Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: saris, speaking to kids on Andrew Tate, breast cancer history, donor conceived children, Eleanor Williams

Episode Date: January 14, 2023

We speak to listeners on how best to talk about Andrew Tate and other social media influencers who are spreading misogynistic messages online. We talk to Dr Emily Setty, Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey who does research in schools with young people about sex and relationships & Michael Conroy, founder of Men at Work, an organisation that trains professionals how to have constructive dialogue with boys.Listener Hayley got in touch to share her own story, not only of being a donor conceived person herself, but of using a donor to conceive her own children too. She explains why she thinks it’s so important to be open and honest about your child’s conception.22-year-old Eleanor Williams who claimed she had been trafficked and raped by an Asian grooming gang was convicted of perverting the course of justice. She will be sentenced in March but we consider the possible impact her conviction could have on how rape is reported, how it’s handled by the police and whether women are believed. We hear from the former chief prosecutor for the north west Nazir Ali and Maggie Oliver, the former senior police officer who became a whistle-blower for exposing the poor handling of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring case by her own force.We hear from Joanna Bourke who is the Gresham Professor of Rhetoric on the history of breast cancer.The Offbeat Sari exhibition will include 90 examples of innovative saris – including the first ever sari worn at the Met Gala and a foil jersey sari worn by Lady Gaga. We talk to the exhibition's curator Priya Khanchandani.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Surya Elango Editor: Louise Corley

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, I'm Anita Rani. Welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. Now, if you're at work or busy with other things during the week so you can't catch our programme live at 10am every morning, this is your place to be. Every Saturday, I'll be taking you through a curated selection of our best stories.

You're welcome. Tea and biscuits at the ready. Coming up, as the dust settles on the Eleanor Williams case, Thank you. Received by sperm, egg or embryo donation, we'll be able to request information that identifies their donor when they turn 18. We hear one listener's extraordinary story. We dive into the history of breast cancer and the pivotal role of the black lesbian writer and radical feminist Audre Lorde. And that's not the only history we'll be exploring on the programme. What pieces of clothing from your heritage are you wearing or reinventing? We look into the 5,000-year-old history of the sari and its modern-day renaissance. But first, how do we talk to our children about Andrew Tate? I spoke to journalist Harriet Hall

and asked her to describe the kind of social media content he produces. He is the latest in a long line of men operating largely online who present themselves as sort of life coaches or self-help gurus for disaffected and vulnerable men and boys. Among the content that he shares is masculine dogma, conspiracy theories about the media, questionable financial advice and those traditionalist views of masculinity and women. Much of his content is also a sort of caricature of what an alpha male might look like. Pictures of him next to supercars, smoking enormous cigars, next to guns with scantily clad women. Now, many of you wanted advice on how to talk to your children about Andrew Tate and misogyny online.

So on Friday, I spoke to Dr. Emily Setty, a senior lecturer at the University of Surrey who does research in schools with young people about sex and relationships. And Michael Conroy, founder of Men at Work, an organisation that trains professionals how to have constructive dialogue with boys. I started by asking Michael, what's the best way to broach this subject if you're worried your kid might be exposed to this sort of material? I think we've got two questions. One is how do we respond to what is emerging in the news? So that's one set of responses. But I think ideally we need to be strategic and to slow, steady, well-planned, well-organised conversations in schools, colleges and at home. There's a lot of good conversations happen when you're both facing the same direction,

even going for a walk or walking the dog or whatever it might be, or maybe over dinner. But I think things to avoid are jumping in all guns blazing in an accusatory or terrified way because we're very slow to the party in this. And I think that's the problem, is that our young people have been exposed to him for months and months or longer,

but we as adults in our 30s, 40s, 50s, we think he's just been discovered. And I saw a tweet today by this guy saying, we should stop talking about him, otherwise he's going to make him more famous. And that speaks volumes about how little we know about how the internet works and how young people are exposed to material not necessarily by looking for it but by looking for them via the algorithmic system we're getting quite a big

reaction to this conversation so i want to go to some of our listeners questions um lula has been in touch to say she'd like to know, could you ask your child how they'd feel if someone thought it was okay to beat their sister, cheat on her or control her? Also stop pussyfooting around them. Sometimes we need to tell our kids that something is morally abhorrent and forbidden in the home. Is that the right approach, Michael? I think we have to express our beliefs and our boundaries, absolutely. But I think there are ways and means of doing that, that don't shut down a conversation. I think what we need to do is know exactly what the content is,

and this might strike some people as odd, but I watched a lot of his videos, and you can't get that time back, unfortunately, but I watched hours of his stuff. So I think that's important. We need to know, certainly if we're in any kind of professional context, we need to know what he's saying. Otherwise, it's all second-hand information.

