Woman's Hour - The Girl Code, Chinese Women in Detention, Sohaila Abdulali

Episode Date: July 9, 2019

The Girl Code: what is it and what does it include? How about "not going out with your friend's ex"? We find out with Moya Lothian-McLean and Ellen Scott.A UK refugee charity says Chinese women who’ve been traumatised because of human trafficking are being harmed even more by being put in detention centres. The charity called Women For Refugee Women says they should be housed in safe accommodation and given support rather than being sent to Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre in Bedfordshire. Last year 420 Chinese women were held in places like Yarl’s Wood, making them the largest group in detainment by nationality.Sohaila Abdulali, a writer from India, was gang-raped as a seventeen-year-old. Police ignored her and the doctor was too embarrassed to examine her properly. She wrote an article about it for a woman’s magazine which challenged perceptions about rape. Thirty years later in 2012 another young woman was raped, this time by a gang on a bus in New Delhi and she died a few days later of her injuries. It caused an outcry and Sohaila's original article about rape was rediscovered and went viral. Jane speaks to Sohaila about her new book called What we Talk About When We Talk about Rape in which she continues to explore frankly the crime and the silence and taboo around it. Historian Amber Butchart begins a new series on summer wardrobe staples . Today it's the swimsuit. How did we get from the bathing suit to the swimsuit and its racier cousin, the bikini?

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is Jane Garvey. This is the Woman's Hour podcast from the 9th of July 2019. On the programme today, I have quite a long conversation, and there's more at the end of the podcast, with Saheeli Abdullali about her new book about rape. She is astonishingly frank, and she'd be keen for me to point this out. Actually, she can do it herself.

You're funny as well. Well, I don't want to toot my own horn. Oh, you can. This programme is all about women tooting their horns. We're happy with that. So more from her at the end of the podcast and of course during the programme you're about to hear as well.

We also talk about Yarlswood Detention Centre. That's where we start today. And you can hear about the history of the bikini and a fascinating chat about the Girl Code. If you or somebody in your life has been watching Love Island, you'll know all about Girl Code. First then, a UK refugee charity says Chinese women, already traumatised because they've been trafficked into the UK,

are incorrectly put in detention centres. Women for Refugee Women says they ought to be in safe accommodation and getting help rather than spending time in places like Yarlswood Detention Centre. Last year, 420 Chinese women were detained in immigration centres in the UK and that means they are the largest group by nationality in such places. I talked this morning to Gemma Lousley from Women for Refugee Women and to Shalini Patel of Duncan Lewis Solicitors. Here's Shalini first of all on how these women end up in Britain.

These women are survivors of human trafficking where they've been either forced through the use of fraud or coercion. They've been brought to the UK to obtain some type of labour or sexual activity from them. They've been promised a certain lifestyle. And most of the time, these women don't actually know where they're going. These victims of trafficking have accrued a lot of debt in China. They're from rural China, really poor backgrounds, trying to better their lifestyles. They'll end up with numerous amount of debt that they will have taken through loan sharks. So they owe this money. And what happens is the loan sharks keep lending these women this money, sometimes lending it to their husbands. And they'll end up in a situation where they can't

pay that money back. And then those loan sharks, I guess they work in a form of gangs. They then promise them a certain lifestyle and say, well, you can pay this step back if you come and do some work with us in another country where, you know, you'll be paid more. And they believe them. These are vulnerable women who have no choice. They've got families. They have to pay this step back. So they'll. OK, I mean, that gives us an idea. I think it's worth saying, Gemma, that these people, these women have not targeted the UK as a place they want to be. The chances are they've probably never heard of it. No, I mean, very often they have no idea where they're being brought to.

You know, as Shalini said, they're told that they have to go and work, but they don't know where they're going to be going. So they arrive in the UK and sometimes they have no idea where they are initially. So it's obviously an incredibly traumatising experience for them. Now, the term trafficked is widely used, but I mean, is it fully understood? What actually does it mean? Effectively, a woman has been, it's not quite kidnapped, is it? But I just don't think traffic does it justice either. No, I mean, they're being held against their will. They're being coerced into sexual exploitation or labour exploitation. Very often they're threatened with violence

or they do have violence used against them or they're beaten, starved, deprived of food and water. So really, like I said, they're being held against their will. They're being forced to do all of these things. And they wind up in Yarlswood because they're picked up. Now, who picks them up and where do they find them? Well really shockingly actually in our research we found that in a number of these cases women are being encountered in massage parlours or brothels by

the police. So they're being encountered in situations where there are clear indicators that they have been trafficked to the UK and yet they're being arrested and taken to Yarlswood. So they're not being given help and support, they're being detained and locked up. Now, this shouldn't happen if you pay attention to the government's own adults at risk policy, which I think came in, what, back in 2016? Back in September 2016,

the Home Office brought in the adults at risk policy, and under that policy they said that vulnerable people, including survivors of trafficking, shouldn't be locked up in detention. So why, apparently, is it being violated so consistently? Well, I think that's a really good question. And I think that what we found in our research is that this is absolutely a deliberate pattern of the Home Office just completely ignoring indicators that women have been trafficked,

completely flouting their own policies, locking them up in detention for really significant periods of time, you know, for months at a time, and even when their mental health is deteriorating absolutely drastically. It's worth at this point acknowledging that we do have a statement from the Home Office who say, detention is an important part of the immigration system, but it must be fair, dignified and protect the most vulnerable.

