Woman's Hour - 'Queens Of Sheba' challenge misogynoir- where sexism meets racism

Episode Date: November 15, 2019

Jane speaks to director, Jessica Kaliisa about her play, Queens of Sheba, inspired by the four black women turned away from a London nightclub in 2015 for being “too dark-skinned and overweight”. On stage next week at the Battersea Arts Club in London, actor, Tosin Alabi, joins the discussion of how the lives of a group of friends were changed forever when confronted with misogynoir - where sexism meets racism.Chile’s worst unrest in decades has transformed into a nationwide uprising demanding dramatic changes to the country’s economic and political system. We hear from Chilean journalist, Constanza Hola, about why people are taking to the streets to fight for equality. Women are taking a significant role in the social movement at all levels. We find out what their particular demands are? It’s well-known that the Roman Catholic Church is struggling to find new priests, especially in Europe and America. Sexual abuse scandals haven’t helped. But for some years, there’s been a movement to allow women to be priests. Some of the campaigners try and make themselves heard at the Vatican. Last month they staged a protest in Rome when bishops discussed the church in South America. From the 20s phrase ‘covered wagon’ to the Mumsnet acronym ‘AIBU’ (Am I Being Unreasonable?), women have always been creators and users of slang. We discuss the history of women and slang from the flappers to the Mumsnetters with lexicographer Jonathon Green and linguistics PhD student, Lotte Verheijen.Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Constanza Hola Interviewed Guest: Jessica Kaliisa Interviewed Guest: Tosin Alabi Interviewed Guest: Miriam Duignan Interviewed Guest: Soline Humbert Interviewed Guest: Jonathon Green Interviewed Guest: Lotte Verheijen Photographer: Ali Wright

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. This is the Woman's Hour podcast. Good morning to you. Today, why women are out on the streets protesting in Chile. We'll look at a play called The Queens of Sheba, which is something that really challenges misogynoir. That's on the programme today. We're asking, too, when will the Catholic Church have women priests?

And this is really interesting, women and slang. We'll look at the influence of Mumsnet, social media, the LGBTQ community and flappers back in the day. Did you know they coined a fantastic phrase, dingle dangler. If you're confused, it means not what you're thinking possibly, although that's probably me judging everybody else by my own low standards. It actually means a clingy man. Women and slang and what the 21st century is doing to slang on Woman's Hour this morning. First to South America, to Chile, where mass protests and strikes began around about a month ago, partly because of a planned rise in metro fares. It's the worst unrest in that country for decades and women are playing a significant role in metro fares. It's the worst unrest in that country for decades and women

are playing a significant role in the social movement taking place there at all levels of it. Overnight actually there's been a development. The authorities in Chile have offered a cross-party agreement on a new constitution. Let's talk to Constanza Jolla who is a Chilean journalist. Constanza, good morning to you. Good morning Jane Jane. First of all, tell us what happened last night. Well, last night, after a whole process, as you said, of a month, the government plus all the parties, well, most of the parties, agreed what they call the Agreement for Peace. And they decided to set the foundation for a new constitution. Why? Because the constitution

that rules Chile was written under Pinochet rule. And he was a dictator. He was a dictator in the 70s and 80s. And the current constitution, what it does is consolidate inequality. And inequality was in the centre of the protests, which started with the students jumping the barriers of the tube because of this increase in the fare. But that was a way of saying, stop this inequality. So you raise the fare of the tube, but you don't raise taxes for rich people. I need to say, I think that Chile is not actually one of the poorest countries in South America, but it is definitely one of the most unequal, isn't it? Exactly. And that's the point that internationally people see Chile as a very stable country with

a very stable economy. But inside the country, people don't feel that. People don't think that that stability, that money, that wealth is coming to their houses, like middle class, working class. They feel that it is. It's not a feeling. It is. In numbers, it's a big inequality.

So the richest 20% of the country gets 75% of the wealth. So that's why this was a boiling thing that ended in the streets, not only with the students, but the whole society. Millions of people went to the streets and protest. And women were an important part of that. And they, for example, this is a very typical thing, they went to the street

with their pans and pots and started banging them with wooden spoons. And that's something that was massive. Of course, there were riots. Of course, there were violence. And people had been killed. People had been killed, on the other hand, but mostly it was a peaceful protest. People were killed and there are

allegations, very bad allegations of human right violations, but mostly it was a peaceful protest. Well, you've said that women are playing a part. Clearly, they are. Prominent women are playing a part. I just want people to listen to this. This is a Chilean comedian, Natalia Valda Benito. I suppose you could sort of say that she's Chile's answer to Miranda Hart, but she's definitely a household name. Here she is. Women have been constantly interpreted by men in any field, comedy, cinema, drama, literature.

