Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: Mona Eltahawy; Scarlett Moffatt; Female astronauts

Episode Date: May 15, 2021

Egyptian-American writer and activist Mona Eltahawy believes women should start actively defying and disrupting the patriarchy now - with force if necessary. Mona explains why she wrote her new book ‘The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls’ with enough 'rage to fuel a rocket.'Tech entrepreneur, Tabitha Goldstaub who chairs the UK's AI Council and Carly Kind, director of the Ada Lovelace Institute, discuss concerns that because Artificial Intelligence algorithms are created from the data we give it, biases in society will be replicated and even amplified by it in the future. TV presenter Jan Leeming and dating expert Charly Lester share tips and advice on how to go about dating in your late 60’s. Scarlett Moffatt, famous for Gogglebox and winning I'm A Celebrity, has just become an ambassador for the Samaritans. She talks about how reality television has affected her mental health, and exchanges experiences with Montana Brown who appeared on Love Island. The last time the European Space Agency recruited for their Class of 2009, only 16% of applications came from women. One of the women chosen, Samantha Cristoforetti, talks about the ESA's latest recruitment drive and what skills are needed to make it in space.Iranian artist Mentrix talks about her new single and video '99 Names of God', a well-known Muslim chant, traditionally sung by men during Ramadan. Mentrix explains the ideas behind the accompanying video which has generated a lot of criticism, with some people describing it as offensive, disrespectful and sinful.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Paula McFarlane Editor: Kirsty Starkey

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. If you're ready for a good laugh, to be moved to tears, feel educated about something new, empowered, taking control, unlike you having a good old gossip with your best mate, then you're in the right place. In the next hour, we have tech entrepreneur Tabitha Goldstab, who chairs the UK's AI Council,

and Carly Kind, the director of the Ada Lovelace Institute, who talk about the role AI plays in how we all work, live and play. We hear from Montana Brown, who appeared on Love Island, and Scarlett Moffat, famous for Gogglebox and winning I'm a Celebrity. Scarlett talks about how reality television has affected her mental health and explains how she deals with online abuse. I actually take a step back and I think, how sad is this person feeling or how bad is their life going

that they're projecting this much hate onto other people? So I actually now message the trolls and give them the number for Samaritans or I ask if they're OK. They're not well in themselves and I think they also need help. And a total of 65 women have been into space, compared with 501 men. During a break from training for a 2022 mission to the International Space Station,

Samantha Cristoforetti tells us about the skills needed to make it in space. But first, we need to dismantle the patriarchy is a familiar rallying cry heard many times on this very programme. But Egyptian-American writer and activist Mona Eltahawy believes we have to stop just saying it and start actively defying, disobeying and disrupting the patriarchy now, today and with force if necessary. Her latest book is called The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls. She says she wrote the book with enough rage to fuel a rocket. She started by explaining to Emma where her rage comes from. I mean, it began when I was four, when a man exposed himself to me and a friend of mine.

But, you know, that four-year-old was enraged enough to believe that what was happening was wrong and waved her little slipper at this man because she believed she could terrify him. But then that four-year-old girl grew up to become a 15-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted during Hajj, which is the fifth pillar of Islam. You know, I'm of Muslim descent. And at 15, I burst, I froze and burst into tears, a perfectly normal reaction to sexual assault. But, you know, where was the rage of that four-year-old? And then at the age of 50, 5-0 now, I was sexually assaulted in a club in Montreal, Canada.

And that rage was fully there. And I beat up the man who sexually assaulted him and it was glorious. You beat him up. What did you do? Well, I tracked him down because I could see who it was because he was the only person walking across a crowded dance floor full of people dancing. And I tugged at his shirt from behind. He wasn't expecting it, of course, because men don't expect us to fight back. And he fell and I sat on top of him and I punched and I punched and I punched. And each time I punched him, I said, don't you ever touch a woman like that again. And each time I thought I was done punching him, I wasn't. And I continued until he ran away. And then probably, and I wanted to

start all over again when a club manager came up to me to ask what happened. And I explained. And he actually turned to my beloved, my partner, looked at him and said to me, why didn't you let your husband take care of it? I was ready to beat him up all over again. And I said, first of all, he's not my husband. Second of all, this is my body. I take care of it. So it was a lesson that patriarchy allows men to beat us and patriarchy only wants men to defend us. But we're nothing in this scenario, of course. Did that man say anything to you? Did you actually exchange anything between you beyond those blows? No. So after I finished punching him, he stood up. He didn't say anything. But interesting, he wanted to look at me because he wanted to see who's this woman who just beat me up.

So he actually stood up and spent a few seconds looking at me, because he wanted to see who's this woman who just beat me up. So he actually stood up and spent a few seconds looking at me. And then I smacked him across the jaw so hard, I almost broke my hand. And that's when he realised I was going to start all over again, and he ran away. There is a difference between rage and violence. And obviously, one fuels the other, you can argue, but not always. You talk in your book about a curriculum for rage and how women have rage removed from them by society. What do you mean by that? What would be on it? And what do you want women to start doing differently? Well, on that curriculum for rage, for example, I would have older women who are great role models for, you know, they would model how rage is useful to fighting against patriarchy. So, for example, the writer Ursula K. Le Guin,

who in the 1980s gave a graduation speech at a university in the United States called Bryn Mawr, a women's college. And she told the women who are about to graduate, we are volcanoes. When we express ourselves, we change the maps of the world. And she said, you are like volcanoes, but you don't know the power inside you. I want to hear you erupt. So she's telling them right there that when we express our justified rage, it changes the maps of the world. I would also include the bisexual Black poet June Jordan, whose incredible poem, Poem About My Rights, you know, ends with her saying, my name is not wrong. And it's this incredible, rage-filled poem about sexual violence, state violence, family violence. I would include the lesbian Black poet, also,

