Woman's Hour - Sharon Stone. The impact of pornography on young people. Actor Vanessa Kirby

Episode Date: April 3, 2021

It’s nearly 30 years since Sharon Stone starred in Basic Instinct, with the famous uncrossing-of-legs scene. In 2001, after adopting her first child, she suffered a stroke and almost died. In an exclusive interview with Emma Barnett she talks about her autobiography - The Beauty of Living Twice. This summer, students in England will receive A-level and GCSE results based on their teachers’ predictions, after official exams have been cancelled for the second year. Teachers will be required to compile evidence to substantiate their predicted grades. We hear from Emma Irving who works part time as a private tutor and Richard Sheriff, Executive headteacher of Harrogate grammar school and president of the Association of School and College Leaders.Jessica Moxham's eldest son, Ben, is disabled. At birth it was touch and go whether he would live and Jessica spent most of the first year of Ben's life keeping him alive, learning how to feed and soothe a baby who couldn't suck or eat. Jessica has written a memoir, The Cracks that Let the Light in: What I learned from my disabled son. Continuing our look at what’s being reported as “rape culture” in schools, we examine the impact of pornography on young people and its effect on relationships and sex. There are plenty of festivals planned in person once social distancing laws are – hopefully – lifted this summer. But why are they still featuring majority male artists, particularly those headlining. Plus Vanessa Kirby explores her role as Martha in the film ‘Pieces of A Woman’. A story of a couple on the verge of becoming parents, when their lives change dramatically when a homebirth ends in tragedy. Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Lorna Rose Treen Editor: Beverley Purcell

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. On the programme today, with school exam season coming up and results predictions, one teacher has raised concerns about pointy-elbowed parents and their lawyer mates pushing to get their kids the best results. So how far would you go to get your children the best grades? What do you think about getting a three-year-old a tutor to get them into kindergarten? Keep listening for that. We also have Jessica Moxham sharing her experience of raising her severely

disabled son. Also, Oscar-nominated actor Vanessa Kirby on what she learnt from her role in Pieces of a Woman about watching women give birth on screen. After hours and hours and days and days of research, I realised I didn't know how to act any better than when I started. And that was because even in the documentaries, it was sort of edited or sanitised in a way. You'd see little moments, but you wouldn't see it in its full entirety. You wouldn't see the messiness of it.

That's Vanessa Kirby coming up a little bit later in the programme. Now, after reports of sexism and assaults in schools on the Everyone's Invited website, how much is pornography part of the problem? And how do you have the conversations with your children? And as music festivals reveal their summer lineups, why are they still so male-dominated? It's nearly 30 years since Sharon Stone played murder suspect Catherine Trammell in Basic Instinct alongside Michael Douglas. It was a role she craved but only managed to get it after 12 other actresses turned it down. It was a huge box office hit. The infamous uncrossing of legs scene remains one of the most controversial moments in film history,

and she did very well after that role. More films followed, including an Oscar nomination for Casino alongside Robert De Niro. Then, at the height of her career in 2001, after adopting her first son, she suffered a stroke and almost died. She's now written her autobiography, The Beauty of Living Twice.

In her only UK broadcast interview, Emma asked her what her percent chance of survival was. It was probably one because the surgery that I had was brand new. Now it's probably five to ten. I mean, your percentages are much better now because that was 20 years ago. But when I had it, I had to wait for the surgeon. I had to wait a day because there was a guy who could perform it hypothetically, and he would come the next day after I was already bleeding into my brain at that point for three or four days. So it was a very new technique that was happening and was available to me, maybe. Now, this is a more tried and true thing. You talk very candidly about

how some people see you as very strong, a difficult woman, all of those sorts of things. And yet that has upset you at times, as it can do. Well, I think what it really is, is that I don't have the capacity to lie. And I think that people find that quite off-putting. I don't know if that's really grit or just a compulsion. And I think people find that kind of shocking and unsettling. And when I tell the truth, that can seem quite offensive or the favorite Hollywood word difficult. I saw on your Instagram, you shared a great quote, never pick a fight with a woman older than 30. They're full of rage and sick of everyone's shit. And I think it's hilarious,

but there is quite a bit of truth in that. Yeah, you do write about this in the book, but it is extraordinary just reading about the story behind that extremely famous scene in Basic Instinct, because I would have thought naively that you would have known that that was how that scene was going to be. But reading the story about, I mean, you tell our listeners how you actually found out that scene was going to be, and then your own negotiations with yourself about whether you were okay with it, even if you didn't think you had any power. Well, I think it's all in the book. And I don't want to keep ad nauseum talking about something that happened 100 years ago. But I do feel that in business, we're often put in positions that we didn't ever see ourselves

being put in. And there are often crisis moments where we have to reconsider, oh, my God, I'm in this position. Now, what am I going to do? We're kind of between a rock and a hard place and we have to pick rock or hard place. And you picked it. I mean, that's that's what's quite, you know, empowering about all of that. That's why I brought it up, because I think even if as it were, I'm not going to say the whole story. And I know there's much more to say, but the fact that you didn't know it was going to be shot necessarily like that, and then you go and you think about it, and you come out at that place, because the film is, you'd gone to so much of your own limits with it. I thought that was so interesting.