Our voices have always been relegated. But it is time for women to speak out and take the front line, because there is a need to listen to women and our ideas. The scene has changed a lot. There are many women doing this job. People want to hear what we have to say. Our voices are valued now. I like to portray women and diversity.

Although Chile is now a diverse country, Chileans are very scared of diversity. Through comedy, I try to show different ways of being. I try to interpret the ones who have never been considered before, like women. And I refer to the women who are interpreted. That is Natalia Valdobanito. And there was also an incident worth reporting at the Latin Grammys. This is in Las Vegas last night. What happened there? Well, Mon Laferte, who is a massive Latin American star, she is Chilean, she won a Grammy. She won a Grammy. She won the Best Alternative album. And after the ceremony, she went to the red carpet and opened her coat.

She was naked and showed a message that said, in Chile, people are tortured, raped and killed. And this is because she has become one of the main voices of the protests. And she cancelled a tour for going to Chile to the slums and bring people. She brought psychologists and lawyers and help to the poorest people who have been alleged abused by the police in this protest. We should say, people may well have forgotten, as in fact I had, that Chile has had a female president. Bachelet was a president relatively recently. Did life for women change at all during that time?

What kind of decisions did she make? Well, she made a lot of laws and she tried to improve the life of women. Let's not forget that Chile is still a very macho country where women are still murdered, are still raped. You mean domestic violence? Domestic violence, exactly. And the main thing that President Bachelet did is the abortion law. In Chile, it's still illegal to have an abortion in case of rape. Until then, they couldn't. They couldn't. They couldn't rape if their lives were in danger or if the fetus was inviolable.

And those are the only three reasons why you can have an abortion in Chile now. And they were thanks to Bachelet government. Thank you very much for telling us about that. And it will be interesting to see what changes in the light of the announcement overnight. But thank you very much indeed for the time being. Perhaps we'll come back to Constanza. Constanza who is a Chilean journalist currently based in London. Thank you very much for your input this morning. Now, Queens of Sheba is a play. It's by Jessica L. Hagen. It was inspired by the experience of four black women turned away from a nightclub in London back in 2015 for being, and I'm quoting here, too dark skinned and overweight. The play has been on a UK tour. It's currently in Warwick.

Next week, it is back in London at the Battersea Arts Club. So how were the lives of a group of friends changed forever when confronted with what many people will understand to be misogynoir, the point at which sexism meets racism and women of colour suffer terribly as a result of this? The director of the play is Jessica Kalisa. Welcome, Jessica. Thank you. Hello.

And joining us from Warwick, where she's performing in the play, and she'll be performing later, is Tosin Alabi. Tosin, good morning to you. Morning. Great. Loud and clear from Warwick in what seems to be an echo chamber of sinister proportions. But we'll plough on with it. I think we'll start with an extract from the play.

Here we go. Yes! I don't it. I think we'll start with an extract from the play. Here we go. Yes! I knew it. I knew it. These girls, they just don't tick enough. Sorry. They need to be a different class. Bodies need to come like an hourglass. Sorry.

Sorry, but your squad just made right. Look, Taylor, you're to come back on a Batman night. Sorry. Look here, I ain't being funny but your team are too dark honey. Sorry. Sorry, not sorry. Sorry? If I cry twice a day, will my skin eventually fade? Or will the dark black on my face still remain? Can I denounce my shade like you who denounce the faith?

When you realise Jesus wasn't really born that way? If I cry twice a day will my skin eventually fade? If I cry twice a day will my skin eventually fade? Or will the dark black on my face still remain can I denounce my shade like you who denounced the faith when you realized Jesus wasn't

really born that way that was an extract from the play Queens of Sheba and just bring us up to speed with exactly what's happening there Jessica that is the cast trying to get into the nightclub and being turned away yes yes so that's the point in the play where the girls have gone to the nightclub and they are turned away by the bouncers and yeah them expressing how they feel about that this is a real incident I know we talked about it on this program some people might have forgotten

was it ever fully explained um yes in some ways um not necessarily from the perpetrator um but what had happened is these four black women had gone to a nightclub and one of them knew the promoter um and um he had been messaging her and they'd had somebody on the the door um and what had happened is the person on the door if i remember correctly had told him that these women aren't fit to come into the nightclub. So he explained to the girl that, I'm sorry, your friends can't come in because I think two of them were too dark and too overweight. And what this girl did is she screenshotted those messages and then sent them out publicly. And that's how the incident came to light and how everyone got to see, you know, what actually goes on. Right. And Tosin, when you're performing that part of the play, what is it like?