And that will be a weakness because the boys and your men have got first-hand information. We need to join them where they are, unfortunately, and become almost as expert in it as they are. And that might be unpalatable, but I can't see an easy way out otherwise. But in school, since September, his name has been mentioned in every single session

and that did not happen before summer holidays. So what do you tell it? What do you say to teachers then? Tell us a bit about what you're telling them today. A lot of it is asking. I think that's the conversation to have with boys and young men. They are experts in their own experience. We know about safeguarding, you know,

as professionals, as parents and carers, we know about the bigger picture. And we've seen people like Tate for decades, haven't we? We instantly dismiss them as what they are, as spivs and snake oil salesmen. But, you know, the 13, 14, 15, you haven't got the life experience

to contextualise what is being said. And he wraps it in this very glamorous showbiz style package, which is very alluring to young boys. But he's sneaking it in. It's kind of, if it was just the misogyny, there would be a different scale of his following. If it was just the lifestyle, it might be a very big following as well.

But the two together is particularly toxic.'m keen to to go to some of the questions and also hear from someone who got in touch with us on the program yesterday so let's hear from another listener who wanted to remain anonymous for about four or five years i've been seeing what my son's watching on youtube what's been filtering through is this misogyny. And it's everywhere. His case is special because he has autism, high functioning autism. He's off school with depression and anxiety. And so he's on the internet a lot of the time. And although he's not in his room, I'm quite often hearing what he's listening to. And he's a captive audience for people like Andrew Tate. He does seem to speak to young men.

From what I've heard of what he fears, it is militant feminism that's anti-men. That's a massive message that's coming through from these sites, from these people. There is a feminazi movement that's out to get men, belittle men, kind of take over. And as a 14-year-old boy, the idea of the Me Too movement has been really weaponised, as I've seen coming up through him. How do you interact with a woman without being accused of rape?

That's a massive fear for him. How do you interact with a woman without being accused of rape? That's a massive fear for him. Obviously, he's too young to actually have had any interaction with women or girls, but he's getting the message that it's unsafe to do so because the woman has the upper hand. She can always accuse you of rape and then you might go to prison. It's as clear cut as that for him. Emily, our listener talks there about the weaponisation of the Me Too movement. How can we reassure them? A big clue is actually in what we just heard. Actually, most teenage boys aren't sexually active. They're not having relationships with girls. This is all very hypothetical. Girls and women almost become symbols, actually, within male peer groups, within ideas of masculinity in ways that actually, if a boy was by himself with a girl,

it would all fall to pieces and he wouldn't know what to do. What guys like Andrew Tate are saying is, yeah, all this kind of vulnerability and insecurity that you're feeling as boys in terms of masculinity, right, I'm going to package it up and give you a solution. It's actually making them more fearful of girls and women. And we need to see, okay, what context is it feeding into? And what's it exacerbating? And how can we be equipping boys, young people in general, to start dissecting some of these messages and start working out what are they actually absorbing into their own identity? What are they taking then into the kind of boys and men that they ultimately want to be? So a couple of listeners have got in touch to ask about the role of men in all of this.

Someone's just messaged to say, what about men, dads, uncles and schools being involved? Around eight years old, boys look to men regarding male identity. So and someone else said, an anonymous listener, that she's more attuned to this issue than her husband. So, Michael, how do dads engage in these conversations and do they engage as much as mums? I would say in a very broad brushstroke, no, unfortunately. And that's an outcome of the gender stereotypical way that we are trained as humans,

to have these oppositional kind of characteristics that the things domestic and emotional and nurturing are kind of allocated to women and the outside world, if you like, is allocated to men. It's a very chicken and egg situation. But the answer is yes, dads have to, uncles have to, granddads, stepdads, older brothers. 50% of our audience are men tell them what should they be doing stop using porn number one stop using porn and understand that your children are accessing pornography the pornography industry which is worth hundreds of billions has developed sophisticated algorithms to find them that's a fact it's uncomfortable for a lot of people but

reality is reality the other thing is learn to talk more to your kids and don't leave it to your, if you're straight in a straight partnership, don't leave it to your wife. Don't leave it to your girlfriend. You can talk as well. You're fully human. This is another listener.