The thing is, as women, or as underlings in any business proposition, we often get taken advantage of. I think women are particularly pressured at work to prove that you can do things and not let your feminine emotion get in the middle of it. And you're often backed into a corner and tried to be made emotional so that you can be dismissed as unable to make a decision in the middle of pressure so that it can be proved that as a woman, you can't function in an emotional, chaotic moment. You talk about being unable not to be honest. You have to be honest. That's how you are. But with regards to the Me Too movement, now we're a couple of years on from that. Do you actually think, because the other thing you talk about is being the only woman on set. Men were doing your hair, men were doing your makeup.

Do you think it has got any better? Yes, because legally there are just things that cannot be explained away anymore. You just can't say, why can't she have a female dresser? Why does a man have to be putting the microphone on her thigh or between her breasts? I mean, they're starting to get some of the simple questions answered. But of course, some of the normal, just fun and silliness has been tamped down and dampened. And I think, you know, we're going to have to re-find a balance because it is a business where we all need to be friends and family.

And we're a little bit stiff right now because everybody's scared of making a mistake or saying something that someone will be offended by because there's just so much, oh, he touched my arm

or, oh, he said I was pretty or, you know, there's so much, oh, he touched my arm or, oh, he said I was pretty. Or, you know, there's so much now that I personally think is a little too far. You know, people are just have gone completely berserk with what they're saying is offensive to them. The things that you were experiencing, you know, people telling you to sleep with a co-star, if somebody was viewed as, I can't say the word because we're on air, but you know, screwable, let's call it that instead, you know, that was, that was kind of part and parcel of your, your acting career. And do you feel the need to name and shame now? Because of course, that's a whole other thing. People are just naming each other on social media and accusing people. Well, I should say to start with, I never felt unable to say no. I never felt unable to explain myself and say, you know, I'm too stupid to be able to do my part and do that too, or I'm incapable of doing both. I felt more offended by

people who literally would go to my representatives and suggest I resign from my job if I didn't want to sleep with them. That has reached a level where the person should be removed. I find that being called into these meetings where I have to listen to the nonsense for, you know, an hour, studio film time, that could be 20 grand that they've just burned. Having me sit in their office, you know, the studio should be letting these people go. They're, you know, losing money left and right over this malarkey. I feel if they simply ask me, do I want to have sex with them or my co-star? And I say no. And they go, OK, thank you and leave. You know, nobody's bothering me on set.

I don't know that that's a fireable offense because ask and answered. Are you saying that still happens? Yes. But I am also saying that I am not a person who feels like, is that a fireable offense? Because I don't feel like when someone asks me a question, I have to crumble. I understand that now when someone asks someone if they want to have sex, some people have so much trauma that they feel like the person needs to be fired. This is not something I ever understood before, but I understand now that this has become a fireable offense at work. I get that, but it's been happening to me for 40 years. So harassment is a different story than a question. I think when I'm harassed, they should be fired or assault me. They should be fired. Yeah. I mean, I definitely think that's a distinction people could relate to. They would probably also say that, as you were saying, the asking the

question is the problem. And on the sort of point of a woman speaking out or, you know, coming out of line in any way, do you think we've got better with that? Because I wonder if you feel a younger Sharon Stone coming up now being the way that you were would be treated differently or the same. I'm still an outsider. I'm an Irish girl from Pennsylvania, not a girl of Hollywood royalty. And you don't get to be inside just like that.

There's still a class system in every business. And you have to earn your way in unless you're Hollywood royalty. And I wasn't. That was Sharon Stone speaking to Emma. Her book is called The Beauty of Living Twice. Exam season is coming up. But this summer, students in England and Wales will receive A-level and GCSE results based on

their teachers' predictions after official exams were cancelled for the second year in a row due to the pandemic. Ofqual has warned they will investigate any instances where they believe the evidence is not authentic. Ministers have insisted that this year's grading plan is the fairest possible system for pupils, that the government is putting its trust in teachers rather than algorithms. However, there are concerns that pointy elbow parents have been pressurising teachers to boost their exam grades. I spoke to Richard Sherriff, Executive Head Teacher of Harrogate Grammar School

and President of the Association of School and College Leaders, and Emma Irving, who works part-time as a tutor. I asked her how pushy some of these parents can be. Very pushy is really the answer. I think normally it comes from, you know, a place of concern and essentially just, of course, wanting the best for their children, which is really understandable, particularly after such a time of high stress for families.

But a lot of the time, in my experience, I'm now seeing increasing levels of sort of scrutiny from parents and then really encouraging you to have really hands on help with their students work because everything is now potentially going to be partly examined. And I've actually been sort of, you know, dismissed from a couple of jobs because I've refused to step over what I would consider to be the line between giving support and actually cheating. They sacked you? Yes. Because what did you refuse to do? What were they expecting you to do? So one family I was working with, it was just that the student was handing in coursework and I was essentially asked to show them how to write the essay. But the way that normally it works in tutoring is I would try and identify what makes a strong essay, go through that with the student and then ask them to apply it to their own work.