We've made significant improvements to our approach in recent years, but remain committed to going further. We continue to explore alternatives to detention, increase transparency around immigration detention, further improve the support available for vulnerable detainees and initiate a new drive on detainee dignity. Any person we encounter who claims they are a victim of trafficking will, with their consent, be referred to the National Referral Mechanism.

And it ends with the statement, their claim will then be considered by a trained specialist. Now, on the face of it, the Home Office seem to be doing their level best to make sure these women are treated fairly. I mean, I think one of the things I would say about what the Home Office have said there is that in a number of the cases that we looked at, so in eight of the cases that we looked at, women had been referred, when they were referred into the national referral mechanism, the Home Office simply said, we don't believe you, we don't believe that you've been trafficked.

And in six of those cases, they gave them a negative decision on the trafficking case in complete contravention of their own guidance. So one of the things Home Office guidance says is that victims of trafficking, because of the exploitation and the trauma that they have been through, often they're not going to disclose what's happened to them immediately. When the Home Office refused these women's cases, they specifically referenced the fact that women hadn't disclosed it immediately as a reason for saying, we don't believe you. So they are completely contravening their own guidance. I think you'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel some sympathy

for these women who've obviously been through, to put it mildly, a tough time. On the other hand, the Home Office has a duty to the taxpayer, and I suppose it has a duty too, it would say, to be pretty sceptical. But I think the thing that you need to understand about immigration detention is that it is actually a completely purposeless system. The majority of people who are locked up in detention in the UK aren't removed from the UK. They're released back into the community. And actually, for asylum-seeking women from China, 92% of them are released back into the community to continue with their cases.

So what is the purpose of this system? And Shalini, what happens to them? You're representing some of these people, aren't you? Yes, so out of all of the women that have been looked into in the report, they're all clients of Duncan Lewis. Majority of these cases, the women eventually secure a positive decision. Which means they stay in the UK? Well, they get a positive decision where they're recognised as a victim of trafficking. Then they're given a 45-day reflection period within which time they can think about how they want to pursue their trafficking claim. During that period of time, we will get the necessary evidence to show that they are victims of trafficking. We'll then submit that evidence to the Home Office and they will then be granted discretionary leave in the UK.

Alongside that, their asylum claim, because of their fear of returning to China, because of these loan sharks or fear from religious persecution or whatever it may be, alongside the trafficking claim, will also support them and represent them through that and they will get refugee status once that's come to an end. So I think going back to Gemma's point, what is the purpose of detention if at the end of the day these women all secure leave in the UK anyway? Yes, but you don't deny that detention centres do serve a purpose. There are some people who try to get into Britain

and flout the system, aren't there? I guess the point that we need to think about is these women who are trafficked to the UK are too vulnerable to be in a detention centre. So they shouldn't be there? Any vulnerable individual shouldn't be there at the end of the day and my job is to represent these people who have been through you know traumatic events in their countries, not just these victims of trafficking, and detention is not a suitable place for them to be. Gemma? And if I can just come in there,

I think it's really important to remember that up until 2011, we were detaining, the UK was detaining 1,000 children a year in Yarlswood Detention Centre. That practice has pretty much come to an end now. The detention of children has fallen by 96%. So actually, if there is the political will to end the use of detention, it can happen. This can happen on a more widespread basis. Detention doesn't need to be part of the immigration system. As it happens, actually, Yarlswood, I think, is majority female detainees, isn't it? Now,

why is that? And is it the only detention centre that is that way? It's the only detention centre that holds predominantly women. There are a couple of other detention centres that might hold small numbers of women, but that's where most women are held. And what about the people who work there and guard the detainees? Who are they? It's Serco who operate Yarlswood, isn't it? Yeah, so Serco operate the, they run Yarlswood, yep. And are the guards predominantly male, female or a mix? I mean, that's something that we have been pushing on for a long time as well, They run Yarlswood, yep. And are the guards predominantly male, female or a mix?

I mean, that's something that we have been pushing on for a long time as well, that actually it is a mixture of men and women. And, you know, I mean, the prison's inspectorate, for instance, has repeatedly said that there needs to be a higher proportion of female guards, particularly, you know, we have documented in the past that male guards were being used to watch women on suicide watch, which was incredibly distressing for them. But you know yes conditions need to be improved but what really needs to happen is that yards would need to be shut down. Shalini? Just to add to that the the first people that within the detention environment that these women will get to talk to

our medical staff and more often than not we're seeing reports written by the medical staff that are actually men how a woman who's been sexually exploited by net men can be expected to divulge information about sexual exploitation to a man is just beyond me and i don't think these reports should be done i was interested actually looking at your report that some of these assessments these medical assessments are they take place at what I might describe as somewhat peculiar times of the day. I mean, it can be early hours of the morning or lastclock at night and 6 o'clock in the morning. And at that point, they have an initial health screening. So one of the questions they're asked is if they've ever been subjected to torture or abuse. They're being asked this after being in,

transported in a van for hours and hours. They're exhausted by the time they get there. And then sometimes they're being asked these questions by male nurses as well. So apart from the fact of being locked up, which acts as a barrier to disclosure, there are also these practices in detention centres that the Home Office knows about. They've known about these practices for years and they have done nothing to rectify. Thank you very much for your input this morning. I appreciate both of you being here. Gemma Lousley