Does it get a different reaction every night? The reaction has been a bit mixed. Some people receive it. Some people it goes over their heads. We've had people even apologize um not necessarily for that scene but just misogynoir on a whole and you know the way they've been conditioned to think and the fact that they've done things in the past that they didn't know that were offensive um so yeah we've had mixed we've had mixed um reviews from the audience yeah when you say it goes over their heads,

are you saying some people just don't believe that it could happen? I think people are just stuck in their own bubble in society. You're a product of your environment, so wherever you're in, that's what you experience. So if you don't have, you know, black friends or you don't interact with black people, you think that it doesn't happen, one, or two, you're just oblivious to it.

So we have people who see the performance and they're like that was an amazing performance but they get nothing from it just a great performance and that's okay because we're not forcing you to get a message from it but then there's some people who actually relate to it who sometimes we didn't oh no i think we've lost our line to warwick um right we'll plow on with jessica because the play is about it features that incident but it's also about a lot more Oh no, I think we've lost our line to Warwick. Right, we'll plough on with Jessica. Because the play is about, it features that incident, but it's also about a lot more. So tell me what else is covered by the play. Right, so, well, just like the play itself, so it's not necessarily based on that incident, but more the conversation that came out after it, which was a topic of misogynoir and that this is a real thing that happens. And it happens in the workplace. it happens when we go on dates um it happens by so many people

um and it talks uh queens of sheba talks about all those different experiences and not only what happens overtly like being turned away from a nightclub but the sort of um microaggressions that people might say or you know walking down the street and somebody just puts their hand in your hair or what do you mean because of course that has never happened to me yeah nor will it ever happen yeah but it does happen yeah and has happened to you most definitely I've walked down the street I've been in Iceland actually and a guy literally just put his hands in my hair and just said oh my gosh this is so amazing and I thought okay but you're in my personal space and it's like we're not pets we're not you know things that you can just stroke and it's just sort of I think sometimes it's uh either

a fetishization or just not an acknowledgement that we're still human beings you know I know you know we're different um black people are know, I know, you know, we're different. Black people are different to people who are raised in this country. But it is understanding that even though we look different, we are still humans and we still deserve that level of respect and personal space. Yeah. Tosin, I know you're back with us now. Do you try to do, do you bring in your own experiences to your performance in the play? I think we have to. That's only the way the play can do justice if we bring our own experiences.

And I think it's things that we still deal with now. Like we've I've come off stage and had an audience member tell me, was that all of your hair? And I'm like, yeah, why wouldn't it be? Like this perception that black people can't grow long hair, we must have short hair. So, yeah, it's been... I guess it also is slightly dependent on whereabouts in the country you are. I'm not familiar particularly with Warwick, but I don't imagine it's as diverse an audience as it might be in Battersea, for example.

Yeah, that's true true we've only had two nights here um and yeah we've even had we had a Q&A um yesterday and we had a guy ask that um he has friends who he knows do not understand this and he's he's tried to explain um the different things that create offense and what they shouldn't and shouldn't do and he still doesn't understand and what should he do um and like I said what they shouldn't and shouldn't do. And he still doesn't understand. And what should he do? And like I said, like we can't we can't make people understand. We can't force you to receive the message. We can only do our part and be unapologetic about the way we speak about our experiences.

And what about the British workplace? Have you ever felt, Tosin um at best patronized by colleagues or um just willfully yeah go on yeah just little things like even just like social events like I hardly get invited to social events at workplace um and I think where I used to work I think I was the only I think there was about two two of us who are black women um there weren't any asian um and literally they would have like work events on a thursday wednesday night and i just wouldn't be informed about it and i felt it was just quite weird i've been in the company for quite a long time um and i just didn't understand that even little things like i bring the same food to work all the time and you continue to ask me what is that i've told you the first second and third time um but you you

just you just seem to want to ask me again and again I'm like well and the impact on you of that over a period of time is what it can't be great um I think it's taken me time to realize the impact of that and I think it's when I came into Queens of Sheba I came into that consciousness of oh my gosh like I've been a victim of micro aggression even from a young age um being at school and not being able to pronounce my name correctly so um I would say that you know what just call me this because obviously you can't say my name um yeah so I've only come into that consciousness when coming into this play that oh my gosh like I didn't know these certain things had happened to me. So yeah, it's been a late realisation for me personally.