But this particular family really wanted me to sort of, you know, essentially write an example essay to the essay question and for the students then sort of tweak it so that it sounded more like it was in her words and for them to submit that and when I refused to do that and explained the fact that I felt that it was really important for the students learning that essentially she she took the work that we did together and used it in her own individual way they essentially dismissed me and the reason was given was that they wanted someone who would give more quote hands-on help so presumably they went and got a tutor who would do what they wanted them to do I mean it's a very well-paid uh job isn't it yeah I mean you I know you have another job as well but it's between 50 to 100 pounds an hour but with that brink comes high expectations

and are you very busy yeah so I mean it's it's extraordinarily busy at the moment. There are so many requests coming in. The age seems to get younger and younger. I saw a recent request for help with a three-year-old who was trying to get into a competitive kindergarten. I'm sure there's lots of people like me wondering, what do you tutor a three-year-old to get into a competitive kindergarten? I mean, it's slightly insane. It could be anything from sort of interview technique. We're seeing increasing requests for help with things like self-confidence or social anxiety after the pandemic, where really you're there as sort of like a young, hopefully quite exciting and inspiring sort of 20-something-year-old who has a passion for a subject. You're there to

sort of try and impart some of that passion to a young student. But yeah, so increasing requests, particularly with very young students, just to sort of try and work on their social skills. But it really can vary massively from very, very specific requests, things like, you know, how to work on sentence structure in a particular essay in a particular subject, right the way through to those very vague requests, like how you can work on a child's self-confidence. I'm going to bring in Richard Sheriff, who's Executive Head Teacher of Harrogate Grammar School and President of the Association of School and College Leaders.

Morning, Richard. I mean, you have been quoted as saying you feared parents with pointy elbows and lawyer friends would push for better grades, as well as obviously all the tutoring, extra tutoring, to try and get their children over the line. How likely do you think this is going to happen now that we've got teachers who are going to be grading pupils this year for A-levels and GCSEs, that sort of middle class, pointy-elbowed parents are going to be, as you've described them, are going to be actually putting a lot of pressure on teachers?

What are your concerns? Well, first of all, the pointy elbows and lawyer friends, I wish I had numbered myself, just to say that it wasn't a kind of pejorative term about them, rather that we wish all children had the same access to pointy elbows and lawyer friends, because the point I was making is the gap between those and those that have not, it could be made wider by this. I've never criticised any parent, whatever they do, to try and make their child successful in life. I do understand that.

But when it comes to actually putting pressure on teachers to change grades or work outside the guidance, that's a real problem. What I can reassure people of, though, is that there's some really good systems in place this year. And if someone was to be pressurising a teacher to change grades or put them up or put them down, whatever, that's malpractice under the exam code as defined by Ofqual, the regulator. So there's ways and means of dealing with that. And there is quality assurance in place to try and make sure it doesn't happen. Can you outline what evidence is going to be used to determine these grades? How are they going to be collected and substantiated? Each of the centres has to produce a policy how it will do this.

So every headteacher, as I said, head of centre, has to be responsible for this. And laid out by the regulator is what you have to have in that statement. And that goes all the way through what kind of evidence you will use, which will be a range of evidence over the course of the time they've taught, testing them or assessing them on what they have done, not what they haven't done. You'll be asked to show what evidence that is over time. And then you'll be asked to say what process you've done to verify that evidence in school.

So it's been more than one teacher can make the judgment, there's at least two teachers. Then it's verified, say, by a head of faculty or department. And then the head teacher themselves will verify that that evidence is correct all that goes on and then there's a quality assurance by the board themselves who will collect in all the statements of the schools and say is that school really following the guidance exactly if they're not we'll be called and we'll be asked to explain the guidance and adjust it if necessary and change our practice. So that's the next set of checks. After that, when the grades go in,

will also be looked at in terms of there'll be randomised attempts to look at each centre to see what's going on and also a spot to check on where you think they're slightly anomalous, where a centre perhaps has put in grades that are way beyond what was achieved before. So all those systems of checks and balances have been put in place to ensure that teachers' grades are realistic, sensible, and children and adults can be confident with them. And how will you be protecting teachers from demanding parents and their expectations? That is a real worry. But we know that most parents are really reasonable and sensible,

and that we've had a tremendous support for the teaching profession during the pandemic from parents. So I think we hope that those will be a small number. And I think when parents understand, and this is really important, like programmes like this, understand all the checks and balances there to make sure that we do this right together. Hopefully we'll get behind us. When somebody doesn't and they overstep that line, then as we described, we've got processing systems in place to do that. And headteachers would be, I think, very reluctant indeed to bear pressure from any individual parent or student because it would affect the outcomes in the whole of that centre. And of course, Richard, you've got to ensure that you're not overly lenient or overly harsh. So how will you guard against any prejudice or subconscious bias that teachers might hold against, say, naughty pupils?

Yeah, that's a really good question. I think that's one of the risks. I just say that Ofqual have issued guidance on this, on subconscious bias, and it's a really good document, actually, that goes through all the different kinds of subconscious. And even myself, I think, as a fairly experienced person who's worked with examiners for a long time, looking through that list and it's quite, you know, the halo effect, you know, that can be in there, just making judgments on the quality of the writing rather than the content. All that's covered in there and I think teachers will be trained. This really interesting phrase,