and Shalini Patel, thank you very much indeed. Any thoughts on that? At BBC Women's Hour on social media. Now, if you are watching Love Island, well, actually, you don't have to watch it to be constantly made aware of it, particularly if you have teenagers or young people in the house, they will all be watching it, even if you're not. And one of the subjects that has featured really throughout this series of Love Island is the girl code and whether or not it has been broken. So we thought it was high time we attempted at least on this programme to define girl code. So with me to attempt to do exactly that, the freelance writer Moya Lothian-McLean. Welcome, Moya. And from the Metro newspaper,

where she's the lifestyle editor, Ellen Scott is here as well. Ellen, good morning to you. Let's talk briefly. I mean, Amy is all over the front pages of the tabloids today. She has apparently left the island. So who's prepared to talk about what they believe has happened here? Ellen first. Well, apparently Maura has broken the girl code. Maura has. Maura. So Maura has gone after Amy's ex, Curtis, and has gone up to him and said, I fancy you. And basically where the girl code has been breached apparently is that she didn't go to Amy first and tell her she was going to do that I think I see um what would you what would you add to that Moya um I would add that Love Island I think every season of Love Island has been defined by this idea of girl code last season

we saw Megan Barton Hanson and Wes Nelson get together after she told him that she liked him and he was with a partner at the time called Laura and Megan was also accused of breaking the girl code by circumventing this and I think earlier this season we also saw it with Maura again although she accused her friend Elma of breaking the girl code by talking to the boy that she was interested in so there's a clear pattern here about where the girl code is applied okay um let's try to define the girl code i want you both to have a go at this uh moya first of all okay well defined in the sense of love and i would say the girl code is a loose collection of tenants that basically are don't talk to your friend's man um well don't talk don't talk don't talk don't go near him don't breathe near him um don't but it's basically don't overstep in a romantic way on another girl's man

that's the main but if they finished what's the if this this is the thing i think the girl what we're getting down to here is the girl code is it's a loose collection of policies that is based on kind of fear and is policing heteronormative dating so it's women don't get involved romantically with other women's men that's the girl code as we know on love island of course it can apply different places but i'd say on love island that's the main tenant we're looking at ellen what do you think it's very possessive it's about saying i've dated this man or I like this man. So he is off limits. He's mine. You're peeing all over someone, basically. Oh, that's a lovely thought.

Welcome to Woman's Hour, everybody. I haven't had my coffee, actually. It'd be nice to have one now. Let's just talk, though, about whether or not this is... It doesn't, to me, it seems a bit retro and not really 21st century enough for me. So what about that? I would 100% 100 agree i think the

clue to girl code is in the name it's an infantilized version of i would say feminism i think it has its roots in kind of 90s la dette post feminism um and it's very much about patriarchal kind of ideas of women being in competition with other women always putting it but they're repackaged in a sort of feminism light kind of product where it says and it's it's based on women policing other women and i think it is very retro it is something that we don't now it seems very out of date because it's like we've moved on our ideas about feminism and solidarity and female solidarity are more based they're not just in relation to men whereas girl code exists solely in relation to men as we see it on places like

love island yeah you're right you're right to use the term heteronormative because would it apply in other sorts of relationships? It can't. I'm bisexual and if you are dating women, you will date your friend's exes. Okay, tell us more about that then. Because it's such a small world, like you're going to the same clubs and it's just not as possessive at all. You kind of see

each other as okay this is my ex for a reason you hang on are you saying women are not as possessive as men shockingly yes are you really don't you believe that yeah 100 i think when they're not um told to be i think a lot of girl code is saying you have to be for women. You have to be on the woman's side always and be loyal to women. You can't choose a man. Whereas when it's women loving women, that rule doesn't apply. You're not getting possessive over men. I think the tenets of girl... I think women, I mean, in the sense of possessiveness,

I think women can be as possessive as men, but I think in the tenets of girl code, it's more about... It's fear, because women are socialized to always see men if in a heteronormative way obviously women are socialized to see men as a prize and competing with other women and women getting picked by that man as a prize and women are seen that we're replaceable we're taught that we can always be replaced and we and in the tenets of girl code the whole fear is that you will be replaced and that men can't control themselves the idea is that you know if a man approaches and you're so if you're in a situation where a man is dating someone

and then that's your friend, and a man then approaches you or hits on you, then it's up to you to turn that down. There's no agency put on the man. The onus is always put on the women to protect other women through solidarity because the idea is that men are never going to control themselves. Men are going to run rampant.

It's actually hard on men as well as women, isn't it? Yeah, 100%. But that's always the way isn't it even with the patriarchy it affects both men and women in a poisonous way is there Ellen a boy code then

no that's what's the issue there's kind of bro code but it's nowhere near as enforced as girl code is and it's not seen as such a betrayal if a guy goes for

you know a friend's ex in that way because I don't think women are valued in the same way to men. And bro code is all about being sexually like, bro, there's a bit I was reading up on it.

And it's a very Americanised thing as well. It's not very entrenched in English values. It's more like, bro, let's have a beer. Let's go get some girls. Whereas girl code is very... Also, girl code is very passive in the sense that it's not actively supporting other women. It's not something like, let's walk other women home.

Let's protect women from harassment. Let's do this. It's all about watching somebody move on to someone else's man and snarking about it afterwards. Oh, God, this is depressing. I know. But the thing is, it doesn't have to be that way. We can have a girl code. And we already have feminism, which is why I think a girl code is redundant.