Audre Lorde, who said that anger is like an energy. And when you focus it and it's precise, it is exactly what we need to challenge patriarchy. So I would include all of these incredible voices of older women. You do believe yourself that physically fighting back force does have a place. Oh, absolutely. I believe that it is our right to fight back. Now, something really interesting happened after I beat up that man and I wrote about it on Twitter. I started a hashtag called hashtag I beat my assaulter. And as well as women from around the world sending their stories of how they beat their assaulters, I heard from a professor of law, an American professor of law called Marianne Franks, who said to me, what you did tonight is a perfect example of what I call optimal violence. And she

sent me a paper that she wrote in a journal. And optimal violence for her is women practicing more justified violence against men's unjustified violence. Because she believes that levels of violence in society right now are skewed. That men practice too much unjustified violence against women. So, for example, a man's walking down the street. He thinks twice before he picks a fight with another man, because he could take him on. But men rarely, if ever, think twice about physically assaulting us. So she was saying that society has to change to allow us to express more justified violence. And I'm not saying this to victim blame, or to put the blame on women, but to better balance justified against unjustified violence.

But there will be, for some, when you have said this, there will be those thinking, well, I just couldn't fight back. So, you know, what am I meant to do with that? And nor do I want to, you know, nor do I want to have to face violence with violence. I don't think that would solve the problem. I totally understand. And I say again and again in the chapter, I'm not insisting that everyone fight back and not everyone can fight back. That's why I said when I was 15 years old, during pilgrimage, I couldn't fight back. All those reactions are perfectly normal. What I do want is to put patriarchy on notice that we can fight back and we will fight back so that in the same way that a man doesn't pick another fight with a man because he thinks he can take him on, patriarchy socializes men to believe that we too can fight back.

And what is really interesting from the reactions to my chapter on violence is that just by asking the question, you know, something like how many rapists must we kill before men stop raping us? I'm not saying go out there and kill all rapists. Simply by asking that question, there is more anger directed at me for talking about imaginary violence against men than the actual violence men commit against us every day, which during this pandemic has become horrifically clear. Across the world, at least a 30% increase

in violence during lockdown. Do you think feminism, and again, it's very hard to couch everybody's feminism or which part of it they perhaps ascribe to, but for instance, there has been a move and it has become less of a dirty word and inverted commas in the last five years or so again. Do you think it's become too soft? Because some versions of that feminism talk about taking men with you, humour, deploying certain tactics to just get what you want. And obviously, it'll be very different depending on the exposure that you have had and the systems that you live in. But in some ways, you know, with feminism now on t-shirts, and

it being almost a corporate slogan in some ways, it's become more palatable. Yeah, absolutely. This is exactly why I wrote my book, Emma. I wrote my book because I am fed up of polite feminism. And I want this book, I want people to consider my book a Molotov cocktail to be thrown from the barricades into the belly of patriarchy. And, you know, it's a privilege not to be hurt by by by patriarchy i mean you know i live in the united states and you know all those white women who voted for donald trump they allowed their race to trump their gender because they're protected through their race it wasn't it wasn't

it wasn't just white women who voted for donald trump it was overwhelmingly white no no but it wasn't i mean that but that's the thing i mean we have to also remember there are all sorts of people who who support politics that wouldn't fit in with what you're talking about, even if they actually support what you're talking about. It's complicated. It's complicated. But the reason that I'm talking about white women is because the majority of white women voters did vote for Donald Trump. But then when you look at black women, indigenous women, women of color like me in the United States, we don't have the luxury of polite feminism. We don't have the luxury of, you know, just t-shirts and corporate slogans. And when people say that, you know,

violence begets violence, or we don't want more violence in the world, who are we talking about? I already have violence in my life because of racism, because of capitalism, because of sexual violence. So when people say to me, you know, violence begets violence, I want them to ask, what do centuries of patriarchal violence against us beget? Because nothing is changing. If anything, it's become worse under the pandemic. So now what? So I want patriarchy. I'm putting patriarchy on notice that we will no longer extinguish angering girls because those girls will grow up to demand a reckoning and they will hold patriarchy accountable. And your emails came flooding in. Lara wrote in to say, I was sexually assaulted by a man late at night. I was enraged and saw red. When I fought back, it made things worse. He was so much stronger than me and retaliated by punching me. The only way I got out was by

talking him round. Violence is not the answer as men are so much physically stronger. And then from an angry and tired university student, I was really struck by the interview on angry and violent women. At university, there were multiple clubbing occasions where I was assaulted. Slowly, I became more physically aware and angry. Once a man grabbed me from behind, I turned around and confronted him full on, but I was derided for it by the boys in particular. I was fighting for myself, but also my peer group.

I honestly think rage should be celebrated. It's pushed down and we're conditioned to think it has no place, but it does. Rage tells you that there is something wrong. Anger informs you that something needs to change. Embrace it. And if you'd like to get in touch with us about anything you hear on the programme, then you can email by going to our website. Now, artificial intelligence or AI is everywhere. From tracking your spending habits to creating filters on Instagram,

it's playing a part in how we all work, live and play. Artificial intelligence refers to the phenomenon where a machine acts as a blueprint of the human mind by being able to understand, analyse and learn from data through specially designed algorithms. The concern is that because AI is made by humans, the biases in society will be replicated and even amplified by it in the future,

a particular concern when it comes to female stereotypes. The European Union has just launched a regulations review to try to address this and other issues, and the UK government is working on its own strategy, which is expected to be released in the autumn. Tabitha Goldstab is a tech entrepreneur and author of How to Talk to Robots and chair of the UK government's AI Council. Carly Kind is the director of the Ada Lovelace Institute, which focuses on AI ethics and privacy. She explained exactly what we're talking about when we think about how AI is used. It's important to remember that AI is not just in what we call