I've heard, the poverty of expectation. The teachers just expect certain children. If you're a middle class child from a certain background, already the teachers presume that you're going to do better than another child. Yeah, absolutely. And those are dangers. But I genuinely think that all

teachers, they're professionals in this, assessment is what they do and they're trained to do. All schools will be doing further training that's been provided by both the awarding bodies, exam boards and Ofqual and JCQ, who organises on behalf of the exam boards to make sure that all teachers are really aware of those unconscious bias issues and can assess effectively and fairly for all children. And I would also say finally that teachers are only too aware of issues to do with social justice, poverty and differential learning loss and they will make allowances for those in a professional way within the frame that they've been given. That was me speaking with Richard Sherriff and Emma Irving and if you'd

like to get in touch about anything you're hearing on the programme, you can get in touch via our social media. It's at BBC Women's Hour. And of course, email us via our website. Jessica Moxham's eldest son, Ben, is disabled. At birth, it was touch and go whether he would live. And Jessica spent most of the first year of Ben's life keeping him alive, learning how to feed and soothe a baby

who couldn't suck or eat. Now Ben is thriving alongside his two younger siblings. Jessica has written a memoir, The Cracks That Let the Light In, What I Learned from My Disabled Son. Jessica told us all about Ben. Ben is now 11 and he's a bright, engaged kid who loves books and being read stories and Marvel movies and swimming and lots of those kind of things. Ben is disabled and we help him with pretty much every aspect of his day to day life. So we move him and he uses a wheelchair. He can't eat.

So we feed him through a feeding tube and we make his food to go through the tube. And he can't talk, but he can communicate with us. So he uses it, he can smile and frown quite readily to show us that he doesn't like the programme that sister's watching. But he uses his eyes a lot to communicate. So he can look at yes and no symbols to answer questions. And he can also use his eyes to control a computer. So it's an eye gaze device, which then has communication software on it as well as games and other things. You know a lot of people will think the first year is the toughest you know regardless of of the child or the issues but yours really is of everything I've ever read one of the toughest I've read in the terms of you had to learn everything new but of a whole other level with the added stress of not knowing how he was a lot of the time.

What was the cause of his disability, first of all? So I had a totally uneventful, typical pregnancy, but at some point during my labour, Ben didn't have enough oxygen. So that meant that he was born extremely ill. And for the first week, we weren't sure whether he would survive. And then it was clear that he would survive. But the oxygen deprivation caused brain damage, which then within the first couple of weeks, we were told that it was very likely that he would have cerebral palsy. And that that would mean that his essentially that his brain would struggle to control his body. And therefore, it was pretty likely that he'd be disabled. And the care for him at first, very striking line in your book is you talk about the fact that there's so many professionals involved and you felt like you were not a key part of that team. Yeah so he was in hospital for five weeks and during that time he became better and better during that time kind of medically

but actually I wasn't necessarily the one he needed right at the beginning he needed medics and then as time went on we could do more and more for him so me and my husband were taught how to feed him through a tube um and we spent a lot of time at the hospital and I was really worried that he didn't that he wasn't touched enough that he'd obviously been in this bed not being held enough so I became quite um I you know I held him as much as possible and then I tried to drag in other family members to hold him when I wasn't there so that he was just cuddled enough um but he obviously needed lots of other people to help him but also that hospital environment isn't particularly conducive to really feeling like a mother so he had his first bath by a nurse and I sort of helped a bit

but that was quite heartbreaking because all of those things I probably hadn't thought enough about what it was going to be like after he was born but certainly of course I felt like I was going to have these firsts and lots of those firsts can't happen in that way if your baby's in hospital. There's a very telling bit of the book where you talk about when you decide to start giving him food through his tube as opposed to just milk. And he was struggling with reflux and all of that was very hard for you to see. And it was a real moment, it seemed, in your story where you started to decide how to parent Ben rather than what you were being told by the experts? Yeah, I guess probably any new mother, there's that confidence building that you start off feeling like

you really don't know what you're doing. And then over time, you become more confident of like, okay, maybe I can keep this child alive and actually help them thrive. And that probably took longer with Ben because I needed to not only be a mother, but also a nurse and a speech and language therapist

and physio and all of these things. 150 appointments in a year. Yeah, obviously the last year has been a bit different because of obvious reasons. But yeah, we still have about 150 appointments a year and that's been pretty consistent over the last, over his life. I think probably we have even more at the very beginning. So, yeah, there's a kind of logistical challenge to that. And when you make this decision to feed him, carry on about that. Yeah. So when he was a couple of years old, we were still feeding him through a tube.

He had at the beginning had a nasogastric tube and then he had a permanent tube in his tummy. And we were feeding him through that. And the typical way to feed a child like him at that stage is through essentially a kind of formula, a medical formula that you put through the tube. And he just vomited a lot and had reflux a lot and was really unhappy and obviously wasn't thriving, therefore. And I had heard about this way of feeding him, which is that you can blend up food to a consistency that's runny enough to put through the tube. So you're just giving him real food, but blended up in a way that can go through the tube. And I'd heard about other parents doing this and their children thriving and having less reflux and vomiting less. I also was pregnant with my second child and he was born and he was typical. So I was thinking about weaning him. And I guess I then saw the gap between the way that Ben's feeding was

treated and the way that Max my second son's feeding was treated which was that no one was interested in what I was feeding him or when I was going to do it um so I think the combination of that and the two years I'd had of kind of beginning to advocate for him and working out what was best for us and that I was his mother and actually I knew him better than anyone meant that I felt confident enough to give it a go and so we started putting food down his tube rather than this milk and and it was better. The thing that comes through again and again is how much of a champion you are for Ben all the time so you talk about you you are an architect by training you designed your home for him most remarkable details in there but you talk about having people in your home to help and