And Jessica, what also struck me, I watched the play last night, was the... I watched it online, but the rap music is something that... Well, just explain that section of the play, because it's something I hadn't thought about, if I'm honest. So which rap section is that? When a character references the fact that they love the tunes but the words are deeply problematic for women yes um so there is a section where it does talk about hip-hop music yeah and how it is a very weird relationship because um a lot of hip-hop

music is so derogatory towards black women and yet black women love the music. And so it does touch on those sorts of things because I think I remember the first time I listened to that and I went, wow, oh my gosh, that is so true. And it is like what Tosin said, what's so amazing about the play is it does highlight things for you it does put how you feel into words and not only that but even as a black woman I've been taught new things from this play and also just by speaking to a bunch of black women because that's how we got a lot of the the research and a lot of the material for the play it's getting people to articulate how you feel so that I think um when a lot of black people black women in particular do watch it will be like oh my goodness me that is so true that is what I do so are you meant to

see this play and feel more powerful not just despairing and powerless yeah 1000 percent um this play was specifically made by black women for black women. And what it does is it creates a space where we're like, these are our experiences. But no matter what happens, we are still queens and we've still got one another. And for anybody else who isn't a black woman, it's for you to come and see what we go through. And like what Tosin said, we can't force you to change, it is a way for you to to recognize yourself and then in that way see how you can empower somebody who does face oppression or does face prejudice so it should be an all-round empowering play nobody should walk around feeling guilty or judged yeah and Tosin do you like the kind of collaborative nature of all this

yeah of course um I think it's been beautiful to just come into a space and just be um obviously as an actor we go into different environments audition rooms and um we're faced with that on a daily basis like so to be in a place where like i'm with three other beautiful black women who accept themselves for who they are they're unapologetic we compliment each other um it's just been an honour. It's been an honour and a pleasure, honestly. And I mentioned the hip hop, but the music is a key part of all this, Jessica, isn't it? What else is in the show?

Oh, I don't want to say too much. Give it away. I'm going to tempt people to go to Battersea. Yeah, so we do incorporate a lot of music from the classic people like Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, and it's just such a celebration of. Is there any Lizzo in that? No. Sorry. It is a celebration of black women and there is a reference to them because at the time that they were famous, they were facing a lot more racism and oppression than we are facing now. Definitely on a more public and apparent scale.

So for them to be able to rise above that and become the woman they are in such a tough time, we do pay a lot of homage to them. All right. The play is called Queens of Sheba. That was the director, Jessica Kalisa. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for coming in. And Tosin Alabi, who is performing in it currently. And it's Warwick tonight. Have a good one tonight, Tosin. Thank you very much. And it will be on in Battersea next week.

Is that right, Jessica? Yes, from next Monday to next Saturday. All right, great. Thank you very much. On Monday on Woman's Hour, we're doing a phone-in on Monday about relationships at work. Now, is the contemporary workplace romance dead, in effect, partly because of Me Too? Do you know these days where the lines are drawn?

Whatever happened to a bit of harmless flirtation in your workplace? The problem is now that things have got all too political, some would say, and you just can't chat in an entirely harmless but mildly flirty way to your colleagues. Are you avoiding getting to know the people you work with for fear of these sorts of repercussions? What about the impact on everybody else in a workplace when two people very obviously get it together? And it will have an impact on other people, won't it? There's no doubt about that. Are you a boss who just wants to ban it all? We want to hear from you on email via the Woman's Hour website, bbc.co.uk slash womanshour. Don't forget to leave your number so we can contact you in time for Monday's phone-in.

It's the normal time, just after 10 o'clock. But we want to talk about relationships at work. Perhaps you met your partner at work. Perhaps you tried to hide it. Maybe you didn't hide it and that caused problems. Maybe one of you had to leave. However it was handled, we'd love to discuss it. Woman's Hour live phone-in on workplace relationships on Monday morning.

And also something else we're interested in your views on. How do you feel about your sex life now you're in your 40s? That's you, not me, by the way. We want to hear from you. Now the children are older, are things getting better? Are you more able to focus? Are things a bit freer? What are you doing about contraception? Is it true, as some people say,

that you have the best sex of your life in your 40s? And how do you think you feel about your body? Email us, womanshour at bbc.co.uk. So a couple of things we want your input on for next week, if possible. Now, will the Catholic Church ever have women priests? It's struggling to get new ones, especially in Europe and in America. And sexual abuse scandals obviously don't help. Campaigners held a protest in Rome last month