embodied form, which is in robots, but also at the back end of a whole bunch of systems. So most people will be most familiar with the AI that, for example, organises the news feed on their Facebook or their Instagram algorithm. But there's a lot of AI or algorithmic systems being used in far more banal applications as well. So things like universal credit, for example, the back end to universal credit is an algorithmic system. More advanced AI being used in predictive analytics, for example, in local councils to track where people are at risk of falling into homelessness or where children might need to be visited by social workers. Some local authorities are using AI in that respect as well. And then there are also even more boring applications which relate to, for example,

traffic systems, agriculture systems, supply chain logistics, that type of thing. Tabitha, what is the concern around the biases to do with women and how that might influence the way we're being judged? Well, as you really perfectly described, artificial intelligence learns from humans and the data that we provide it. And so if an AI learns about the existing biases that we already see every day against women, AI systems are going to think, for example, that the gender pay gap is something that we should keep perpetrating know, keep perpetrating,

or that women's jobs is only in the home, then you have scenarios where when it's being used in things like Carly just described, women will be negatively impacted. So for instance, if there was a judgment situation or predicting something that the woman might want to be doing next? Exactly, or looking for a new job. Women regularly will not see jobs in their job feed for CEO positions, for example, because already we have trained the machines to believe in these stereotypes that are out there. Wow, it's a sobering thought. Carly, do you think the answer then is as simple as making sure women are involved in the design and are part of the

teams that put this together or is there something else we should be thinking about? That's an important part of the equation but it's not the answer I'm afraid. The answer is a lot more complex as Tabitha was just alluding to. The major problem or at the moment one of the major problems is that AI relies on massive data sets and there's two problems with the data sets that AI are using. On the one hand, some of the data is bad. It just doesn't capture the whole of experience, including women's experiences. And in part, that's because often it's scraped from the internet, for example. So there are some big natural language processing models that are being developed by big AI companies. They scrape a bunch of data from the internet. And then the result is they garbage in, garbage out. They churn out a bunch of misogynistic, racist content because it's based

on bad data. But the other problem is even when you base AI on good data, that data enshrines structural biases like Tabitha was just saying. So even if you have a perfect data set of every CEO in the world, you're still going to have a list of mostly white men. So an AI system that's trained on a good data set of CEOs, who's likely to become a CEO, and then predicts who should become a CEO in future, is still going to churn out bad results because it's based on structurally biased discriminatory data. The same can be said, for example, for women's access to credit. Women have historically had less access to financial credit. So if you train an AI system on a bank's previous history of giving access to credit, then it's going to perpetuate that same bias against women. So the problem is bigger than

just women being in the design. It's about the data. It's about the data that it's exposed to in the first place. So are you confident that we can do this, that we can do this well? If we've already got enough biases in the real world and we're just going to potentially be passing them over to systems that then judge us in the digital world, some of us may say, are there any upsides here? And can we control this? Can we make it better?

I am confident. I believe that the rewards and the upsides of artificial intelligence are so huge that we have to make this as something that works for everybody. And when you look at potential examples of upsides, so we heard on the news, the waiting lists in the NHS, there are AI systems out there. Friends of mine run a business called Care on Med that are actually looking at previous mammograms using artificial intelligence to then predict who should be called first for their mammogram. It's smart moves like that,

that we can't miss out on. And so we have to, which is why I'm so excited about the EU regulation, I believe that more regulation can equal more innovation in a safe way. And we even heard in the Queen's speech, you know, the government is talking about improving regulation, that's like right up there in one of the things they want to do around life sciences, because it will enable more people to do more things and hopefully mitigate the biases. Are you sharing that optimism, Carly? Yes, I am. Absolutely. I think regulation has a really important role to play. I'm not as positive that the EU AI regulation gets entirely right, but it has to be credited for trying. And the EU is the first government entity, international government entity to try to regulate AI. There's some flaws in the proposal, but I think Tabitha's right. Without regulation,

without brakes in the car, the car can't drive fast. So without regulation, we can't let the innovation move ahead. What are you most excited about, Carly, that this could improve? We had an example there from Tabitha around mammograms. I think that the health space has a lot of potential because there's a lot of good data there. And we're seeing lots of the innovations in AI really coming through health. I'm more excited to see a broader conversation about AI that really brings people's attitudes into consideration. I think lots of the conversation around AI has been led by the tech industry, who are either telling us that some types of tech innovation are inevitable, or that there are some

type of magic that people should just, you know, get used to and integrate into their life. And I think what we're starting to see is a more nuanced conversation where normal people get to come into that. We get to talk not only about individual impacts, but about societal impacts. So, what is the implications of AI for the future of work and automation? And that's another area which does affect women because women's jobs are more likely to be automated than men's jobs, or women work in sectors that are more likely to be automated. So, really kind of expanding the scope of what we should be talking about when it comes to AI to make sure everyone benefits. I think that's one of the benefits of putting regulation on the table. It broadens out the conversation. That was Carly Kind and Tabitha

Goldstarb talking to Emma there. And if you are enjoying what you hear and think, oh, if only I could catch up with this in the week, well, you're in luck. Just head to BBC Sounds and find the Woman's Hour podcast. Now, one listener got in touch with us wanting to know about how she should go about dating in her late 60s so we thought we'd discuss advice and tips for entering the dating world in older age especially in a post-Covid world. The email went like this. I'm wondering if you have any advice for women starting to look for a new partner. My husband died some years ago. I'm in my late 60s. Until COVID, weekends away and holidays with friends took the place of trips

with my husband. Now, as we come out of lockdown and the 18-month isolation for single people, the fact I am very conscious of is that being a single person in my home isn't going to change unless I at last consider how one might find another partner or male friend. So far, I haven't looked at all. I'm aware of the dangers of being scammed in all sorts of ways on dating sites. What routes are there to finding a new partner? And that was from Anonymous. Well, I spoke to dating expert Charlie Lester and TV presenter Jan Leeming, who is sensational at 79 and would also very much like to meet someone. When I spoke to her, it was the first time she'd ever used Zoom. Good on her.