how important and also when you're out and about doing things with ben whether it's going to the pool or not how important it is to make sure that his dignity is preserved and that even though they're caring for him and it's a job that you really want to make sure that they aren't just sitting next to him looking at their phone while he's watching the television all the time you're trying to make sure that he's treated as a full human, you know, if I can put it like that. How much of a pressure is that for you to advocate for your son? It's, yeah, it's a pressure. I mean, I guess, you know, all parents want to do the best for their kids and we're constantly trying to make sure that we're doing our best for them. But for Ben, I guess there's extra because I think we live

in a society where most of us, I certainly before I had Ben, had almost no experience of disability or real contact with disabled people. So his life has been a rapid learning curve for me. And that means that most people we come across haven't spent much time with disabled people. And actually, even those who have, there can be this issue that because he doesn't talk, people assume he can't hear. But he can hear perfectly. He can understand everything people are saying to him and they can understand what people are saying about him. And so we just try and make sure that people understand that and they treat him like they would any 11 year old child but also that he's dependent on people for help and so we have to work out we don't have a model for that so we have to try and work out how to make that work in a way that really respects him a very moving interview there jessica moxham talking to emma all about her memoir the cracks that let the light in what i

learned from my disabled son and please if you would like to email us head to our website we'd love to hear from you about any of the topics you're listening to today still to come on the program why do some music festivals still have white male dominated lineups and we talked to the actor vanessa kirby about her oscar nominated role in pieces of a woman and remember that you can enjoy woman's hour any hour of the day if you can't join us live at 10 a. the week, just subscribe to the Daily Podcast for free. What a bargain, via the Woman's Hour website and BBC Sounds. Now, coming up is quite a frank conversation about pornography. The reports of sexism and assaults in schools,

detailed on the Everyone's Invited website, has opened up the conversation about abuse in schools. One issue that keeps coming up is whether or not easy access to pornography is part of the problem. Back in 2019, a survey of over 1,000 people carried out online by DeltaPoll for the BBC Three documentary Porn Laid Bare showed that over three quarters of young men, that's 77%, and nearly half of young women, 47%, admitted to watching pornography within the last month.

Cindy Gallop is the founder and CEO of Make Love Not Porn and Dr Fiona Vera-Gray is an assistant professor at Durham University and works on violence against women and girls. First, Fiona. We need to start having these big conversations because porn is stepping into this cultural vacuum around talking about porn and it's co-opting that and it's telling us what we should be desiring we need to start changing that we need to start changing that conversation and talking back talking without judgment creating some open spaces for us to talk about sexual pleasure sexual practice i know that you've been looking at this, that kids, what, age 10, 11, they're looking at porn. If parents don't think they are, I know you think they're sort of not engaging with reality. When you say we need to have these conversations,

have you got any advice for people who want to talk to younger people about watching porn, who are also themselves watching the same sort of stuff? It's really, it's really, really hard. I mean, some of this, it needs to be a much broader cultural conversation, I think. The research that I've done and work that I've done with kids, and it makes sense, kids don't want to talk to their parents about porn and sex. Parents don't want to talk to their kids about porn and sex. And so in some ways, I'm not sure if that's the most productive or useful space to have those conversations. But we need to start producing and creating some

different cultural stories. Sex education, which was mandated, what, five years ago now that we still don't have in school, we need to start funding specialist women's services who can do some of this work in schools with young people and creating ways for young people to have conversations in this open way about what they're finding, what they're accessing and how it's making them feel because they're not having a good time at the moment. This idea that porn, everyone's having a good time with it is absolutely not true. And we need to create a space to start talking about that conflict. Cindy, there's a big push there to have this conversation,

but just kind of with the brute reality that you've seen with some of these platforms, what do you think would make these platforms change what they're offering? Or do you think we're stuck with it? No, absolutely not. And by the way, I do just want to make you aware that parents are buying their over 18 children and 20 something children subscriptions to make Love Not Porn because they want them to see what happy, healthy sexual relationships look like. I'll tell you the answer to how we could actually transform the porn industry. And by the way, this is also basically how you transform popular culture in general, because this is an enormously nuanced issue. And we are living in a patriarchal society where every aspect of popular culture is dominated at the top by men. Basically, if women began talking openly about the fact

that we enjoy watching porn, then the porn industry has to sit up and take notice of the fact there's a huge market and support actually many wonderful female queer pornographers who are making very different kinds of porn. Porn is not one big homogenous mass. But I think it's also equally important to bear something in mind. I wish society understood women enjoy sex just as much as men and men are just as romantic as women. Neither gender is allowed to openly celebrate that fact. We'd all be better off if they were. Toxic masculinity means there's enormous peer pressure on boys to go along with it. Oh, look at this. And if they're at all romantic or vulnerable, they're not encouraged to express that at all. We need to allow open conversations about love, intimacy, connection across genders in a way that then balances out in the real world.

What is currently the only place people see sex actually happening. They need to see many more nuanced takes on that to be able to understand that, you know, you'll be so much happier when you're able to express yourself freely and connect with somebody in a really wonderful real world way. Well, I mean, you two obviously have no issue talking about this, but a lot of people do and a lot of calls here for conversation. I want to read you a message from a message from Jonathan who's just texted in specifically to Fiona saying, I probably saw six or seven murders on early evening television last week for lightweight entertainment, but I don't feel the need to go out and hurt anyone. I'm able to distinguish dreams from reality like everyone else. So with porn, this outrage is ridiculous. We all know they're just acting. It's not real. Fiona, you've looked into what's actually being offered on mainstream sites and how abusive that is at times as well.