when bishops did discuss the church in South America. We're going to speak this morning to Miriam Dunagan, who's from the group Catholic Women's Ordination. Welcome, Miriam. Good morning. And in our studio in Dublin is Solene Umber, who would like to be a priest, and she's from a group called We Are Church Ireland. It recently organised a conference in Dublin. Good morning, Celine, which had the former president of Ireland, Mary McAleese, speaking. And Mary McAleese knows her stuff. She spent six years studying for a doctorate in canon law in Rome. So let's hear a quick clip of Mary McAleese at this conference in Dublin last month. She said that letting women become deacons in the Catholic Church is at least

a start. It won't solve the problems in the church, but it would be a breakthrough. It would be a breach of the bunker in some ways, because the bunker ultimately is a bunker of really embedded misogyny. It goes very, very, very deep. And it goes so deep that good men do not even see it in themselves. That is Mary McAleese. Celine, first of all, very simple question. Why do you want to be a Catholic priest? Well, that's a question I asked myself a long time ago. When I got that sense, I was 18. And it wasn't something that I'd planned for my life. So to some extent, you know, it's a vocation. It's a call.

You answer the call. You're not the one who takes the initiative. I could have done many other things with my life. And as I said, I was the first one disturbed. But that vocation has lasted from the mid70s to now. And I would ask also, you know, why do we say in the future will women have Catholic priests? Because I say the Catholic Church has already women who are Catholic priests. It's just a matter of recognising what God has already done in Catholic women.

Sorry, what do you mean? You mean there are women within the church effectively doing the work of priests? Yes, women who have the vocation, who have the calling. The calling is from God ultimately. It has to be tested and recognized by the church. The church authorities have totally failed when it comes to both women and married people. It's throwing away genuine vocations but people like me in the margins in the margins of the official church live out our vocations and women and married men have presided at Eucharist for decades now myself I told my local bishop in 1998 that I had started presiding at Eucharist and more and more people in Ireland and elsewhere, Catholic people, recognised the leadership of women.

So, Miriam, I know you don't want to be a priest yourself, but you believe passionately in this cause. Why? I do, and yes, thank goodness I don't have a vocation to priesthood because I think it's so demeaning the way that a woman like Celine, who is a beautiful priest, cannot fulfill that vocation, even though her congregation recognize that she is a priest. The reason why it's so important to me is because when you look at the way that the church works right now, Selene is right. There are women who are ministering. So they are in churches all across the world. And, you know, especially in the Amazon region that the church was just discussing, they are administering sacraments, they are leading parishes, and

they're doing the work of a priest, but we're just not allowed to call them a priest. So it really is the institutional church, which is more than just a faith tradition, you know, it's a massive global institution. It really is institutionalized subjugation of women. They're okay to do the work. And the hierarchy, the bishops and the priests in these regions are allowing the women, they know that they are carrying out those ministerial jobs. Well, they know presumably that the whole thing would collapse without the women. It would. Our message when we were in Rome protesting at the synod that just was discussing the Amazon region and the shortage of priests was don't forget that without women, there would be no Catholic church in the Amazon region. And to now talk about a shortage of

priests without recognizing that you need to end the injustice of constantly saying women are not allowed to be priests because you don't resemble the maleness of Christ, and then give the green light to married men. The rule against married men and the rule against women priests happened at the same time. Right. I mean, we should make it clear, of course, the Church of England hasn't entirely covered itself in glory here. Women priests are now allowed within the church and bishops also, but it took an enormous battle and the work of decades, didn't it,

to actually achieve this. And the Pope recently, Celine, has not given you much hope. I gather he said pretty emphatically that the door is closed to women priests. Well, yes, but, you know, I'm old enough now to have seen popes come and go. Doors get shut. But I also know from the history of the church that the doors which are more firmly shut have a way sometimes of just springing open. The Holy Spirit ultimately can get through all those closed doors. Change is a foot. Change comes from the ground.

And I've seen it that it's the Catholic people, the faithful people, the people filled with the Spirit who recognize that God is doing a new thing. God is doing something in women. And ultimately, that will get through. Yes. I mean, you say change is coming on the ground. I think it, I mean based on my Catholic friends, it would appear to be slightly dependent upon whom your current priest is. I mean there are some priests who are more liberal in their thinking and may well allow and encourage girls to become altar girls for example but equally,

Celine, there are plenty who think the exact opposite. That's true. At the same time, I have to say the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland, which represent a large number of priests, now not all, recently has made a statement that they were in favour of the ordination of women. I think there is a realisation across the board. But I mean, most of the people in the church are the baptised. The clerical church is a tiny minority. And the people on the ground, by and large, are the lay people, the baptised, the faithful, the one, as I say, confirmed with the Spirit.