When we got going, I asked her first of all whether she could relate to our listener's email. Can I relate to it? Yes. I mean, I've been on my own now for far too long and probably likely to be until I die. I have tried internet dating. Today, it's totally acceptable. When I first tried it 15 years ago, the press discovered and whoop. I mean, it was even on Sky News. I mean, it was so, you don't do that. But not only did the press discover that I'd done it, but for the one and only time,

cost my heart and hope to die. I lied about my age. I was 66. And I said I was 60. So of course, quite rightly, the press, well, they picked up without even speaking to me, the Express Ramon article, and then the Daily Mail wanted an interview. Now that was interesting, because the very first question was, is it dangerous? Well, frankly, it's no more dangerous than being picked up in a pub or at a dance or something like that. So long as you follow some basic rules, which I've learned as I've gone along. And what are they? Well, on the website, you communicate through an email.

You do not give away your private email until you're fairly sure that the person on the other end is genuine. You have a list of questions you ask. I mean, I've learned this by trial and error. And if it gets to the stage that you decide to exchange emails, fine. If you then want to speak to each other you get his phone number not the other way around I have never ever been asked for money so I've never been scammed in that sense then if it continues you meet for a coffee coffee because if you're bored stiff you can say thank you very much and leave and if it works you can go to lunch and then it's up to you. And I'm sure that Charlie is longing to say something because I can see her there in the corner.

Come on then, Charlie. I mean, Jan sounds like she's giving very sensible advice there. Is she right? Jan does sound like she's giving very sensible advice. A couple of things I'd probably say. A lot of the apps these days don't work off an email base but but it's the same premise keep your conversation in the app um then you don't have to give out your phone number and also it can be moderated too so you know if something makes you uncomfortable you can literally block someone immediately and stop communication very quickly and the one thing I would probably say about going on a coffee date is sometimes it's too actually too much pressure because it feels like an interview so I would probably suggest a walk or something where you're side by

side because it can actually feel quite intense sort of sitting opposite someone where the only um inspiration for conversation is is literally a cup of coffee in front of you so maybe taking yourself somewhere where there's some natural conversation starters like a gallery when it's possible or a zoo and I I always say, go and do something you wanted to do anyway, because then if you don't fancy the other person, it's not a complete waste of your time. At least you're doing something fun anyway. Right, right.

I was already going to come and see the giraffes at London Zoo. You just happened to come and keep me company. Come on, John, we'd love to hear about some of your experiences. How have some of these dates gone? Do you really want, well, you know, you've got to kiss a lot of your experiences how have some of these dates gone? Do you really well you know you've got to kiss a lot of frogs to get your print um the first time round because of the press I came off it immediately and then a couple of years later I thought I'd try again by then I was 69 and I thought well before I'm 70 I'll have a go and I mean I did have responses and I did sift through them. I don't know, maybe I am looking for too much or I don't know what it is.

But I have come to the conclusion that predominantly older men are looking for a much younger woman. But for your listener, I would say, please try it. Maybe I'm too fussy. I don't know. What are you looking for, Jan? And has it changed over the years? Yes. Obviously now, if somebody were completely bald, that would be fine because I'm very wrinkled.

I would not accept somebody who'd let themselves go. I would be looking for someone who had my kind of interests. I love history. Because as you get older, you're not going to spend all your time canoodling in bed, are you? I don't know. Well, I don't know. But I have to say, at my age now, having been alone for 20 years, there's no way I would want to live with somebody.

I would want a romance, if you like. I want somebody to live near me. We can spend time together, go on holiday together, and he can wash his own socks. Very important. Charlie, I'm really intrigued to hear your thoughts on what Jan said about older men wanting younger women. You used to run a website for the over 50s. What's your experience? What do you think, Charlie? Yeah, I used to run an over 50s dating app. And honestly, everything that Jan's been saying has been completely correct. I can remember I had a security profile on the app. So I was the only under 50 woman on the app, literally there for customer service. And on a daily basis, I was being hit on by 80 year olds who were telling me, oh, you're the best looking woman on this site.

Ridiculous, right? Because I was 20 years younger than most of the other women. I had one 87 year old man complained to me that there was not enough under 55s on the app for him. Yeah. So I've worked in this industry for coming on eight years and I still think that this is a problem that hasn't been solved and I think it's I think the industry itself has to take some responsibility but men also need to take some responsibility I think

as you said lots of people meet online dating I think it's amazing I do think that it's a great way to meet people but one of the downsides is that we all have these tags and for women it's a great way to meet people. But one of the downsides is that we all have these tags. And for women, it's age, which that's why women lie. You mentioned lying about your age the first time. That's so not uncommon because we know that we'll get filtered out, you know, by men our own age if we don't lie about age, which seems such an awful way to start. What's about meeting someone in real life, Jan?

And maybe you need to go for a younger man, Jan. Well, I must admit, two of my husbands were younger, but not vastly younger. I'm not a cougar. But Anita, much to your surprise, I don't have much of a social life. And if you get a widower, my goodness, the women hone in like bees to the honey. So I think maybe I might be on my own till I die. Well, I'm still hopeful for you, Jan, because we just don't know what's waiting for us around the corner. I'm thrilled that we were your first Zoom. You are sensational and come and talk to us at any time. Anita, thank you. And thank you, Charlie. It was great. I wish I'd known about you a few years ago, but no, I won't do dating again.

That was Jan Leeming and Charlie Lester, and your emails came in. Carolyn wrote in to say, at the age of 54, I met the love of my life on Tinder. We talked on the phone a lot before meeting. My pics were normal and unfiltered, which is why he matched me. He wanted a normal woman who wasn't trying too hard.