Yeah, and I think it's really important. We're not, we're not, I'm not making a causal argument. This is not about an individual based causal argument. You watch porn, you feel like this. This is about recognising that pornography has this social function about setting expectations about sex. And particularly when we're talking about younger people, those expectations are being set before they have the opportunity to start to test things out themselves, before they're having the opportunity to think about what might I like, what might I not like. So young women that I've spoken to have talked about, you know, for years, years and years, feeling like they had to like being spat on, they had to like

having their hair pulled, they had to like being slapped, and only getting into their mid to late 20s, starting to feel a bit more sure of themselves, where they felt that they could say, I'm not sure that I actually do like that, you know, but they were unable to do those really basic things at the beginning of their sexual experience where they start to test out what they like and what they don't like because those expectations about pleasure have been set. And I just want to make a point about the porn companies. We need to start holding them accountable. It's just ridiculous. You know, we know this famous line about the internet, if it's free, you're the product, you know. And so what's happening at the moment is mainstream pornography platforms are monetising the access of children and young people, and no one is doing anything about it. So the government needs to act now. We need to keep the pressure on until they do. And we need to understand that this isn't about a single cause. No one is saying that pornography is the single causal reason that we're living in this conducive context for violence that we are.

But it is the contributing factor and we need to start doing something about it. Dr Fiona Vera-Gray and Cindy Gallop talking to Emma on Wednesday's programme. And you emailed in off the back of that interview. An anonymous email here says, this is a discussion I've been having with my husband and two teenage boys.

I'm particularly worried about how my sons will manage their relationships with girls when they get around to having serious girlfriends. If they're only able to be aroused by the types of sex they see in porn, their relationships are probably doomed. Most girls are looking for romance sensitivity. And Kate emailed in to say,

I'm a 47-year-old mum of a nine-and-a-half-year-old boy. I'm so saddened and feel desperate sometimes about how I will not be able to stop him seeing horrible porn. What I do plan to do actively is to promote healthy sexual information. I'll make sure he sees the Joy of Sex book, for example, and however embarrassed he is, I will make sure he knows what real relationships are about, including real sex.

Now, this week, the organisers of Glastonbury Festival announced a one-off live-streamed event in May. The bands will be performing at Worthy Farm, but the audience will be at home around the world. However, there are plenty of festivals planned in person once social distancing laws are, hopefully, lifted this summer. Many of them have now revealed their lineups, and overall, they are still featuring majority male artists, particularly those headlining. Here's a clip of some of the women who've bagged prominent slots. But now I can't dismiss, it's killing me The hardest thing, you are not addicted to me I'm the only thing you should need

You should be addicted to me The hardest thing I am too selfless to leave You're the only thing that I need You should be addicted to me Why do I keep dreaming of you. Why do I keep dreaming of you? Is it all because of my rebel heart?

Is it all because of my rebel heart? You heard music from Haim, Georgia Smith and First Aid Kit there. Three female acts that will be performing live on main stages at UK music events this summer, but they are still in the minority. Two women that want to change that are Maxi Gedge, UK Projects Manager of Key Change, an initiative set up by the PRS Foundation to encourage better gender representation in music, and campaigner and founder of The F List, Vic Bain. I started by asking Vic what was going on.

I think we can do better. I was really hoping that when things reopened this summer, we would be building back better. And that means having more diversity on our lineups. And unfortunately, with a lot of the major festivals, that's not what we're seeing. Why is there such a huge disparity? Well, I don't believe that audiences don't want to see women. Festival audiences are now majority female. The latest research shows that just a few years ago, 60% of all of the major festival

attendees were women. And the audience research that I know of is that they are wanting to see more women on festival stages. So what I think we're experiencing is the historical context, the music industry has always been dominated by men, both in the executive workforce and on the stages. And they're just not catching up in time. And who are some of the big names that are dominating this year? Headlining acts? Yeah, male acts. Yeah. Well, you know, I noticed Duran Duran, which is which is great, you know, but a band from the 80s. How about having some some, you know, top female 80s stars as well? How about having Annie Lennox? Annie Lennox would be amazing. Banana Rama. Can we start the Banana Rama campaign, please, on Woman's Hour? Thank you.

Exactly. But we've got Liam Gallagher, David Guetta, Stereophonics. Why does it matter who's headlining? Well, I think it makes for better creativity, more diversity. Nearly 50% of all music performance degree students are women. And yet when we go to these festivals and see that it's 10% or 20% women on stage, why are women being given the same opportunities that the male musicians are? Let's bring Maxie in to see what she thinks about all of this. Why aren't they given the opportunities?

They must be there some ways. Are there more women than in previous years, but they're just further down on the bill? What's your experience, Maxie? We see that in the entry levels of the music industry and in kind of grassroots scenes that, yes, things are much more diverse. But the reality is that women and gender minorities face barriers.

And so they're not allowed to progress and get onto these stages and take up those headliner slots on music festivals. Yeah. So, Vic, you're doing the PhD about it. What are the barriers and how are we going to how are we going to bust them down? Well, some some of the barriers include, well, plain sexism. There's unconscious bias, I think, at play here. There's a lack of role models. There's harassment for women, sexual harassment, technophobia, where women, you know, aren't empowered

in their own music careers. There's the motherhood penalty. There's lots and lots of barriers, but all of them are absolutely able to be overcome with just a bit of will, I think, an initiative from festival organisers. Maxi was talking about positive action. The F List for Music has over 5,000 listings of UK female musicians who are able to play on festival stages right now. And why did you set it up? Why did you decide, right, I'm going to just bring in the F List where I'm going to bring all these 5,000 female artists together

and put them on a list? Why did you do that? Because I was tired of reading in a magazine and newspaper article interviews of festival organizers saying well we've asked all of the women we've asked them all or they weren't available uh you know or women don't play guitars and you know silly silly comments like this so I you know I collected all of the data and published it and women can sign up and create their own listings as well. So that it's a freely publicly available directory that festival and event organizers can go on and search right now. And there's just no excuses to say that there aren't female musicians available.