Because feminism is the girl code. It's the woman's code. Whereas a girl code is all about this kind of the girl code. It's the woman's code, whereas a girl code is all about this kind of, like, baby, like, just don't touch someone. But I think we could rebrand it completely. Let's talk, as we're here and as you're both here, about Maura and about how divisive she has been,

because our listeners, I'm conscious some of our listeners will be saying, I don't want to hear this on Radio 4. But if you live with young people, it's their water cooler telly they're watching it it's their communal talking point of the moment and actually this generation don't get that many and Maura has been a consistent talking point throughout this series now both of you just give us a quick take on Maura what she's done and whether or not she's a good thing well I love Maura so yeah she's a good but what's she done she has so

she's kind of broken girl code twice um she's gone for one guy tommy who had a girlfriend at the time and then she's also expressed um attraction to another guy who's just broken up with someone so that's curtis and amy i'm a big fan what i would say about maura is i as again i'm a fan i think she's fascinating in the sense that she is a properly three-dimensional person and yes she sometimes oversteps in that sense but I think that's you know she's been assertive she's assertive she's completely so she's sexually open very open about that she makes mistakes yes and then you can call out but she's not she's not something you can brand as a hero or villain she exists in a totally 360 degree fully realized character I think that's so important for us to

see especially as women it's like we're not going to be perfect and we are going to do this and we are going to do that but we also assure of ourselves and we move through the world making our own decisions and you can't just put us in a box i think on a program like love island which often has very two-dimensional characters in previous seasons and that's why this season i think has also really hit a chord you have someone like maura who says no no no no no this is like the 21st century woman. She will go after the things she wants, she will do this, she will do that, and yes, she will make mistakes, but that's all part of being human.

It's interesting that Amy does appear to have been made very upset by what has happened, and we were led to believe that this series was going to be different, it was going to be kinder. And I just want to know whether you think it has been, Ellen. I think maybe they've put in more things and measures that we're not seeing. But in terms of the very dynamic of the show, absolutely not. Like you've seen men, especially on the show, be incredibly cruel to the women that they're dating.

And it's been quite painful to watch in a way. It hasn't been kind at all. I would say that whatever Love Island does, as Ellen said, the measures that are are in we don't see them but i think there's no way of making it kind of because the end of the day it reflects the real world and real world dating right now is not that great and the sexual dynamics in heteronormative dating as well are particularly skewed especially in post me too well not because of me too but because women are starting to say i'm not going to do this i don't want to settle for this i know my

like and that's what we're also seeing on the show i think we're seeing a lot more kind of mainstream feminism come through in a way they might not even be aware of. So it's got a lot more charge. Can I just bring you some thoughts from our listeners? Emma says, what impressive young women talking about hashtag girl code. On the other hand, BBC Balance,

Sarah says, I've been a woman for most of my living memory and I have never, never subscribed to any of this nonsense I don't think we need it so let's just not um I'm not sure about that but what I do know and we were talking about this in the green room earlier is that because as I said at the start your generation doesn't have it has you have so much choice in terms of your entertainment you don't have many collective television experiences and for people

under 25 love island is that sort of telly isn't it over 25 as well everyone in the office is talking about it yeah but how often do you all watch the same thing um i mean netflix i think how often you don't say the same time it's an event television yeah exactly it's like we can watch the same thing but this one is like eventual i think the reason as we time, it's an event television. Yeah, exactly. We can watch the same thing, but this one is an event television. I think the reason, as we say, is it's sex and relationships. And that will always get people involved because it's something that everyone can relate to on some level. Someone has always felt heartbreak. Someone has always fallen in love with somebody who didn't love them back.

Somebody has had that passionate four-month romance only to realise that actually the ground is falling out under your feet. And the dynamics we see in love, and the reason we talk about it all the time is because it relates to so many wider issues you've got the emotional abuse the gaslighting conversations it's brought concepts to mainstream discussions that I don't think we would have been talking I really don't think we would have been talking about gaslighting and that would not have become a buzzword in the way it has if it wasn't for last season of Love Island. Gemma on Twitter says I'm liking this discussion on Girl Code and Love Island. It's my first year

watching purely so I can talk to my teenagers and get some kind of response. So far we've had chats on body image, coercive control and bullying. On the other hand, another listener, if Love Island is the way of the world, bring on the end of the human race.

Susan, with two daughters in their early 20s, they live and breathe this stuff. Why? I think she means girl. Yeah, she does say, she says, ha-ha, girl code. So people do take it seriously. It's an entry-level thing, I think, as well.

Like, when you're growing up, you have this sort of fuzzy idea about sisterhood and that, you know, you should somehow ally with other women and you're kind of aware that you're in this together but at the same time you're being socialised with so many messages

from this kind of patriarchy we live in about being in competition with them for men and you know pitting against each other and I think it's very hard

to unlearn that so often as you're getting older and these are all people in their early 20s remember on Love Island as I am but you know I work in the media

so it's very easy for me to come into all this other stuff. Dead easy. I have to say, you're both unnervingly good at this malarkey. I don't think I'll be here much longer for a variety of reasons. So you might be more than suitable to take over. Really enjoyed talking to you both. Thank you very much, Eleanor and Moya. Really good to have you on the programme. Keep your thoughts coming. You've been very active throughout that conversation. So keep it all coming at BBC Women's Hour on social media.

