone-in. Make sure you're with us on Bank Holiday Monday morning for that. Now, the Olympic 800 metres champion Kasta Semenya has been told that she's got to take medication to reduce her testosterone levels if she wants to carry on competing in her event. On Wednesday of this week, she lost her legal case against Athletics Governing Body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, although the Court of Arbitration for Sport did agree that the IAAF policy was discriminatory to athletes with differences in sexual development, DSDs, people like Semenya. So what do we mean when we talk about differences in sexual development? We'll talk in a moment to the Cambridge University Emeritus Professor of Paediatrics, Ian Hughes, who is an expert in paediatric endocrinology and DSD.

And you'll also hear from our first guest, Holly Greenbury, who's the founder and lead policy consultant of advocacy group Intersex UK. Holly, good morning to you. What made you want to set up intersex uk well thank you for having me on the show the first reason um really was because we we heard through support groups that parents were really struggling that children were experiencing the same traumas through medical interventions that had been experienced decades before so there was a need to actually raise the issue and look at changing the model of care.

And that's something that we've focused on through consultancy and training and support work over the last 10 years with a variety of colleagues. You talk about medical interventions. These would happen when exactly? Well, I mean, it's difficult to be exact. If a variation of someone's body is recognized early in their childhood or infancy,

then depending upon that variation, an irreversible intervention can occur. So that could be at months old or actually there's pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. So looking at the fetus, looking at the embryos, and actually deciding whether or not it's a valid birth, a valid life, if there is a difference of sex development. We use the term intersex as an umbrella term, and synonymously, as with the UK governmental departments, we use the term variation of sex characteristics also.

We don't use the term DSDd as it's deemed by all barring medics as being pathologizing what do you mean by pathologizing in that context so it creates a sense of medical emergency it creates uh it's a medical term when in the vast majority of cases a lot of infants and young children who are recognized to have variations of sex characteristics are actually healthy there's just a difference in the way their body looks. So what's important is to recognise that if there isn't a medical necessity, an urgent life-saving medical necessity for surgery or other harmful practices, as many term it, then we just need to wait. Recognise that kids can be kids, grow up healthily, be valued as the little boys and girls that they are.

And when they're old enough to understand the consequences of irreversible cosmetic procedures and non-essential medical procedures, then we can ensure that they're well prepared to make the decision for themselves. So it's fundamentally about bodily integrity and bodily autonomy. Ian Hughes, can we, just from you, the two different terms, DSD and intersex, which one do you use regularly or do you use both and do you understand Holly's concerns? years. And the medical profession back about 15 years ago responded to concern by families and parents of children with intersex that they didn't like that term. They found it actually pejorative. And so the health professionals got together and responded to that to see what they could come up with that was a better form of terminology. Now, the term DSD, which stands for,

actually originally stood for disorders of sex development. Now, the word disorder was not something that was favored by many people. So that change, if you like, evolved to differences or variations or diversity. It didn't matter really what, they were now talking about semantics. But it's an umbrella term. It's not a diagnosis, it just sets the scene for a situation that may or may not require, as Holly said, may or may not require intervention at some stage. So that's, and it certainly is used mainly by the medical profession. So it's a standard terminology. Now, if you just look at any textbook of any chronology now, it's standard fare within that.

The problem then, of course, is that medics have their own language and lay people don't often understand that language. And that's a major problem in medicine throughout. This is nothing to do particularly with this situation we're talking about today. Doctors and nurses, we are all guilty of using a lingo that is not familiar to the non-specialist. Can I just ask you? We have to concentrate on that and we are doing our best to do that. Yeah, we are. And we need to do it, but without causing offence to anybody, which is the most important thing.

The most basic situation I want to talk about is the child is born. Why would questions begin to be asked about the child's biological sex? What might make people in the room ask questions? Well, I mean, normally when children are born, it's an instantaneous observation that they've got a baby boy or a baby girl. Increasingly these days, they might even know that obviously well before the baby's born. But let's take this sort of usual situation, baby's born, boy, girl. Now then, put yourself in a situation where you look at the irrelevant anatomy and you cannot tell whether that is a boy or a girl. And that situation does occur. It occurs probably about one in 5,000 births in this country.