There really are. And if the image is that bleak for women, then where does that leave women of color? I mean, the intersectionality is just another added dimension, isn it Maxie absolutely oh either of you Vic yes absolutely and I mean I think that acknowledging that intersectional those intersectional barriers is incredibly important ethnicity wise looking at the festivals this year I mean it's kind of white able-bodied cis straight men that dominate and that is devastating for everyone it means we don't have diverse perspectives in our brilliant music scene and we know that they exist as Vic says we have we have lists and databases that prove that these people are out there, but we need more music organisations to take responsibility

and scratch below the surface to find that talent and raise it and put it on our stages. And that will have a positive impact on everyone in the music industry. Surely it doesn't reflect, Vic, what people are listening to, because people listen to a broad range of music. And a lot of these festivals are sold out before the line-ups even announced. So it's a real opportunity, isn't it,

for festivals to really mix up the line-ups and diversify them? Exactly. They should be showing an example, using a bit of creativity and imagination on their on their lineups audiences and and fans are demanding diversity the outrage on social media this week is absolutely it's it's been great uh you know because it shows the strength of feeling that people have towards this these festivals who don't get with the picture and update and start, you know, programming creatively are going to be left behind.

Maxi, who's getting it right? Has anyone got it right? Yeah, there are so many awesome UK festivals that are achieving greater parity. I mean, Wild Paths Festival in Norwich, Focus Wales, Blue Dot Festival, Manchester Jazz Festival. This is not about excluding anyone. It's about taking responsibility and making sure that your talent pools are diverse and ultimately making sure that your artists are responsibly sourced. I mean, we care about that in all other sectors. And that's because it's sustainable and because it's the future. We have a responsibility to adapt. And I honestly believe that the festivals who don't adapt and take that action towards equality will get left

behind. I was speaking to Vic Bain and Maxi Gedge there. Let's start that campaign to get Bananarama headlining right now on Women's Hour. And you emailed in with your thoughts. And Anonymous says the music industry is brutal for women i've been in it for 20 years and the lifestyle and culture simply does not provide support safety or respect for women uh nikki says i've worked at festivals for over 10 years and two of the festivals i love working on not only have a fantastic gender balance in the crew they also represent that in their lineups dearsher Shed in Yorkshire and End of the Road in Wiltshire. They are a joy to work at and I note that Deer Shed has been flagged as a festival

with more female artists than male. Now that interview with Vanessa Kirby I've been promising all programme. She's perhaps best known for her award-winning portrayal of Princess Margaret in the first two series of The Crown. She's now receiving rave reviews for her performance in the film Pieces of a Woman. It's an important but devastating story, not often told on screen, but one that unfortunately a number of women can relate to. Martha and Sean are a couple on the verge of becoming parents

when their lives change dramatically when a home birth ends in tragedy. The film deals with the birth, trauma, grief and fallout from the loss of their baby. The birthing scene alone takes up a quarter of the film. Vanessa has been nominated for the Best Actress Award at the Oscars and at the BAFTAs for her performance. Emma started by asking Vanessa if the role scared her.

It did scare me and I always think that's a good sign. It would almost demand that I push into a corner of myself that perhaps I haven't been in touch with. if the role scared her. It did scare me. And I always think that's a good sign. It would almost demand that I push into a corner of myself that perhaps I haven't been in touch with. And that's always such a, without being grand, a kind of profound experience, you know, where you come out the other side of something different because of it. And I really do sort of always seek that in a way. But it is profound.

I mean, it's literally life and death, this film. And the birth scene, Everybody who's read anything about it or seen it won't forget that scene because it's not anything I've ever seen on screen before. Can you tell us about what it was like to make that? What was it in one take? How long did it take? So it was in one take. And I remember when I first read the script, I couldn't believe that, you know, page 10, the birth was still going on going on page 20 and it was 35 pages or something and the intention was to do it in one continuous take which we did without any cuts and I remember being halfway through it being so struck by the fact that my eyes had never seen it black and white on paper before in a script the most in-depth birth scenes

that I'd ever read or seen really were fleeting and a sort of passing moment of a few pushes and then baby was out. And I realized I was becoming conscious then as I was reading it of the fact that, oh, look, this is a female writer writing about her female experience. days of women really being able to take space generally but particularly as writers and having movies financed about a woman that gives birth for a quarter of the film and and then loses her baby is so I found out discovered a little spoken about in society and I really believe that it should be just because we'll get to that won't we we will we will because but the reason I asked about the shooting of it is, of course, your job is to act, but something like that, you have to get some level of insight or experience of.

And I know you haven't yet had a baby yourself. What did you do to prepare for that? Well, yes, that was also what scared me so much, is I just thought, I can't get a second of this birth wrong, because it's such a responsibility to sort of do women justice in the true experience that birth is so I started watching a ton of documentaries home birth videos anything I could find and after hours and hours and days and days of research weeks I realized I didn't know how to act any better than when I started and that was because even in the documentaries it was sort of edited or sanitized in a way.