Now, yesterday we had a phone-in. If you missed it and this is relevant to you, then make sure you go to BBC Sounds and listen to the podcast of yesterday's phone-in about the transition from primary to secondary school, which is something obviously is coming up in late August, depending on where you are in the country, or September for loads and loads of people.

It can be a trying time in a child's life. And it can also be quite trying for the parent as well. So if you missed yesterday's programme, there's some good, solid advice and some nice stories on that phone-in about the primary to secondary school transition. Now, our next guest was listening to that conversation about Love Island with... Well, you were amused, weren't you? I hope you were amused. I was fascinated.

Fascinated. Excellent. OK. Sahela Abdullali is here to talk about something that is incredibly serious. Although, of course, we should say that some serious issues are raised actually on Love Island, as we alluded to in that conversation. Your book is what we talk about when we talk about rape. And Sahela, I don't want to talk about your experience because you own what happened to you so tell us what did happen to you when you were a teenage girl I will but before that I just want to respond to the people before first of all they were so amazing and articulate and I think we make a real mistake when we say well that's

light and this is heavy it's not like that at all. We could have been in the conversation together. They're talking exactly about sisterhood, about men going rampant, about the court. It could be about my book. So it's really amazing to me how all these issues dovetail. So I don't want to come off as a serious one while they're the light ones. No, I think that's an excellent point. Let's go back then to, well, first of all, to what happened to you. You actually, you grew up in India, but actually you had left the country when you were attacked.

Yes. So we, I had moved with my family to Boston in the States. And then I graduated high school when I was 17 and went home for the summer with my father and my grandmother lived there still in our house. And during that summer, at one stage, I went for a walk in the evening to this mountain near our house, which is we used to do all the time. And we were kidnapped. I mean, kind of abducted by four armed men who were really violent. And they seemed very angry that I dared to be out there, a girl wearing jeans alone with a guy. And they wounded us both really badly and they threatened to kill us. And they raped me.

And then after some hours, I went home and there was big drama because I wanted to report it but the police didn't believe me and then three weeks so we recovered from my injuries and then a couple of weeks later I started college in the states and you make it sound perfectly simple that you then just casually started college what had you been through what was the reaction to what had happened? Well, it wasn't casual. But I have to say that that I think was the saving of me because, you know, I was 17. Life was just beginning. And at that age, you also you have a certain amount of defiance in you. And I was damned if I was going to let these people spoil my plans. So and the big thing is that I was really, really lucky. The main thing that happened for me is that my my parents are incredible. So my mother wasn't there, but my father was there. And he was worried because I had vanished. I was supposed to be home before dark and I wasn't there. So when he went out hunting for me, and when he came back, I had arrived home and he just took one look at me and I was injured. He just picked me up, put me in his arms and ran up four flights of steps to the terrace and said, tell me what happened.

Tell me what I can do. Tell me what you want. And it just was completely up to me what to do. He said, do you want to call the police? I will. So I said, yes, of course I want to call. So I think that kind of support is so rare, unfortunately. It seems like basic good parenting. But of all the 30 or more people I interviewed for the book, and I've talked to hundreds of the men, women, trans people, people from all cultures,

it's that one basic thing that you so often don't get in cases of rape. It's somebody saying, I believe you, what can I do? That is the simple part, which doesn't happen. You wrote about what had happened to you for a magazine. Yeah. And I should say, of course, no charges were brought, were they? No, because no charges were brought. We called the police and I think 15 policemen showed up in our house.

And in India, the police are not comforting. They're scary, generally. So they were there. And I was so naive that I just assumed that obviously this crime has been committed and they're going to find the people. But they just refused to believe me. So even though I and my friend were sitting there, we actually had wounds on us. They just tried every

possible thing to make it so that either it was our fault for being out there. Or at one stage, there was the implication that we must have gone out to have sex. And we made up the story to cover that. But essentially, it was that in those days in India, and in some, to some extent, even now, nobody wanted to register a rape case because they would look bad. So they just didn't want they didn't want that on the record that they had a rape in their district. And so ultimately, they just made it harder and harder. And because I was officially a child, I was 17. They said that for your protection, we will lock you up in a remand home during the trial and you can't go to America.

So which is where you were living. Yeah. So the article you wrote, it was it was it was published. People read it. And then you got on with the rest of your life. I'm not again, that must have been extraordinarily difficult at times, but you did nevertheless. And then something else happened 30 years later. Yeah. So the article was you have to remember there was that the age of pre-internet. So it came out in this feminist magazine because I wanted to make the point that this happened and it happened to me. I'm not embarrassed about it. And then I did engage with the issue because I something of interest to me, but it became less and less personal and more like rape as a way to explore all these issues

of inequality and feminism and poverty and climate even. It's so connected to all of it. And then I'd kind of forgotten about that article. And then in 2012, when there was a rape and murder of Jyoti Singh in India, which was big news everywhere, it turned out I was still the only living rape victim who had ever spoken out in India. So I was sitting in New York, quite happy to be away from all this, but very thrilled at the protests in India because it was the first time in our history that rape became a topic of everyday conversation. And even though people were saying some crazy things, they were saying things. They were at least talking about it. And there was a commission. I mean, I could go on, but it was great.