And they are the ones who want change because they know that change is already happening and they know that the misogyny and sexism in the church cannot continue. It's an obstacle to the witness. Yes, because if it does, the church won't continue. Is that your fear, Miriam? Yes. Well, you know, what's positive about what just happened in Rome is that it was priests and bishops who were talking about the role of women. And they were the ones that for the really the first time in living memory, who actually said, we must recognize women, they are doing the work, we can't keep passing them over and letting them, you know, exist in the shadows and constantly having to have a male authority

over them. So it was actually, you know, yes, only 185 men were allowed to vote in any decision that came out of that meeting. But the majority of those men in authority and priestly and bishop roles, they said, what about the women? We cannot keep forgetting about the women. So that's a good thing. And that's a new thing in terms of that discussion. Are they doing it because they recognize the injustice and they're ashamed of the sexist teaching? Or are they doing it because they think the church won't survive? Does it really matter why they're doing it? We don't care. No, OK. That's interesting. And you, I know, care passionately about this and have done for a long time.

And I think there was an incident when you were a very young girl, wasn't there, that propelled you into this way of thinking. Yes, that's right. I started recognising the injustice of all this when I was age 12 at my Catholic convent school in North London. And I said to the nuns, you know, could Jesus come back as a girl? And I was accused of being blasphemous. No, Jesus is the son of God. And I said, well, if God created all humans, he must surely have a daughter too. And then I was also told off for being blasphemous.

My mother was called in when I said that, you know, the priest didn't turn up one Friday morning. And I said to Sister Alphonse as our head teacher, why can't you say the mass? I know you know the words. And we saw her as our priest, but she wasn't allowed to. We had to sit there and wait for the man to come in. Right. And I suppose the question for me, on behalf of the many people listening who are not religious, Celine, would be, why do you want so passionately to be a part of an institution that doesn't want you, actually, and treats you with contempt?

Well, for me, the church is more than an institution. The church is a movement of people who have been entrusted with the liberating message of the Gospels. And to me, the good news, that's what the Gospel, the good news is about the love of God for all of creation on all of humankind. And it's a love which doesn't make difference, a love which is not racist or misogynist or sexist. And I am kind of entrusted with that message. And that's what it is. I also acknowledge that the institution will need drastic changes in terms of de-clericalisation. So a lot of injustices in the church, a lot of dysfunction. So it's not so much being a cleric as being a priest, which is quite a different thing in my view. Well, goodness knows I admire your strength, Celine. Thank you very much indeed for talking

to us. Quick word, Miriam, will it happen in your lifetime? You know, I think it might happen sooner than we think. I'm hoping that it's going to be like the Berlin Wall. Out of nowhere, it's just going to crumble because the foundations upon which this ban on women rests is so fragile. It doesn't stand up to scrutiny and it has to be dismantled. Right. So what will happen first, women priests or married priests? Married priests.

The men always get the green light first. We've got a little bit of an amber light, so let's just keep pushing. Thank you so much for coming in. Really appreciate it. Miriam Donegan from the group Catholic Women's Ordination. Your thoughts on that, welcome, of course, on social media at BBC Women's Hour. And now we're going to talk about slang in the company of the lexicographer Jonathan Green, author of Sound and Furies, The Love-Hate Relationship Between Women and Slang. Welcome to the programme, Jonathan.

And also here, linguistics PhD student Lotta van Hagen from Liverpool University. And you're researching slang within the queer community. That's right, isn't it? That is one of my research interests. All right, well, it's a very rich territory, so we'll explore that in a second. First of all, Jonathan, really basic question.

What's slang for? The way I see slang, it's a counter language. It's a seditious language. It's taking the mickey. It's standing there looking at all the things that are tabooed and that are establishment and are generally seen as sacrosanct. And to go back to what was just being talked about, blaspheming, one could say. I mean, another word for slang is profanity. I mean, it profanes all sorts of things. So that's its job. It has a job to do.

One may not like it, one may not approve. What I've been looking at for 40 years is how that job works out, how it's changed, so on and so forth. What is the earliest known example of slang in the English language then? It's very difficult because the word slang itself doesn't come on stream in the context of language until 1756. It's in a play.

But, and one of the things I dealt with in my book is the wife of Bath. Now she uses words. Which is a filthy thing, isn't it? Sorry? It's filthy, the wife of Bath. Up to a point, up to a point. She's, one could say, she's expressing herself strongly. She's very dismissive of her husbands and her lovers.