We have about 700,000 births in the UK. So you can do the mathematics in terms of how many cases like that. It's about 200 a year. Now, it's very rare, but you imagine how distressing that can be for the parents when they have a situation that they literally don't know in the delivery room,

the staff don't know either, whether the baby is a boy or a girl. Therefore, you cannot just rest on your laurels and say, well, let's see what happens. Obviously, the questions are asked. We have to try and find a cause. And sometimes we don't find a cause.

But increasingly now with very sophisticated techniques, we are improving that yield of finding the exact diagnosis. And moving forward, Ian, decisions might then be made about that child, over which the child has absolutely no control whatsoever. And these may very well be decisions which will define the course of the rest of their life. Correct. And I think that is the challenging part, because you have to in the society we live in, in general, you have to decide whether you're going to grow up as a boy or grow up as a girl at that stage and that discussion has to take place with the parents and it's only the parents who can decide about that the health professionals can provide the information but the decision rests firmly as long as they're fully in possession of the correct facts.

It's the parents who make the decision and whatever decision is taken, whether you might agree with it or not, you have to support the families with that process. All right. Which is where I want to bring Holly back in. Holly, this is your area of concern, isn't it? Absolutely. So I'd like to take point with the the numbers that Professor Hughes raises. Actually if you encompass all the variations of sex characteristic development, not just the ambiguities that are seen at birth, you're looking at a nearer one in 200 to 300 cases of live births. So if you look at hypospadias as a variation of sex characteristic.

What does that mean? Hypospadias is where the urethral opening of the penile shaft won't necessarily exit the body at the tip of the shaft. It may enter partway down or in more severe cases, there may be some alteration in the shape of the penis itself. So those children also go under quite invasive and irreversible surgeries and typically we hear from many parents who absolutely understandably feel an anxiety and uncertainty and panic, but actually once they've reached out for support, once they've met other people who've experienced these surgeries,

many of them have decided to wait and to hold. And actually one of our key consultants who works for Intersex UK has a similar scenario she's faced that with her child and that's something that was absolutely gobsmacking in layman's terms so I think it's really important to recognize actually also that parents can't with any child determine the lifelong outcomes of that child's desire whether they um what their sexuality is going to be in some cases what their gender is going to be or indeed what what's really needed is to understand what the outcomes of these surgical and other harmful practices can do to a child such as vaginal dilations on a seven or an eight-year-old girl,

clitorectomies on a child. This happens in this country. I think we need to reach a stage where we are just, this is to you both, very briefly if you can, just to be more sophisticated in our thinking. It isn't as binary as we might have been led to expect, is it, Ian? Well, I just want to come in there with some of the things that Holly said. I focused on the situation that I described.

I agree with you that if you look at the variations from the very mild to the very severe, it is about 1 in 300, but I didn't bother to mention that. I was focusing on the really here and now situation that I described. All right. And I think Holly is being a bit disingenuous

in saying about the surgery. All right, let me put that very briefly back to Holly. What do you say, Holly? So what I would say is when you speak to parents whose children have undergone certain surgical procedures in the less important areas as being suggested, what we have to remember is it's the outcome and the sensations and the traumas that those children experience and those lived testimonies that families bring to support groups and peer groups that actually is where the truth of the matter lies. We have a parent recently who spoke to us about the fact her 10-year-old child almost every holiday has to go to the hospital for further surgeries because the surgeries have failed and how this child screams and screams and is terrified to go into surgery so what we have to recognize is this isn't just

a group of activists who are making claims that this is irrelevant i i myself have lived with intersex variations and have experienced the traumas and have the lived testimony of that but this is also coming from the un it's coming from the UN. It's coming from the United Nations. It's coming from the Council of Europe and many other medics. It's such a complicated area. And actually, the situation involving Casta Semenya and the judgment this week illustrates just how far we have to travel on this. It's still a very, very complex area that we don't appear to have really reached a final decision on. But thank you both very much for your expertise this morning, Holly Greenberry and Ian Hughes. Monster trucks is a phenomenon that may be completely new to many of you. It's not my current number one hobby, I have to say, but I'm about to be converted