He's called Dan. Let's have a listen. I've got a 13-year-old son and an 11-year-old daughter and I'm painfully aware that they know who Andrew Tate is and he's very much on their radar within their school community, I suppose. Now, my daughter is not interested either way. My son tells me he isn't and I'm concerned that he, I think he certainly seems to put Andrew Tate on a bit of a pedestal.

He tells me he doesn't watch or participate in any of his footage, but I know for definite that his friends do, and he is very aware of the whole Andrew Tate enterprise, I suppose. I think that the fact that he appears wealthy and successful draws these kids in to a certain extent. I'm not sure they particularly understand there's any evil intent. It feels a bit like the Pied Piper, really. Part of the reason he appeals to these kids is,

I think it's harder to be a boy nowadays and just to grow up as a young boy and act like a boy and rough and tumble and play competitive sports. This seems to be being eroded quite a lot through society, as far as I can see. There's so much confusion with gender and all sorts of other bits and pieces that I think it makes it easy for someone like Andrew Tate to be the guy that they look up to and see as aspirational, really.

Where can we point our kids for better role models in life? Well, Emily, what do you make of what Dan's saying there? I think Michael answered it a little bit before, didn't he? It's tricky with some of this because, yeah, you don't actually want to keep going down the route of boys need these particular role models and girls need this particular role model and all of that because societal changes do lead to

different emphases on different ways of being right and actually rather than presuming boys need something and presuming something is harmful for them or whatever it's actually about engaging with individual boys about what makes sense for them right and exactly as Michael was saying it's about humanity. And I don't think parents can change some of this context. You know, there probably is some truth that at the current time, you know, gender identities influx, all these ideas about what it means to be a boy,

what it means to be a girl, and all of this is influx, right? You as a parent can't necessarily change all that. You can't magic up a bunch of role models of all various forms of diversity that's going to make sense for every single young person that's developing. What you can do is you can sit down with your child and talk about that reality and talk about what it means to your child to be developing within that context and what they think and feel about some of these matters.

Create a space to work through some of these issues and give voice to these boys and young men without shutting them down. Here's the thing, Emily, and I think I really liked Michael's advice of talking in the car or maybe going for a walk. So it kind of takes you out of that strict confrontational head-on setting. At what point do you stop listening and give them an alternative view? At what point do you step in and say, OK, now how about this? Well, I mean, exactly as you say, right, you hear it out. You hear some of the and we know also teenage boys, they're probably not going to say a lot in succession. You are going to have to drop in your own thoughts and feelings as you go.

I think it's all about how it's done. You can do it pretty quickly. If they're saying things like, you know, Andrew Tate's bringing back masculinity, then great. Say, OK, what types of masculinity? And if they go, well, it's cool, you know, it's cars and it's this and it's that. And say, oh, well, that's interesting. Like from my perspective, that's kind of just this one really basic form of masculinity. Is that all masculinity is about? it through the conversation but ask it through questions i don't think judging or shaming in particular boys is going to get us out of this problem saying how would you feel if it was your sister oh how awful of you to even express this

view that's not necessarily going to change the view it's just going to make the boy ashamed potentially of the view so it's almost role-playing and getting them to think about what they're saying. Yeah, exactly. And also showing that you're open to the complexities of it. As we're saying, these are deep-rooted social and systemic issues. Reflect on your understanding of gender stereotypes, your feelings of pressure potentially when you were growing up and what it was like. Bring it in. As long as it's non-confrontational, non-judgmental and non-shame based, you can very easily convey your opinion. That was Michael Conroy, founder of Men at Work, and Dr. Emily Setty, a senior lecturer at the University of Surrey, speaking to me yesterday about how to talk to your children about Andrew Tate. Here's another story generated by you from another listener about something a little bit different. Last week on this programme, we had a discussion about donor-conceived children.