But my point is that she uses certain words there that will come to be in the slang dictionaries. But it's always been a problem. Not a problem, but it's interesting. How do we define a word as slang when the word slang itself does not exist? So 1386 or thereabouts, Canterbury Tales, there are these slang words. I certainly put them in my dictionaries. Yes.

Female genitalia is often something that there are, well, there's a multitude of slang words for female genitalia, not so many for male. Now, why is that? I would have to argue with you. I have I have got approximately 1400 for each. Have you? Indeed, yes. It's a tight contest. You see, I was obviously going to make the feminist argument that slang is harder on women than on men because it tends to come from men. And I think this is absolutely true. And I think but well, the first half of that is true.

I mean, there are perhaps, even up to, if you factor in sex workers and all the bits of the female body and having sex and so on and so forth, yes, there's probably 10,000 words in slang. Women are one of slang's great obsessions, and I'm

afraid they do not come out of it very well. If you look at the 1,750 words meaning sexual intercourse or to have sexual intercourse, 1,700 of them are from the male point of view, and if we want to translate it, as it were, the majority are man hits woman. There are virtually none with a woman saying, this man is either good or bad or satisfying, except for there are, and this comes out in my book, quite a lot of fun words, mainly

fumbler for impotence, a lot of impotence. Over to you, Lotta. So the gay community, the queer community, tell me what you've discovered about contemporary slang within that setting? Well, yeah, it is interesting to link it to, I guess your work is mostly on, well, cis male and cis female sex, right, Ben? The bar in statistical terms, yes, there is much more. Whereas especially online now, queer people come up with their own slang terms and also very much terms for having sex,

but also the types of sex they enjoy, which types of roles they have during sex. So there's a very rich vocabulary there that is probably not known to the mainstream or to people who do not... But that's the whole point of it, isn't it? It is, yeah. It's not meant to be widely understood. Some of it might be because if nothing is understood,

the community might not be understood. But it is nice to have some in-group, it does foster an in-group feeling if you have words that aren't known outside the community. Right. I know there's been a lot of kerfuffle recently, Jonathan, about Mumsnet and about social media and the part it has played in creating, particularly acronyms. There are some classic ones, aren't there? Well, I mean, I like all the ones that are the ones that when you refer to your immediate family, you've got D, D, D, darling daughter, D, H, darling husband. But you've also got D, M, I, L, which I think is pushing it too far, which is darling mother-in-law. Well, that's no, hang on, this is women's hour. I'm being very stereotyping.

Yes, just be very careful, Jonathan, because father-in-law can be a right pain in the backside. I'm sure they're in there as well. I'm sure they're in there. But what interests me about Mumsnet, and I'm sure you've seen this because there's being used has factors of compassion, caring, sharing, softer slang, as it were, that mainstream slang or traditional slang simply does not bother with. I mean, if you look at slang's taxonomy, it's all about hedonism,

what I would call, you know, sex, drugs and rock and roll and you obviously in the widest possible sense of all those words but what it isn't about is sharing caring and compassion as I always say sweet Fanny Adams, there isn't any. Tell me something about the very fertile area

of the TV show Gentleman Jack based on the life and times of Anne Lister there's a whole world around that TV show and around that woman's life story, isn't there? Tell me about it. Yeah, there's fan fiction and Tumblr forums. There's podcasts. It has sparked a very rich fandom, so to speak.

And the fandom actually calls itself the Andom because both protagonists are called one N with an E, one N without an E. So I thought that was a quite clever way of naming the fandom. And I'd say the fandom isn't entirely made up out of queer women, but the majority do identify as queer, not necessarily as women. There's also loads of non-binary and genderqueer people.

But it is a very queer fandom in the sense that it also celebrates the female gaze that the programme has on lesbians, on sex, on... And this is very much about women, whatever their sexuality, creating these worlds and creating the language. And celebrating it. And celebrating it, yeah. And do you think they are now more likely to be able to do that than back in the past, the areas that Jonathan's been studying?