His pics looked kind and friendly. We went for a walk on our first date, then a drink, then a meal, and we've spoken every day since. We're now married, and I've never been happier. Oh, my stone-like heart has just warmed up a bit. And then Matt got in touch to say, it's not just women in this situation, I can assure you. A long since divorced, self-employed man in my 50s, I work from home, I don't get out socially very much, don't use social media and certainly wouldn't trust dating sites. I feel out of touch with the way people connect and find one another now, so I guess I'll have to be content with my own company. I feel like Woman's Hour should set up a dating site. And then Sue and Paddy got in touch to say,

I'll be 60 in a couple of weeks and we'll be getting married in the next few days to my partner who I met online dating 12 years ago. We're in the car right now on our way to Scotland where we can marry on a beach like teenagers. I just sent a photo to our kids saying we were eloping. Thank God for online dating. We'd have never met otherwise. Go foroping. Thank God for online dating. We'd have never met otherwise. Go for it. Thank you for your emails. They put a smile on my face this Saturday. If you'd like to

get in touch and tell us about your romantic life, or lack of, then go to our website and drop us an email. Now, as summer approaches, so does a new season of the hit show Love Island. Does reality TV do enough to support young women thrown into the limelight? Former Gogglebox star and I'm a Celebrity winner Scarlett Moffat has recently become an ambassador for the Samaritans. Montana Brown was a contestant on season three of Love Island and they spoke to Emma during Mental Health Awareness Week. Scarlett started by explaining why she felt she had to call the Samaritans. It was about four and a half years ago,

so I went on a show called I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. I'd had a little bit of sort of a dabble in the waters of showbiz from Big Do and Gogglebox, but nothing could prepare me for what was about to happen when I came out of I'm a Celebrity and I just found it really overwhelming I didn't quite know how to handle it I was sort of subject to a lot of projection of hate on social media then also you know in the tabloids lots of sort of stories that weren't true and then picking apart what I looked like and you know I started I started looking at myself in the mirror

seeing things that I didn't even notice before and and with that came a lot of anxiety I remember walking to my front door and just freezing when I got to the door handle and I told my friends and family that I was at work for the week and I wasn't I actually just stayed in bed I didn't dare go outside and then luckily I somehow found the courage after about 20 times of dialing and to finally call Samaritans and it was just like a little voice of hope and from there you know it gave us a lot of strength to speak to family and friends and my GP so I was lucky that I was able to get help and I've got a good support network around me so then I just contacted Samaritans and said look you've helped me in so many ways please can I help you and so we started doing

lots of campaigns together and yeah now I'm an ambassador so it's come full circle what was actually going on with you do you think it was now you you can look back at it yeah now I look back and reflect I think it was a mixture of anxiety panic attacks and just sort of an overwhelming feeling of of wanting to disappear for a while, you know, just wanting to sort of go somewhere for a couple of months until it blew over. Because like I say, I just didn't, I just didn't know how to handle it at all. Do you think that there should be better preparation from the companies that put you out there because of the world that we now live in? I mean, we are offered a lot of help and I think nothing can sort of mentally prepare you

for what's about to happen because I think everybody's journey is so different. But one thing that I would urge is rather than, you know, being offered help, I think it sort of needs to be a bit more forceful, as in maybe have a phone call once a week rather than, you know, the person that's subject to that suffering having to get a lot of strength and make the first move. I think, you know, with a duty of care, maybe the channel or production company can make sure that, you know,

you get the phone call first rather than you having to make the first move. I think that would definitely help. Montana, what do you make of that? Do you feel you were given the necessary preparation? I think what's really difficult is that some people go on a show like Love Island and they are super successful and they do really, really well and everything just goes up and up and up. The difficulty is that a lot of people go on Love Island and it doesn't go so well for them.

And so I think it's really hard to manage because that overnight success, which I feel like people really struggle with, and especially for my series, it wasn't that big. So nobody went in with an agent, for example, when I was on Love Island, whereas now people go in there, they're organising kind of brand deals before they even get on the show. So I think it has changed a lot now. And I think the aftercare is a lot more kind of rigorous than what it was. You were in the same year as one of your co-stars who did end up taking their own life. And I just wondered if you could talk about that and talk about him. Yeah, definitely. I think the main thing about the situation was that there is a massive pressure on these young individuals that go on Love Island and they feel so much intense pressure from social media, from the press to be a certain way, to have certain things, to upkeep a certain lifestyle and then they're also subject to all this horrible comments, trolling about your

appearance like Scarlett was saying and it's so overwhelming because you go from one day being able to walk the streets, no one really looking at you, day being able to walk the streets no one really looking at you you can walk to the shops and no one's going to bother you to people shouting at you in the street people constantly messaging you saying oh you've got a lazy eye or you know you've got this and that and I think specifically with Mike it was so difficult because he kind of shot to fame and he didn't really have the guidance to you know manage his funds for example you know no that no one was there saying oh you should probably make a business account so you only have to pay corporation tax and you know nobody was there to say you know if you do need to speak

to anyone and you are depressed and anxious you can speak to this person because he was going through all of these things and I think he felt like he had nobody to speak to about it because as well him being a male as well you know girls I could kind of gush to my friends about you know I'm feeling really anxious today or I'm feeling really paranoid or I've had an anxiety attack whereas you know there is such a stigma with men that we still need to really kind of we need to challenge um because they just they feel like so alone and they don't feel like anybody is there to help them you're talking about of course my thalassitis, which people will remember.

How have you responded, to come back to you, Scarlett, when people have said things to you? Do you respond? Have you changed the way you respond? Yeah, definitely. With a lot more years in this industry, I see trolls as a very different thing now. So I don't even like the word troll because I think it makes it sound like this mythical creature that lives under a bridge when in actual fact it's someone we walk past in the

street it could be our neighbor but for me I actually take a step back and I think how sad is this person feeling or how bad is their life going that they're projecting this much hate onto other people so I actually now message the trolls and give them the number for Samaritans or I ask if they're okay. And I would say 98% of the time, you know, they're very apologetic and they're not well in themselves. And I think they also need help.