But it led to your article being circulated again. It went viral. People started to, as you say, really engage with it. So I think there are some brilliant, brilliant bits in this book. And there's loads of stuff I want to ask you. You've already mentioned how good your father was. And you have advice, don't you, for people who perhaps meet a rape victim in their life. Just can you sum up the key points, actually, for anyone? Of the advice?

Advice for the people who want to help someone who's been raped. Oh, yes, absolutely. So I called it the Abdullali guidelines for saving a rape survivor's life. And actually, it applies to anything when anyone's in a trauma. But I kind of and I sort of say she, but I make sure that people know it applies to all gender. And also, of course, men can be victims of rape. Yes, and trans people and in fact more. You know, the minute you're not a binary gender, you're immediately more vulnerable to attack. So essentially, it boils down to believe the person.

You're not the judge and jury. Someone tells you something, believe them because give them the same level of credibility as you would if they came in and told you someone stole my wallet. If someone comes and tells you they've been robbed, you don't say, well, why did you leave your house unlocked? Blah, blah, blah. Why did you leave your money out on the draw? All that might be not good decision making, but there's still a criminal out there. You're not, you don't excuse them by your behavior. So I guess my main advice is to treat rape like any other crime in the sense of where you put the blame on the criminal, not the victim. You also talk about consent. And actually, well, you've got some interesting views on consent, actually, haven't you? Tell us about that.

Well, I think that we, when I was in college, it was very much feminism of the 80s and we used to have take back the night marches and one of the big things was yes means yes and no means no. And of course that's true, but the fact is that that's not a very nuanced way to look at it. Because first of all, many times you say yes, like I said, yes,

you could the police actually said, but you let them rape you. I said yes, because they were going to kill me. And so I would rather be raped than dead. But you could take that whole thing to an extreme and say, well, she she consented and that that plays out all the time because for instance one of the people I interviewed in my book it was she had just broken up with a boyfriend and stomped out of a bar drunk after breaking up with him and gone to her dorm room she was in college and he came raging after her knocked on the door and she opened it and he raped her and everyone in her life said she had consented and that that wasn't rape because he was her boyfriend. Why did she open the door? She must have wanted it.

So I just feel like we need to look beyond these words. And you make the point as well, there should be, there should always be a link between sex and pleasure. Yes. I mean, often, apparently, there isn't. Well, there usually isn't because you think of sex education. In India, we have none. But say in the West, I don't know what it's like in England. But in the US, I think it would be fair to say. But in the US, it's sort of like sex education is basically

you see the diagrams of the organs, which are also wrong because there's no clitoris usually. And sex for girls is, be careful. It's painful. You're going to lose your virginity. It might hurt the first time. And be careful how you behave because, you know, they can't control themselves like those women were saying.

Men are rampant and they have some innate thing. Well, I enjoyed that bit in the book where you actually talk about this very notion that male arousal is impossible to control. No man can stop. I mean, it's so insulting to everyone. And I actually have this question for men who feel that is that if you were having really hot sex with someone you're really into and you're in the middle of the action and your grandmother walks into the room and looks at you, could you stop? And I think probably most people could. So there's this whole issue of, but getting back to sex and pleasure,

it's that if you're taught as a girl that sex is not for pleasure, you might not even be able to recognize that what's happening to you isn't consensual because it's not even a concept. Because you never expected to enjoy it in the first place. Yeah, and you don't know how to say yes because you don't think you deserve pleasure. So it seems to me like if you teach girls and boys both that sex is meant to be fun for everyone, you're more likely to have a scenario

where somebody's just lying there putting up with it. What did they say? Lie there and think of England. Yes. Go on, carry on. Yeah. And the other person not even knowing that maybe this is not so cool,

that maybe I should care what my partner wants. And so it's complicated to talk about rape and sex together because I would never want to say rape is sex. But they're very connected. It's a sexual act. And sometimes it starts off as somebody thinking they're having sex with someone who wants to. So I think difficult, though it is,

I think we're smart enough to talk about them together. Well, I found the book absolutely fascinating. And actually, I was really glad you started on such a positive note in the conversation, because this book, it's important and serious, but it's not gloomy. And people should look at it and learn from it. No, because I'm not gloomy. No, no, you certainly aren't. No, you're far from it. Thank you very much. Thank gloomy. No, no, you certainly aren't. No, you're far from it.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Sir Hayley. And the book is called What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape. You don't need to go. Stay there. Very welcome. And tomorrow on the programme actually Vanessa Redgrave is on. She's talking to Jenny about her new play Vienna 1934, Munich 1938. It's on in

Bath and it's based on her own famous family's personal history. So that's Vanessa Redgrave tomorrow. And the next Tuesday, we are live in Liverpool at the World Netball Cup. Looking forward to that. Now, Amber Butcher is here for the first in a series of conversations about summer fashions and summer essentials. Good to see you, Amber. Hi, Jane. So we are starting with the swimsuit. And I would like to know when the swimsuit first... Was this when we had those extraordinary contraptions that went down to the edge of the sea?

The bathing machine. Bathing machines. When was all this? Well, the bathing machine was a 19th century invention. So you're right. Basically, the development of the swimsuit very much mirrors our relationship with the beach, our relationship with swimming. So in the 18th century, doctors and sort of other medical officials started to sort of talk about the benefits of being in seawater.