Well, there's more opportunity to find other fans, first of all. There's fan fiction sites where you can post it and other people can comment on it and they can, you know, read along every single week and it becomes sort of like a new community of people. There's Tumblr where you have, again, a community of people. So I think it's just become more, it's become easier. I think if the internet had existed before,

then people would have found each other, but it's just, you know, it's easier now. Where do you think slang is going to go then, Jonathan? It may well be that this softer edge to it, this woman created slang, rather than woman used slang, because women have always used slang, is going to be, well certainly

whether it's the entire future, I don't know, but I get the sense that it's going to bring in a whole new section and a whole new world, and change perhaps the focus of slang in a way that I have not encountered prior to doing, prior to doing, well, Mumsnet and social media as well. And presumably as handwriting effectively dies out,

as writing probably dies out, well, I look at my kids' texts and frankly I think writing has died out, frankly, Jonathan. But what will happen to our use of language? I'm probably being a bit apocalyptic here. I think you are, and I think, you know, I always go back to the great diagram, or the rather small diagram, created by James Murray in the original Oxford English Dictionary, and in the middle it says English language,

and round it it has various things, technology, dialect, and one of the things it has is slang. And my point, quite simply, and his point, of course, was that slang is no different to any of these other things. It's part of the English language. So slang is a rather fecund part of the English language. We'll keep continuing. What it will do, though,

is it won't, I imagine, well, most of it will carry on on the same old theme, sex and drugs and rock and roll. But there's going to be, I think, this new theme dealing with emotions, dealing with caring, sharing and compassion, almost certainly created by women, because it's not going to come from men. And that may well be a section of the future.

I'm not in the prophecy game. No, well, no. But it would be very interesting if it were so. And that was Jonathan Green. If you're interested in his book, I should say it's a chunky old tome. It's called Sounds and Furies, and it's about the very long history of women and slang.

Some interesting stuff in there, I should say. He was in conversation with Lotta Verheyen, who is from the University of Liverpool, where she is doing a PhD, a linguistics PhD. On the subject of the Catholic Church, it was Manuela who said, just heard a bit of that discussion about female priests in the Catholic Church. Married Anglican priests are, of course, already allowed to become Catholic priests. And I'm not sure you mentioned that, she says.

And we didn't and we should have done. So apologies. Angela says, wonderful women talking about their role in the Catholic Church. It's a crucial story, rarely discussed. But for anybody who cares about population and climate change, this is a huge issue. And I've been wondering about that. And I suppose the belief being that if female Catholic priests were working in the Amazon region, that might well change the approach to population growth, I suppose.

I don't know, but I guess that must be the theory. Zofia emailed to say, people who try to change fundamental laws within a group don't realise that they'll isolate those who believe in those laws. If you want to form a church with different laws, then there's nothing to stop somebody forming their own church. That is, of course, true. The play Queens of Sheba was discussed,

and during the course of that conversation, we got onto the subject of women of colour in particular having their hair fiddled with in public. A listener says, As a youngster, I had almost white, long, wavy hair, and I've got clear memories of people stopping me in the street and touching it. I was a shy child, and I remember feeling embarrassed

when people commented on it. One of my children has red hair and was bullied and teased so much as a child, but that by the time she was 13, she was buying dye to hide it. As an adult, I'm really careful not to mention people's hair. And from Seanette, a few years ago when my daughter was seven, she was told by the head of the department at her school that she wasn't allowed to wear her African hair in bunches like her white friends because it wasn't businesslike. I couldn't believe it and I felt so disappointed and disgusted. I'm not surprised.

I hope you spoke to the school about that because that's just ridiculous. And if you were interested in what our contributor Constanza had to say about the situation in Chile, there is more on a BBC World Service programme over this weekend available via BBC Sounds. The name of that show is The Cultural Frontline. Right, on Woman's Hour on Monday morning, we are having a phone-in on the subject of workplace relationships. So if you perhaps met your partner, whether current or previous partner, in your place of work, was much made of it at the time? Was it a thing? Was it simply not really discussed? Did you come clean about it in your workplace or

did you have to hide it? What happened and how did you approach it? And now, do you think workplace relationships are much less likely in the light of Me Too and increasingly, really, people just being a bit wary about the kind of attachments they form at work and how they might be perceived? And could there be a downside for women in terms of mentoring? Do you think perhaps men at the top of organisations who might in the past have genuinely helped younger women to get on might feel now that they just can't do that kind of thing? So workplace relationships in 21st century Britain. Please do email the programme now

if you have an experience to share or a theory on the whole subject. You can contact the programme via the Woman's Hour website, bbc.co.uk slash womanshour, and please include your phone number on the email. And we don't need to necessarily use your real name. We can change your name or not use any name at all if we feature your experience on Monday's programme. So that's Workplace Relationships on Woman's Hour on Monday.

Russell Cain here, and I'm here to tell you about Evil Genius, the BBC Radio 4 podcast where we take icons from history and then decimate them by slinging mud. Think you know everything about Einstein? You don't. He was a woman hater. You probably think you know about Amy Winehouse, that she was a victim. She had a pretty

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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.