As of this year, children in the UK conceived by sperm, egg or embryo donation will be able to request information that identifies their donor when they turn 18. This includes the donor's name, birth name, date of birth and address, as long as the information is on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authorities Register. It's as a result of a law that was made back in 2005, but only comes into force now. We had a really great talk about what this could mean for parents

and children alike, and loads of you got in touch with your own experiences. One listener who contacted us was Hayley Darknell King. She's a donor conceived person after her parents used an anonymous sperm donor. And now she's also the parent of donor conceived twins after her and her wife used a sperm donor to have children. She's using her experience to be an advocate and educator too. Nuala started by asking Hayley when she found out she was conceived by donor. So yeah, I found out actually only eight years ago. I always knew that I was fondly called a test tube baby growing up. It was like a celebrated story. My parents had a long journey to become

parents, had several years of infertility and were fortunate enough to have some very early rounds of IVF treatment at the first clinic that was doing IVF at the time, Bourne Hall in Cambridgeshire, with Patrick Scepto and Robert Edwards. But like I say, I knew about being an IVF baby, but I didn't find out until a lot later in life that obviously, as you correctly said there, that as part of that very early treatment, they used an anonymous sperm donor. Because we were talking about this last week, and I'm just wondering how that was for you to find

out so late. It was a huge shock. It came completely out of the blue in the sense that I wasn't expecting that information. And obviously, at this point, I was in my early 30s. And I think you sort of grow up, don't you, with certain narratives about, you know, all the stories you have when you're children about you get certain things from your mum or your dad or great auntie May or whoever it may be. It's the kind of conversations you have. And I think to have that information so late in life, I really felt like the rug had been pulled. I mean, I always say it changed, you know, in that moment, everything changed, but nothing changed in the sense my dad was still my dad.

I've had the most wonderful upbringing with both my parents, very loving, supportive family. But actually, that information, which was so pertinent to my identity, it changed a lot of things for me at that moment in time. You know, I was reading about your story and it's a fascinating one. You did embark on a journey to find who was the donor tell us about yes yes so it was about when our own children were about two years old and and as you've mentioned they're also going to conceive I started to get very curious about my own genetic heritage and the fact that my wife and I were having really serious conversations about you know how are we going to talk to our own children about being donor conceived? You know, maybe looking back at some of the things that went on in the past and maybe how we can do things a little bit better.

And having your own kids in life anyway, regardless of how they come into the world, it does change your perspective on a lot of things, having children. So I decided to send my DNA off to Ancestry.com. I'm one of the real oldies. And I was born pre-1991 before the HFEA even came into effect. You know, they weren't even in the regulatory body wasn't even in existence. So there was literally no information on who the donor was. And my parents were given very, very minimal information back, you know, when they were having treatment nearly,-odd years ago. So my only option was to DNA test with the big commercial sites at that time. And yeah, I sent off my DNA, had an eight-week nervous wait because I wasn't sure what would come up, potentially opening Pandora's box. You just don't know what you're going to find on these sites. And the way the sites work is they match your DNA with anybody else that is listed on the database.

My wife was amazing as well at helping me go through all my results. We spent many weeks when the twins were asleep at night going through family tree work, genealogy, census records, all sort of publicly available records. And we were able to narrow down my genetic father to two brothers. And like I say, I was able to reach out to one of them. And his name's Jonathan. And yeah, like I say, he got back to me and confirmed that he was in fact the donor. And he was up for meeting you and you have met, which I know will not be the experience for many people that might even want it to happen like that.

What was it like meeting him? Yes, it was it was quite crazy, actually. I mean, I the first time I saw him um I actually it's like was like looking at a familiar stranger we do look very alike I always used to think I look quite like my mum and I do but I actually when I saw a photograph of Jonathan and then met him we are very alike physically um but originally I just wanted to find him to have a photograph have some information and really importantly I was getting to the age where medical history was quite important. I was very fortunate that Jonathan was very welcoming and was able to provide me with all of that information.

And has continued. You know, we've stayed in contact. And he's been a great addition to my life. But I always want to make it clear that he's never going to be a replacement for my dad. I've never set out to look for any of my genetic family, if you like, as a replacement for, you know, my raised family, if you like. Well, let's talk about other additions to your life. You've already spoken very briefly there about your twins, but you are the parent of donor conceived twins. How did you and your wife go about making the decision to take that route? Yeah, so I'm married to a woman. So in order for us to have had a child, one of the options would have been donor conception.