by Brianna Mahn, who's a monster truck driver. Brianna, good morning to you. Good morning. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm very well, thank you. Now, you better just describe your professional life as a professional driver of monster trucks. Sock it to you. Good morning. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm very well, thank you. Now, you better just describe your professional life as a professional driver of monster trucks. Sock it to me. You know, I get to travel the world and introduce all these new markets to our big, loud machines. They are 12 foot tall, 12 foot wide, and they're 1500 horsepower. And it's honestly like something you've never experienced before

um we do racing and jumps and tricks and backflips and we there's carnage and we run over crushed cars and it's uh it's definitely a whole different world well i know you're in the uk you're going to be appearing in manchester in cardiff and in coventry um i want to hear about the noise and the smell and the intoxicating atmosphere let me into your world um well we run off uh methanol alcohol so i kind of i mean i guess the closest thing i could uh refer to is like uh like jet fuel in a sense you know how that plane has like a specific smell and our trucks kind of do too and uh the noise it is is very very loud we always encourage uh you know ear protection whenever you come to a show. I mean, I even wear ear protection inside of the truck as well. But it is it's an adrenaline rush.

You are you're an athlete, aren, you know, try to watch what I eat. And it's really evolved over the years of what you would think a big monster jam truck driver would be, you know, this big burly guy. And then now we've got, you know, I'm a little five foot tall female. So we've really grown with the times and really refined being athletes. Yeah. Now, I know you are actually relatively rare. There aren't that many women doing what you do. We have discussed on this program, the W Series, which I think starts today, actually. What do you think about that? It's a kind of female alternative to F1, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, we are a little bit different. We get to compete alongside the men. We don't have a women's division. And is that right as far as you're concerned? Yes. I come from male-dominated motorsports.

I raced professional motocross, which is dirt bikes, and I've raced dirt track racing with race cars and stuff. So we had women's divisions, but we also were allowed to run with the men as well, which helped form me into the athlete that I am because I feel like they're two completely different things. But in Monster Jam, being allowed to run alongside the men on the same track, winning the same championships, running the same equipment, it's really awesome to see that grow with the women over the years

and to watch the little girls get so interested in it and just really be as big of a fan as one of the little boys. What is your favorite stunt? I'm known as the of the little boys. What is your favorite stunt? I'm known for I'm known as the queen of car or the I'm sorry the princess of carnage the queen of carnage was Medusa but I love to do backflips and every show I usually bust out a backflip you know here in Manchester it'll be a little different it's a very small arena and things like that so not in every venue but that's one of my favorite tricks.

Okay, and you'll definitely be doing it, will you? No, I will not be doing a backflip in Manchester. It's a very small venue and we actually, it's not going to have any dirt in it. It's going to be a totally different type of show. So it's definitely a first for us and I think it'll be amazing for the fans.

All right, I'm sure they'll enjoy it. And you do wear safety clothing, don't you? Oh, yes, we are. You're fully togged up. Top of the line when it comes to safety equipment from head to toe, fire suits, neck restraints, helmets, gloves. I mean, they really put the top dollar into our safety.

Brianna Mahan, who drives monster trucks, and you can see her doing exactly that, although it's a shame that she won't be able to do the backflip because our arenas aren't big enough, or at least Manchester isn't. You see, another thing the Americans do bigger than us, arenas. I can't, well, I drive a Mini and some would say I don't do that particularly well. So I think it'll be a while before I drive a monster truck. Certainly it'd be a while before I drive them professionally. I think that can be acknowledged and understood. Right, let's go over some of your thoughts on the issues in the programme. Margaret Thatcher is just, you can't say her name without getting a reaction, I have to say. Amy came up with the old classic. I asked my dad as a five year old girl if men could ever be prime minister. This is probably the most positive thing she did for me. Annie, I've got no time for Margaret Thatcher and what she did.