And I know a lot of people will disagree with me there because obviously they are making people's lives not great, but it's because their life isn't great. It's that whole sort of ethos of where it's as if they're bullies in the playground. And, you know, when you look back on when you were bullied at school, a lot of the time it's because, you know, their home life wasn't great or they also were suffering.

Well, I was going to say, that's going to take a lot of time and energy from you if you're going to be doing that each time to them. I mean, a lot of people would just ignore. I think, yeah, I did used to. I think if it's if it's just I mean, I can't even believe I'm saying this, but if it's just like, oh, you know, you're really fat or ugly. I just ignore those ones. But if it's, you know, like death threats and things that are very like severe, that's when I reach out. Have you had death threats oh I mean weekly I think it's just a it's just an occurrence that happens now and it's really sad to say but I mean recently I did a post about um like dental hygiene and I I got death threats for it and I was like I don't understand why because I'm telling people to floss you know

it gets it's it's that ridiculous sometimes that people are just really angry and I think you know I do think that social media needs to to make sure that these people aren't anonymous because I do think with anonymity comes a lot of you know they feel like they can get away with it. So I think that if, you know, you had to put some sort of ID to have social media, I do think it would stop. I do think a lot of it would stop. Montana, do you bother replying? And do you think there is something specific towards women? I personally don't reply, but that's because I think at the start

that I was so overwhelmed because I'd had never I'd never even been bullied at school or any dealt with anything like that so I was getting messages saying that people would throw acid in my face and I remember I was getting loads of messages and I I was so paranoid to go out I remember going to a Beyonce concert and I was just looking around like a rabbit in the headlights thinking oh my god someone could literally come up to me and throw something in my face and I think um it's something that I can't put my energy into and I think Scarlet it takes so much strength to actually reach out to these people but I just block people because they are quite often like you say fake accounts so I just block them.

That was Scarlet Moffat and Montana Brown speaking with Emma during Mental Health Awareness Week and please do reach out and get in touch if you've had a similar experience. Thelma emailed in to say by these abuses being visible and not reprimanded it encourages further abuse including abuse of ordinary women in social media forums. You can see this in local community social groups. It means that women and others who are being abused in this way are least likely to comment and more likely to withdraw and be silent. Abuse in public forums seems to be increasing to the detriment of public discussion. Thelma, thank you for your email. Now, if you've ever thought about becoming an astronaut, then listen closely.

Because the European Space Agency are recruiting and they actively want more women to apply. The last time they had an astronaut selection process in the late 2000s, only 16% of applications were from women. That led to one, the Italian Samantha Cristoforetti, making it through. She now has the honour of being just one of 65 women ever to go into space. So is it just sexism that's kept womankind mostly here on Earth, or something else? And if you fancy commuting by rocket, what skills do you need to get there? Samantha Cristoforetti, who's currently training in Houston,

explained to Emma what made her apply. Oh, it was my dream since I was a child. I mean, I was just fascinated by the idea of, you know, flying into space already as a child. And then as I grew up, all my passions and interests kind of kept me on that path. I was interested in science and technology, but also the human aspect of things. And, you know, I enjoyed living in different countries, learning different languages. Outreach is important to me, being able to communicate to people.

And all of that is part of this job. So what I find amazing about this job is that you have that very broad, diverse set of activities and tasks that you're trained for, that you're expected to do. And that's very, very interesting. It keeps the days very interesting. Do you believe, though, that people from a variety of backgrounds can and should apply? Well, for now, we are indeed looking for people with a STEM or aviation background. So, you know,

science, engineering, math, or a solid aviation background or mix. I was kind of like a mix, right? I had a background in engineering from college and then I was a military pilot when I was selected. So I guess I had a little bit of a mixed background. Is there anything specific do you think that being a woman brings to going to space, being an astronaut, the role really? You know, I don't like to, you know, put people in a box. I think anybody, man or woman, has a right to be the way they are. So if you're a woman but you have more typical male traits, you know, go for it. And vice versa, if you're a guy and have more typical female traits, then go for it. What I think is important to underline is that the stereotypical image of astronauts that we kind of have, you know, that kind of white stuff, it is a little bit of a macho stereotype, but it does not reflect reality at all.

I mean, what we are really looking for, you know, in estimates when we select them, but also what we really appreciate in our colleagues is how good they are in terms of teamwork. Are they team player? Are they going to support the team? How do they communicate? Are they effective in communicating? Are they good in taking care of themselves and the rest of the team? How do they communicate? Are they effective in communicating? Are they good in taking care of themselves and the rest of the team? And so if we want to talk stereotype,

I would say those are more stereotypically female traits. So I really don't like when, you know, they paint that picture of the macho astronaut, because that's really just not the reality. Maybe it was. I'm not even sure that it was in the past, to be honest. It's certainly not in the present. Well, no, I mean, of course, though, you don't feel like this and you've had this opportunity. You've held the record for a while for the longest continuous stay in space. But for a while, women's identity was held almost against them

in lots of walks of life, not least also in space. Just even the idea that it was thought because women had periods, they shouldn't go to space. That's what some people thought. I know. And I guess it's fun to repeat those anecdotes and those stories. But again, let's not paint the wrong picture. Because it's changed, is your experience? A lot. I don't bring it up because I think it's fun i think it's important to remember i think it was shocking and i think it says something we've seen it in the military you know women being given whatever it is one size fits all bras this idea that you know women are a certain way um you know for a long time women weren't allowed onto submarines because of all these concerns about our cycles interestingly the menstrual cycle i was just

reading by someone who's a specialist in this area stays the same when you're out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it stays the same. I will say, you know, for disclosure, most women do suppress it actually just for convenience. It's not a problem at all. But it's interesting, right, that you mentioned, you know, you know, maybe in the past, you know, the one graphics all and so on. I mean, that's really one of the reasons why I think it's important that, you know, we get more women into this business. It's not about, you know, what does a specific woman bring to the program by virtue of being a woman. That's not the point. But, you know, there are, in fact, those aspects that are, you know, obviously more relevant to females. And I think if we have more

women in the program, as we shape space for the future, you know, women are going to be in the position to contribute to shaping that, you know, otherwise we will find ourselves in hindsight, you know, 10, 20, 30 years down the line. It's like, oh my gosh, this whole space has been shaped just with a male perspective. And I'm like, well, guess what? You know, we didn't have enough women part of it. That's why I think it's important that hopefully this time, this new astronaut selection that is running, we get a lot of female applicants. Was it hard to come down, back down to Earth? It was. I would say it was probably the hardest part of this experience. It was probably not the training and certainly not being up there.