But this didn't really mean swimming the way that we think of it today. It meant bathing. We still have a sea bathing hospital in Margate where people could go and enjoy the benefits of being in the sea water. That's fantastic. Sea bathing hospital. Yes. I'd like to go there actually. Well, it's flats now, such is the state of the world. So they started to advocate this kind of the benefits of sea water.

And then throughout the 19th century, the ideas of health start to be superseded by the law of pleasure. We have piers built, you know, people go promenading at the seaside. And the sort of the what we wear in the sea sort of starts to develop. But it's still very different to what we think of swimwear today. Well, people weren't swimming, though, were they? They were just getting in. They were bathing. Exactly.

And that's why you would also have this bathing machine that would be drawn by horse down to the sea. You could get changed inside it and emerge in your one-piece woolen serge swimsuit, possibly with nautical details, and get into the sea without anybody seeing you. Very sort of Victorian idea. And that applied to men as well as women, did it? It did apply to men as well as women, did it? It did apply to men as well as women, both. Now, we start to see a bit of a shift around the beginning of the 20th century. And there are some people who are really key to this. A woman called Annette Kellerman was a champion swimmer, an Australian. And she really, you know, she was swimming professionally and in sort of vaudeville shows. And she didn't like the idea that you had to wear so much cumbersome fabric so she started to wear something a lot more slim-lined a one-piece swimsuit that stopped at

the thigh and didn't have any sleeves now she was actually arrested for indecency on the beach in Massachusetts for wearing this in 1907 which was possibly a publicity stunt but they were doing that even then were they even? Even then, even then. But nonetheless, she did kind of become credited as the inventor of this one-piece swimsuit. And they colloquially became known as the Annette Kellerman as well. Now, in the 1920s, this is a really important decade for beach life, Riviera culture.

It becomes very fashionable to go to the seaside, people have more leisure time than they've had before and so this is when we really start to see it changing from bathing to swimming. We have companies largely on the west coast of America, companies like Janssen creating swimsuits still knitted, still woolen but made for swimming rather than bathing. Then throughout the 30s the idea of the suntan becomes even more important really fashionable and swimwear design reflects this so you have designs that can you know allow for backless sort of suntanning for that you can remove the strap so you don't get strap lines. Is all this happening without people being judged for wearing this stuff? Or were people shamed?

Well, yes and no. There are sort of images of women in the 1920s on the beach with her being sort of measured. You know, how high is your swimsuit? Is it coming up too high? I think the coast is such an interesting space because it's a space where we do allow a lot more freedom. Different rules apply.

Different rules apply, exactly. And that very much is the case with what we're wearing as well, whether it's swimwear or whether it's clothing for sort of promenading around the coast. You mentioned tanning. And of course, tanning hasn't been around forever. It is relatively new as a concept and it's gone in and out of fashion. And now there's all sorts of fake tans around as well. But what about bikinis did when did the first British woman wear a bikini well two-piece swimwear has been around for a really long time there are even sort of ancient uh sort of Greek images of two piece two pieces what we would think of as the bikini but the actual term itself was first used in 1946 by a French designer and he um he called it bikini after Bikini Atoll, which was the island

location of American nuclear test explosions. He thought it would, I know it's crazy, he thought it would have an impact of atomic proportions. He thought it would be explosive. He found it really difficult actually to get someone, to get a woman to model it because it was so daring, so risque. And so he used a showgirl to model this design instead so that's when we first get that term bikini very much linking with the atomic age it is absolutely fantastic uh social history and you are brilliant at it amber thank you very much now there's going to be more uh throughout the rest of the week um sunglasses caftans espadrilles and straw hats await you on Women's Hour in

the rest of this week. Thank you very much, Amber. Thank you. The fashion historian Amber Butchart, and there'll be more from her throughout the week, this week. So, to your thoughts on Girl Code, Marcus, deeply depressing. What happened to feminism? Never mind individual freedom, or even just

communicating with each other. From Aki, listening on, I just wanted to say the bro code is 100% a big, big thing in my life as a 19-year-old male. I don't go after mates' exes, he points out. Jabers. I think it's Jabers or is it Jabbers? Girl code is a dramatic tool dreamt up by movie makers. Decency and loyalty are character qualities that reasonable people aspire to in their day-to-day lives and relationships, regardless of gender. From Verushka, good point on Woman's Hour on Girl Code. We already have feminism as a code for treating other women and men with respect.

Girl Code sounds like another example of hierarchies dividing people and leaving them to fight for crumbs. That's a good one. Another listener, my 13-year-old, says she's learning how not to behave when dating by watching Love Island. Then again, today she straightened her hair for school for the first time. Is that a coincidence? I suspect it isn't, I'm afraid.

And from Lee, young women shouldn't be watching this crap. We need to stop making idiots famous. Society should be making scientists, engineers and sports professionals famous and role models. We should be teaching our daughters that intelligence is an attractive

quality to have. Yeah, well, you sound like a very good dad, Lee. Thank you very much for that. We always welcome your thoughts, of course. Could have been, yes, it could be a woman. I've just been informed, although it's spelled L-E-E. I think that's a man's name. Giving the

producer the eye. She's not interested in maintaining eye contact, so we'll move on. And Sir Hayley is still here. Now, I want to start... Sir Hayler, do forgive me. Sir Hayler is still here. There's a lot we needed to say that we didn't get around to. So first of all, I'm really interested in the fact that you talk a lot times, like, for instance, last week, I talked with 100 teenagers in Amsterdam. And really, they did most of the talking, and I just listened, fascinated. I just every now and then prodded them a bit. And it was really interesting because, on the one hand, I feel,

I also have a personal interest in this because I have a teenager. On the one hand, you hear conversations now that were not even possible when I was their age of people talking openly about sex and rape and gender dynamics. That's great. And I think that should happen. And that's progress. That is progress. But some of the things they say, I really worry about. For instance, it was we talked about wearing short skirts and getting a butt pinched.