And we decided to go down the route of using a sperm donor. We welcomed them into the world in 2017. And I think, to be honest, at that stage, because I hadn't met Jonathan, I hadn't really gone into the whole, I call it the rabbit hole of donor conception, if you like. One of the main things I think for my wife and I at that stage, when we were in our trying to conceive stage, was that our children had the identifying information of the donor that we were going to use. So that was very, very important to us.

And that's obviously what we ended up doing. But I think it was only after the twins were born that I DNA tested myself and actually met Jonathan and it really opened my eyes up to maybe how my children may feel in the future and that's kind of what prompted me to start talking a little bit more about my story and some things that I've learned about the fertility industry and things like that that I think could be vastly improved you know things about information for parents that are on this journey that they should maybe be thinking of

before they embark on it and just things like that, really. And I was looking at your following on Instagram. You share your story as well as tips. And I wonder, with those experiences that you've shared with us, if there are parents listening who haven't told their donor-conceived children yet

of their genetic origin, what would your advice be to them? advice would be to um definitely seek some help and some information and you had nina on from the donor conception network last week who they're a fantastic charity that have supported uh many hundreds of parents i think over the years um and especially those that are maybe telling them and or maybe even adult, you know, their adult children. And just be mindful that DNA testing is out there. And it's really grown rapidly in the last couple of years. And these kits are so cheap, people are getting them for Christmas and things like that as gifts.

And it may be that your child may find out by accident in a DNA test, which it can be an awful experience. So I would always say that even though it will be a difficult thing to tell your children later on in life, it's far better to come in a loving, supportive manner than finding out by accident or in a DNA test. Hayley Darknell-King speaking to Nuala about her experience of being both a donor-conceived parent and a donor-conceived child. Still to come on the programme,

how can an item that's 5,000 years old be trailblazing? We talk about the sari and why it's having a fashion renaissance. And remember that you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day if you can't join us live at 10am during the week. All you need to do is subscribe to The Daily Podcast and it's absolutely free at BBC Sounds. Now, last week we reported how 22-year-old Eleanor Williams, who claimed she'd been trafficked and raped by an Asian grooming gang,

was convicted of perverting the course of justice. The jury heard how she'd created fake social media accounts to make it look like she was being intimidated and that her injuries were self-inflicted. She'll be sentenced in March, but as the dust settles on the case, this week on Woman's Hour, we as the dust settles on the case, this week on Woman's Hour, we discussed the possible impact of her conviction. Nuala was joined by Nazir Afzal, who was Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England and has been involved in a number of grooming gang cases,

and also by Maggie Oliver, the former senior police officer who became a whistleblower for exposing the poor handling of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring and now runs the Maggie Oliver Foundation, which works with victims and survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Nuala started by asking Nazir his opinion of how serious the implications of this case are. I mean, it's not going to be a situation that will improve things, let's put it bluntly. 10, 11 years ago, and Maggie and i will know this very well um the police approach was to treat every or pretty much every victim with enormous skepticism and uh and they would work on the basis that um well we don't believe her let's see what the case proves to be the case and we changed that uh we brought about um a

significant change where we started on the principle that you believe the complainant when they come forward and then you investigate it which is the right approach I mean you would do that with a burglary for example you wouldn't say you're a victim of a burglary but we didn't happen you prove that you know the police need to investigate it and then we a few years ago five or six years ago we had the Carl Beach saga which was the Operation Midland which was a man making allegations against some high-profile figures, which were found to be lies. He was then convicted and given 18 years in prison.