You'd see little moments, but you wouldn't see it in its full entirety. You wouldn't see in the sort of the messiness of it. So I ended up writing to obstetricians, and I wrote to one amazing woman called Claire Mellon, who works at the Whittington Hospital. She allowed me to come on the labour ward, and so I spent many days with midwives there who were really wonderful to me and so generous.

And we went through the birth scene and they were showing all the different positions. And there was one woman on the last day I was there. She's nine centimetres dilated and her name is Erin. And I was like bowled over by her allowing me to be there in one of her most sacred of moments, I imagine. And so I watched her for eight hours go on this most incredible journey. I bet she had a few other words for it as well. I've also been struck, though, by some of the narrative around this film in the sense of you've now been nominated for the Best Actress Award at the Oscars and at the BAFTAs.

Congratulations for that. I should hasten to add but there have been some that said well perhaps it may or you may not win because people don't want to award misery you know you know this is not necessarily a film you run towards and and this isn't a film that runs away from its misery because why should you move on after a stillbirth? Why should you do anything other than what Martha's character does, which people will see? What do you make of that? That some people say, oh, gosh, it's just so miserable. Yeah. I mean, I fully hear them and acknowledge it. I sometimes have that thought in the making of it. But then I thought about the depth of experience and pain, actually, that a really intense loss causes., relationship, a person, someone we love, end of a time in your life or chapter or whatever, you have to grieve. And I think grieving is the most universal human experience and it's uncomfortable and it's hard.

And sometimes those days feel like they go on forever. And yet the world around you feels like it's just continuing on, just buzzing onwards and you're sort of on your lone journey and I guess I always felt that the film sort of would just hope in some small way to speak to that experience for anyone that's going through it right now and feels that they're alone with it. Most people do not go and watch another woman give birth anyway full stop but they certainly don't do anything like that maybe before they have had a child i wonder how it's impacted i don't know if you were ever thinking of that and i wouldn't wish to pry but i wonder if it has impacted your view of potentially becoming a mother and if so

how a doctor said to me before i went into the labor ward he said oh I just want to warn you it might put you off if you see one I went oh no I don't I mean maybe but honestly watching her do it it just made me so excited for hopefully maybe if I'm lucky enough to do it myself and now when I see a pregnant lady or someone's about to give birth or we're talking about it I feel so connected to them and then I feel that's such a fraud because of course I haven't remotely even gone near, you know, done it at all. I'm just an actress that's pretended. You're like, when I was going through this, you know.

No, I did. My friend, one of my best friends from school was about to give birth and I said, okay, so basically you have to make sure you just, you know, I was giving all this advice and I thought, oh God, this is so weird because I'm literally literally just you know an

actress having having pretended perhaps we'll talk again uh as and when if you are in that boat completely different we'll have some comparisons I'm sure to talk about those those war stories as as some like to call it I wanted to ask you about something that we we got a letter here from one of our listeners and it was about the depiction of women in film in television and the violence against women and girls that is often part of a storyline and and I have to say it was after a whole week of coverage and we'll continue to talk about this after the killing of Sarah Everard I don't know how you how you feel about this because what we were talking about is the influences and how we show the way men and women interact and how media plays a big part in that not just film of course but how we write things up have you been

affected by what's happened to to sarah everard and have you reflected on on the way that we represent women and the way the interplay with men and women definitely i think we all felt it um i still think of it all the time i think it's very much in our collective conscious now. And I think it's so important. And I do think film and media generally has a responsibility. And I really feel that now. And everyone is part of it to take responsibility for that. I think there is space opening up for female writers to come in,

which means that basically, subliminally, there's this space opening up for female writers to come in which means that basically subliminally there's this space opening up now almost feels like a runway to be able to really take ownership of stories that are reflected on our screens because women are now being invited into the space and actually taking hold of it I think a big part of it is really representing what it is actually to be a woman not a movie type of a woman not a sort of cartoony type at the Venice Film Festival after the film was first shown to people for the very first time a few women came up to me and sort of grabbed my arms and said oh thank you for burping and you know I laughed with them and I sort of said I was I was really touched by them saying that and this is in the birthing scene just to be in the birthing scene yeah just not generally for birthing screening

which I'm sure I might have done but anyway and it took me a while to process why they were thanking me for that and then I realized oh I think it's because it was important to reflect the the things that we might perceive as being unpleasant or unpalatable or uncomfortable and unattractive or whatever, you know? And I just like, what? But being a woman is so imperfect and messy and, you know, there are ugly parts, there are beautiful, exquisite parts. And that's what it is to be a human being. And so if I can burp in all my films, I think I'd be happy, to be honest, because I don't want to show a perfect version of a woman I don't identify as being like me. Vanessa Kirby speaking with Emma there, and you can see Pieces of a Woman on Netflix now.

Oops, excuse me, just did a little burp. Join Andrea Catherwood on Monday when we explore how chocolate came to be both a luxury and a staple in Britain and its historic links with exploitation and imperialism, what life was like for some of the women who farmed the cacao, and we meet women on the factory floor producing chocolate here in Britain and, of course, delve into how chocolate in all its forms is advertised to women. Hope you get to enjoy some lovely chocolate over the weekend. A very happy Easter.

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.