And it was so clear among so many of the girls that they thought, well, that's what's going to happen to you if you do that. And that's okay, you're asking for it. And some of the boys were actually protesting about that. And then some agreed. So it was interesting to me that here's this group of probably more woke teenagers than many you'll find. And the consensus was that it's not okay to steal a pencil from someone, but it's okay to pinch someone's butt. And that to me was really, was really indicative of what I call rape culture. And the girls were as hard on girls, in fact, harder.

Yeah. Than the boys. And this was just a few vocal ones. I didn't take a vote or anything. But the point is the bottom line for me was bottom line. Yeah, don't worry. I was going to let you just get away with that. Was that it was a discussion.

And it wasn't that everybody was on one side. And that it wasn't the way it was when I was a teenager, when I went to convent school and the nuns just told us, don't associate with boys. If you do, it's bad. We'll expel you. And that was the extent of our gender dynamics education. That was your sex education. Yes. Yes. OK. Let's talk to something else that is referred to in the book about what we can do with our sons and young men in our lives. And it's not always true, but in some households, teenage boys, adolescent males are treated rather differently. I think it's fair to say that in many households, and it's very easy for me to use examples from India because it's very stark and it's very open. But frankly, it really goes

on as much I see in households in America where even simple things which seem like you're protecting your daughter, where girls have a curfew of earlier because, you know, they're not safe out in the streets. And and they're scrutinized a lot more about what they dress and what they do. Whereas boys, you know, I mean, why don't we talk as much about the boys who have their butts hanging out of their pants as much as we do about girls who have the short shorts. So and this whole business of the messages we give them about protection and the messages we give them about being safe, not only are they really skewed towards women being, girls

being responsible and boys not, but they're also wrong. It's actually wrong that you're going to get raped if you're out late at night. You're much more likely to get raped if you stay home. Well, that's the terrible statistical reality, isn't it? Yeah. And I found during conversations we've had on this program over many years that there is still a reluctance to engage with the brutal reality. It happens in homes and in families.

With acquaintances. And it's kind of ironic that i'm sitting here talking about this when i'm kind of this what happened to me was the stereotype scary rape yes but i i know i and that of course that happens i know that but it's your rapist is much more likely to be someone whom you know and in your class yes um or in your family yeah um can we just go back to briefly to the adolescent boys and how we can instill? It's the whole idea. I mean, I've happened to have two daughters and they dump their washing on landings and treat their essentially me with a certain amount of disdain. Right.

I don't think a teenage son could behave any worse in that respect. Or am I wrong? Well, I don't know. But isn't the point how you would react to the teenage son? If you're furious at your daughters, would you be equally furious at him? Or would you sort of say, well, he's a guy and that's what they do? I think that's more important. Teenagers are teenagers. And, you know, we were all kind of monstrous at that age. But the point is, what is the reaction and what is the expectation that girls are supposed to be neat, but boys are not? Girls are supposed to help, but boys are not? I think that's where I think about treatment of women.

And it's about worth, isn't it? Yeah, it's about worth. Now, I'm listening this week to the, there's all this brouhaha about the American sports team, the soccer, women's soccer team, suing for equal pay. It's just, it's unbelievably ridiculous to me that this is even an issue. You're doing the same thing. You're doing it better than the guys

and you're getting paid less. And so in every realm, women get paid, they get paid less. And to me, it leads directly into rape culture because it's like you're worth less. Actually, as a human being, you are worth less than a guy. And so that is the attitude that breeds the entitlement that somehow, men are worth more, that their needs are worth more, and that, you know, his needs preclude yours, because he makes more money than you, he's better than you,

he's bigger than you, he has more power than you. So all these little battles kind of lead into this culture that scaffolds rape and how much we each other to behave decently and kindly are the same responsibilities. It's not the duty of one gender to police the other. No, unfortunately, it has been for quite some time. I suspect your battle will go on. Well, it's not my only battle. I've written my book and now I'm happy. All right. Yeah. Well, I have to say you radiate joy, so that's excellent. Sahila, thank you so much for sticking around. Thank you for having me. It's been exhilarating actually talking to you. Thank you very much. Now, Jenny is

here tomorrow with the programme and the podcast and you'll be able to hear one woman's experience of recovering from anorexia in her 40s. That's tomorrow. Hello, it's Sophie Duker. Heidi Regan. Ned Sedgwick here. We've been given 30 seconds to tell you

why Grown-Up Land is the podcast that will change your life for the better. Why you'll be healthier, happier, more culturally enriched and totally confident about everything in every way. But there is a small snag as none of that is true at all.

What you will become is confident that everyone else is just as confused, frustrated and anxious as you are. Every week we're joined by a brilliant guest to talk about things like sex, fear, rejection, jealousy, sex.

And we often end up sharing way too much about our personal lives. Yeah, I should really rein that in. That's Grown-Up Land, the podcast about the exhausting pursuit of adulthood. Make sure you subscribe on BBC Sounds. 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's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in.

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