And there was a real pushback then. People were saying, oh, no, hang on a minute. We shouldn't be having this principle of belief. We should, again, try and treat everybody with scepticism. So it went backwards and for a little while it meant that many people who were making allegations weren't treated with the seriousness that they ought to be treated. And my danger, my fear is that that's the same thing that will happen here, that on the basis of one case, and it's only one case and one person,

other victims will be given or will be denied justice. And that can't be the right approach. Maggie, you know, it would be profound, though, if it changes in any of the aspects that Nazir has mentioned there. How are you thinking about it? You know what, Noala, I think this is perhaps one of the hardest interviews I've ever had to do. Because do I duck it? Because it gives me many uncomfortable feelings if i feel this way what about all the victims and survivors throughout the country who are now feeling some kind of uncomfortable feeling or are they going to be believed or will they come forward um and you

know faith potentially and that they will have a fear in their head that they will be potentially prosecuted for perverting the course of justice. An unrealistic fear, but nonetheless one that many have contacted me about last week. But in my 20 years of dealing with these kinds of crimes, Noala, this is the very first time that I have heard of a case like this, except for the Carl Beach case that Nazir has just mentioned. And I would be really sad

if victims felt silenced. But this case does raise many questions. And I do feel for the young men who were falsely accused. My heart goes out to them. You know, I have got three sons and there can be nothing worse than being falsely accused of rape.

But it is rare. It is extremely rare. But I want to pick up on some of the issues that you've raised there, Maggie, and go back to Nazir, because, you know, people do remember

the headlines, not the granular details of individual cases even though this is one that is rare. Her photograph as we know has been everywhere including with those injuries and will the lasting memory of this case be that

women make fake rape allegations even though this is about one person and one case? Well, I hope not. And of course, you know, I know from experience, good defence lawyers will make hay. In another case, they will say, members of the jury, you probably remember. And that's the kind of thing we need to be wary of.

But prosecutors at the end of the day will present the evidence that needs to be presented in those cases. You know, I've no doubt that people will make hay, if that's the right phrase. But at the same time, we have to recognise it's very, very rare and it's not just an anecdote. And so we will put that case before a court. Yeah, I suppose, how do you get that message across

to somebody's historical memory for juries or the general public? Good prosecutors. At the end of the day, the general public don't make a decision on a case. It'll be the jury that does. So there's 12 people in the courtroom.

And for the prosecutor and the judge to make sure that they have all the facts before them and they only base their finding on the evidence that they hear in the court. So, you know, at the end of the day, we have a jury system. That's what it's there for.

And it'll protect the innocent at the same time as it'll convict the guilty. So I'm not wary about that. I just think that in a public discourse, I don't want people to be deterred from coming forward. Well, that's Maggie's point. You know, it happened after Operation Midland. It happened with Carl Beach. I don't want the same thing happening again. People who are victims need to get the support they get from Maggie

and organisations like Maggie's and make sure that they make their report and then the police do their job. Well, let me throw that back over to Maggie, because do you have faith in the system, as Nazir was outlining? I do believe in the system, as Nazir was outlining? I do believe in the system. You know, I have, my whole life changed because I believe in a criminal justice system that needs to be fit for purpose.

I do believe, I mean, Nazir knows that not everything goes in front of a court. But, you know, I too did make a couple of phone calls before I shared that post um to other professional organizations in barrow and also lawyers up there and i was assured that yes um that there was credence to this so um it's not a simple case i want victims to feel that they can come forward that they will be heard. And if they are telling the truth, do not fear the system.

We have to believe in a system and we have to have one that works. Maggie Oliver, former detective constable with the Greater Manchester Police and Nazir Afzal, former chief crown prosecutor for North West England, speaking to NULA earlier this week. And if you've been affected

by what we've been discussing, then do go online and search for the BBC Action Line support page. Now, our next guest has been looking into the history of breast cancer. Joanna Bourke is the Gresham Professor of Rhetoric. How did the one-step radical mastectomy persist as the most common way to deal with the disease until relatively recently? How was breast cancer racialised with many doctors in the US who believe that black women could not get it? And why are women encouraged to reconstruct their missing breast after surgery? Well, I started by asking Joanna why she wanted to research this particular topic. I think breast cancer is a really important thing, disease to sort of look

into. I mean, one in eight women in Britain and America will have breast cancer in their lifetime. So it's something that affects all of us. And I think by looking at the history of this disease, we can actually reflect on the present and the future of what we can do to actually make breast cancer something that is livable and something that we can do something about. So let's go back, back to the ancient Greeks and the Romans. How did they view breast cancer? Did they have an opinion on it? How did they even know about it? Well, breast cancer has been talked about, written about since 3000 BC. It's the first time we actually get an indication of it. So it's always been a major thing for physicians and indeed for philosophers. In the ancient world,

the Greek and Roman ancient world, breast cancer, they thought that breast cancer was due to an excess of black bile in the body. So women's bodies, they believed, were sort of spongy and moist and wet, and therefore black bile built up in the body. And if it couldn't be expelled, for example, through menstruation, then it could develop into breast cancer. So it's about an imbalance, if you like, in what they used to call the humours within the body. But what they also believed was that actually breast cancer was would be to put meat on the breast because then the worms would eat the meat as opposed to eating the person's flesh. So this was one of the cures, if you like, for breast cancer. I mean, there was also, of course, purging and things like that. But breast cancer is something that has really fired the medical imagination since forever.