But coming back was tough. It was stuff from a physical point of view. Again, you know, you have to put all the weight back on that you were able to shed for a while, but also indeed reconnecting, getting used again to have all those human interactions. You're never alone up there. It's not about loneliness. You know, you've got your crewmates, you have a lot of interaction with the ground, you can call your family all the time, but you can really control yourself how much human interaction you want. You kind of get used to a pretty limited amount, let's say. And then you come back and all of a sudden you're this astronaut who came back from space and everybody wants a piece of you. And all you want, of course, is some time with your family, you know, to rebuild those connections that are really important to you.

And it's not so easy because, you know, you're subjected to a lot of demands in that time. And so it certainly takes, I would say, at least a few months until you feel that you came back to normal. Well, they must be incredibly proud of you. How do they feel, your family, about you going again? They're not taking it personally are they hopefully not no no actually I'm blessed with an incredibly supportive family so and hopefully we will be

able to make it part of the adventure also for our children you know I think it will be fun for them as well can you describe a site that will always stay with you from your time there, like a view that you saw from space that very few people have still seen? I would say there's something very special to sunrises in space because you transition very quickly from this complete darkness and there's all these stars that are absolutely present. It's like, you know, on Earth, if you go on a high mountain or someplace where there is no light pollution, when in space, you have that all the time. So you've got all that, you know, night sky that is always present with you.

And then, you know, it starts to become fainter and fainter and then you can start seeing on the horizon you know this just small sliver of blue that becomes bigger and bigger and then this burst of of light of uh of the sunrise and you've got this very privileged view of seeing this on on the entire you know curvature of uh of the earth and then you see basically light rolling over the planet and kind of chasing away the darkness on the surface of the planet beneath you and it's just you're just in awe every single time now if you were inspired by that and think you've got the skills to be an astronaut then applications for the european spaceaut Training Programme are open until the 28th of May. Open's website begins to apply.

Come on, who doesn't want to be an astronaut? Now, my next guest is challenging conventions, stereotypes and expectations and producing beautiful music with accompanying videos whilst she's at it. Avant-garde Iranian artist Mentrix released her new single, 99 Names of God, a well-known Muslim chant traditionally sung by men during Ramadan.

But she's giving it a poetic and feminine context. I started by asking Mentrix why she chose to sing 99 Names of God. It was Ramadan and this year I'm pregnant. I couldn't participate like I usually do. And I still wanted to. And I always wanted to do my own interpretation of the song, which I heard throughout my childhood and my teenagehood on the radio, on TV. It's been a part of my consciousness.

And I never really heard something that i as a woman could really relate to and and as life just put me on the path of becoming an artist and a musician i thought well here's an opportunity to do something uh feminine with this uh with this song and and yeah just as simple as that i think we should listen to it. It is rather beautiful. Here it is. Thank you. It's so soothing, Mentrix. It's mesmerising, as is the music video that goes with it. It's absolutely stunning. It was made with Tobias Gremier, who's most notable for his collaborations with Bjorkork of all people and you can see that describe it

for people haven't looked at it online yet well um exactly uh tobias gremler uh does these uh 3D visual visual poetry I like to call it I wanted to make a very modern video to accompany this song which can be found on YouTube with millions of plays but often sung by men or actually the most known ones

actually don't depict anybody no figures or anything just the words happening in a bit of a, you know, sort of a cheesy typo, something that taps into a lot of false beliefs about Islam. And I thought it's important to challenge that visually, because people really connect to what they see and can really engage with what they see. And so I decided that I wanted to appear bald so that people would see that my head is not covered, but yet I'm not showing hair.

And I also wanted to appear in a shape that would question gender. So I asked Tobias to do a 3D model of my head and attach it to a male body and have me dance in this she-male appearance. But at the same time, half of my body is almost like letters or smoke swirling around. You don't really know what it is. So you're challenging, like you say, you're challenging false beliefs. like letters or smoke swirling around. You don't really know what it is.

So you're challenging, like you say, you're challenging false beliefs. What's the reaction been? The reaction has been, as you would expect, you know, I did attract a lot of hate. A lot of people came forward saying, this is sinful. This is not acceptable. Why would you sing? Drawing is forbidden in Islam, you are half naked, this is sinful, how dare you associate the name of God with this. And all of these things, you know, are part of a belief system that is absolutely not rooted in the teachings of Islam, but very much linked in this patriarchal values of Mediterranean cultures

and now mostly known as Muslim societies or communities that have been just passed down to people. And you've lived in a few different Muslim societies and Muslim worlds, if you like, because you were born in Iran, your family then left and lived in France, and then you moved back to Iran. And you particularly talk about the video and how she's not wearing a veil. The hair is not revealed, but the veil is not there. And you've done both.

You've worn the veil, you haven't worn the veil. Tell us a bit about your experience. Yes, it was very interesting um for me uh now you know when i had with hindsight being a being a grown woman to realize that i did experience both of these worlds the secular world that i grew up in um um in primary school and in high school and later on for university in france and then before as a child and then also later on back and forth um the ir society where the hijab is obligatory for women. And it's a very conflictual experience. You realize that, wait a minute, as a woman I do have rights

and you do feel just equal to men. But yet you realize that depending on which environment you're in and depending on the rights that have been achieved for women in those societies, then you're going to have a completely different experience of life. Nevertheless, I was lucky enough that what I experienced did not make me reject spirituality or religion, but it made me rather question people's understanding of what they proclaim to be the word of God. And this is what got me into Sufism and into the study of the Quran. And yeah, this is why I do what I do. And you choose not to wear the hijab, but many women do.