I never needed her to show me what women could achieve. But we should remember she did what she did because she could. People voted for her and her party's policies. Yeah, that is undeniable. Three general elections she won. Tony Blair won three general elections too. And people are rude about him, aren't they? This is from Elle. I was five when she was voted in as prime minister. I drew her a picture of her at number 10 and I sent it in. I got a personal letter on House of Parliament headed paper from her secretary thanking me for my letter and advising me that Margaret Thatcher had very much liked my picture. It always stuck with

me. She was a tough lady. And as a five-year-old girl, she demonstrated to me that women should and could aim high. Chris did not enjoy the item. Ghastly. Ghastly package, says Chris, on female political leadership. Presenter posits that the Lib Dems may soon have a woman leader and that will make Labour look very silly. The Tories got a woman leader, you numbskull. Does that make us look very silly? Hashtag BBC bias. Numbskull. I'll take that. It's all right. It's actually marginally pleasanter than some of the things people call me. From Simon, the discussion on the iconic status of Margaret Thatcher

seems to presume that she was the first woman prime minister. Well, we didn't say she was because we know she wasn't. She was the first UK female prime minister. But anyway, Simon goes on. This seems very narrow and UK-centric. What about Sirimavo Bandaranaike in Sri Lanka, Golda Meir in Israel or Indira Gandhi in India, all of whom were world-famous heads of state

before Margaret Thatcher. Did she ever mention them? And of course there were others and have been since, few of whom owe much, if anything, to Margaret Thatcher. Good to know that there's general consensus that Mary Black is a good thing. So that's something we can pretty much agree on. David, I first heard Mary Black singing Columbus

and I've never looked back. Having seen her live on many occasions, she has fulfilled my musical wishes. Not only is she a lovely person, not only that, but she's a lovely person too, says David, with an amazing autobiography. Thank you for giving me such happiness. It was Siobhan Tai, our reporter,

who did that conversation, did that interview with Mary, and it was very enjoyable, I agree. Sarah and Alan got together to email to say, just great to hear Mary Black. You interviewed her 25 years ago, and that broadcast introduced Irish music to us. We subsequently chose her track Summer Sent You as our first song at our wedding in 1994 and all of our children have grown up to be fantastic musicians. Well there we are you see it just proves if you play the right song as the first song at your wedding when you dance that will necessarily mean that your children will be great musicians. Yeah I'm not sure whether the theory carries through, but you can let us know your thoughts on what song you danced to

or attempted to dance to at your wedding. We'd love to hear about that. I actually, by mistake, thought I was getting the music of Mary Black yesterday when I fiddled about on my phone and got Mary Coughlin instead. But it was a reminder to me of how many brilliant brilliant irish singer-songwriters there are and if you like mary black you'll like mary cockland so look her up as well two fantastic performers right looking forward to the live phone in bank holiday monday morning this is all about healthy eating how you can inject a love of healthy eating into your children

how do you do that? What do you say? Does it necessitate you doing loads of from scratch cooking? And how do you fit that into your life? I really want your experiences, actually, what you do, what you're able to do in the home in terms of cooking and getting across those important healthy eating messages. So that's Bank Holiday Monday. That's a phone in.

And then on Tuesday, we are live at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. So that's a programme about Ireland and all the changes there in terms of women and how they can live their lives. So I'm really looking forward actually to next week, which is an extraordinarily positive position to be in. Hope you enjoy the Bank Holiday weekend and spend time with us, if you can, on Monday, just after 10. Oi, you. While you're here, have a listen to this, would you? Forest 404.

An environmental thriller for BBC Sounds. I'm so sorry. Meet Pan. Oh, I did. She lives a few centuries from now, after a data crash that wiped out most records of life. So when she finds an old recording of a rainforest, she has no idea what it is.

Forest 404, nine part thriller, nine part talk, nine part soundscape. Starring Pearl Mackie, Tanya Moody and Pippa Haywood with theme music by Bonobo. Subscribe now on BBC Sounds. Subscribe now on BBC Sounds. Subscribe now. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was 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.