When did the shift in understanding of this disease really happen? The real big change, I think, happened with two big changes. The first big change happened in the 1890s when, as you've already mentioned, radical mastectomy became popular and the massive cutting, not only of the breast tissue, but also of the pectoral muscles surrounding it. And this was a form of radical surgery that was popularized by Halstead of John Hopkins University. And it left women really desperately incapacitated. They couldn't even comb their hair afterwards. But they didn't, and also often they didn't have a choice. I mean, I was shocked to read about that.

Yeah, first step, surgery. So what would happen is when a woman was diagnosed with breast, when they found a tumour or something, she would be anaesthetised and then a biopsy would be taken. And while she was still, you know, sleeping, while she was still anaesthetised, they would test and then if it was proven to be breast cancer, they would immediately remove the breast. So a woman would be taken into hospital, operated on, wouldn't know in advance whether she had breast cancer or not. She would either wake up with or without her breast. So first step, surgery.

And this lasted until the 80s? This lasted a long time. I mean, it was partly due to Halstead's great sort of influence as a major surgeon. He wrote a lot of the textbooks. It was also due to the fact that this kind of surgery really matched the kind of militarism of the period. But it was also due to this idea that if you cut into the tumor, it would actually spread the cancers throughout the body. And it was really only into the 1970s and 1980s that work done, clinical trials done by people like George Kyle and others

showed that in fact this wasn't true and actually lapectomy was just as effective as the full radical mastectomy. Now something I mentioned in my intro to you which is incredibly shocking I want to talk about how prevalent it was the view that black women did not get breast cancer. This was a very, very common view all over the world. It wasn't only breast cancer they believed black women didn't get. It was also many other forms of diseases such as polio, for example. The reason for it is that there was this belief that breast cancer in particular was a cancer of civilization.

And black women had more primitive bodies. They had more physiologically robust bodies. They didn't have the sophisticated internal life in order to deal adequately with the effect of breast cancer. Out of that racist view. But Audre Lorde has a huge role to play in changing that, didn't she? Yeah, Audre Lorde, she's just one of my great heroines of all times. If you don't know her work, really, she's just incredible. Your face is lit up, yes.

She's written so much, but her cancer diaries are so important. She's a black lesbian feminist of the 1970s, 80s. And she got breast cancer and she wrote about it. And she wrote really searingly about the fact that breast cancer was white. Even the prosthetic that she was meant to be wearing was white lambswool. And so she wrote about the racism at the heart of this, of breast treatments, breast cancer treatments. But she also did other things. And that is she politicized it. She said visibility is a political issue. And, you know, breast cancer is not something that we have to deal with alone. She was great about the difficulties,

the problems of the individualisation of breast cancer. She said, look, we're a community. And if women can't love their own one-breasted bodies, then we are totally lost. We are alien to each other. So she was very important in sort of pushing the whole movement about the democraticisation and the politicisation of female beauty.

Making out everyone, Audrey Lorde, that's a bit of homework for this weekend. Let's all dig into the history of Audrey Lorde. And you very quickly criticise what you call the relentless positivity of the narrative around breast cancer. What do you mean by that? One of the things that is really infuriating is this relentless need that, you know, you can't be angry, you can't be afraid, you have to have guts, you have to have courage, you have to wear lipstick to your mastectomy. So it's about consumerism. It's not about fighting, for example, the industrialisation, fighting pollutions in our environment.