Many women choose to wear it out of their choice and they feel empowered and it is part of their identity. That's correct. your immigration process, your integration process, your journey as a human being, seeking for your identity and how you define yourself in the new societies that you live with. But I think it's very important for this awareness to become more known that the Quran does not require women to wear the hijab. This is very important. And it's a very common knowledge among scholars and debates

when you are really interested by the topic from different angles, not from just your wish to live a life following certain values and the feel-good element of it. Because this feel-good element is then again defined in each society. And I think it's important to be reminded that decency has always been expected from women in different societies. And covering for women has always been associated with this expectation of decency. In lots of societies? In lots of societies.

In lots of societies. This dates before Islam, this dates before Christianity. And it continues to be a fact in every society today. Now, I understand that some women feel the need or feel empowered, like you say, to cover themselves. But I think that this is an identity issue. I think it's very normal when we live in the West, but we come from the East,

and we never really fully feel that we belong in either of these worlds, that we reach a point where we feel that we need to have a certain identity and proclaim where we're coming from and manifest our roots and therefore define ourselves. But what I think is very also important to think about is that your identity as a human being is not your color, it's not your background, it's not your culture. These are all colors and these are all things

that give you a certain shape and flavour. And it's beautiful, you know. It makes you come to the table with different things to say, with different stories to tell, you know. But ultimately, your identity as a human being is an essence. And this is what religion invites you to discover for yourself. And that's it from Weekend Woman's Hour. I hope you enjoyed the programme. Do join Emma on Monday when Woman's Hour will actually be an entire hour. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Hi, this is Jane Garvey. And yes, this is, it's a free, well, they're all free, but this is an extra podcast. It is've already guessed it a shameless plug for my new series life changing in which i talk to people who've been through some phenomenally difficult challenging experiences and come out the other side now each episode is just an intimate one-to-one

conversation and that i think has taught me um never mind anybody else, such a huge amount about human nature, the best and the worst of it, and resilience perhaps in particular. Now take Grace. She is a trainee doctor. She was minding her own business in the Westfield Shopping Centre in East London when a man fell from several storeys up and landed on top of her. That incident left her paralysed from the breast down. Now, you might imagine that she'd be incredibly angry about that. No, not at all. I don't have any anger. A complete absence of anger. And people find that really hard to understand.

And it almost makes me sometimes second-guess myself. Like, is there something wrong that i don't feel this this anger that you know everyone else does i'm not out for revenge i almost feel as if our lives collided you know figuratively and literally and then it separated and i can go months without even thinking of him well that's grace um quite a remarkable young woman i'm sure you'll agree. Tony O'Reilly's story could not really be more different, but it is terrifying, quite honestly. Tony found himself caught up in a gambling addiction of quite epic proportions. He ended

up lying to everybody he knew. He stole huge amounts of money from his employer to try and find a way back to pay off his enormous debts. Now the figures in Tony's story are staggeringly high. Here's a clue as to how he got there. There was one particular weekend I started off at 5,000 euro and I turned it into nearly half a million over a weekend. I got a really good run of events. I had stolen, I think, €900,000 at this stage. And for me, I think I had €462,000 in my online account. And I said, if I can double this, I can fix this situation. And within 12 hours and 31 bets later, which of those 30 were losing bets,

I'd lost €462,000 in 12 hours. And then again, you start the whole process again of trying to get that money back. So you can imagine the stress. I could begin to imagine the stress. I can't really imagine it, Tony. I've got to be absolutely honest. I just want to nail these figures down, actually.

So in total, you stole in euros, much 1.75 million yep 1.75 million euros tony ended up on the run holed up in a hotel room contemplating taking his own life well that was when the police found him and everything started to change then there's Harriet Ware Austin. Her family faced a quite unbearable tragedy when she was just a little girl. She was just eight when she was waving off her two big sisters watching as their plane prepared to leave Addis Ababa airport to take them back home to school in England but the plane crashed. Both girls were killed and the family and Harriet had to try to find a new way of, well, who we were. And that first ten years was a journey back to the new normality. And, yeah, just completely different.

Charlie Wilson has endured a very different kind of absence, quite a lonely one. At the age of 44, he had a stroke and lost his entire memory, everything. When he woke up, he did not recognise his own wife. I was in this wee room and the nurses called the wife through, who pretty much introduced herself to me. I had no idea who she was. She said, hi, I'm Jackie. You know, I'm your wife. And I said, oh, very good type of scenario. I had absolutely no idea. Well, Charlie then had to relearn everything.

And that is everything. Brushing his teeth, tying his shoelaces, a slow and often incredibly frustrating process. And then you can also meet Keith. Now, Keith's a Welshman who grew up working in his adoptive father's business, delivering coal to the local area. When he was about to become a grandfather, he decided it was time to track down his birth parents. He met his birth mother and she told him the most extraordinary thing, that his father had been a Malaysian prince. Obviously, when she said, oh, he's a prince, well, you know, it absolutely knocks your head off, doesn't it?

I mean, I'm talking to you about this now and it gives me the shivers. Yes, well, it's just funny you say that because I've just had one of those moments. And what was it like driving back down the A1 with your wife, having established that she, in fact, all these years had been married to royalty? Yeah, surreal, isn't it? Keith, just one of the incredibly interesting guests on Life Changing. There's so much of the human experience

in this series of interviews. I really hope you'll enjoy them. Every episode is half an hour, so it's ideal for your government-approved walk, maybe for clearing up after dinner or just for a curl-up in your favourite chair. It's an opportunity to meet some really incredible fellow humans. It's life-changing. All episodes are available 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 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.