The brilliant Professor Joanna Burke on the cultural history of breast cancer. Now let's talk about one of my favourite items of clothing to wear. The sari. Hashtag sari not sorry. A new exhibition called Offbeat Sari is set to open at the Design Museum in London. It'll be the first large-scale show of its kind and I can't wait. It brings together more than 90 trailblazing saris that have been loaned by designers and studios across India to tell the story of what has been called

a fashion revolution. The sari whose history dates back over 5,000 years is evolving into a modern expression of identity. In 2010, Lady Gaga wore a sari-inspired outfit designed by Tarun Thaliani. And last year, the Indian businesswoman and socialite Natasha Poonawalla was the first ever Met Gala guest to wear a sari designed by Sabyasachi Mukherjee. And yours truly wore a sari to present the Queen's Jubilee in 2022. It's a moment I will never forget and I feel incredibly proud of it. While Krupa spoke to Priya Kanchanthani, who is curating the exhibition, she started by asking Priya, how can an item that's 5,000 years old be trailblazing?

The way in which the sari is being experimented with today is absolutely astonishing. It's probably going through its biggest reinvention in its 5,000 year history, if it's possible to track that. The way in which designers are playing with new materials, we're seeing saris woven from steel, stitched from hands distressed to denim, knotted, pleated, belted, saris that are worn in protests, in celebrations, or even on a daily commute. But essentially, the sari is being radically reimagined. And that's taking place by the work of designers, by wearers, and also by makers. And I think they're really adapting it for what is a diverse and contemporary world. Steel and denim. I'm not sure I'd be able to put

one of those on, but it's important to say, isn't it, that sari is well experimented with to an extent already. Each part of India has its own way of putting on a sari, but there are stereotypes associated with wearing a sari. Talk us through them and how they have changed. Well, I think the stereotypes are quite different perhaps here in Britain compared to in India, where this reimagining of the sari is really taking hold. Having grown up in the UK among the South Asian diaspora, like you, the stereotypes I was exposed to were of the sari being something associated with my grandmother with my mother um something that was and subconsciously I probably didn't realize it but associated with

the passive female body in the domestic space or the objectified female body in Bollywood um you know and in India the sari in the sort of 80s and 90s was going through a period of not being quite as relevant as it had been in a previous generation. In fact, in 1990, India Today reported that the sari was considered a staid standard and almost sacred, which is quite astonishing given how exciting it is today within India at least. You see I've always thought of it like you know fashions change but the sari stays the same and it's timeless and it comes you know if one fashion's gone out it will come again it will come again around in a few months time or a few years time but one thing that that is clear is that they are very tough to wear so why are the younger generation choosing to reinvent it? Well, I think India's gone through quite an intense period of cultural socioeconomic change.

You know, it was made independent in 1947. In 1991, the economy liberalised and it opened India up to so many new influences. And that's sort of, you know, when the fashion industry also sort of mushroomed, we started to have the first design fashion weeks in India, and fashion houses started to grow. So I think all of that is sort of coming to a head in a sense, through for a number of different reasons. I think there's also a reckoning about the role of women in Indian society. And I think the way women are experimenting with the sari is an expression of their own identity. And they're really turning it into a symbol of female empowerment, which I think defies those stereotypes of an earlier generation.

But it also in many ways connects us to an earlier generation as well, doesn't it? Yeah, I think there's certainly a great deal of nostalgia. There are designers who are looking to female icons of earlier generations for inspiration, you know, figures like Gayatri Devi from the Tagore family and Indra Gandhi, the first female prime minister of India. You know, these are powerful women who wore the sari boldly and designers now are looking back to them and women looking back to them as sort of muses. Prime Minister of India. You know, these are powerful women who wore the sari boldly and

designers now are looking back to them and women looking back to them as sort of muses. So yeah, there's certainly that nostalgia factor. But I think the kind of materiality of the sari now, the way it's being draped, the way the individualness of it is giving rise to quite different form of expression than what we've seen before. Priya Kanchandani speaking to Krupa Paddy earlier this week. The exhibition The Offbeat Sari will open at the Design Museum in May. See you there. That's all from me and Weekend Woman's Hour today. On Monday, the actor Patricia Hodge, 50 years in the business and roles ranging from She Who Must Be Abayed in Rumpel of the Bailey

to Miranda's Mother in Miranda. Plus, memories of working with Faye Weldon in Life and Loves of a She-Devil. Join Nuala at 10am on Monday for Woman's Hour and I'll be back presenting Woman's Hour on Thursday and Friday. Have a lovely weekend. I'm Sarah Treleaven 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.